Isolated, without experience, Annette was in a poor position to protect

herself. But she had the practical instinct of the Rivières and she had

her pride, and they would not accept the humiliating wages to which

others yielded. She was not of the whining sort who complain and give

in. She did not complain and she did not give in. And in the face of all

expectation this attitude was successful. The human species is cowardly;

Annette had a calm, rather haughty way of saying no that cut short all

bargaining; people did not dare to treat her as they would have treated

others, and she obtained conditions that were rather more favorable. Not

greatly so. She had to go through many weary hours to earn what she

spent every day. Her pupils were scattered in remote quarters, and this

was before the time of the autobusses and the metro in Paris. When she

came home in the evening, her feet ached and her shoes were worn out.

But she was robust, and it gave her a sense of satisfaction to

experience the life of toil for one's daily bread. To earn her bread was

a new adventure for Annette. When she was successful in one of those

little duels of the will with her exploiters, she was as well pleased

with her day as a gambler who, in the pleasure of what he has won,

forgets the insignificance of the stake. She learned to see men better.

It was not always a pleasant sight. But everything is worth learning.

She came into contact with the obscure world of toil. But her contacts

were inadequate and without depth. If wealth isolates, poverty isolates

no less. Every one is caught fast in his difficulties and his effort,

and he sees in others not so much brothers in misery as rivals whose

fortune is made at the expense of his own.

Annette divined this feeling in the women with whom she found herself

thrown, and she understood it; for she was a privileged being among

them. If she worked in order not to be a charge upon her sister, her

sister was none the less there; she was safe from the danger of

destitution. She did not know that feverish uncertainty about to-morrow.

She had her child to enjoy; no one was trying to take him away from her.

How compare her lot with that of this woman whose story she had

learned--a teacher who had been dismissed because she, like Annette, had

had the hardihood to be a mother. It was true that she had been

tolerated at first on condition that she kept her maternity secret.

Exiled in a post of disgrace, in the depths of the country, she had had

to separate from the child of her own flesh. But she could not keep

herself from running to him when he was ill. The secret was out, and the

virtuous countryside made ferocious sport of her. The authorities of the

university of course upheld the popular decree and threw into the street

the two rebels against the code. And it was with them that Annette was

disputing their meagre livelihood. She took care not to apply for the

position which the other woman was seeking. But she was chosen. Just

because she sought positions less eagerly, because she had less need of

them. People have little respect for those who are hungry. And then the

poor souls whom she supplanted treated her as an intruder who was

robbing them. They knew they were unjust; but it is comforting to be

unjust when you are a victim of injustice. Annette became familiar with

that greatest of all wars--the war of the workers, not against nature or

circumstances, nor against the rich for taking their bread away from

them--the war of the workers against the workers who are snatching the

bread from each other, the crumbs that have fallen from the table of the

rich or from that sordid Crœsus, the State. That is the misery of

miseries, most felt by women, and especially those of to-day. For they

are still incapable of organization. They remain in the state of

primitive warfare, the individual against the individual; instead of

pooling their difficulties, they multiply them.

Annette hardened herself, and although her heart bled her eyes were

aflame with joy. She strode on, sustained in her ungrateful work by its

novelty, the energy she had to spend--and the thought of her child,

which illumined the whole day.

XII

Marc spent the day in Sylvie's workshop. Aunt Victorine had flickered

out shortly after they were settled. She had not been able to survive

the ruin of the old home, the loss of the old furniture, the habits of a

peaceful half-century. Since Annette was out of the house till evening,

Sylvie took charge of the child. He was the darling of the workshop,

petted by the customers and the workers, rummaging about on all fours,

sitting under a table, collecting hooks and eyes and scraps of chiffon,

winding skeins of silk, rolling balls, stuffing himself with sweets and

smothered with kisses. He was a little boy of three or four, with golden

auburn hair like Annette's, and he had been rather pale ever since his

illness. Life for him was a perpetual spectacle. Sylvie could remember

her own first experiences when, sitting under her mother's counter, she

had listened to the customers. But the great personages, from the tops

of their stilts, have too utterly different a field of vision to know

what catches the eyes of a child. And its rosy ears. . . . There was

quite enough to keep them busy in the workshop! Every tongue was

loosened, laughing, bold, brazen. Prudery was no weakness of Sylvie and

her flock. Plenty of laughing, plenty of gossip, makes the needle fly.

No one thought of the child. Was it possible that he understood? He did

not understand (in all probability), but he grasped things, he let

nothing escape him. The child collected everything, touched everything,

tasted everything. Woe to whatever lay in his way! Sprawling under a

chair, he put in his mouth whatever fell from above, scraps of biscuit,

buttons, fruit-stones; and he also put words there. Without knowing what

they meant. Exactly, in order to find out! And he munched away and sang.

"Little pig!"

An apprentice would snatch from his fingers a ribbon he was sucking, or

perhaps experimentally burying in his nose. But no one took from him the

words he had swallowed. He was doing nothing with them for the present;

there was nothing he could do with them. But they were not lost.

Routed out from under the furniture and the petticoats, where he was

absorbed in curious studies of the fidgeting feet and the imprisoned

toes curled up in their shoes, dragged back to the conventions, to his

normal position in the world of grown-ups, he would remain motionless,

soberly seated on a low stool between Sylvie's legs. Or, since his aunt

rarely kept still, between some other pair of knees. He would lean his

cheek against the warm cloth and watch, with his nose in the air and his

head thrown back, those bending faces with their puckered eyes, their

quick, shining, moving pupils, those mouths, biting the thread; he saw

the saliva and the lower lips--they seemed to be the upper ones--gnawed

by the teeth, the undersides of the nostrils, covered with little red

streaks and trembling as the words came, and the fingers that flew with

their needles. Suddenly a hand would tickle his chin: there was a

thimble at the end of it that gave him a cold feeling in his neck. Here,

as ever, nothing was lost on him; these warm and cold contacts, this

downy glow, these lights that reddened and these shadows that turned to

amber the bits of living flesh, yes, and this feminine odor. . . . He

was certainly not aware of it himself, but that multiple consciousness,

that many-faceted consciousness which is spread about the whole

periphery of a child, registered everything that passed over its little

printer's-roller. . . . These women never suspected that their images,

complete from head to foot, were being imprinted on this little

sensitive plate. But he saw them only fragmentarily: pieces were

missing, as in a puzzle in which the parts are mixed up. From this

resulted his strange, fleeting preferences, as lively as they were

varied, which seemed capricious but were really due to his deep-seated

predisposition. A clever person might have said what it was in each of

these women that attracted him. He was like a regular household pet: it

was the gentleness of the hands rather than the whole person that he

liked. And it was the totality of these sweetnesses, the home, the

workshop. He was frankly an egoist. (And rightfully: the little builder

has to assemble his ego first of all.) A sincere egoist, even in his

blandishments. For he was blandishing: he wanted to please and he

enjoyed giving pleasure, but only to those whom he had chosen.

From the very beginning his great favorite had been Sylvie. The instinct

of the domestic animal in him had at once perceived that she was the god

of the household, the master who dispensed food and kisses and was

responsible for the tone of the day, and whom it was a good thing to

propitiate. But it was better still to be propitiated by her. And the

child had observed that this privilege had been accorded to him. It

never occurred to him that it might not be deserved. Thus he received

without surprise but with satisfaction the agreeable and flattering

homage that was rendered to him by the sovereign of the workshop. Sylvie

spoiled him, adored him, went into ecstasies over his gestures, his

steps, his words, his intelligence, his beauty, his mouth, his eyes, his

nose; she held him up to the admiration of her customers and preened

herself on his account as if he had been her own chick.

To tell the truth, she also called him, "Little blackguard! Silly little

fool!" And sometimes she tweaked his nose, slapped him, gave him a

spanking. But from her he did not take this as an offence; although he

protested loudly, he did not even find it too disagreeable. May not any

one be struck by the hand of the queen? From any one else, from one of

the girls in the workroom, heavens above, he would never have permitted

it! Even without her sceptre, Sylvie had a charm for him. In his

feminine puzzle, made up of this group and that, she had provided him

with the greatest number of parts; he loved to press against her dress,

with his head against her stomach, to listen to her voice (he could hear

her laughing all through her body), or clamber up her hips till he had

reached the summit; and then, with his two arms knotted about her neck,

he would rub his nose, his lips and his eyes against her soft cheek,

close to her ears, among the little blonde curls that had such a nice

smell. What the eye is for the mind of grown-ups, the sense of touch is

for that of children. It is the talisman that permits one to see over

the wall and weave within oneself the dream of things one believes one

sees, the illusion of life. The child spun his web. And without knowing

what these blonde curls were, or what this cheek was, this voice, this

laugh, this Sylvie or this "I," he thought, "This is mine."

XIII

Annette would come home in the evening. She would be famished. All day

she had walked in a waterless desert, a world without love. All day she

had walked with her eyes turned towards the spring which, in the

evening, she would find again. She heard it rippling; in anticipation

she would dip her lips in it; a passer-by in the street might have taken

as intended for him the smile which this beautiful woman who was

hastening along addressed to the image of her child. As she approached

Sylvie's house, her steps quickened like those of a horse that scents

the oats; and when at last she entered, laughing with greedy love, no

matter how tired she was she went upstairs at a run. The door opened;

she dashed in and threw herself on the child; she caught him up in her

hands, squeezed him, devoured him furiously, his eye, his nose, under

his nose, wherever she happened to alight, whatever part she could

reach, and her mad joy expressed itself noisily. As for him, as he

played about or amused himself soberly, comfortably settled on the

padded sofa, drawing lines with a piece of chalk or mixing up threads of

various colors, he was none too pleased by this invasion. This great

rough woman who came in without any warning, seized him, pulled him

about, shouted in his ear, stifled him with kisses . . . he didn't like

it at all! To be disposed of without his permission made him indignant.

He wouldn't allow it. He was cross and he struggled; but this only made

her shake him, fondle him, laugh and cry all the more furiously. . . .

Everything about her displeased him: this lack of consideration, this

noise, this violence. . . . He quite understood that she ought to love

him, admire him and even kiss him. But she should have had better

manners! Where had she come from? Sylvie and her girls were more

ladylike. When they played with him, even when they laughed or

exclaimed, they didn't make such a racket and seize you and hug you in

this brutal way. He was astonished that Sylvie, who knew so well how to

give her subjects a dressing down, should never give this ill-bred

person a lesson in deportment, that she did not protect him from such

familiarities. On the contrary, Sylvia assumed with Annette a tone of

affectionate equality which she did not have for any one else, and she

said to Marc, "Come, be good! Kiss your mother!"

His mother! Of course, he knew it. But that was no excuse. Yes, she too

was a domestic power. He was still too close to the warmth of the breast

not to have kept on his epicurean mouth the sugary taste of milk, not to

have kept in his birdlike body the golden shadow of the wing that

sheltered him. Even more recent were the nights of illness when the

invisible enemy had seized the throat of the fledgling and the head of

the great protectress had bent over him. Of course, of course! But now

he no longer needed this. If he preserved these memories and a hundred

others that were stored away in his granary, he had no use for them at

present. Later, perhaps, he would see. . . . Every moment now brought

him a new gift; he had enough to do to gather them all in. A child is

ungrateful by nature. _Mens momentanea_. Do you imagine he has time to

remember what was good yesterday? What is good for him is what is good

to-day. To-day Annette had made the great mistake of allowing herself to

be eclipsed by others who were more agreeable and even more serviceable

in Marc's eyes. Instead of going off, heaven knew where, and making her

unseemly appearances in the evening, why didn't she stay here like

Sylvia and the others, busy all day with Marc and paying court to him?

It was her loss. So he barely condescended to accept Annette's

effusions, responding to the rain of silly, loving questions with a

bored and distant Yes, No, Good Morning, Good Evening; and then, flying

from the downpour and wiping his cheek, he would return to his play or

to Sylvie's knees.

