She had paused upon this question. Why interrogate him? Did she not know that he would coax her with these soft blandishments of speech which do not reveal the depths of the heart? Would she succeed in deciphering the meaning this living enigma of a man's character, set thus before her for weal or woe? Cruel heart! would it never yield her its secret? Kisses, however, may be more tender than he who gives them, soft looks may conceal a soul like a veil--and she was so thirsty for truth! But whence came all this moral anxiety that preyed upon her? Nothing had to all appearance occurred between them, and already she was alternately asking herself: "Does he love me as much as at first? Does he love me? Has he ever loved me? Can he love me?" And every minute she struck upon some trifling fact that heightened her doubt. She ceaselessly encountered that mistrust which degraded her, that irony which bruised her, that dryness of heart which reduced her to despair. Some of their friends from Bourges would arrive in Paris, and Alfred would say to De Querne: "Do not come to-morrow evening; you would be too much bored. We are having some acquaintances from the country." "When I am going to be in your way," the young man would say to Helen next day, "why do you not give me notice yourself, instead of doing it through your husband?" "To be in my way?" she would ask. "Oh! why deceive me? You have had some flirtations over there for which you blush here. You do not want me to verify your familiarity with this man or the other. But what can that signify to me since you did not know me? What does signify is to see you deceiving me." Deceiving! always deceiving! This word recurred in Armand's conversations--indefatigably; she read it in his eyes, his gestures, his thoughts. Did she find herself obliged at the last moment to fail at one of their meetings in the Rue de Stockholm, she knew that he would not believe in her excuse. But a man of that kind--no, such a man cannot love. "Ah, love me, love me!" she would murmur feverishly as she drew closer to him after passing through one of those crisis of anguish in which she had felt how little her lover's heart belonged to her. "Why, I do love you," he would reply, without understanding the agony of which this agony was a last sigh. _She_ understood that the word had not the same signification to him as to her, and the whole of the inward tragedy whereof she was the silent, grief-stricken heroine, burst forth one frightful day. Like a captive who, during his sleep, has been bound by his conquerors to a corpse, and awakes to discover himself chained to this horrible companion, she found herself, a living heart, a heart susceptible to love, and happiness, and life, fastened to a corpse-like heart, icy, moveless--slain!