Mademoiselle Leseigneur, on her part, soon expected her lover to
give a short account of all his actions; she was so unhappy, so
restless when Hippolyte did not come, she scolded him so
effectually for his absence, that the painter had to give up
seeing his other friends, and now went nowhere. Adelaide allowed
the natural jealousy of women to be perceived when she heard that
sometimes at eleven o'clock, on quitting the house, the painter
still had visits to pay, and was to be seen in the most brilliant
drawing-rooms of Paris. This mode of life, she assured him, was
bad for his health; then, with the intense conviction to which
the accent, the emphasis and the look of one we love lend so much
weight, she asserted that a man who was obliged to expend his
time and the charms of his wit on several women at once could not
be the object of any very warm affection. Thus the painter was
led, as much by the tyranny of his passion as by the exactions of
a girl in love, to live exclusively in the little apartment where
everything attracted him.

And never was there a purer or more ardent love. On both sides
the same trustfulness, the same delicacy, gave their passion
increase without the aid of those sacrifices by which many
persons try to prove their affection. Between these two there was
such a constant interchange of sweet emotion that they knew not
which gave or received the most.

A spontaneous affinity made the union of their souls a close one.
The progress of this true feeling was so rapid that two months
after the accident to which the painter owed the happiness of
knowing Adelaide, their lives were one life. From early morning