She might at that moment have been forbidden to throw herself into the water, and in her rage for contradiction, and to relieve her nerves, she would have hastened to the Seine. On entering her room again, she felt so unhappy that she did not even undress. She walked about in her ball costume until morning, and the champagne she had drunk, the bewilderment of the party, the fund of despair upon which her soul had been living for so many hours, all united to confuse her understanding. "Yes," she said to herself at certain moments, "'tis he that I must have and no other--for the time being," she added with such implacability in the imagining of ill as at dark moments relieves the heart somewhat, "and when I have done it, when I am low and in the mire, then perhaps I shall forget, and then all this will be over, over, over." And when her soul recoiled at the wildness of this monstrous plan, then, that she might resume her inclination for the shame to which she was being dizzily impelled, she pictured Armand to herself, she saw him with his eyes and his smile, she heard his voice: "Do you believe that I was not acquainted with your life?" "Ah!" she would then exclaim like a wounded creature uttering a cry, and she would stretch herself upon her bed with that whirl in her sick brow which was intolerable to her. In the morning she had an hour's heavy sleep, visited with nightmare. At about nine o'clock she rose to attend to household affairs, as was her habit, indolently and with soul roaming elsewhere. Extreme fatigue and, as it were, a dying languor had taken possession of her. After breakfast she went up to her room again, and, in spite of herself, her hands opened the box containing Armand's letters. There were not fifteen--she counted them--and the longest of them had but two pages. She read them again, as she did nearly every day, and their aridity showed to her even worse than on former occasions. Every phrase in these notes might have been quoted without compromising her to whom the notes were addressed; and so there was not one that might have been traced in a moment of self-surrender, or to give passage to the overflowing of a heart. She had believed formerly that he used to write to her in this way out of regard for her peace, and she had been grateful to him for it. Fool! Fool! He wrote to her thus because he did not love her, because he had never loved her, and why should he have loved her, judging of her as he did? In his eyes, what was she? A woman like all the rest! Of what did he not believe her capable? Of making use, perhaps, of his letters against him? Her soul was bleeding again at every pore. Ah! what remedy was there, what remedy?--and as she was asking herself this question for the hundredth time the servant entered and inquired whether she would see Monsieur de Varades. The officer had kept his word, and had not lost a day in taking advantage of the permission to come and see her which she had granted him.