Annette could not help seeing that Marc preferred Sylvie to herself.

Sylvie saw it even more clearly. They laughed about it together, and

both pretended not to attach a shadow of importance to it. But deep in

their hearts Sylvie was flattered and Annette was jealous. They took

good care not to confess this to each other. Like a good girl, Sylvie

forced the ungracious child to kiss Annette. Annette found little joy in

these forced embraces; Sylvie found more. She did not tell herself that

she was stealing from the garden of the poor, and that later she would

royally return some of the fruit. But what one keeps to oneself in order

not to load oneself with troublesome scruples, one only tastes the

better with one's closed mouth. And although she had no unkind feeling,

Sylvie found more pleasure in making the child fondle her and in

displaying her power over him in Annette's presence. Annette, pretending

to joke, would say, in a careless tone, "Out of sight, out of mind." But

her heart did not take it as a joke. There was no joke about it. Annette

had no humor save that of the intellect. Her love was as foolish as that

of a dumb creature. It was painful to be a woman among women and to be

obliged to hide one's feelings. People would only laugh at you if you

showed your poor famished heart. Annette, when she was with other

people, acted as if her love were an old story; she talked about her

day, the people she had seen, what she had learned, said and done--in

short, everything that was indifferent to her. (Oh, how indifferent!)

But at night, by herself, in her apartment, alone with her child, she

could give free rein to the torment she felt. To her joy, too, her

torrential passion. No need to take precautions any longer. There was no

one from whom to hide herself. She had her son entirely at her mercy.

She abused her power a little; she wearied him with her wild affection.

Since here, away from Sylvie, he no longer had the upper hand, the

little politician did not show his annoyance: till morning came he would

have to humor this extravagant mother. He used strategy; he pretended to

fall asleep. He did not have to pretend very much; sleep came quickly

after his full days. All the same, it had not quite come when, like a

lamb in his mother's arms, with his eyes closed, Marc would seem to be

overwhelmed by it. Annette, interrupting her prattle, was obliged to

carry him to bed; and the little comedian, in the half-sleep down which

he let himself slip, step by step, down which he slid on the banisters

to the foot, laughed in his sleeve as he watched through his eyelashes

the credulous Mamma who was mutely adoring him. He had a sense of his

superiority, he was grateful to her for it; and sometimes in a transport

he would even throw his little arms about her neck as she knelt beside

him. By a surprise like that Annette was repaid for her troubles. But

the stingy child did not repeat it often, and Annette had to fall asleep

hungry. It was not before she had turned over in bed many times to

listen to the child's breathing as her thoughts revolved feverishly. He

had not kissed her nicely, and she said to herself, "He doesn't love

me."

Her heart would shrink. But she would at once correct herself. "What

nonsense I'm inventing!" The idea had to be repressed at once. How could

one live with it? No, it wasn't true. . . . The good little creature she

was accusing! She hastily sought among her memories for the best she

had, for the pretty tricks of the child, for his lovable ways. At the

images she called up she would have liked to snatch him out of his bed

and kiss him. . . . But hush! She mustn't wake him up. That delicious

little breath. . . . My treasure! . . . How good it will all be later!

For as the present was decidedly meagre, Annette made up for it by

inventing a future of motherly intimacy with her son that conformed with

her desires. She needed an idol to absorb the energies of her nature.

For some time now they had been troubling her again.

XIV

It was no longer a restless melancholy, that neurasthenic depression

which had preceded her child's illness and which the illness had

dissipated--those days of a life that was at a standstill, in which she

felt emptied of energy and interest: the becalmed sea before the flow of

the tide.

This was the return of the oceanic flood. It announced itself by a

roaring of the waves, a nocturnal resurgence. For a time maternity had

satisfied the passionate elements of her nature. The material fatigue of

a working life had set up a dam against them. But, gathering in the

shadow, they beat against the rock. The soul, which as it grows climbs

up the spiral of life, found itself returning to a state bordering on

that from which it had passed, four or five years before, between the

burning summer of the hotel in the Grisons and the spring of love with

Roger Brissot. Bordering on it, but not the same. One returns on the

spiral above the past; one does not descend to it again. Annette's

nature had ripened. There was no longer in her agitation any of the

blind ingenuousness of the young girl. She was a woman; her desires were

keen and definite. She knew whither they led. And if she did not wish to

know, it was precisely because she did know. Her will had matured no

less than her flesh. Everything about her had become richer, and

everything had assumed an accent of passion.

The reappearance of these familiar demons, these dreaded demons, was

like a midday when a storm is gathering. A heavy silence, a silence big

with the tempest to come. It followed the careless joys and the careless

sorrows of the young morning. The shadows slipped unceasingly over

Annette's face. She had become tense. When she was in company or off her

guard, when she was not distracted by the child's presence, she would

fall into a dumb silence, with a line between her brows. When she became

aware of this, she would slip noiselessly away. Any one who had been

disturbed about her would have found her in her room, setting it in

order, making her bed, turning the mattress, polishing the furniture or

the floor, using more movements than were necessary, but not succeeding

in stifling the spirit that resounded within her. She would stop in the

midst of something she was doing, upright on a chair, a bit of chiffon

in her hand, or leaning on the window-sill. Then she would forget

everything, not only the past but the present as well, the dead and the

living, even her child. She saw without seeing, she heard without

hearing, she thought without thinking. A flame that burned in empty

space. A sail in the wind of the open sea. She felt the great breath

that passed through her limbs, and the ship vibrated with all its masts.

And then from the boundless void emerged the face of the things that

surrounded her. From the court of the house over which Annette was

leaning mounted the familiar sounds; she recognized the voice of the

child talking and singing. But her reverie was not interrupted; it took

another course. It was the song of a bird on a summer afternoon. O sunny

heart, what an amount of life you still have to give! Take the world

into your open arms! Too much plunder! . . . Her consciousness relaxed

its grip; she fell back into the incandescent gulf where there was no

longer any song, any child's voice, any Annette . . . nothing but a

powerful vibration of sunlight. . . .

Annette awakened, leaning on her elbow on the window-sill.

But at night the tormenting dreams that had disappeared since Marc's

birth took up their abode in her. They came in groups of three or four,

ceaselessly succeeding one another. Annette rolled from one to another,

layer after layer of them. She would get up in the morning fatigued,

feverish; she had lived ten nights in one. And she did not want to

recall what she had dreamed.

Those who saw Annette frequently had observed her anxious brow and her

absorbed eyes; they did not understand this sudden change, but they were

not disturbed by it; they attributed it to external causes, material

difficulties. For Annette these periods of anxiety were a season of deep

renewal. She could not do justice to them, for they brought with them

the weight of gestation, which was more agonizing than that of

maternity. It was a maternity indeed, that of the buried soul. The human

being is wrapped up like a seed in the depths of matter, in the amalgam

of humus and human loam where the generations have left their debris.

The labor of a great life consists in disengaging it. For this

childbirth a whole lifetime is necessary, and often the midwife is

death.

Annette had the secret anguish of the unknown being who was to emerge

from her some day and rend her. Overcome by fits of shame, she would

shut herself up in a tumultuous retreat, face to face with the immanent

Being; and their relations were hostile. The air was charged with

electricity; its gusts rose and fell in the immobility. She realized her

danger. In vain had her consciousness left in the shadow the thing that

disturbed her. "In the shadow" meant in herself, in her own home. And to

feel her home peopled from top to bottom with beings whom she did not

know was far from reassuring.

"All that. . . . I am all that. . . . But what does it want of me? . . .

What do I myself desire?"

In reply, she said to herself, "You have nothing more to desire. You

possess."

Her stiffened will turned all the violence of her love upon the child.

These continual recurrences of maternal passion were not very fortunate.

Abnormal, excessive, unhealthy--(for this passion sprang from an

impossible attempt to turn into a path that was not theirs alien and

insistent instincts)--they could only end in disappointment. She

repelled the child. Marc would not submit to being monopolized in this

way. He no longer concealed his ill-will from his mother. He thought her

a bore and he told her so in cross little monologues which happily

Annette did not hear, but which Sylvie overheard one day. She scolded

him for it, bursting out laughing at the same time. Marc, in a corner by

the door, was talking to the wall, saying, as he made little impatient

gestures, "That woman makes me tired!"

XV

People are always writing the history of the events of a life. They

imagine they see the life itself in them, but in reality these events

are only its outer covering. The life itself is within. The events act

upon it only in so far as it has chosen them; one might be tempted to

say it has produced them, and in many cases this is the exact truth.

Twenty events take place each month under our eyes; they do not count

for us because we have nothing to do with them. But when one of them

touches us, it is a safe wager that we have gone halfway to meet it; and

if the shock loosens a spring in us, it is because the spring is wound

up and awaiting the shock.

Towards the end of 1904, Annette's moral tension gave way, and the

transformations it brought about in her seemed to coincide with certain

changes which, at the same moment, took place in her.

Sylvie married. She was twenty-six years old; she had had enough of the

joys of liberty; she decided that the moment had come to enjoy those of

a home. She took her time making her choice. The stuff of which a lover

is made does not need to be lasting; it only needs to be pleasing. But a

good husband must be made of sound, durable material. Of course it was

important for Sylvie that he should be attractive too. But there are

ways and ways of being attractive. In choosing a husband one doesn't

have to lose one's head. Sylvie consulted her common sense and even her

social sense. Her business was going well. Her establishment, _Sylvie:

Robes et manteaux_, had acquired, along with a select clientele of the

fairly well-to-do bourgeoisie, a justified reputation for elegance and

style at moderate prices. She had reached a point in her business where

she could go no further alone. To advance she would be obliged to

associate other forces with her own and add to her seamstress's workshop

a tailor's shop that would enable her to enlarge the circle of her

operations.

Without taking any one into her confidence she looked about for some one

who would fall in with her plans. She made her choice soberly; and once

it was made she decided to marry. Love would come later. It should have

its proper place: Sylvie would not marry a man whom she could not love.

But love must await its turn. Business came first.

The name of the object of her choice was Selve (Leopold); and no sooner

had she cast her eye upon him than the little business woman decided on

the name, the beacon-light of the new establishment, _Selve et Sylvie_.

But although, for a woman, a name is never unimportant, Sylvie was not

so foolish as to be satisfied with a name alone; and Selve (Leopold) was

a good match. No longer very young, looking all of his thirty-five

years, a rather handsome man in the popular style, rather ugly, in fact,

but solidly built, with reddish blond hair and a florid complexion, he

was the head cutter at a great tailoring establishment, skilful in his

craft, earning a good income, steady, anything but dissipated. Sylvie

had taken his measure; the question was settled--in Sylvie's mind. She

had not consulted Selve about it. But the assent of the man she had

chosen was the last thing to trouble her. She took it upon herself to

win this.

Selve himself would never have sought anything of the kind. He was

devoted to his own welfare and his own habits, a good soul, not at all

ambitious and rather egoistical, and he had made up his mind to remain

unmarried. It would not have occurred to him to quit his lucrative

position as second fiddle, which entailed no responsibility, with an

employer who knew his value. Sylvie upset his plans and his peace of

mind in the twinkling of an eye. She met him--she took pains to meet

him--at an exhibition whither she had gone, as he had, to study the

modes they were both going to contribute to launch. She was surrounded

by admirers, and without paying any attention to Selve she began to

distribute her smiles and clever repartees to three or four young men

who were very much taken with her. Suddenly, Selve, observing with some

annoyance this grace and wit that were not for him, perceived that he

had become the object of her attentions. She was speaking now only for

him; the others had ceased to count. He was all the more affected by

this instantaneous change because he attributed it to his own personal

merit. With this stroke he was caught. Farewell to his resolutions!

