She turned towards him with a delirious expression which he took for the frenzy of spite, and he seized her in his arms. Was it that kind of momentary aberration which at certain moments prompts us to the performance of actions in which later on we fail to recognise ourselves? Was it the domination of a distempered will by a will that was cold and steady? To what extent did that frenzy for degradation, that madness for her own ruin which had haunted this hapless soul the evening before, enter into her weakness? The fact remains that she did not defend herself against the young man's embrace. He grew more bold, and she was completely his. Yes, in that very drawing-room where formerly she had shrunk in horror from giving herself to the man she loved, she suffered herself, alas! to be taken by a man whom she did not love, and the latter was stupefied both by the ease of his victory and by the corpse-like insensibility encountered in this unlooked-for mistress, of whom he had not even been thinking twenty-four hours before. De Varades had been gone for a long time, and evening was falling. Helen had remained in the same place, seated in the same corner of the couch, as though dead. The enormity of the event that had just come to pass had suddenly dispersed the hallucination in which grief had been causing her to live during the past few weeks. What! she was the mistress of Monsieur de Varades--she, Helen Chazel! No, it was not true, seeing that she loved Armand. Where was she? What had she done? Impelled by what madness? And through the supreme horror by which she was possessed on finding that she was alive, and that all was true, a sudden idea rose in her mind, the idea of seeing Armand. Why? She could not have told exactly, but the desire had swooped upon her, irresistible; she felt that it must be done, and not on the morrow, not that evening, but immediately. She must speak to him, were she to fly from her home in order to find him wherever he might be. At all costs she would see him. Had he returned to Paris? She would ascertain. In ten minutes she had put on a fashionable dress and a bonnet, had called a cab, and shivering with fever in a corner of it--how great a change from the day on which a similar vehicle was conveying her to the meeting with her lover!--was proceeding to the Rue Lincoln. CHAPTER IX The cab went slowly along the streets, and every moment Helen said to herself: "Shall I see him again?" She was now facing the irresistible thought, the mere appearance of which had hurried her to the immediate quest of Armand when she had barely emerged from her horrible delirium. She must be able to cry to this man that he had ruined her. Yes, she must do this, and he must at last believe her and understand the infamy of his behaviour. She would say to her former lover: