She ought to have the sense to say: ‘I shall not go,’ if it were only from policy, since it is by what she answers now that the quality of her soul will be determined once and for all.” And having persuaded himself that it was solely, after all, in order that he might arrive at a favourable estimate of Odette’s spiritual worth that he wished her to stay at home with him that evening instead of going to the Opéra-Comique, he adopted the same line of reasoning with her, with the same degree of insincerity as he had used with himself, or even with a degree more, for in her case he was yielding also to the desire to capture her by her own self-esteem.