CHAPTER II

      It was half-past eleven o'clock when Armand de Querne left the house in

      the Rue de La Rochefoucauld. The wind had swept away all the clouds, and

      the sky was filled with stars. "What a beautiful night!" said Armand to

      himself; "I shall walk home." It was a long way, for he lived in the Rue

      Lincoln, in the upper part of the Champs-Élysées. Here, on the second

      floor of a wing projecting upon a garden, he had rooms which he had once

      amused himself with furnishing in quaint and exquisite fashion with all

      kinds of old-fashioned trifles. But how long had he ceased to spend the

      evening in this "home?"

      He was following the pavement of the Rue St.-Lazare, which, after quite

      a narrow and slender beginning, suddenly, like a river swelled by

      tributaries, widens after the Place de la Trinité, when it receives,

      one after the other, the flood of passengers and vehicles drifting

      through the Rue de Chateaudun, the Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, and the

      Rue de Londres. Cabs were plying, omnibuses were changing horses, the

      crowd was surging. Sometimes a girl came out from the corner of a

      doorway, and with obscene speech accosted the young man, who put her

      away gently with his hand.

      Was it the contrast between the intimacy of the little drawing-room and

      the swarming infamy of the pavement? Armand felt deeply melancholy. He

      could not help seeing Alfred's face again in thought, with Helen's close

      beside it. Yet, was he jealous? No. Pictures of childhood came back to

      him as they had done just before, but with increased precision, showing

      him Chazel dressed in the uniform of the "Vanabosteans"--a small jacket

      similar to that of the Barbistes. They always went side by side in the

      ranks. Poor Chazel! he was not rich. The head of the establishment had

      taken him as a foundationer, with a view, to making a show-pupil of

      him--a machine for winning prizes in competitions. How many times had

      Armand paid for him at the little wicket, when the porter sold to the

      pupils sweetmeats, fragments of iced chestnuts, cakes, and Parisian

      creams--tablets of chocolate having a thick and oversweet liquid inside!

      They had gone through all their classes together from the fourth up, and

      had together passed through the evil days of the Commune, when, on

      returning both of them from the country, after the siege, they found

      themselves blockaded in Paris. Alfred had afterwards entered the École

      Polytechnique. And when he came on Wednesdays and Sundays to visit his

      old schoolfellow, who had already crossed the Seine and begun to lead

      the life of a rich and idle young man, how ludicrous he was in his

      military dress, embarrassed by his sword, not knowing how to set his hat

      upon his head, and invariably scarred with clumsy razor-cuts!

      While Alfred was at the School of Bridges, Armand was travelling. He had

      gone round the world in the society of an amateur artist. On his return

      he found that his friend was no longer at Paris. The letters passing

      between them became rare. Could they have told why? Armand perhaps

      might. There was only one point left in common between Alfred's life and

      his own. Alfred had married Mademoiselle de Vaivre. They had made a trip

      to Paris, and Armand well remembered how he had been deliciously

      surprised by Helen's distinguished demeanour, when he had expected to

      find her awkward, pretentious, and a fright. But at this period he was

      taken up with another woman, little Aline, a mistress of his for whom he

      had cherished the only genuine passion of which he was capable--painful

      jealousy blended with delirium of the senses.

      Later on, some one had spoken to him of Helen Chazel, and told him ugly

      stories about her. And who was it that had done so? Another

      school-fellow--big Lucien Rieume, who had been educated at the Vanaboste

      establishment like Alfred and himself--during one of these

      _tête-à-tête_ luncheons when an opening of the heart usually

      accompanies that of the oysters between two college companions; and

      Lucien--cordial, indiscreet, intolerable--had talked a great deal,

      pouring out pell-mell whatever he knew concerning former friends. Armand

      could again hear him chuckle, leaning forward somewhat with kindled eye

      and humid lip:

      "Poor Chazel, he hadn't a head worth a fig! It seems that his wife is

      tricking him. I heard the gentleman's name: Marades, Tarades--just wait

      a moment--yes, De Varades, an artillery officer. It was the talk of

      Bourges. He was never out of the house."

      It was an unfortunate trait in Armand's character that he was unable to

      withstand the tempting of mistrust. When evil was asserted to him, he

      preserved an indelible impression of it. He did not altogether believe

      in it, and yet he believed in it sufficiently for a suspicion, and a

      busy suspicion, to be planted within him. When the Chazels had come to

      settle in Paris, ten months previously, and Armand had begun to interest

      himself in Helen, the scruples of an old friendship might perhaps have

      been stronger than his freak of curiosity if big Rieume's words had not

      risen before his recollection.

      "Really," he had said to himself, "it would be too foolish,"--a criminal

      phrase which serves men for the justification of many a dastardly

      action. Helen had not been slow in displaying towards him a kind of

      passion which he had attributed to the