But how delighted the confiding Helen had been by this concession! What quick work it had been with her to transform the commonplace rooms into a personal domain to which she brought all kinds of dainty feminine objects, slippers into which to slip her naked feet, a lace shawl to throw over her quivering shoulders, a few pieces of material for draping the table and the backs of the easy chairs, a frame in which to place a photograph of Armand. She had not suspected that each of these little attentions had had the double effect of disquieting De Querne with respect to the difficulty of future separations, and of proving to him that he had to deal with a lady of experience. Like all romantic women, Helen was occupied with the subtleties of the voluptuousness common to herself and to her lover, as though with an anxiety suggested by sentiment. What renders a woman of this kind perfectly unintelligible to a libertine is that he, on his part, has accustomed himself to separate the things of pleasure from the things of the heart, and to taste this pleasure amid degrading conditions; whereas a woman who is romantic and in love, having known pleasure only as associated with the noblest exaltation, transfers to her enjoyments the reverence which she has for her moral emotions. Helen approached with amorous piety, almost with mystic idolatry, the world of mad caresses and embracings. This piety was centred upon the man who had taught her to love, as upon a being above the range of all discussion. It went for nothing that Armand, after the first days of a self-abandonment produced by the novelty of physical possession, multiplied the tokens of his egotism; his mistress found the means of loving him the more for them. If he came late to their interview in the Rue de Stockholm, she was so proud of having worsted him in the intimate joust of love that she was almost grateful to him for doing so. If at the last moment, and merely to suit his own convenience, he altered the hour of their meeting, the gentle woman experienced a further pleasure in feeling herself treated by her worshipped master as a slave, as a thing which belonged to him, and which he disposed of according to his fancy. Was this paying too dear for the ecstasy which she felt in ascending the staircase of the house (ah, how little she cared whether she were looked at now!) in hearing the creaking of the key (her own key, for she had now one of her own) in the lock, in walking through the three rooms wherein abode the whole of her passionate life, and above all in holding Armand beside her, close beside her? Evening was falling, the objects about them were growing dim in outline, and she lay in his arms, listening to the distant roar of the town, the noise of the neighbouring railway, and, beneath their windows, the circles of little girls singing: "Il était une bergère." Then she would give her lover kisses so tender that he would ask her almost with anxiety: