Her rapid interview with Monsieur de Querne had modified the colouring of these fears. He had come to take the Chazels to their hotel, and all three had dined together in a restaurant on the Boulevards. Helen had been surprised by Armand's outward appearance, and by the contrast that he presented to the carelessness of Alfred; but further, the young man's questions, his keen way of looking, the irony that tinted his slightest expressions, together with an indefinable shade of contempt for Alfred, which a woman's acuteness could not but remark, had disconcerted her, causing her a slight shiver of mistrust. She would have wished never to see the man again. She had been unable to refrain from mentioning this antipathy to her husband, and he had replied: "He looks like that, but he is such a good fellow, and then he has been so unfortunate." And he told his wife about Armand's childhood, his guardian's selfishness, his youthful melancholy, and he commiserated him for other mysterious sufferings.
"He has not understood life well. He was rich. He has not employed his fine powers. He has said nothing to me, but I always believed that he had experienced a deep passion."
Helen would have been much astonished if any one had revealed to her that the species of agony with which her thought rested upon the probable secret nature of this disquieting personage, comprised that form of anxiety which often precedes love. The settlement at Paris had taken place, and Armand had begun to visit them, at first in their furnished rooms, and then in the little house in the Rue de La Rochefoucauld. It was he who had found it for them, he who courteously offered his assistance in the countless goings and comings necessitated by the furnishing of the new home. In the constant interviews thus brought about, whether in a shop, or while walking together from one tradesman's to another, or when driving in a carriage, as often happened, Helen learnt to know all the delightful outward qualities possessed by Armand. Unlike the men, all of them occupied with science or self-advancement, who met at her husband's house, he appeared to attach only a secondary importance to acquired merits or positive learning. Questions of feeling alone interested him.
In all the men that she had seen, Helen had encountered the same idea about love, namely, that it pertained to youth, was to be relegated to the background, and that rational people should never weigh it against family or professional interests. Her discussions with Armand revealed to her a man who had reflected a great deal about the mutual relations of the sexes. He possessed that imagination of heart which women so readily confuse with genuine sensibility, together with that experience of amorous life which lends to libertines their prestige even with the most virtuous. The expression of melancholy which was familiar to him seemed to say that this experience had been purchased at the cost of cruel deceptions. It was these unknown griefs that completed the work of seduction which had begun in timorous astonishment, and been continued in the admiration of the provincial for the Parisian; for the superiority of judgment concerning life which distinguished the young man, corresponded to too many stifled aspirations on Helen's part, to leave her indifferent to it. It was he whose taste she perceived scattered over the walls of her little drawing-room; he who had chosen that old tapestry and hung it in its corner; he who had chosen this piece of furniture or that piece of material from among several others. This softened admiration, which led her to say to herself: "What a happiness it would be to comfort him for all that he has suffered," had soon ended in the hope that her presence was really sweet to him, for he was occupied about her with visible sympathy.
At different times she had heard him tell her:
"I had an invitation to Madame So-and-so's this evening, but I broke my engagement in order to spend the evening with you."
One day, on the occasion of one of those insignificant events which in the heart's darkness are as tiny lights revealing an immense gulf, she had confessed to herself that she loved him. Armand, who was to have come to dinner in the Rue de La Rochefoucauld, had sent a note of excuse to the effect that he was unwell. She had sent Alfred to see him, and Alfred had found nobody in the Rue Lincoln. By the sorrow that the young woman experienced, she recognised the extent of the interest that she took in Monsieur de Querne, and, to her misfortune, she recognised it at a moment when, upon one of those petty troubles, which are great disasters in love, she must inevitably doubt whether her feeling was returned. Instead of striving against this love, as she would have done had she believed herself loved, she said to herself:
"Why has he not kept his promise? With whom has he spent the evening?"
When she saw him again, he spoke somewhat hardly to her, and she suffered a disconcerted countenance to be seen. He gently took her hand, and she burst into tears. From that hour she ceased to be capable of concealing the disquiet with which the mere sight of Armand inspired her. She began to enter upon that stage wherein the soul finds itself ceaselessly divided between the sight of the direst misfortune and of the highest felicity. How is it possible to reason then? Armand, who knew love's halting-places too well not to perceive the progress that he was making in Helen's heart, was adroit enough to show her that he doubted her feelings towards himself, and that he was unhappy on account of this doubt.
He thus led her in succession to tell him that she loved him, to let him take her hands, her arms, her waist, and to lend her cheek, her eyes, her lips to kisses. Nothing could be more opposed than these progressive familiarities to the ideas that Helen entertained respecting the manner in which a woman ought to behave towards a man when she loves. She considered, as do all truly loyal natures, that a slight deception is morally equivalent to one that is complete. But she yielded to the faintest expression of pain in the young man's eyes with a weakness for which she reproached herself on each occasion, only to relapse once more.