Then, as she had come back and was crouching on Armand's knees, and pressing against his breast, a fresh expression, that, namely, of almost intoxicated desire, was depicted on the young man's face. He felt close to him the beauty of this yielding body, he held in his arms those charming shoulders of which he had knowledge from having seen them in the ball-room, he drank in that indefinable aroma which lingers about every woman, and he pressed his lips upon those eyelids, which he could feel quivering beneath his kiss. "You will at least be happy?" she asked him in a sort of anguish between two caresses. "What a question! Why, you have never looked at yourself," he said, and he began to extol to her all the exquisiteness of her face. "You have never looked at your eyes"--and he again drew his lips across them--"your pink cheek"--and he stroked it with his hand--"your soft hair"--and he inhaled it like a flower--"your sweet mouth"--and he laid his own upon it. What answer could she have given to this worship of her beauty? She lent herself to it with a half-frightened smile, surrendering to these endearments and to these words as to music. They caused something so deep and withal so vague to vibrate throughout her being that she came forth half crushed from these embraces, like one dead. It was not for the first time that she was thus abandoning herself to Armand's kisses. But no matter how sweet, how intoxicating these kisses, which she found it impossible to resist, she had on each occasion been strong enough to escape from bolder caresses. No, never, never would she have consented, even had there existed no danger of a surprise, to yield thus in the little drawing-room, where the portraits of her mother, her husband, and her son reminded her of what she was nevertheless ready to sacrifice. Ah! not like that! And again at this moment, when she saw on Armand's face a certain expression of which she had so deep a dread, she found courage to escape, seated herself once more in another easy chair, and opening and shutting a fan which she had taken up in her quivering hands, replied: "I will be yours to-morrow, if you wish." Armand seemed to rouse himself from the sweep of passion in which he had just been tossing. He looked at her, and she again experienced the sensation which had already caused her so much pain, and which was that of a veil drawn suddenly between herself and him. Yet, what could she have said to displease him? She thought that he was wounded by the fact of her shrinking from him, for was not the uttering of the words that she had just uttered equivalent to giving herself to him beforehand, and how could he be vexed with her for desiring that their happiness might have another setting than that of her every-day life? But he had already answered her by the following question: "Where would you like me to meet you? At my own house? I can send away my servant for the whole of the afternoon."