"Do not misjudge me, Armand; rather understand me. I should like to be yours in a place of which nothing would remain afterwards. What would become of the rooms you furnished for me if ever you ceased to love me? Why, I cannot endure the thought of it, even now. Do not wrong me, dear; only understand me." Thus did she speak, laying bare the profoundly romantic side of her nature, as also her heart's secret wound. Although she did not account fully to herself for Armand's character--a character frightful in aridity beneath loving externals, for in this man there was an absolute divorce between imagination and heart--she perceived only too clearly that he was inclined to misinterpret the slightest indications. She saw that distrust was springing up in him with an almost unhealthy suddenness. She had been quite aware that he suspected her, but she had believed that this doubt proceeded solely from her refusals to belong to him. It was on this account that she was consenting to give him this last proof. "He will doubt no longer," she thought to herself, and the mere idea of this warmed her whole heart. If only he did not give a guilty construction to her replies? She rose to go to him, and leaning over the back of his arm-chair, encircled his forehead with her hands. "Ah!" she said with a sigh, "if I could know what is going on in here. It is such a little space, and it is in this little space that all my happiness and my misfortune are contained." "If you were able to read in it," the young man replied, "you would see only your own image." "I shall read in it to-morrow," she said subtly. "To-morrow," he returned with a smile; "but what about the place of our meeting? There is nothing left but furnished rooms or a hotel." Furnished rooms! A hotel! These words made Helen shudder. All the shames of adultery appeared to her to be comprised in their syllables. There was the hiring of a cab, with the driver's cunning smile; there was the entry into one of those houses, whose thresholds have seen the passage of so many furtive, quivering women; and, as a setting for her divine passion, there was the furniture that had, perhaps, been utilised for similar scenes. Yes, but there was also an element of anonymity, of impersonality, of never-ending strangeness. And since all was pollution, the former of the two alternatives carried with it the least. She was too certain of Armand's refinement to think that he might take her to a place which he had visited with others. She would have to endure personal loathing, but nothing that would touch the very essence of her feeling. It was accordingly with courageous resolution that she replied to her lover. "Will you have time enough to find them in one morning?"