Page:The Revolt of the Angels v2.djvu/82

CHAPTER IX

WHEREIN IT IS SHOWN THAT, AS AN ANCIENT GREEK POET SAID, “NOTHING IS SWEETER THAN APHRODITE THE GOLDEN”

LTHOUGH he had enjoyed Madame des Aubel’s favours for six whole months, Maurice still loved her. True they had had to separate during the summer. For lack of funds of his own he had had to go to Switzerland with his mother, and then to stop with the whole family at the Château d’Esparvieu. She had spent the summer with her mother at Niort, and the autumn with her husband at a little Normandy seaside place, so that they had hardly seen each other four or five times. But since the winter, kindly to lovers, had brought them back to town again, Maurice had been receiving her twice a week in his little flat in the Rue de Rome, and received no one else. No other woman had inspired him with feelings of such constancy and fidelity. What augmented his pleasure was that he believed himself loved, and indeed he was not unpleasing.

He thought that she did not deceive him, not

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