"We shall be discourteous to some very kind people, who have always behaved perfectly towards us since we came to Paris a year ago," replied the young woman; she stretched out to the fire her slender feet, in the pretty patent leather shoes and mauve stockings, the latter being of the same colour as her dress. "If I had not my neuralgia!" she added, putting her fingers to her temple. "You will make all my excuses to them. Come, my poor Alfred, courage!" She rose and held out her hand to her husband, who drew her to him in order to give her a kiss. Visible pain was depicted on Helen's handsome face for a minute, during which she was constrained to submit to this caress. Standing thus, in her mauve-coloured, lace-trimmed dress, the contrast between the elegance of her entire person and the clumsiness of the man whose name she bore was still more striking. She was tall, slender, and supple. The delicacy with which her hand joined the arm which the sleeve of her dress left half uncovered, the fulness of this arm, on which shone the gold of a bracelet, the roundness of her dainty waist, the grace of her youthful figure,--all revealed in her the blooming of a bodily beauty in harmony with the beauty of her head. Her bright chestnut hair, parted simply in the centre, half concealed a forehead that was almost too high--a probable sign that with her feeling predominated over judgment. She had brown eyes, in a fair complexion, such eyes as become hazel or black according as the pupil contracts or dilates; and everything in the face declared passion, energy, and pride, from the rather too pronounced line of the oval, indicating the firm structure of the lower part of the head, to the mouth, which was strongly outlined, and from the chin, which was worthy of an ancient medal, to the nose, which was nearly straight, and was united to the forehead by a noble attachment. The pure and living quality of her beauty fully justified the fervour depicted on the face of her husband while he was kissing his wife, just as the evident aversion of the young woman was explained by the unpleasing aspect of her lord and master. They were not creatures of the same breed. Alfred Chazel presented the regular type of a middle-class Frenchman, who has had to work too diligently, to prepare for too many examinations, to spend too many hours over papers or before a desk, at an age when the body is developing.