Under his roof--or rather under _her_ roof, for the Abbess of Fontevrault is co-heiress with her married sister in the properties which the Alquiers inhabit, both in Paris and in the country. But necessity in this case is doubled by no disapprobation: Philippe Alquier naturally believes in the rights of minorities. Although politically of the extreme left, he would in this affair have voted with the extreme right (as did many Dreyfusards some twenty years ago, who opposed the banishment of their political enemies, the Jesuits), and thus, in the opening scene, the author establishes her hero’s refusal to allow the tyranny of the greatest number. The abbess brings with her a postulate of her order, secularised like herself, but (in the case of the girl) before she had pronounced her vows. Hélène Schlumberger, young, beautiful, intelligent, and rich, is naturally the heroine of the piece. Her mind, the fresher that hitherto it has been restricted to the skyey sphere of theology and ethics, revels in the wide and indiscriminate culture with which Alquier delights to enrich it. Nietzsche, Bergson, Anatole France, she absorbs all without a protest. Naturally, history repeats itself, and Abelard falls in love with Héloïse, and Héloïse still deeper in love with Abelard. What, in this conjuncture, is the duty of a free soul? Shall Philippe Alquier divorce his faithful, admirable, uninspiring wife? Shall he keep a virtuous young lady as his secret mistress? He makes both these proposals, but he makes them as one who feels how impossible they are. For we act, not in accordance with what we actually think and believe, but as persons still inspired by what we used to think and have long been in the habit of believing: when Alquier proposes a divorce to the girl he has educated in the ideas of Nietzsche, her first instinctive cry is: _Et les autres?_ She is an altruist still, and a Christian, in spite of herself, and acts according to an impetus given years ago, perhaps before her birth. Hélène in the convent to which, unbelieving, she retires, is happier, probably, than she would have been as Alquier’s concubine (setting society at defiance) or as his wife, Hagar enthroned, having sent out the lawful Sarah into the wilderness. In the convent at least she finds, if not a faith, a rule of life. A discipline and an ideal are things more intimately necessary to her soul, such as the ages have formed it, than the happiest passion, if satisfied in their despite. And Alquier, too, will acquiesce. When he threatens the abbess with political reprisals, with the ruin of her order, she smiles:-- ‘Vous ne ferez rien de tout cela, Philippe, et vous me donnerez votre fille à élever.’