ere was no
doubt of that! She did not now feel herself to be in the least degree
qualified for ruses, lies, and agonies, and the tyranny of a sentiment
that never varied. Oh, how delightful did it seem to her to find
herself free again! She laughed contentedly; but immediately
afterwards there was another outburst of tears as she besought her
friend not to despise her. Beneath her feverish unrest a fear
lingered; she imagined that her husband knew everything. He had come
home the night before trembling with agitation. She overwhelmed Helene
with questions; and Helene, with a hardihood and facility at which she
herself was amazed, poured into her ears a story, every detail of
which she invented offhand. She vowed to Juliette that her husband
doubted her in nothing. It was she, Helene, who had become acquainted
with everything, and, wishing to save her, had devised that plan of
breaking in upon their meeting. Juliette listened to her, put instant
credit in the fiction, and, beaming through her tears, grew sunny with
joy. She threw herself once more on Helene's neck. Her caresses
brought no embarrassment to the latter; she now experienced none of
the honorable scruples that had at one time affected her. When she
left her lover's wife after extracting a promise from her that she
would try to be calm, she laughed in her sleeve at her own cunning;
she was in a transport of delight.

Some days slipped away. Helene's whole existence had undergone a
change; and in the thoughts of every hour she no longer lived in her
own home, but with Henri. The only thing that existed for her was that
next-door house in which her heart beat. Whenever she could find an
excuse to do so she ran thither, and forgot everything in the content
of breathing the same air as her lover. In her first rapture the sight
of Juliette even flooded her with tenderness; for was not Juliette one
of Henri's belongings? He had not, however, again been able to meet
her alone. She appeared loth to give him a second assignation. One
evening, when he was leading her into the hall, she even made him
swear that he would never again visit the house in the Passage des
Eaux, as such an act might compromise her.

Meantime, Jeanne was shaken by a short, dry cough, that never ceased,
but became severer towards evening every day. She would then be
slightly feverish, and she grew weak with the perspiration that bathed
her in her sleep. When her mother cross-questioned her, she