"Yes," he said, after a moment's reflection. "I have in my mind a very convenient house, where one of my English friends always used to stay. See," he went on, "between eleven and twelve o'clock I will send you some books and a note. I will give you the address of the house and the number of the room, just as though you had asked me for the address for one of your country friends. Don't let that prevent you, however, from burning the note immediately. You will come at whatever hour you can; I will spend the whole afternoon waiting for you, and, if you do not come, I shall not be put out; I shall think that you have not been able." She listened to him with a mingling of pain and enchantment--pain, because it would cost her so dear to keep her promise; and enchantment, because all the trouble that he took to point out these details to her, instead of enlightening her concerning the man's heart, appeared to her a sign of his love, and their talk proceeded in the quiet drawing-room, in front of the expiring fire, until the stopping of a carriage at the door announced Alfred's return. "Good-bye, my love," said Helen, taking Armand's hand and kissing it, as she sometimes did with sweet coaxing; and she had already begun a piece of work when Chazel came in, with a cheery "Well!" He looked at once towards his wife with his loyal, honest gaze. How well Armand knew that gaze, one which had not altered from the days of their childhood, when they were both at the Institution Vanaboste, whence they followed the courses of study in the Lycée Henri IV.! The establishment stood yonder behind the Panthéon, at the corner of the Rue du Puits-qui-Parle, now the Rue Amyot. Yet it was not remorse for deceiving the man whom he had known from quite a child that suddenly made De Querne feel uncomfortable. It was the thought that Helen was deceiving this confiding nature. Masculine egotism has such monstrous ingenuousness. A seducer engaged in enticing a woman, despises the woman for yielding to him, and forgets to despise himself for seducing her. Meanwhile Alfred had taken Helen's hands. "I have bored myself conscientiously this evening; what will you give me in reward?" he asked. How his familiarity hurt her! How willingly would she have cried to this unsuspecting husband: "Do you not see that I love another? Let me go away. I do not want to lie to you any more."