A little while after this, Sylvie begged Annette to join her in the

evening after dinner at a time when there would be no one in the

workroom.

"I've asked you to come," she said, "because I'm expecting some one."

Annette was surprised. "What! You need me? Can't you receive him alone?"

Sylvie said soberly, "I think it would look better."

"This attack of propriety has come rather late."

"Better late than never," said Sylvie, diplomatically.

"Nonsense! Try that on somebody else."

"Just what I'm doing," said Sylvie.

Annette shook her finger at her. "You have some one up your sleeve.

Well, who is this someone?"

"Here he is now."

Selve (Leopold) was ringing the bell. He seemed to be annoyed at not

finding Sylvie alone, but as a well-bred man he put a good face on the

situation. It was not easy for him to appear to advantage alone in the

presence of two young gossips who were alarming enough anyway and were

evidently in each other's confidence. He felt that these two pairs of

eyes were watching him. After a few rather heavy gallantries, of which,

as a matter of politeness, Annette had her share, he began to talk about

business, the trade, the strenuous life he led. Annette, with an air of

being interested, charitably asked him a few questions. He became more

confident and told about the difficulties of his career, his

disappointments, his success, missing no opportunity to place himself in

a good light. He seemed simple, cordial, self-sufficient; he played with

all his cards on the table. Sylvie, who was more cautious, watched his

play before playing herself. Annette, who was soon relegated to the

background, where she followed the game, was less surprised at the

competence of her sister than at the humbleness of her choice. It would

have been easy for Sylvie to make a more brilliant match; she had simply

not wished to do so. She distrusted men who were too handsome and too

clever. It goes without saying that she would not have chosen a goose or

a fool. _In medio_. . . . What she wanted was a prudent second in

command, not someone who would command her. She knew that in marriage

everybody has to give something and wants to get something: it is a

question of supply and demand. For herself she demanded the right to

remain the mistress in her own household. And what did he demand? Ah,

poor fellow, to be loved for himself, just for himself. He was not

conceited; he knew well enough that he was neither handsome nor

attractive. But it was his weakness to wish to be married for love.

Ridiculous, wasn't it? He shrugged his shoulders at the idea, for he was

no fool, this big, ingenuous creature who was familiar enough with life

and sceptical, as three out of every four Frenchmen are, where women

were concerned. But the need of the heart is so strong! That stupid

need! "Why shouldn't I be loved? I'm as good as others who are." So, by

turns, he was almost humble and almost fatuous. And always begging. This

was not very clever of him, and it was even worse that he allowed it to

be seen. For she had seen him very clearly, the sharp-eyed minx. And to

those big, blue, round, rather prominent eyes that were always asking,

"Do you love me?"--her soft eyes responded neither with a Yes nor with a

No. For uncertainty is like fuel to love.

When the sisters found themselves alone again, Annette said to Sylvie,

"Don't play with him too much!"

"Why not?" said Sylvie, wondering. "The stakes are worth the trouble."

"Then it's serious?"

"Very serious."

"I can't imagine you married."

"Really? I dare say you will see me so two or three times."

"I don't like you to laugh at these things."

"What would one laugh at, my dear Salvation Army lassie? Come, Mrs.

General Booth"--she pronounced it "Botte"--"don't knit your beautiful

brows. I'm not thinking of changing before I've even tried it. I am

marrying in the hope that it's for good. But if it doesn't last, one

must be able to resign oneself."

"I am not anxious about you," said Annette.

"Really? I thank you for his sake. Has he made a conquest of you?"

"He isn't good enough for you, Sylvie. But I shouldn't want you to make

this good man suffer some day."

Sylvie smiled and looked at her teeth in the mirror.

"Suffer! Everybody makes the other person suffer. That's nothing. Of

course he will suffer, poor man! I shouldn't mind being in his place.

Come, don't disturb yourself about him. Do you think I don't know the

value of my Adonis? It isn't dazzling, but it amounts to a good deal. I

know what I'm about. I shan't tell him, for it doesn't do to spoil men.

It allows them to think they have rights over us. But privately I shall

not forget it. I shan't do myself the wrong of doing him a wrong. And if

I don't promise never to make him angry--which might be an excellent way

of making him a little thinner--I shan't put him on the grill unless it

is necessary. Of course, assuming that I have no reason to complain of

him. Otherwise it would serve him right to give him his due. And I pay

in cash. I am an honest business woman; I don't deceive my customers any

more than is necessary for me to live. Unless they try to get the best

of me. Then I get the best of them. Don't I!"

"To think," Annette exclaimed, "that you never can get her to talk

seriously!"

"Life would not be endurable," said Sylvie, "if one had to say serious

things seriously!"

Leopold was not long in coming back again, and Sylvie did not leave him

languishing. She had quickly made the tour of the enemy's positions,

reconnoitered behind his defensive works and discovered his arms, his

baggage and his supplies before giving herself in good earnest. She had

no difficulty in leading him to adopt her own plans. Till his last day

Leopold was to preserve the illusion that it was he who had conceived

the idea of establishing the great dressmaking establishment of _Selve

et Sylvie_.

The marriage was arranged for the middle of January, a time when work

would be rather slack. The preceding weeks were a joyous time in the

workroom. The radiant Leopold regaled the whole band, took them to the

theatre and the movies. They all had such a need for laughter! When one

of them was married, it was as if she brought marriage into the house.

And each of the others greeted the visitor with a whispered "Don't

forget! The next time it will be my turn. . . ."

Annette was caught up in the general joy. Instead of feeling the

deprivation of her own life, she asked herself what had become of her

troubles. They slipped away as a chemise slips down one's thighs. O

youthful body, sorrow cannot cling to you! Not that this marriage gave

her any satisfaction. She had loved her sister too tenderly not to feel

rather sad to see her going still further away from her. And it was not

pleasant to see such a pretty girl giving herself to this rather vulgar

man. Annette had had other dreams for Sylvie. But with our dreams other

people have nothing to do. Their way of being happy is their own, not

ours. And they are right.

Sylvie was satisfied. Leopold's affection, the admiration which he

showed for her, touched her vanity and gradually her heart. As she had

said to her sister, she appreciated the serious character of the man she

had chosen. He would be a steadfast companion who would not interfere

with her. She had no intention of abusing him--though one never

knew!--but she was certain that she would never have to give him any

minute account of her behavior. Leopold made no attempt to learn about

Sylvie's past; he trusted her, and this pleased her. His experience of

life had left Leopold with few illusions; above all, it had left him not

unwilling to compromise; it inclined him to assume for his own use and

accept for that of others, as a rule of conduct, the cordial egoism of

an honest, sceptical, affectionate man who was not exacting and did not

ask of others more than he himself could give.

Sylvie, indeed, found herself much closer to him than to Annette. She

loved Annette more; but, as she said to herself, laughing, she would

never have married a masculine Annette. No, that would have turned out

badly.

Selve inspired her with a feeling of complete security. This restful

impression dispensed her from thinking about him: she thought of the

wedding, of the dress she was making, of her future household, and she

made great plans for the business. It was perfectly satisfying.

XVI

The wedding took place one radiant winter day. Selve carried off all his

friends to the woods of Vincennes. They separated into jolly groups.

Annette gaily mingled with them. In former times she would have been

sensitive to the noisy and rather vulgar side of these rejoicings, but

she was not so now. She laughed with these bold young men, these hearty

girls who were giving themselves a day of merriment between their days

of toil. She took part in their sports, and she enchanted everybody with

her enthusiasm. Sylvie, who had known her as cold and contemptuous,

watched her running and amusing herself in this frank way. There she was

playing blindman's buff, with her eyes under the bandage, red with

excitement, her mouth open and laughing, her chin in the air, as if to

seize the light as it flew past, her arms stretched out before her and

her hands like wings, striding along with great steps, stumbling,

laughing her prettiest. . . . What was the beautiful, vigorous body of

this passionate blind girl going to seize? Who was going to seize her?

More than one person who was watching her might have had this thought.

But Annette seemed to be thinking only of her game. What had become of

the cares that had weighed upon her yesterday? Of her anxious, tense,

absorbed air? . . . What elasticity she had! . . . Sylvie congratulated

herself on having succeeded in distracting Annette from her troubles,

and she was overjoyed at this. But Annette knew very well that the cause

lay much further back. She was not disburdened of her cares because she

was laughing at the wedding. She was laughing at the wedding because she

was disburdened.

What had happened? It was a strange thing and one that was not the work

of a day, although on this day it appeared so.

One Sunday morning, a few weeks before this, she had been sitting

half-clad before her dressing-table. She took a long time over her

toilet on Sunday, for on other days she was obliged to go out so early.

She was weary with the accumulated fatigue of the week. The child, who

had just got up, had slipped out of the room to find his aunt. He was

very much interested in the wedding, and he amused Sylvie by the

reflexions which, as a man of experience, he expressed on this subject.

Leopold petted him; as a way of courting Sylvie, he courted her little

lap-dog. And Marc, flattered and proud of his importance, passed all his

time in the apartment below, remaining with his mother very reluctantly.

Annette was bitterly disheartened by this. But this morning her

weariness swept away her sadness and even mingled with it a secret

feeling that lightened it. She sighed, however, from habit. She was

feeling that mingled fatigue and enjoyment which came from knowing that

she could, thank heaven, stretch out at full length on this Sunday

without having to stir. . . . Sunday! In former days Annette had never

dreamed how precious it was.

"How weary I am, how weary I am! How good it is not to budge! If I were

sitting in the most uncomfortable position, leaning on my elbow in some

tiresome way, I shouldn't move. I could sleep for a thousand years.

There is a charm in this that holds you. One's afraid of breaking it.

Let's not stir. How good it is!"

She saw through the window, on the roof opposite, a stream of smoke

coming from the baker's chimney. It was carried off by the wind, in

spirals, bright and gay, stretching out, rolling, running and dancing

against the blue sky. Annette's eyes laughed and her spirit danced in

the meadows of the air--borne along in the wake of the mad arabesques.

All the weight of the earth had slipped away from her. Her spirit felt

naked in the wind and the sun. Annette sang in a low voice. . . . And

suddenly there appeared before her the enraptured eyes of a young man

who had looked at her the day before in an omnibus. She did not know

him, and in all probability she would never see him again. But this

look, which she had surprised as she suddenly turned her head--he did

not think he was being seen--confessed so naïvely how charmed he was

that ever since a fresh joy had remained in her heart. She pretended to

herself that she did not know the cause of this; but as her mirror

returned to her the image of her smile, she saw herself with the eyes of

the one who would love her some day. . . . What has become of you, my

worries? I can still hear them murmuring fitfully, far, far away.

"Enough, enough! No more of this. One must be reasonable."

There was nothing new in what Annette said to herself. Twenty times she

had said it. But although she did as she said, she expected nothing from

it. Success does not always depend on being reasonable. Reason is a good

counsellor, but counsellors do not guarantee payment. And the heart is

only convinced by the reasons of the heart.

She had no lack of these now. Annette was willing to see how absurd were

the demands made by her maternal love. But if she was ready to do this,

it was because other stifled aspirations had risen to the surface. She

could no longer deny them; she no longer wished to do so. And once she

had given them this tacit acquiescence, Annette felt liberated. The

voice of her reawakened youth said to her, "Nothing is lost. You still

have the right to be happy. Your life is just beginning."

The world revived. Everything had a savor again. Even on dull days she

had her luminous moments of escape. Annette formed no plans for the

future. She abandoned herself to the happiness, whatever it might be, of

a future that she had recaptured. Yes, yes, she was young, young as the

young year. . . . A whole life before her, . . . There would never be

enough of it.

