"Perhaps she loves me," he said to himself; and he sat down at his table, and even got ready a sheet of paper in order to write to her. Then, leaning back in his easy chair, he reflected. The recollection of Varades suddenly beset him, as also of the serenity with which Helen had deceived her husband that evening. "Innocent child," he said aloud, speaking to himself, "if it were not I, it would be someone else. When a fast woman meets with a libertine, they form a pair."
He began to laugh in a nervous fashion, and recalled the boundless contempt with which he had formerly been covered by the lady whom his scruples had led him to give up. She was the only enemy that he had kept among all the women with whom he had had to do. The clock struck.
"Two o'clock," he said, "and I have to get up early in order to visit worthy Madame Palmyre, and reserve one of her little suites, as in Madame de Rugle's days. I shall be tired. Monsieur de Varades will be missed."
Half-an-hour later he was in bed, and, head on arm, sleeping that infantine sleep which, in spite of his life, had still been left to him. So he was represented in a drawing by his father, which hung on one of the walls of his bed-room. Ah! if the dead ones, whose son he was, had been able to see him, would they have condemned him? Would they have pitied him?
[CHAPTER III]
It was about half-past ten in the morning when Madame Chazel received a small packet from the Baron de Querne. It contained two books—two new novels—and a letter, the last being similar to all those that a man of the world may write to a woman with whom he is on friendly terms. But the postscript pressed as with a hand upon her heart. It ran as follows:
"If your country friend decides to come to Paris, the best furnished apartments that I have seen are at 16, Rue de Stockholm. They are on the second floor, to the right."
Yes, Helen was seized with inward trepidation on reading these simple lines. In proportion as her action drew closer to her—the action that would for ever separate her future and her past—the fever which had been preying upon her since the previous evening had increased still more. She had just left her bath, and, wrapped in a dressing-gown of pure white, was crouched on a low chair beside the fire, her naked feet in slippers, her form unconstrained by the flexible material, and her hair rolled in a great twist about her neck. She shivered in her wool-lined robe, and, with Armand's letter in her fingers, gazed now at the paper, the mere touch of which overwhelmed her, and now around the room—a refuge which she preferred even to the little drawing-room, as enabling her to retire into a domain that was all her own.
She had been so pleased at the time of their settling in Paris to obtain this room all to herself! She had during so many nights known the torture of sleeping beside a man whom she did not love, and if sleeping side by side, almost breath to breath, forms the delight of blissful passion, physical aversion, on the other hand, is augmented by such intimacy, until it becomes a species of animal hatred. Alfred's movements, the sound of his breathing, the mere existence of his person, angered her and hurt her, in the hours that she spent thus beside him, when silence hung heavy upon their rest, and she lay awake quivering and in revolt. When requesting this separation of rooms she certainly had not foreseen that the solitude of her couch would one day avail her as a weapon against material partition, that terrible ransom for adultery which prudent women accept as a security. It is a rare thing for those who deceive their husbands to sleep apart from them. They would rather not have to carry with them to their lover the anxiety due to a watchfulness but little reconcilable with complete pleasure.
But Helen was not capable of such calculations. The most charming trait in her character was a spontaneity that might draw her into very great perils, but that at least always preserved her from a foulness which is more degrading than anything else—reflection in the midst of error. At this very moment, as she sat crouching upon her low chair, she did not think about the consequences of her approaching action, nor did she reason—she felt. The presence of Armand's letter caused her to be visited with excessive emotion. She scarcely so much as listened to the noise that her little boy made in playing beside her bed. The child was shaking his flaxen ringlets, and shouting and running about. He had set two chairs beside each other, and was creeping between them, pretending that he was a railway train passing through a tunnel.