A LOVE CRIME. Paul Bourget

anything.

      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."

      "Oh, no!" she replied hastily, "not at your own home."

      The vision had just come to her that other women had visited Armand,

      those other women whom a new mistress always finds between herself and

      the man she loves, like the menace of a fatal comparison, like an

      anticipated discrediting of her own caresses, since love is always

      similar to itself; in its outward forms.

      "At least," she thought to herself, "let it not be amid the same

      furniture."

      "Would you like me to request one of my friends to lend me his rooms?"

      Armand asked.

      She shook her head as she had done just before. She could hear by

      anticipation the conversation of the two men. She was a woman, and

      hitherto had been a virtuous one. She was only too well aware that the

      manner in which she regarded her own love would have little resemblance

      to that of the unknown friend to whom Armand would apply. In her own

      eyes passion sanctified everything, even the worst errors; spiritualised

      everything, even the most vehement voluptuousness. But he, this

      stranger, what would he see in the affair but an intrigue to afford

      matter for jesting. A shudder shook her, and she looked again at Armand.

      Ah! how her lover's thoughts would have horrified her had she been able

      to read them. It was very far from being De Querne's first affair of the

      sort, nor did he believe that it was a first act of weakness on her

      part. She had, indeed, told him that he was her first lover, and it was

      true.

      But what proof could be given of the truth of such vows? The young man

      had himself deceived and been deceived too often for distrust not to be

      the most natural of his feelings. He had provoked this odious discussion

      concerning their place of meeting only for the purpose of studying in

      Helen's replies the traces left by the amorous experiences through which

      she had passed, and mere curiosity led him to dwell upon a subject which

      at that moment was stifling the young woman with shame. The scruples

      that she displayed about not yielding to him in her own house seemed to

      him a calculation due to voluptuousness; those about not yielding to him

      at his house, a calculation due to prudence. When she refused to go to

      the rooms of a friend: "She is afraid of my confiding in some one," he

      said to himself, "but what does she want?"

      "Suppose I furnished a little suite of rooms?" he said.

      She shook her head, though this had been her secret dream, but she was

      afraid that he would see in her acceptance nothing but a desire to gain

      time, and then--the necessity, if their meetings occurred always in the

      same place, of enduring the notice of the people of the house, the

      thought of being the veiled lady whose arrival is watched! Nevertheless,

      although such a contrivance also involved a question of outlay which