XVII

One of those gay, precocious months of February that have so much charm

in Paris. Spring is not yet in the sky or in the heart, but everything

is pure, pure light, the limpid joy of a child that has awakened. The

beautiful dawn of the year is beginning, and before the birds have

reappeared one hears them coming. As from the summit of a tower lost in

the clear sky, one sees them, clouds of wings, swarms of swallows. They

are coming, they are crossing the seas. And already some of them are

singing in my heart.

Like every healthy being, Annette loved all the seasons. In adapting

herself to them, she shared in their secret energies. Those of the

springtime exalted her.

She went along, happy to be walking, happy to be working, carrying home

with her a wholesome fatigue and a hearty appetite. She was interested

in everything, filled with a new curiosity about the things of the mind

which for four years she had abandoned, about books, music; and

sometimes in the evening, although she was half dead, she would go out

and run to the other end of Paris to use a ticket to some concert.

Sylvie envied her; she herself was in the early stages of pregnancy, and

it was far from pleasant.

In her evening walks, Annette was followed more than once. She did not

notice this: absent-minded, dreaming, amused, she would suddenly stop in

the midst of her soliloquy with the feeling that she was dragging

something along at her heels. She would wake up and look curiously at

the thing that was whispering to her, shrug her shoulders or make a face

and start off briskly saying, "What an old idiot!"

The idiot was often young, and Annette thought, "In a dozen years Marc

may be like this."

She stopped indignantly. The false Marc received the wrath of the eyes

which she turned upon the other, and he did not persist. The eyes began

to laugh. The idea of seeing Marc in such a situation, a big handsome

boy, amused her in spite of everything. But her maternal pride was hurt.

She scolded herself for the observation she had made. Or rather she

scolded Marc.

"Young scamp!" she muttered. "When I get home I'll pull his ears." (She

did pull them.)

These little adventures entertained her. At first, that is. But when

they kept on. . . .

"Oh, what a pest! This is tiresome. Am I never to be allowed to walk in

peace any more? Because you look to the right, to the left, in the

simplest, most harmless way, because you laugh as you walk along, people

have to suspect you are thinking of love! I know love, I have seen

enough of it. The fools who imagine one can't get along without them! It

never occurs to them that one can be happy without them, just because

it's a fine day and one is young and has the little one needs. Let them

think what they like! Am I thinking of them? Of them! Haven't they ever

looked at themselves?"

She herself looked at them; and as she was in a state of grace (that is,

of gay freedom) she certainly did not idealize them. Far from it. She

asked herself how one could possibly fall in love with a man. Man was

certainly not a beautiful animal. One would have to have lost one's head

to find him attractive. And the daughter of Rivière, who was a good

Frenchwoman, of the strong classical type, a reader of Rabelais and

Molière, repeated to herself Dorine's remark to Tartuffe.

She made fun of love. (Ah, how she deceived herself!) She defied it, and

she carried it in her heart. Sly and apparently asleep, it was awaiting

its hour. These little skirmishes were preparations for the real attack.

The enemy was approaching. The friend. . . .

Who could have suspected him? Anyone else, perhaps. But this man--what

an idea!

Julien Dumont was just about the age of Annette, between twenty-nine and

thirty years old. Of middling height, with a slight stoop, a rather sad

face and one that would have been unattractive without the fine, brown,

gentle, serious eyes that were humbly caressing when one overcame their

shyness, a bony forehead, with a depression in the middle, a big nose,

pronounced cheek-bones, a short black beard, an affectionate mouth that

was concealed under a very long moustache--it was Julien's almost

invariable habit to conceal whatever was least ugly about him--the dull,

old-ivory complexion of a man who has been nourished more by books than

by sunlight. A face that lacked neither intelligence nor goodness, but

was rather depressed and languid, a face that life and the passions had

not yet marked. In his whole appearance there was something walled-in,

something despondent.

He was more ingenuous and inexperienced than Annette, who was still a

good deal so herself. For, in spite of her brief experience, an

experience that had been more violent than extensive, she did not know

very much about the world of love. It is true that the intuition she

owed to her father and her talks with Sylvie, which sometimes quite

equalled those of the Queen of Navarre, had not left her ignorant of

anything. But the lesson is badly learned which the heart has not

studied at its own expense. Words are not of the same stuff as reality.

And one sometimes fails to recognize what one has read about when one

meets it in life. Annette, who had been well taught, had almost

everything to learn. Julien had to learn everything.

He had lived without love. We hesitate in France to speak of "innocents"

of this kind: they provoke the easy pleasantries of an intelligent race

that does not vary to any great extent in the forms of its wit. There

are many of these innocents. Whether it is the result of religious

scruples, or moral puritanism, or a deep-seated and sometimes

unwholesome timidity, or (and this is most frequently the case) an

overwhelming burden of work that absorbs their years of youth, a life of

poverty, toil, a repugnance for vulgar love affairs, a respect for the

future, for the one who is coming (who is not coming)--in every case, no

doubt, a certain cold-bloodedness lies at the bottom of their attitude.

The Nordic heart is slow to awaken, though this may mean, not that the

passions are going to lack force in the future, but merely that they are

gathering and being held in reserve. There are many of these innocents,

and the happy young people about them pay no attention to them.

Innocents are left empty-handed; they are left out of everything. Julien

knew scarcely anything about life except through his intelligence.

The child of a bourgeois family, poor, laborious, which included only

his two parents, the father an obscure professor who had worked himself

to death, the mother devoted to her son, who returned the devotion,

deeply religious, a practising Catholic, a believer, with liberal ideas,

an unbroken, monotonous life of labor, coldly illumined by the severe

joy of conscience and habit, with no interest in politics, a distaste

for every sort of public activity, a profound love of the hidden, inner,

domestic life, he was a truly honest, modest soul, with a sense of the

value of the strong, humble virtues. And deep down in his heart was a

flower of poetry.

He was an assistant teacher of science at a lycée. He had known Annette

years before at the University, when they were twenty. From the very

first he had been attracted by her. But Annette, who was rich at that

time, popular, radiant with youth and happy egoism, carelessly distant,

intimidated Julien. Her bolder companions assumed with her the place

that he would have liked to take. He envied them, but he did not try to

rival them; he considered himself inferior, ugly, awkward, ill-dressed;

he was unable to express himself and gave a false idea of his

intelligence and his sincerity. The sense of his physical uncouthness

paralysed him all the more because he was susceptible to beauty, and

Annette inspired in him an unexpressed emotion. For he thought her

beautiful; unlike his companions who paid court to her, he did not have

a sufficiently free mind to observe cavalierly the imperfections that

accompanied her attractions, the strongly marked eyebrows, the prominent

eyes, the short nose. He did not see these details. But he alone of all

these young men grasped the harmony of this living form, he alone

understood it; for, although most people stop at the mere external

pattern, every form expresses an inner meaning. Julien did not separate

in his own mind Annette's eyes, her forehead, her heavy eyebrows from

her energy of character and vigorous mentality. He saw her from a

distance, simply, summarily; but he saw her truly, more truly, at this

first glance, than when he came nearer and tried to know her better. He

was one of those far-sighted spirits that are embarrassed at close

range. Sometimes they have genius and stumble at every step.

Julien and Annette happened to meet again one morning in the great

windowed hall on the first floor of the Library of Sainte-Geneviève. It

was nearly ten years since they had seen each other, and Julien had

prudently avoided thinking of the image that rose before him to-day. He

lifted his eyes from his book. On the other side of the table, a few

steps away, he caught sight of her reading. Over her beautiful auburn

hair was a fur toque; her cloak was thrown back from her shoulders. (It

was still winter, though Easter was approaching; and the hall, into

which the icy air of the square filtered through the great windows, was

never warm enough. Julien had kept his own coat-collar turned up, but

she, with her neck exposed, did not feel the cold.) With one elbow on

the table and her chin resting on the back of her hand, she had the

familiar attitude which he had seen so long ago, her brow bending

forward, her blond eyebrows knit, and the eyes running down the page,

while she nibbled the end of her pencil. He felt again as he had felt at

twenty. But it did not occur to him to get up and speak to her.

In spite of the ardor with which she had applied herself to reading, as

she applied herself to everything, Annette's mind was still pursuing

more than one single thought. The ideas she had come to find in a book,

and that really attracted her, rarely presented themselves without a

procession of images which had very little in common among themselves.

She drove them away; but, as moment followed moment, the indiscreet

images came back and knocked at the door. The most intellectual woman

never completely forgets herself in what she is reading; the current

within her is too strong. Annette interrupted her reading to open the

flood-gate for a moment.

As she thus stopped, casting about her a rather troubled glance, her eye

encountered that of Julien: it was fixed upon her. The image of Julien

seemed to her a part of what was passing through her mind. Then,

suddenly awakening--as when, in the morning, on her pillow, she found

herself all at once in the midst of life--she rose gaily and stretched

out her hand to him across the table.

Julien, who was embarrassed, awkwardly went over and sat down beside

her. They began to talk. Julien said little. He was stunned by this

unexpected pleasure. Annette took everything into her own hands. She was

delighted; a happy past reappeared before her. Julien played a very

minor part in this: he was a mere link in the chain, and as the figures

of the dance unfolded Julien was soon far away. But he thought he still

saw himself in Annette's laughing eyes, and in his confusion he scarcely

knew what he was saying to her in reply. He did his best (the clumsy

soul!) to conceal the admiration she aroused in him. She still seemed

beautiful to him, more beautiful than ever, but closer, more human,

somehow new. . . . In what way? He knew nothing about her; the last

thing he had heard was the death of her father six years before. He

lived a solitary life; the gossip of Paris never reached him. . . . He

asked if Annette was still living in the Boulogne house.

"What, don't you know? It's a long time since I moved away from there.

Yes, they put me out of it."

He did not understand. She hastily explained, with an air of gaiety,

that she had been ruined by her own fault, her indifference to business.

"It was a very good thing!" she added.

And she spoke of other matters. Not a word about her life. She had no

desire to conceal it, but it was no concern of others. If Julien had

insisted, asked some question, she would have replied with the exact

truth. But he asked nothing, he would not have dared. His mind was lost

in this one thought: she was poor, poor like himself. Already the fiery

wind of hope had entered him.

To disguise his feeling he leaned, with a gruff camaraderie, over the

pamphlet she had just laid down.

"What are you reading here?"

He turned the leaves. A scientific review. There was a file of them.

"Yes," said Annette, "I am trying to catch up with things. It's not

easy. I have lost ground during these five years; I have to earn my

living, giving lessons, and I haven't the time. I am taking advantage of

Easter. No more lessons. I'm resting. I am trying to make up for lost

time. I am taking double doses, you see. [She pointed to the open

reviews that surrounded her.] I should like to swallow them all. But

it's too much. I can't manage it; I have to learn everything all over

again. Such an immense number of things have happened since I have been

out of the running; they allude to works that I don't know. . . .

Heavens, how quickly things move! But I shall catch up with them again!

I swear I shan't be left behind on the road like a cripple. There are

fine things to be seen out there. I want to see them."

Julien drank in her words. Of all she was saying what remained in his

mind was this: she was earning her living under difficulties, and she

was laughing. She rose in his admiration to a height which the old

Annette had never attained. And she dragged him along with her. For this

joy, which he did not possess, she brought to him.

They went out together. Julien was proud to find himself in the company

of this beautiful woman; he could not get over his surprise that she

should have remembered him so well. In the old days she had hardly

seemed to notice that he existed. And here she was recalling to him

little forgotten events in which he was concerned. She asked about

Julien's mother. He was so touched that his embarrassment vanished;

haltingly, he began to tell her about himself; he was tongue-tied.

Annette listened to him with gentle irony; she would have liked to

prompt him. He was still at the beginning and his assurance was coming

back when she held out her hand to bid him goodbye. He had just time to

ask her if she was going to be at the library again, and he was

overjoyed to hear her say, "to-morrow."

