She, the sensual Epicurean, was only eager to prolong the delight of mental possession. Voluptuously, carefully, and secretly did she watch the poet from the corner of her blue eye that looked so modest beneath its golden lashes. She was unable to take exact account of all the changes of feeling he underwent, for although she was already well acquainted with his inner nature, she was so entirely ignorant of all the facts of his life that sometimes she would ask herself with a thrill whether he had ever loved before. It was impossible to follow his thoughts in detail, but it was not difficult to see that he was now looking at her much more than at the pictures, and that his distress was increasing every minute. She attributed this distress to a fit of shyness--a shyness that delighted her, for it proved the presence of a passionate longing tempered by respect. How pleased she was to be the object of a desire that expressed itself with such modesty! It enabled her to measure more correctly the gulf that separated her little René--as she already called him in her thoughts--from the bold and dangerous men with whom she usually mixed. His looks were full of love, though devoid of insolence, and contained an amount of suffering that finally decided her to lead him on to the declaration which she had promised herself to provoke.
'_Mon Dieu!_' she suddenly cried, catching hold of the iron bar that runs round the walls, and turning to René with a smile that was meant to hide some sharp pain. 'It's nothing,' she added, in reply to the poet's look of anxiety. 'I twisted my foot a little on this slippery floor.' Then, standing on one leg, she put out the foot that she said was hurt, and moved it about in the soft boot with a graceful effort. 'Ten minutes' rest and it will be all right, but you must be my crutch.'
As her pretty lips uttered this ugly word she took hold of René's arm, the poet little thinking, as he almost piously helped her along, that this imaginary accident was but one episode more in the comedy of love in which he was playing so innocent a part. Taking care to throw her whole weight upon him, she managed to redouble his passionate ardour and to completely intoxicate him by the rhythmic and communicated movement of her lithe and supple limbs. The trick succeeded only too well. He could scarcely speak, overwhelmed as he was by the proximity of this woman and penetrated by the subtle perfume she exhaled. It was as much as he dared do to look at her, and then he found beside him a face both proud and playful, a cheek of ideal colouring, and a pair of mobile cherry lips upon which from time to time there hovered a sweet little smile that meant mischief, though when their eyes met this smile would change into an expression of such frank sympathy that it dispelled René's timidity. This she knew by the greater assurance with which he now supported her.
