"No, madame, I am living here," he replied; "I was appointed professor at the School of War four months ago."
"Four months, and you have not come to see us?" she said in a coquettishly reproachful tone of voice.
"No, but I heard about you," replied the young man, and to himself: "How Paris has changed her!" He detested her deeply, first because she had wounded his pride, and then by reason of the infamous conduct of which he had been guilty towards her. He had boasted of having been her lover, giving details in proof; it was not true, and he could not forgive her for the irreparable wrong that he had done her. Ah! if the calumny had only been like those others that are stated aloud and that it is possible to grasp! But no, it passes from ear to ear and from lip to lip until it reaches a man who might have loved this woman, and whose heart is stayed, suddenly paralysed by the terrible uncertainty concerning the answer to the question: "Has she that in her past?"
To the young officer's credit it must be said that he had not seen so far. He had yielded to the hideous spite of masculine vanity, and it was again this vanity which, on Helen's unexpected reception of him, prompted him to murmur an interrogative "Eh?" and immediately to begin again the love-comedy that had formerly been played. A waltz was sounding—the waltz of Faust, for the second of the young Malhoure ladies was at the piano, and she, the artist of the family, liked people to dance to classical subjects, whereas the eldest and the youngest, who prided themselves upon being regular Parisians, doted on popular music, and airs from the operettas and musical cafés.
"May I have the honour of this waltz, madame?" asked De Varades of Helen.
"Was I engaged or was I not?" said the latter. "So much the worse! I restore you your liberty," she added, addressing the young man who had accompanied her to the refreshment room, but who through timidity did not venture to remind her of the promise she had given of dancing with himself; and immediately she was whirling round in the ball-room in the arms of De Varades.
She was whirling round, prettier than ever with the feverish pink that coloured her cheeks and imparted to them a tint similar to that of her stockings, her skirt, and her corsage. The two patches at the corner of her cheek, her black eyes, and her powdered hair, clothed her with a sovereign grace that, apart from feelings of pride, stirred old longings in the young man's heart. He was speaking to her while they danced. She listened to him with—strange contrast!—Armand's image before her thoughts. "If he could see me," she said to herself, "he would have doubts no longer, he would triumph. Well! what does that matter to me?"
This strange inclination to act exactly contrary to her inmost nature, which, when light and artificial is called spite, was exalted in this distempered soul to the pitch of aberration, and she listened with a pleased smile to what De Varades said to her. The latter, clever enough to discern that something extraordinary was going on in Madame Chazel's mind, and too desirous of requital not to take advantage of the opportunity, had again begun to speak to her of his feelings. In passionate terms he depicted to her his despair at Bourges when he had displeased her, his vain attempts at self-consolation, his resolve never to marry for her sake; he gave her to understand that she was the only woman he had ever loved, and that he had sought an appointment at Paris solely that he might meet her again. Never had he dared to tell her so much at the period of their early relationships, and before his brutal assault. But to all these falsehoods, repeated over and over again during this first waltz, then in the square dances which followed, and then in the quietude of the cotillon which they danced together, she responded by such slight interjections of doubt as encourage avowals. She seemed to be delirious for coquetry; she spent upon this flirtation of an evening the fever that was preying upon her. Thus, a few hours later, the officer, on his return to his small abode in the Rue Saint-Dominique—a suite of apartments of which only two were furnished, the others being filled with uniforms, weapons, and big boots—swore inwardly as he undressed that he would carry this affair through with a high hand. From his grandfather, who had served under the Emperor, De Varades inherited the maxim that everything, in all circumstances, should be ventured with women. And so, when he laid his head upon his pillow before going to sleep, he had resolved to essay the possession of Madame Chazel, no matter where, even were it on the couch in her drawing-room, at the risk of a servant's entrance. "And this time she shall not escape. She told me she was always at home between two and four. Till to-morrow," he added, and closed his eyes on the sweet hope of repairing his former wrong.
Poor Helen! While this man, anticipating the temerity with which frenzy for injustice endured had inspired her, was falling asleep over his dangerous plan, she herself was watching, a prey to those memories each one of which was hurrying her to some act of madness. Her husband had been unlucky enough to say to her on their return to the Rue de la Rochefoucauld after the party at the Malhoures':
"I thought you had quite an antipathy to Varades, and you danced with scarcely anybody else."