Julien went home in utter confusion. He was ashamed of himself, but

to-morrow he would make up for it. To-day he only wanted to think of the

miracle of this friendship. On her side, Annette, who was submerged in

Sylvie's environment, was pleased to have found again a comrade of her

intellectual years. Not that he was very enlivening--hardly that--but he

was a serious, sympathetic, honest boy. . . . What an icicle!

She had no reason the next day to change her opinion. Julien only thawed

out when he was alone at home. The moment he saw Annette again, the ice

at once returned. He was filled with consternation. He had prepared many

things to say, prepared a conversation as he would have prepared a

lecture, but under Annette's eyes nothing remained of it all. There was

only a tasteless extract left of the recitation that he had warmed up in

himself so many times. Even he was bored as he heard himself reeling it

off. He only recovered his equilibrium when they began to discuss

science and he himself was not in question. On that ground he was

precise and clear and even became quite lively. Annette could have asked

nothing more. Eager to learn, she pressed him with questions that

interested Julien by their intelligence; she was so quick in imagining,

though she often guessed wrong, and at a word she would turn up at the

exact point whither he wished to lead her. He liked this attentive face,

these eyes that plunged into his to reach his thought more quickly, and

then suddenly lighted up. She had understood! The joy of thought shared

in common, and this invisible sun and the immense perspective illumined

by its light, the joy of travelling together towards discovery by new

roads where he was her guide! It was delicious to talk in this way, in

the peaceful seclusion of this hall of books, this church of the mind.

Delicious for him, but not for those who were near them. For he talked

too loud: he had forgotten that other people existed. Annette smilingly

told him that he must be silent and rose to go out. He followed her. But

once in the street again, with the table and the books no longer before

them, he became the same impotent soul whom Annette had seen the day

before. She tried to make him talk of himself, but her labor was lost.

And he could not make up his mind to leave her; he wanted to take her

back to the door of her house. He was stiff, nervous, abrupt from

embarrassment--at moments, unintentionally, even rather impolite. . . .

He was a fearful bore! Annette, slightly irritated, thought, "How the

devil can I get rid of him?"

Julien perceived the mocking curve in this mouth that said nothing. He

stopped suddenly and remarked, in a tone of distress, "O forgive me, I'm

boring you. . . . Yes, I know it, I know it! I am such a bore! I don't

know how to talk. I am not used to it. I live alone. My mother is good,

very good, but I can't tell her about my thoughts. Many of them would

upset her; she wouldn't understand them. And I have never known anybody

who was interested in them. I don't expect it. You have been good to

listen to me so indulgently. I have let myself go on because I wanted to

tell you. . . . But it isn't possible. One can't tell things, one should

keep them to oneself. It isn't interesting, it isn't manly. Live and be

silent. I ask your pardon for having bored you."

Annette was touched. There was real feeling in these words. This mixture

of modesty and sad pride struck her; she felt the disappointment and the

wounded affection under the shell of coldness. In one of those bursts of

emotion which she could not resist, she was seized with a kindly pity

for Julien. She said warmly, "No, no, don't regret anything. I thank

you. It was quite right of you to talk"--she corrected herself with a

touch of mockery that had no sharpness in it this time--"to try to talk.

Yes, it isn't easy. You are not used to it. . . . Well, I'm glad you are

not used to it. There are plenty of others who are! But there is nothing

to prevent me from hoping that I shall make you get used to it. Are you

willing? Since you have no one with whom you can talk?"

Julien was too much moved to reply, but his look expressed a gratitude

that was still shy. Although it was past the hour when she should have

been at home, Annette retraced her steps so that they might still have a

few minutes together; and she talked to him with a kind, motherly

camaraderie, in a simple, cordial tone that was like a cool hand laid on

his aching forehead. Yes, he had been hurt, this big boy; with his moody

air he needed to be handled very gently. He was coming back to life now.

But she had to go in. . . . Annette suggested seeing him again from time

to time. And they confessed that, as for the work they had done in the

library, they might have done it just as well in the Luxembourg Gardens,

or . . .

"Or . . . why not at my house?"

And Annette, inviting him for some Sunday soon, vanished without waiting

for a reply.

Ah, how well he might have talked, now that she was no longer there! He

went over the whole scene; he felt how kind Annette was. And since this

man, who was so well balanced in his intellectual life, was unable to

preserve any measure in the things of the heart, he slipped without

transition from the thought that his feeling was destined to remain

unreturned to the thought that perhaps . . .

XVIII

Annette had not the least suspicion of what was taking place in Julien.

The unengaging appearance of her new companion seemed a guarantee

against love, and she thought that in some comic fashion it would also

guarantee Julien. She respected him. She pitied him. Pitied, he became

sympathetic. It was pleasant to tell herself that she could do him good;

and he became more sympathetic to her. But it would never have occurred

to her to be on her guard against him, still less against herself.

She had forgotten her invitation when, on the following Sunday, he came

to recall it to her; and the joyous surprise with which she greeted him

was not assumed. But Julien who, for a week, had been thinking of

nothing but this moment, did not see the surprise and saw only the joy.

And his own increased. The weather was very bad. Annette had not thought

of going out this afternoon. As she was not expecting anybody; she was

in négligé, and so was the apartment. The baby had been playing there.

It is useless to have, as Annette had, a love of order; children oblige

one to give it up, along with so many fine plans that one has formed

without considering them. But Julien, referring everything to himself,

saw in this disorder no artistic effect, but a sign of some intimacy

that Annette wished to accord him. He came in with a beating heart, but

with his mind made up to appear this time in an advantageous light; he

assumed an air of assurance. It was not becoming to him, and Annette,

who was annoyed at being surprised in this confusion, was angry because

the intruder was so unceremonious. She at once became cold, and in an

instant Julien's pride was broken. So they remained, each as stiff as

the other, the one not daring to utter another word, the other waiting

with an air of malicious _hauteur_.

"If you imagine, my dear boy, that I am going to help you to-day!"

And then she saw the ridiculous side of the situation. She saw with the

corner of her eye the piteous look of the conqueror, and she laughed out

loud. Suddenly relaxed, she resumed the comradely tone. Julien did not

understand it at all: disconcerted but relieved, he too became natural

again, and at last a friendly conversation sprang up between them.

Annette told him about her working life, and they confessed to one

another that they were not made for their occupations. Julien was

passionately interested in the science which he taught, but . . .

"They can't follow me! They look at me with their dull eyes blinking

with sleep; there are hardly two or three who have a glimmer of

understanding; the rest are a heavy mass of boredom. If you sweat blood

and water, you can sometimes (not always) stir it for a moment, but it

always falls back into the pond. Try to fish it out again! It's work for

a well-digger. But it isn't their fault, the unhappy brats. They are

just like ourselves; they are victims of the democratic mania according

to which all minds absorb equally the same sum of knowledge--before the

normal age when they might begin to understand! Then come the

examinations, the agricultural matches, when they weigh these products

of ours who are crammed with a mixture of lame words and formless

notions. Most of these they hastily disgorge immediately afterwards, and

they are disgusted with learning for the rest of their lives."

"Now I," said Annette, laughing, "like children very much, yes, even the

most unattractive ones. I am not indifferent to any of them. I should

like to have them all, I should like to hug them all. But one has to

limit oneself. Isn't that so? It's enough to have one. . . ."

(She pointed to the disorderly room, but he did not understand and

smiled stupidly.)

"It's a pity! When I see one who pleases me, I would like to steal him.

And they all give me pleasure. There is something fresh, an infinite

hope, even in the ugliest. . . . But what can I do with them? And what

can they do with me? I see so little of them. They are only in my hands

for an hour. And then I run to the others. And my little ones also run

from hand to hand. What one hand has done the other undoes. Nothing

sticks. These little formless souls, these little soulless forms, who

dance the Boston and the two-step. We run about. Everyone runs about.

This life is a race-course. No one ever stops. People die, they join the

dead. Ah, what unhappy souls, never granting themselves a day to collect

their thoughts! And they don't grant us one either, we who would so like

to have it!"

Julien understood her. He had no need to learn the value of a retreat,

the horror of the tumultuous world. And their understanding increased

when Annette said that fortunately, in the midst of the flood, there

were still a few islets where one could take refuge, the beautiful books

of the poets and especially music. The poets had little attraction for

Julien; their language was beyond him. He had the strange distrust of it

which is common in minds that love thought and often have their own

poetry, but do not perceive the deep vibrations of the music of words.

The other music, the language of sounds, is more accessible to them.

Julien loved it. Unfortunately, he lacked the time and the means to go

and hear it.

"I lack them too," said Annette. "But I go just the same."

Julien did not have this vitality. After his working day he stayed

quietly at home. He did not know how to amuse himself. He saw a piano in

the room.

"Do you play?"

"Ah, it isn't easy!" said Annette, laughing. "_He_ doesn't allow it."

Julien, vaguely troubled, asked in surprise who could prevent her in

this way. Annette, with her ear alert, listened to the little steps that

were tapping along as they climbed the stairs. She ran and opened the

door. "See, there's the monster!"

She brought Marc in. He had returned from his aunt's.

Julien did not yet understand.

"My little boy . . . Marc, will you say good-afternoon?"

Julien was astounded. It had not even occurred to Annette that he would

be surprised. She went on gaily, holding Marc, who tried to escape from

her, "You see, I haven't lost my time in spite of all."

Julien did not have the wit to reply. His attention was occupied in

concealing his confusion. He attempted a rather foolish smile. Marc had

succeeded in slipping from his mother's hands, without having said

good-afternoon. (He thought this ceremony ridiculous, and he made off,

leaving his mother talking, "talking and saying nothing," well knowing

that the instant after she would have forgotten it in something else.

There was no continuity in women.) Four steps away from Julien, in the

folds of a curtain which he twisted in his embrace, Marc looked the

stranger up and down with severe eyes; and in his childish way (which

was fairly accurate) he had quickly sized up the situation. Decision

without appeal: he did not like Julien. The question was settled.

Julien, whose embarrassment was increased by this look from the child,

tried to resume the thread of the conversation while following the

thread of his own thoughts. But he only succeeded in becoming more

confused. He reassured himself, however. Feebly. Annette's confident

manner made it impossible for him to suspect that she was unmarried:

that was out of the question. But where was the husband? Alive or dead?

Annette was not in mourning. No, he was not reassured. What had become

of this man? Julien did not dare to ask directly. After many detours, he

finally took a chance, imagining he was very clever, and carelessly

remarked, "Have you been alone very long?"

"I am not alone," said Annette. And she pointed to her child.

He learned nothing more. But since she thus admitted by implication that

she was alone (with the child) and that she took it gaily, it must be

because her mourning was far, very far, behind her, and she no longer

thought of it. Julien's interested logic ended victoriously, "Monsieur

Malbrough is dead."

Farewell to the husband! He was no longer disturbing. Julien threw one

more shovelful of earth on him, and then, turning to Marc, gave the

child a crooked smile. Marc was becoming sympathetic to him.

But he had not become so to Marc. He was more familiar with the

constitution of the atomic bodies than with that of a child's mind. Marc

fully realized that this demonstration of good nature was not natural,

and the result was that he turned his back, grumbling, "I forbid him to

laugh at me."

Annette, amused by Julien's useless efforts to win over the child,

thought she ought to make up for Marc's ungracious greeting. She

questioned Julien about his solitary life with an interest that wandered

a little at first, but soon ceased to do so. Julien, who was always more

sure of himself when he was sitting in the half-light of a room, talked

about himself this time quite frankly. He was simple; he never, or

hardly ever, posed, in spite of his desire to please. In his sincerity

he revealed a candour that one seldom meets in Paris in a man of his

age. When he touched upon subjects that were dear to him, he had a

delicacy that veiled a restrained emotion. In these moments of abandon

when, in the kindly silence of the encouraging Annette, his true inner

nature seemed to blossom, a gleam of moral beauty lighted up his face.

