It was just at this time that Henri Mauperin had made his appearance in her drawing-room. He seemed to her young, intelligent, serious, and thorough, equipped for the victories of life with all those dispassionate and unwavering qualities that she had dreamed before her marriage of finding in a husband. Henri had seized the situation at a glance, and, divining his own chances, he made his plans and swooped down on this woman as his prey. He began to make love to her, and this woman, who had a husband and daughter, who had been a faithful wife for twenty years, and who held a high position in Parisian society, scarcely waited for him to tempt her. She yielded to him at their first interview, conducting herself like a mere cocotte. Her love became a mad passion with her, as it so frequently does with women of her age, and Henri proved himself a genius in the art of attaching her to himself and of chaining her, as it were, to her sin. He never betrayed himself, and never for an instant allowed her to see a sign of the weariness, the indifference, or the contempt that a man feels after a too easy conquest, or of that sort of disgust with which certain situations of a woman in love inspire him. He was always affectionate, and always appeared to be deeply moved. He had for Mme. Bourjot those transports of love and jealousy, all those scruples, little attentions, and thoughtfulness which a woman, after a certain age, no longer expects from her lover. He treated her as if she were a young girl, and begged her to give him a ring which she always wore, and which had been one of her confirmation presents. He put up with all the childishness and coquetry which was so ridiculous in the passion of this mother of a family, and he encouraged it all without a sign of impatience on his face or a shade of mockery in his voice. At the same time he made himself entirely master of her, accustoming her to be docile and obedient to him, revealing to her such passionate love that Mme. Bourjot was both grateful to him and proud of her victory over this apparently cold and reserved young man. When he was thus completely master of her, Henri worked her up still more by impressing her with the danger of their meetings and the risks there were in their _liaison_, while by all the emotions of a criminal passion he excited her imagination to such a pitch of fear that her love increased with the very thought of all she had to lose. She finally reached that stage when she only lived through him and for him, by his presence, his thoughts, his future, his portrait, all that remained to her of him after she had seen him. Before leaving him she would stroke his hair with her hands and then put her gloves on quickly. And all day afterward, when she was at home again with her husband and her daughter, she would put the palms of her hands, which she had not washed since, to her face and inhale the perfume of her lover's hair.