"She has a fancy for me," he reflected; "let us take advantage of it. But why have all women a mania for telling you that you are their first lover?" His kisses were loosening the locks of her hair, which she tried to readjust above her forehead with her hand. "Do not be afraid," he said to her; "I have thought of everything." And he led her through the bedroom to the door of a little dressing-room, on the table in which were arranged all the articles belonging to his travelling dressing-case. "You will be able to comb your hair again," he said. "Oh!" she said, blushing, "you make me ashamed." Just then he had led her into the bedroom, and as he was taking off the jacket which she wore over her dress, a small object rolled out of her pocket. It was a pocket-comb of light tortoise-shell, which Helen had taken up unreflectingly before going out, as she often did. "She remembered that, too," he thought. Then with loving entreaty: "Be mine," he asked of her. "Nay, I am yours," she replied. A twilight prevailed in the bedroom, for he had loosed the window-curtains, as also those of the bed--of that bed which she found strength to look at for the first time. How fain would she have bidden him leave her to herself! And she turned her eyes towards him. He had begun to unfasten the buttons of her dress, and she was about to say to him, "Go away!" when she saw in his eyes that expression of felicity of which she had so often dreamed, and she suffered him, with that divine weakness whose sublime flattery so few men understand. If a woman who loves wishes to be loved in the same degree, is it then needful that she borrow something from the methods of those creatures devoid of true sensibility, to whom their persons are but instruments of supremacy, and who surrender themselves that they may the better possess? Helen did not suspect, while Armand, intoxicated with her beauty, was sweeping her away in his arms, after warming her feet with kisses and taking from her all her attire, from her bracelets to her hair-pins--no, Helen did not suspect that, at that very moment, this man had just found in the absolute submission to his desires that had cost the poor woman so dear, a reason for not believing in her. "Are you happy?" she asked of him an hour later, lying on his heart, and giving herself up to the languid voluptuousness that succeeds caresses; "tell me, are you happy? You see, _I_ am." And it was true, for she had just for the first time felt an unfamiliar emotion waking in her beneath the caresses of the man she loved so dearly. "Oh! very happy," replied Armand, and he spoke falsely, for reviewing in thought all the slight incidents of this first meeting--the smiling entry, the presence of the comb, the compliant disrobing, the burning susceptibility of his mistress--he said again to himself that he was certainly not Helen's first lover.