"Show him into the drawing-room," she said; suddenly the memory of Armand's injustice awoke keener than before, and the crisis of sorrow through which she had just been passing resulted in one of those rushes of frenzy in which she really no longer knew what she was doing. She went into her dressing-room. With a little water she removed the traces of her tears, for at the times when she renewed, one by one, the details of her wretchedness, she used to weep, almost without perceiving it, and mad, as it were, through grief, she went down to the little drawing-room. "How kind of you to come to keep me company!" she said, holding out her hand to the young man. Voluntarily she made him sit down in the arm-chair in front of her, the one in which Monsieur de Querne used generally to sit. How he had lied to her in that place! How he had misunderstood her! It seemed to her that she was taking vengeance upon him at that moment by this profanation of their common memories. She herself took a seat on the couch which stood obliquely against the fireplace, in which the remnant of a fire was burning. She looked at De Varades with eyes that did not see him, but he, as he began to talk, watched her with much attention. The obvious wildness that she displayed, the almost incoherent rapidity of her speech, the element of nervelessness that was manifested in her laughter, in her gestures, in the movements of her head, all evidenced a woman that was half beside herself. The evening before De Varades had inwardly said in explanation of her coquetry at the Malhoures' ball: "She wants to make some one jealous." Then he had not discovered any one wearing towards her the countenance of a wounded lover. In the twilight in the little drawing-room he said to himself: "'Tis she who is jealous, and wishes to be revenged." Insensibly he caused the conversation to glide upon the same slope as on the previous evening; he spoke to her again of his despairing and melancholy feelings. She listened to him almost without reply, with the thought of the indignation that Armand would feel after all, if he could see her at that moment. De Varades meanwhile was reasoning thus to himself: "What do I risk? Being shown the door once again as at Bourges?" He made up his mind to take advantage of the disquiet which, as he could see, possessed her, and he rose and seated himself on the couch by her side, saying to her: "Ah! I loved you dearly!"