She had never done anything but esteem him, and she continued to esteem him as before. Since the pretence of the doctor's order had freed her from all hateful advances on Alfred's part, she ingenuously extended to him the joy with which her heart was filled. She no longer made him any of those bitter replies which, in connection with the pettiest details, betray the unconscious animosity of a woman against the man to whom she belongs, and who has not been able to win her love. Did he at table utter, as he used to do, an idea that was not her own; did he allow an awkward gesture or a clumsy question to escape him, she had no capacity within her for becoming angry, all her faculties being employed in calculating the hour at which Armand would be with her, and in depicting to herself the happiness that his presence would bring her. The hour struck, and Armand was there. She felt so fully satisfied that she no longer thought of watching him. He told her that he loved her; he proved it to her by sacrificing his life in society, the theatres, his club, and spending as many as two or three evenings in the week with her. What interest would he have in deceiving her, and how could she do otherwise than surrender herself to this divine felicity? When the morning of a day selected for one of their secret meetings arrived, she had not the strength to superintend her household. The expectation of happiness was so keen that it bordered upon pain. On these mornings, as on the first of them, she was absorbed, feverish and prostrate by the fireside, in prolonged reflection, and in her excess of feeling experienced an anguish that relaxed to delight when she had reached the little suite of rooms in the Rue de Stockholm. These were still the same; for having been obliged at their third meeting to take other rooms in the same house, she had entreated Armand to return to the former ones, to those which had witnessed her first intoxication. To do this it had been necessary to take the lodgings no longer by the day, but by the month. Armand had at first declined to do this, affirming that he had good reasons, but in reality because he knew by experience how greatly a movable place of meeting that is changed on each occasion facilitates ruptures, and then--although he was generous and rich he felt, without fully acknowledging it to himself, that there was rather too great a difference between the twenty-five francs that Madame Palmyre demanded for an afternoon, and the four hundred represented by a monthly hiring. He had yielded nevertheless, just because a small money question was involved, and because he thought himself shabby for having so much as thought about it. "It will only last six months after all," he had said to himself.