She was standing thus beside the table in the refreshment room, fanning herself with one hand, and holding in the other the cup containing the last golden drops of the drink whose vague enervation was pleasant to her; her partner, an insignificant and sufficiently correct young man, who was quite proud of having promenaded with her on his arm, was trying to talk; he was speaking of the new play, a middle-class comedy which Monsieur de Querne had cruelly ridiculed one evening, and Helen was replying with praise of a work which hitherto on her lover's authority she had considered detestable. At the mere mention of the actors' names and the title of the play, she could see herself in a box beside him, and a flame coursed through her blood as she suddenly heard close to her a voice that completed her emotion--that voice?--no, but the voice of Monsieur de Varades, of the man who had exercised so fatal an influence upon the destiny of her love, the voice of him whose name Armand had flung in insult into her teeth during the scene of their rupture. By what cruel mystery of fate was the officer here, almost within two steps of her, and talking without appearing to see her? Had she been able to reflect for a moment she would have deemed the presence of old Malhoure's former pupil as natural as her own. Was she not at this ball as the wife of an old fellow-student of De Varades? She would also have reflected that living for months and months, as she had done, apart from the society frequented by her husband, she was ignorant of the movements of Alfred's companions. But in her present state of morbid over-excitement, this sudden meeting struck her with a sort of almost terror-stricken stupor, which was immediately replaced by a fresh sweep of her secret grief, of that maddening grief which made her long to cry _Fire!_ and _Murder!_