"If we break, there will be a tearful scene to be gone through, she will spend a few melancholy weeks, enabling her to say to her next lover, with eyes raised heavenwards, 'How I have suffered, love!' or else to her most intimate confidante, 'Oh! men! men!'" There was a moment of base merriment; then his reflections began again. "What strange animals women are! Here is a fellow who has a heart, frankness, and fidelity, as they call it; he can love--which is another of their expressions--and his wife must deceive him--for whom? For a cynic like me who am just the opposite. And if it had not been I, it would have been some one worse. It is humiliating to one's vanity, but refreshing to one's conscience--yes, it would have been some one else." And a few minutes later: "What fine reasoning, too, in order to justify myself! Suppose one applied it to assassination! If I do not kill you to-day you will die sooner or later in some other fashion. The truth is that adultery is a great pollution. Pah! Pah!" He returned home, turning these melancholy conclusions over and over. When he was again in his drawing-room and in front of the easy-chair in which Alfred had sat that morning, he felt still more incapable of continuing to be Helen's lover--no, not two days, not a single day longer. "We must put an end to it and break with each other, and that immediately," he said aloud. He sat down at his table to write to Helen, but a note asking merely for an appointment, for to break with her by letter and leave such a weapon in her hands would be madness. Why not withdraw without seeing her again as he had done in the case of more than one mistress? It was impossible under the circumstances; it would be necessary also to renounce ever seeing Alfred again. He must therefore resign himself to a rupture by means of a scene. The most important point was the choice of a locality. At her own house? And what if she had hysterics and some one came in? In the Rue de Stockholm? But what if she threw herself into his arms and the fever of the senses led him to take her once more, only to leave her afterwards like a clown, after possessing her? Once more, no. "This is the best place after all," he said to himself. "The fact that the servant is at the door will be enough to restrain me from yielding to her. And if she has an hysterical attack, I have my little travelling medicine chest." And he scribbled a note absolutely correct in form. Had Alfred intercepted the missive he would have found in it nothing but an offer very natural, considering their somewhat exceptional degree of intimacy, to show Helen some albums for the choice of a costume for a fancy dress ball. In order to justify the meeting at his own house, he alleged the size of the albums and the difficulty of transporting them.