Annette looked at him attentively, and what she felt for him was no

longer merely a friendly indifference.

After this they saw each other regularly on Sundays and a little oftener

during the week, when they had a free moment. Julien used as a pretext

the books which he lent her; it was quite necessary to accompany them

with explanations so that Annette should have less difficulty in

understanding them. He brought Marc some rather expensive but badly

chosen presents for which the little enemy was by no means grateful to

him: he thought them childish and beneath his dignity. But nothing could

shake Julien's good will, firmly resolved as he was not to see anything

that would disturb him. Solitary spirits who distrust the world lose all

discernment, all desire to be discerning, the moment they abandon their

distrust in favor of some chosen soul: they are liberated. Julien's

mind, ingenious in deceiving itself, arranged to its satisfaction the

memories it brought back from each of its visits: everything that

Annette had said and everything that surrounded her. (Without being

conscious of it, he indirectly glorified himself.) Annette's

inattentiveness, her wandering replies, even the bored silences which he

sometimes caused her, all rendered her more beautiful and more touching

to him. And as, each time, he still discovered some new little trait,

which did not accord with the portrait he had made, he kept remaking the

portrait, he made it over ten times; and although the portrait no longer

resembled what it had been at the beginning, Julien never admitted that

there had been a change in its essential constancy. He was ready to

alter his ideal of love as many times as the beloved object altered.

Annette had become aware of his love for her. She was amused by it at

first, then touched, then grateful, a little, a good deal, in spite of

everything. ("The least handsome boy in the world can only give what he

has. Thank you, my good Julien.") Then she was a little troubled. She

told herself frankly that she should not allow him to start down that

slope. But it gave the boy so much happiness, and certainly it was not

displeasing to her. Annette was susceptible to affection; susceptible

also to gentle attentions, the flattery of tenderness. Too much so,

perhaps. She confessed it. Love, the admiration she read in his eyes were

for her a caress that she could not but wish to have repeated. . . . Yes,

she admitted it: perhaps it was not quite right, but it was so

natural! She would have to make some little effort to deprive herself of

it. She did so, but she had no luck; everything she said to push Julien

away from her (did she really say everything?) attracted him all the

more. It was a fatality! One has to resign oneself to a fatality. She

laughed at herself, while Julien, troubled, wondered if she was not

laughing at him.

"Hypocrite, hypocrite! Haven't you any shame?"

She had no shame. Can one resist pleasing a heart that has surrendered

itself into one's hands? It brightens one's days. And what harm does it

do? What is the danger? As long as one is calm and master of oneself and

desires only what is good, the good of the other person!

She did not know that one of the insidious paths through which love

finds its way is the fond vanity of believing that one is

necessary--that feeling which is so strong in the heart of a true woman:

it satisfies her double need of doing good, which she confesses, and of

pride, which she does not confess. It is so strong that when she has a

well-developed soul she often prefers the man for whom she cares less,

but whom she can protect, to the man for whom she cares more, but who

can get along without her. Is not this the essence of maternity? Suppose

the big boy were to remain the little chick as long as he lived! The

woman with a mother's heart, like Annette, finds it easy to attribute to

a man whose love appeals to her a charm he does not possess. Her

instinct disposes her to observe only his good qualities. Julien had

plenty of these. Annette rejoiced to see his timidity vanishing and his

real nature, which had been repressed, expanding in the daylight with

the soft happiness of the convalescent. She said to herself that

hitherto no one had understood this man, not even the mother of whom he

was always talking and of whom she was beginning to be jealous. As for

poor Julien, he did not know himself. . . . Who would have suspected

that under this rough shell there was a tender, delicate soul? . . .

(She was exaggerating.) . . . He needed confidence and he had lacked it:

confidence in others, confidence in himself. To believe in himself he

needed another believer. Well, she believed! She believed in Julien, for

Julien's sake, so much that she ended by believing in him also for her

own. . . . He blossomed under her eye as a plant in the sunlight. And it

is good to be the sun for somebody else. "Open, my heart!" Was it to

Julien's heart or her own that she was speaking? Already she had ceased

to know. For she too was blossoming as a result of the good she was

doing. An abundant nature dies if it cannot nourish others from itself.

"To give myself!"

Annette gave too much. She was irresistible. Julien no longer concealed

his passion. And Annette--a little late--recognized that she was in

danger.

When she saw love rising within her, she threw up a feeble defence; she

tried not to take Julien's feelings seriously. But she did not believe

herself, and all she did was to make Julien more importunate. He became

pathetic.

Then she was seized with fear. She besought him not to love her, to let

them remain good friends.

"Why?" he asked. "Why?"

She did not want to say. She had an instinctive fear of love; she

remembered what she had suffered through it, and an intuition warned her

of what she would have to suffer again. She summoned it and she drove it

away from her; she desired it and she fled from it. Julien's entreaties

she resisted sincerely, and in the bottom of her heart she prayed that

her adversary might conquer her; resistance.

The combat would have dragged on if a certain event had not hastened the

issue.

XIX

With her sister's husband Annette was on terms of the frankest

friendship. This good soul, for all his slight vulgarity, lacked neither

heart nor integrity. Annette respected him, and Leopold treated her with

a rather ceremonious consideration. Ever since their first meetings he

had gathered that she belonged to a different species from his and

Sylvie's; she intimidated him. He was all the more grateful for the

kindness she showed him. At the time when he was paying court to Sylvie,

she had been his ally; more than once she had come to his aid when he

was exposed to the ridicule of his fiancée, who was too sure of her

power not to abuse it. Later she had even discreetly interposed in

misunderstandings in the household, or when Sylvie yielded to sudden

whims, crotchets and deviltries, now and then, escaping from her own

vexations by vexing her husband. Leopold, who did not understand such

things, would come and tell his troubles to Annette, who undertook to

bring Sylvie back to reason. He had even gone so far as to confide to

his sister-in-law more than one matter which he had not mentioned to his

wife. Sylvie was not unaware of this, and she teased Annette, who took

it gaily. Everything was natural and frank among the three. Leopold had

never complained of the place held in his home by his wife's sister and

the little boy, though they were often rather in the way; he thought, in

fact, that Sylvie did not do enough to help Annette, whose courage he

admired; and he spoiled the child. Annette, who knew through Sylvie what

Leopold thought, was grateful to him.

The period of Sylvie's pregnancy was not, for those about her,

especially the husband, a happy time. Frequent discords drove Leopold

and his consort apart. Not that Sylvie meant to get along without him.

She thought very little about her maternity and was unwilling to make

any change in her manner of living. But he did think about it. Those

long months of gestation were far from being for her what they had been

for Annette, an endless dream of languid happiness that was finished too

soon. Sylvie was not made to brood on dreams. She was impatient and had

no intention of giving up one of her duties, one of her rights or one of

her pleasures: she overtaxed herself. Her health was affected by her

nervous state, and her character did not gain by it. When one is

tormented, one is glad to torment others. Sylvie, who was uncomfortable,

was indignant because her husband was not; and she undertook to make him

so. She harassed him with her teasing, malicious, perpetually changing

moods. She was even (unexpectedly enough) jealously amorous, though this

did not prevent her from abusing him. There were days when he did not

know which way to turn.

Annette was at hand to receive his lamentations. He would climb up to

her floor, complaining; she would listen to him patiently, and she found

a way to make him laugh at his little misfortunes. These meetings, as

they went on, established between them a sort of complicity, for they

had so many feelings in common. And sometimes, in Sylvie's presence,

they would exchange a malicious glance. Perfectly honest, both of them,

they took no precautions and abandoned themselves to a familiarity

which, if it was innocent, was not entirely harmless. Annette did not

dream that there was any risk, and these friendly coquetries amused her.

Leopold was captivated by them; he asked for nothing better. He had been

attracted for a long time by the radiant force of joy that issued from

her. Just at that moment Annette was discovering Julien's love, and it

troubled her deliciously. The rest of the world was all a haze. When she

had just seen Julien, and Leopold was talking to her, she listened to

Leopold and replied to him, but it was to Julien that she was smiling.

Leopold had no means of guessing this.

He knew what he wanted. He resisted like a decent fellow. But a decent

fellow is a man. He should not play with fire.

One Sunday in May the four of them, Sylvie, Annette, Leopold and little

Marc, went for a walk in the direction of Sceaux. After an hour of

strolling, Sylvie, who was a little tired, sat down at the foot of a

slope and said, "Well, young people, climb it if you want to! You will

find us still here."

She remained behind with the child. Annette and Leopold went gaily on.

Annette was animated, joyous, the best of company. Leopold, with his

jolly talk, eased the moral tension in which Julien's love and his

intellectual conversation held her. The path wound between the long wall

of a great estate and a rise of ground covered with flowering bushes.

Through the holes in the hedges they saw, as they climbed, the sloping

orchards with their white and pink tufts.

A fantastic sky, with the busy clouds racing over its delicate blue. The

laughing wind, like a young dog, bit them by fits and starts. Annette

was walking ahead, picking flowers, singing. Leopold was following her;

he watched her bending over, watched her robust frame under the tightly

fitting dress, her bare hands, her bare neck, reddened by the lash of

the wind, and amid the foaming hair the red shell of her ear, the tip of

which looked like a drop of blood. The slope rose again to the right,

and the road formed a passage in which the rushing wind streamed down

upon them. Annette, without turning, asked her companion a question. He

did not reply. She went on, bending over, picking flowers and talking.

And as she joked with Leopold, who was silent, it suddenly occurred to

her that there was something dangerous in this silence. She let her

flowers fall. She straightened herself, but she did not have time to

turn when . . . she almost fell. He had clasped her in his arms. She had

been brutally seized, and she felt on her neck a panting breath. An

eager mouth was kissing her throat, her cheeks. Instantly stiffening,

bracing herself, with all her unconscious fighting forces collected,

with her chest and her spine she furiously shook the man who had seized

her: she broke his hold and found herself face to face with the

aggressor. Her eyes flamed with anger, but he did not relax his grip. A

rough struggle followed, like that of animals that hate each other.

Rough and brief. Annette, whose outraged instincts gave her an added

strength, violently repulsed the man, and he tripped and stumbled. He

remained there before her, doubly humiliated, panting, scarlet, and they

looked at each other with rage in their eyes. Not a word was said.

Suddenly Annette clambered up the bank, crept through a hole in the

hedge to the other side, and fled. Leopold, who had come to his senses,

called after her. She stopped twenty paces away and would not let him

approach. They redescended the hill on different sides of the hedge,

keeping their distances, on their guard, hostile and ashamed. Leopold,

in a changed voice, implored Annette to come back, begged her pardon.

Annette turned a deaf ear towards him, but she heard him: the confusion

of this voice reached her through the barrier of her bitterness. She

slackened her pace.

"Annette!" he besought her. "Annette! Don't run away! I don't want to

pursue you. See, I'm staying here, I shan't come near you. I've behaved

like a brute. I'm ashamed, ashamed. Call me any names you like, but

don't run away. I shall never touch you again, not even with the tip of

my finger. I'm disgusted with myself. I ask your pardon on my knees!"

He knelt down awkwardly on the pebbles. He looked utterly wretched. He

was ridiculous.

Annette, who was listening to him in cold silence, motionless, with her

face turned away, threw him a side-glance without looking at him. She

saw this humiliated man. She was touched by his humiliation; her warm

heart had the faculty of opening to the emotions of others as if they

were her own, and she blushed at Leopold's shame. She made a movement

towards him and said, "Get up!"

He rose, and she instinctively recoiled a few steps. "You are still

afraid," he said. "You will never forgive me."

"Don't speak of it any more," she answered dryly. "It's ended."

They descended the road again. Annette was dumb and frozen. He had

difficulty in keeping silent. He was mortified, and he was trying to

justify himself. But he was not very eloquent, the poor man. His style

was not exactly noble. "I am a dirty cur!" he repeated angrily.

