But what he regretted in Helen, even more than her gracious tenderness, was her physical person. From the time that he had become her lover he had, contrary to all his principles, remained entirely faithful to her, and this fidelity increased in him the exactitude of the memory of the senses. He could again see in thought the room in the Rue de Stockholm, and on the pillow that refined head, its eyes laden with mysterious voluptuousness. Slight and scarcely observed details recurred to him: a certain fashion that she had of leaning her pretty face over him, the aroma which hung about her kisses and their special flavour.
A yearning then seized him, against which he employed the infallible remedy to which he was accustomed. He felt that he must place between Helen and himself bodily shapes that might afford his senses a pasture of beauty, bosoms fit to serve for the modelling of cups, sinking shoulders worthy of statues, supple hips, slender legs, and skilful caresses. Such instruments of forgetfulness abound in first-class houses of pleasure. The young man used them on this occasion, as on others, even to excess, so that when Helen rang at the door in the Rue Lincoln, she had come to be almost as great a stranger to him as though he had never known her.
He was turning over the leaves of a book, lying rather than sitting in an easy-chair, and waiting until it should be time to dress in order to rejoin some dinner companions at the club. He was in that condition of pleasing weariness which heartless pleasure always brings to men who are wise enough to ask nothing of women but the enjoyment of palpable beauty. Helen and the intrigue of the previous months were, so far as he was concerned, shrinking into a background that each day made more inaccessible than before. It was another chapter to be added to the others in the mournful romance of gallantry in the course of which his feelings had been exhausted without being expended.
Already, as he thought about it, he had ceased to feel anything more than a sick spot in his heart. He was sorry for having so greatly misunderstood Chazel, but a satisfied conscience softened this sorrow. Had he not unhesitatingly sacrified to his friend's confidence all the pleasure that his intrigue might still have brought him? Accordingly, he experienced the most disagreeable of surprises when, after being informed by his servant that a lady wished to speak to him, he saw Helen. She had not taken the trouble to put on a veil. He perceived at a glance her wasted countenance, her discoloured eyes, her bright and steady gaze, her bitter lips. Mechanically, he pushed an arm-chair towards her, which she declined.
"It is not worth while," she said, "what I have to say to you will not take long. I shall not take up much of your time."
"Well," he thought to himself, "another scene. It shall be the last."
The complete absence of physical desire resulting from his recent debauches, made him singularly dry and hard. He reflected that it had been very stupid on his part not to close his door against her, and he forthwith determined to enter into no explanations, and to keep her at a distance by the employment of the most commonplace politeness.
"I feel quite put out," he said to her, just as though there had never been anything but the most official relations between them; "I ought to have called on you after my return, and then a dozen wretched trifles prevented me. You know how it is when one is on the point of going away. I expect to be in London towards the end of the month."
"Do not trouble yourself to make excuses," Helen interrupted, shrugging her shoulders; "what is the use? Why should you have come? To avoid compromising me? I will dispense with such delicacy on your part. To tell me again that you do not love me, and have never loved me, and to see me suffer? You are not a monster. All that you had to tell me you told me. Do not be afraid," she added with a nerveless smile, "it is not to resume our former conversation that I am here."
She paused as though the words that she was about to utter were already burning her lips, the lips parched by so many feverish nights. She had spoken in so bitter and withal so grave a voice that the young man felt a pang. On seeing her again he had expected a pleading scene, the eager appeal of a forsaken mistress who entreats for but a day of the old happiness, and the solemnity of Helen's accents heralded a prayerless, hopeless revelation, tidings such as to her appeared of tragic importance. Was she going to tell him that she was pregnant? Or had she in an hour of wildness confessed everything to her husband? She remained silent, and it was his turn to be impatient.