to keep my
heart warm, I had some romantic and sentimental friendships with women
in society, some of those delightful flirtations which have an
appearance of love, which fill up the idleness of a useless life with a
number of unexpected sensations, with small duties and vague subtle
pleasures!

And was I now going to be like one of those ships which an unskillful
turn of the helm runs ashore as it is leaving the harbor? What terrible
trials were awaiting me, what sorrows and what struggles?

A chaffing friend said to me one night in joke at the club, when I had
just broken one of those banks, which form an epoch in a player's life:

"If I were in your place, Jacques, I should distrust such runs of luck
as that, for one always has to pay for them sooner or later!"

Sooner or later!

I half opened the bedroom door gently. Elaine was in one of those heavy
sleeps that follow intoxication. Who could tell whether, when she opened
her eyes and called me, surprised at not finding herself in my arms, her
whole being would not become languid, and suddenly sink into a state of
prostration? I wanted to reason with myself, and bring myself face to
face with those cursed suggestions, as one does with a skittish horse
before some object that frightens it, and to evoke the recollection of
every hour, every minute of that first night of love, and to extract the
secret from her....

Elaine's looks and radiant smile were overflowing with happiness, and
she had the air of a conqueror who is proud of his triumph, for she was
now a _woman_ already, and we had _at least been alone_ in this
modernized country house, which had been redecorated and smartened up to
serve as the frame for our affection! She hardly seemed to know what she
was saying or doing, and ran from room to room in her light morning
dress of mauve crape, without exactly knowing where to sit, and almost
dazzled by the light of the lamps that had large shades in the shape of
rose leaves over them.

There was no embarrassment, no hesitation, no shamefaced looks, no
recoiling from the arms that were stretched out to her, or from the lips
that begged; none of those delightful little pieces of awkwardness which
show a virgin soul free from all perversion, in her manner of sitting on
my knees, or putting her bare arms round my neck, and of offering me the
back of her neck and her lips to kiss, but she laughed nervously, and
her supple form trembled when I kissed her passio