Annette, still agitated, repressed a smile. Her mind was in a tumult,

and she found difficulty in calming it. She felt at the same time the

loathsomeness and the absurdity of the scene. She had not forgiven him,

and she was ready to pity the man who was accusing himself so

pathetically beside her. He continued to flounder. She listened to him

with bitterness, compassion, irony. He struggled to explain "this filthy

madness that passes through your body." . . . Yes, this madness, she

knew it, although it was not the time to tell him so. But he looked so

wretched that, in spite of herself, she said to him, "I know. One is mad

sometimes. What's done is done."

They continued on their way, without speaking, their hearts heavy, sad

and embarrassed. Just as they were arriving at the spot where they had

left Sylvie, Annette made a gesture as if she were about to hold out her

hand to Leopold. But instead of doing so, she said, "I've forgotten it."

He was relieved, though he was still troubled. Like a schoolboy caught

in some misdemeanor, he asked, "You won't say anything about it?"

Annette gave him a little pitying smile.

No, she said nothing. But at the first glance the sharp eye of Sylvie

had seen it all. She asked no questions. They spoke of other things. And

while all three, to hide their thoughts, made a great parade of

chattering all the way home, Sylvie observed the two others.

From that day forward Annette and Leopold were never again alone

together. The jealous one was always watching; Annette too was on her

guard. In spite of herself she allowed her distrust to be viable. And

Leopold, who was hurt, brooded over his unconfessed bitterness.

XX

Annette's eyes were opened. She could no longer remain undistrustful of

herself and others. She could no longer pass along, laughing, as she had

done before, heedless, because she did not seek them, of the desires she

aroused. Society being as it is, customs being as they are, her

situation as a single woman, young and free, not only exposed her to

pursuit, but legitimized it. No one could believe that she had freed

herself, in the boldest fashion, in order to shut herself up afterwards

in a widowhood the constancy of which was without an object. She

imagined she had changed with maternity, and no doubt maternity was a

great flame. But another flame still burned in her. She tried to forget

it, because she was afraid of it; and she imagined that no one saw it.

But this was not so; in spite of her, the fire of love burned on. And

other people, if not she, were in danger of being its victims. Leopold's

adventure had shown her this. It was hideous. She was revolted by it. In

the disillusioned eyes of one who is not in love, the act of love seems

a grotesque or disgusting bestiality. As Annette saw it, Leopold's

attempt was both. But Annette did not have a calm conscience. She had

fanned these desires. She remembered her thoughtless coquetries, her

arts, the provocations she had given him. What had driven her into them?

That repressed force, that inner fire which she was obliged to foster or

stifle. Stifle it one cannot, one should not! It is the sunlight of

life. Without it, everything is plunged in shadow. But at least it

should not consume that to which it ought to give life, like the chariot

that was given into the hands of Phaëton. Let it follow its regular

course through the sky! Marriage then? After having so long avoided it,

the perception of the dangers that menaced her led her to tell herself

that a marriage of affection and esteem, of calm sympathy, would be a

bulwark against the demons of the heart and a protection against pursuit

from without. The more she convinced herself (and everything conspired

to convince her: her material and moral security, the attraction of a

home and the solicitations of her heart), the less resistance she

opposed to Julien's supplications. In order to yield to them, she went

over all the reasons she had for loving him. But she did not wait for

these reasons in order to love him. For already there had begun within

her that construction of the mind which creates an exalted vision of the

chosen one. Julien had preceded her in this, but as she had a richer and

more passionate nature she had soon outdistanced him.

No longer on her guard, surrendering to the ardor of her frank nature,

she used none of those artifices with which a cleverer woman masks her

defeat when her heart is captured and she allows people to believe that

she is still mistress of it. Annette had made a gift of hers. She told

Julien. And from that very moment Julien began to be uneasy.

He knew very little about women. They fascinated him and disconcerted

him. Rather than know them he preferred to judge them. He idealized

some, he condemned others. Towards those who fell into neither of the

two categories he remained indifferent. Very young men--and Julien,

owing to the slightness of his experience, had remained very young--are

always hasty in their judgments. As they are full of themselves and

their desires, they seek in others only for what they wish to find.

Whether on the moral or the carnal side, naïve persons are like roués

in one respect: when they love they are always thinking of themselves

and never of the woman. They refuse to see that she exists outside of

them. Love is the one test that can teach them. It teaches the few who

are capable of learning--but generally to their cost and that of their

partners; for when at last they know it is too late. The naïve

astonishment, old as the ages, that bewails the irreducible duality

which is the bitter fruit of love, that disappointed dream of unity, is

the usual result of this initial misunderstanding. For what does "love"

mean if it is not "loving someone else"? Without possessing the egoism

of Roger Brissot, Julien, through ignorance, had no less difficulty in

getting outside of himself; and he had a still more limited view of the

feminine universe. He needed to be led prudently by the hand.

Prudent was the one thing Annette was not by nature, and love did not

teach her. It gave her the need of a generous confidence. Now that she

was sure of loving and being loved, she concealed nothing. Nothing in

the man she loved could have repelled her: why should she paint herself

up? She was healthy-minded, and she did not blush at being what she was.

Whoever loved her should see her as she was! She had clearly seen

Julien's naïveté, his lack of understanding, his alarm. She found a

tender and malicious pleasure in them. She was glad that she was the

first to reveal to him a feminine soul.

One day she went to surprise him in his apartment. His mother opened the

door. An old lady, with gray hair tightly drawn across a calm brow that

was lighted up by two severe, watchful eyes, she inspected Annette with

a distrustful politeness and showed her into a neat, cold little

drawing-room with horsehair furniture.

Dull family photographs and pictures from museums added a finishing

touch to the freezing atmosphere of the room. Annette waited alone.

After a whispered consultation in the adjoining bedroom, Julien dashed

in. He was delighted and he was frightened; he did not know what to say.

He spoke absent-mindedly. They were sitting in uncomfortable chairs with

stiff backs that thwarted every natural movement. Between them was one

of those drawing-room tables that you cannot lean upon, tables with

sharp edges that hurt your knees. The cold glitter of the carpetless

floor and the dead faces under glass, like plants in a herbarium,

congealed the words on their lips and made them lower their voices. This

drawing-room absolutely froze Annette. Was Julien going to keep her here

during the whole of her call? She asked him if he did not want to show

her the room where he worked. He could not refuse, he even wanted to do

so. But he looked so hesitant that she said, "Would you rather not?"

He protested, explaining that it was not in order, and took her in. It

was in much better order than her own rooms had been at the time of

Julien's first call, but there was no air of gaiety in Julien's room. It

served him both for working and sleeping. Books, a well-known engraving

that represented Pasteur, papers on the chairs, a pipe on the table, a

student's bed. She noticed overhead a little crucifix with a branch of

boxwood. Settled in the badly upholstered arm-chair, she tried to put

her host at his ease by gaily recalling to him the memory of their

student days. She talked without prudery of what they both knew. But he

was distrait, embarrassed by her presence and her freedom of speech; he

seemed preoccupied with what was going on in the next room. Annette,

embarrassed by contagion, held out bravely and succeeded in making him

forget the "what will she think of it?" At last he became quite lively

and they had a good laugh. When she got up to go he became awkward

again, leading her out. In the corridor they passed the mother's room;

the door was ajar; Mme. Dumont, from discretion or in order not to have

to speak to the stranger, pretended not to see them. The two women had

only exchanged a glance, and they were enemies already. Mme. Dumont, the

mother, was shocked by the call of this bold girl with her free and easy

ways, her dear voice, her laughter, her animation: she scented danger.

And Annette, who, during the visit, had perceived between Julien and

herself this invisible presence, had felt angry: passing the room of the

old lady who turned her back on her, she spoke and laughed more loudly

still. And she jealously thought, "I'm going to take him away from her."

A week later, Julien came in turn, one evening, after dinner. He had had

his first discussion with his mother on the subject of Annette; and he

meant to assert his will. They were alone. Leopold had taken little Marc

to the circus. When Julien left her, a little before eleven o'clock,

Annette suggested walking back with him for the pleasure of enjoying

together the fresh night air. But when they reached his door, Julien was

troubled at the idea of leaving Annette to return alone. She made fun of

his fear. None the less, he masted on going back with her again, and she

did not protest. She would have him all the longer with her! So they

returned by the most roundabout way; and without quite knowing how they

got there, they found themselves on a steep bank of the Seine. It was a

June night. They sat down on a bench. The poplars rustled above the dark

water in which were spread the reddish and yellow lights of the lamps on

the bridges. The sky was far away, the stars were feeble, as if the

monstrous city had drawn all the life out of them. The darkness was

above and the light below. They were silent. Words could no longer

express their thoughts, but, without looking at each other, each read

the other's mind. Julien's desire set Annette's heart aflame; but his

timidity kept him bound and motionless, and he did not dare even to lift

his eyes to her. She smiled and watched him, without turning her head,

as she kept her eyes upon the red reflexions on the river; he could not

make up his mind! Then she leaned towards him and kissed him.

Drunk with love and gratitude, he kissed her in return, while the

insidious point of a dull anxiety fastened itself in his brain. A harsh

remark of his mother's: "These bold, poverty-stricken girls who are

trying to find somebody to marry them. . . ." He had pulled it angrily out

not long before, but the tip of the sting had remained under the skin.

He was ashamed. Mentally he asked Annette's pardon. He knew that the

insulting suspicion was false. He believed in her religiously, but he

was troubled. And each new visit troubled him more. Annette's freedom,

the freedom of her manners, the freedom of her ideas, the freedom of her

opinions on every kind of subject--especially on social morality--her

calm lack of prejudices, terrified him. He was as narrow in his way of

thinking as in his dress, rather dull in his ideas, inclined to

severity. She, on the other hand, was generously indulgent and full of

laughter. It did not occur to him that she might be as much of a Puritan

as he where she herself was concerned, while with an ironical tolerance

she applied to others their own measure. Tolerance and irony

disconcerted him. She saw this; and when he expressed himself on some

question with an unjust and excessive harshness she did not attempt to

oppose his way of thinking; she smiled at this naïve rigidity which did

not displease her. Her smile disturbed Julien more than her words. He

had the impression that she knew more than he. It was true. But how much

more? And just what did she know? What experience had she had?

Like his mother--and some of his mother's spiteful remarks had

contributed to make him so--this man of fine but impoverished vitality

was vaguely alarmed by the brilliant health, the radiance of this woman.

He had the most ardent desire for her, but he was afraid of her. In the

walks they took together he felt that he cut a poor figure. Annette's

perfect poise in every company added to his embarrassment. And although

she would have liked this embarrassment if she had observed it, he was

humiliated by it. But she did not observe it. She was utterly absorbed

in the song within her. Annette mistakenly thought that no one but

herself heard this song; and she did not see Julien's anxious glance

when he asked himself, "At whom, at what, is she laughing?"

She seemed so far away!

He did not cease to see--he saw more clearly than ever--her great

intellectual force, her moral energy. At the same time she remained for

him a dangerous enigma. He was divided between two opposite feelings, an

invincible attraction and an obscure mistrust that were like a remnant

of the primitive instinct that recalls to the man and the woman of to-day

the original enmity of the sexes, for which the carnal union was a form

of combat. That suspicious instinct of defence is strongest perhaps in

a man like Julien who is at once keenly intelligent and poor in

experience. As it is impossible for him to see a woman just as she is,

he sees her now too simply, now as full of snares.

Annette contributed to these oscillations of thought by her way of

alternately saying everything and saying nothing, of revealing

everything and concealing everything, her bursts of passionate

expansiveness and her hermetic silences, which sometimes lasted during a

good half of their walk. . . . These terrible silences--what man has not

suffered from them?--during which the life of the companion who walks at

your side goes down into those regions that you will never know! . . .

Not that as a usual thing they cover very profound secrets. If you

plunged into them you would find that they did not rise above your heel.

But whatever the depth may be, the sheet of silence is opaque: the eye

cannot penetrate it. And the tormented spirit of the man has plenty of

time to conjure up all sorts of alarming mysteries. The idea would never

have entered the head of a Julien that he might be the author of them,

that if a woman is silent it is often because she knows so well how

little the man understands her. Annette's silence, which was ironical

and a little weary on some days, tolerated a false interpretation of her

feelings on the part of her lover, for she knew that he loved the false

and did not love the true.

"If you wish . . . As you wish! . . . Of course. I am not as I am. I am

as you see me."

But these silences of acquiescence only lasted for a time. From the

moment Annette perceived that there might be danger in frank

explanations (since Julien was unable to understand them) and that it

would be more prudent to hold her peace, she spoke. To be silent in

order to avoid uselessly annoying Julien, yes. But to deceive him, no.

And if there was danger in speaking, all the more reason. That was the

time when you couldn't avoid speaking any longer. The greater the risk,

the greater was the pride that desired to brave it. This test of love

made her heart beat. If the test succeeded, she would love Julien all

the more. If it did not succeed? . . . It would succeed. Didn't Julien

love her? Let come what might!

She played the game loyally. But there are some men who would prefer to

have their partners cheat. When Sylvie learned of Julien's love and the

plan for the marriage, she scolded Annette: good heavens, she wasn't

thinking of telling the whole truth? Of course it was absolutely

necessary for him to learn a part of it. When they were married the

official records would be sure to enlighten him. But there was always a

way of dressing up the truth. Since this boy loved her he would close

his eyes. She had only not to open them! To do so would be really too

stupid! Later there would be time to tell each other everything. . . .

Sylvie spoke honestly out of her experience. She wished her sister's

welfare. (She wished her own too; she would not have been displeased to

see them out of her house with all possible speed.) From her point of

view one didn't owe the truth to everyone, especially to one's fiancé:

it was enough to love him! Annette's truth, of course, was innocent, but

men are weak. They cannot endure the full truth. It has to be given to

them in small doses. . . .

Annette listened to Sylvie calmly and spoke of something else. Useless

to reply: it would only make her more obstinate. Sylvie's morality was

not hers, and she preferred not to say what she thought of it. Sylvie

was Sylvie. She loved her. . . . But what a look she would have given

anyone else who had spoken to her so!

"Poor Sylvie! . . . She judges men from those she has known. But my

Julien belongs to another species. He loves me as I am. He will love me

as I was. I have nothing to conceal from him. I have never done him an

injury. If any injury was done I did it to myself alone."

Fully considering the risks, but trusting in Julien's magnanimity, she

made up her mind to speak. She brought up the subject of her past life.

With a common modesty, they had always avoided this topic. But more than

once, Annette had read in Julien's eyes what he burned and trembled to

ask, what he wanted both to know and not to know.

She placed her hand tenderly on Julien's hand and said, "My friend, you

have always been so adorably discreet with me. I thank you for it. I

love you. . . . But I must tell you at last something you don't know

about me, something that I have been. You must know me. I am not free

from reproach."

He made an apprehensive gesture that protested against what she was

going to say, as if he half wished to prevent it. She smiled.

"Don't be afraid! I haven't committed any great crimes. At least I

shouldn't call them so. But perhaps I am too indulgent to myself, for

the world regards these matters differently. It is for you to judge. I

believe in your judgment. I am what you decide I am."

She began to tell her story. More frightened than she wanted to appear,

she had prepared in advance what she intended to say. But simple as she

imagined it would be to utter this, it was very painful to her. To

overcome this constraint she made herself appear more free from emotion

than she was. She even revealed at moments a touch of irony, directed at

herself, which scarcely corresponded with the anxiety this recital

stirred in her: she resorted to it in order to protect herself. . . .

Julien did not understand it at all. He saw in this attitude only a

shocking light-mindedness and lack of conscience.

She said first that she was not married. Julien had feared this. To tell

the truth, he had even been silently sure of it. But he had always hoped

that the contrary would turn out to be the case, and that Annette should

tell him this, that doubt should no longer be possible, filled him with

consternation. Intensely Catholic at heart, under his superficial

liberalism, he had not freed himself from the idea of sin. Instantly he

thought of his mother: she would never accept it. He foresaw a struggle.

He was very much in love. In spite of the grief that Annette's

confession caused him, in spite of the real fall her past weakness

signified for him, the "error" of her whom he loved, he loved her, he

was ready, in order to have her, to fight against his mother's

opposition. But someone must help him; Annette must second him. He was

weak; to endure the combat, he needed to summon all his strength, not

the least element of which was the strength of illusion. He needed to

idealize Annette, and if Annette had been clever she would have helped

him to do so.

She saw the grief which her words caused. She had expected it; she was

sorry for it, but she could not spare him. Since they were to live

together, each would have to take his share of the trials and even the

errors of the other. But she did not suspect the conflict that was

taking place in him; and if she had thought of it, she would have

remained confident of the victory of love.

"My poor Julien," she said, "I am giving you pain. Forgive me. It is

hard for me too. You believed that I was better than I am. You gave me a

higher place, too high, in your mind. . . . I am a woman. I am

weak. . . . At least, if I have made a mistake, I have never deceived

anyone else. I have always acted in good faith. I have always done that."

"Yes," he said hastily. "I'm sure of it. He deceived you, didn't he?"

"Who?" asked Annette.

"That wretch. . . . Forgive me! . . . That man who left you."

"No, don't accuse him," she said. "I am the guilty one."

She attached to this word "guilty" only the sense of a warm regret for

the pain she was causing him, but he seized upon it greedily. In his

confusion he longed to hold fast to the idea that Annette was the victim

of a seduction and that she had repented. . . . He had an extreme need

of this notion of "repenting"; it was for him a kind of compensation for

the hurt he had suffered, a balm for the wound it could not heal but

could render endurable; it gave him a moral superiority over Annette of

which--to be fair to him--he would never have made use. In short, since

he had no doubt about Annette's sin, he also had none about the need of

repentance. His Christian nature was imbued with both these ideas. The

most liberal Christian never frees himself from them.

But Annette had sprung from a race with a different kind of soul. The

Rivières might be pure or impure, in the sense that Christian morality

attaches to this word; but if they were pure it was not in obedience to

an invisible God or his too visible representatives and their Tables of

the Law. It was because they loved purity as moral cleanliness, as

beauty. And if they were impure they regarded it as an affair between

themselves and their own consciences, not the consciences of others.

Annette could not admit that she must give an account of herself to

others. If she confessed herself to Julien, it was a gift of love that

she was making him. In all honesty, she owed him merely an account of

her life. But of her inner life she did not owe him any account. She

gave it to him of her own free will. She saw now that Julien would have

preferred to have her embellish the truth. But she was too proud to

profit by a lying excuse of which she felt no need. On the contrary,

when she understood what he wanted her to say she took pains to make it

clear that she had given herself to her lover.

Julien, who was completely upset, would not listen to her.

"No, no, I don't believe you," he said. "You are too generous. Don't

accuse yourself to defend that man who deserves nothing but contempt."

"But I'm not accusing anyone," she said simply.

Her words struck against his consciousness, but he refused to

understand.

"You are trying to exonerate him."

"I am not exonerating him. No one's to blame."

Julien struggled. "Annette, I implore you not to talk that way."

"Why?"

"You know very well it's wrong!"

"I know nothing of the kind."

"What? You don't regret anything?"

"I regret making you unhappy. But I didn't know you then, my friend. I

was free and alone; I had no obligations except to myself."

"Is that nothing?" he thought. He did not dare to say it.

"But still you regret it?" he said, insistently. "You know very well you

made a mistake."

He did not want to accuse her. But he so longed to have her accuse

herself.

"Perhaps," she said.

"Perhaps," he took her up, dejectedly.

"I don't know," said Annette.

She saw where Julien wanted to lead her. Perhaps she had made a mistake,

if yielding to a transport of sincere love and pity was a mistake.

Perhaps, yes. "But if in my heart I can regret a sincere error, I don't

need to excuse myself for it. My heart has remained alone with its

suffering, communing with it alone in the silence. It must commune now

with its regrets. They concern nobody. . . . Regrets? . . . Let's be

honest to the end! There are no regrets!" After reflecting, she said, "I

don't think I made a mistake."

Perhaps she was exaggerating in reaction against Julien's unconscious

pharisaism. (Poor Julien!) But even in the moments when she loved him

the most she could not bring herself to utter the word of regret which

he was expecting. . . . "I should so much like to say it! But I can't.

It isn't true." Regret what? She had acted in accordance not only with

her rights but with her happiness. For, costly as the latter had been,

she had had it--the child. And she knew (she alone) that this gift of

the child, far from dishonoring her, as a stupid public opinion

supposed, had purified her, delivered her for a long time from her

troubles, brought into her life order and peace. . . . No, for the sake

of assuring her future love she would never be base enough to slander

her past love. She even felt now a certain gratitude towards this Roger

who had only been an agent of her destiny, so inferior to the love and

the flame of life he had lighted in her.

Julien felt this jealously. "Ah, you still love that man?" he said.

"No, my friend."

"But you are not angry with him."

"Why should I be angry with him?"

"And you are thinking of him."

"I am thinking of you, Julien."

"But you haven't forgotten him."

"I could not forget anyone who had done me good, even if he ceased to

exist. Don't reproach me, you who have done me so much more good!"

Julien was honest enough to respect Annette's frankness, and in his

heart he felt her nobility. This for him was an unaccountable spectacle,

the unwonted dignity of which revealed to him a new world--the new

woman. But another part of his nature was in revolt. His masculine

instincts were wounded. His Catholic and bourgeois prejudices were

horrified. The idea that he had, that he continued to have, of Annette

was poisoned with degrading suspicions. Instead of being surer of a

woman who gave up her secret to him with complete loyalty, he was less

sure of a woman whose past weakness had been revealed to him. He doubted

her fidelity in the future. He thought of that other living man who had

possessed her and whose child would be his. He was afraid of being

deceived, he was afraid of being ridiculous. He was mortified, and he

could not forgive her.

As soon as Annette fully perceived the dangerous struggle that was going

on in Julien's mind and saw that the hope she had formed was menaced,

she trembled. She was utterly in the grip of the love she had provoked.

All her power of loving, all her capacity for happiness, she had centred

in this Julien. And in truth she had half deceived herself. But she had

only half deceived herself. Julien was not unworthy of her; his

qualities were real; they deserved love. Different as they were, they

would be able to live together with a little mutual effort to understand

and tolerate each other--and a little suffering, no doubt; and was a

little suffering too much to pay for a firm affection? Annette would

have been good for him; she would have invigorated him; she would have

been that great wind of confidence in life that would have swelled his

sails and carried him whither he could never have gone without her. And

Julien's delicate tenderness, his respect for woman, his moral purity,

even that candid religious faith which Annette did not share, would have

been wholesome for her; they would have given her passionate nature a

basis of security, the peace of home and of a soul of which one is sure.

Ah, the misery of hearts that miss their destiny through a

misapprehension which their passion exaggerates, that know it and

reproach themselves for it and always will reproach themselves, but will

never yield the point that separates them just because they love too

much to make a moral concession to which they would disdainfully consent

with those to whom they are indifferent!

Annette tormented herself now with the anxieties to which she had given

birth in Julien's mind. Was Julien right? . . . She was not infatuated

with her own judgment. She tried to understand other ways of judging.

Her character was not entirely formed: her moral instinct was strong,

but her ideas were not yet established; she reserved the right to revise

them. While quite young she had realized how artificial was the morality

of those who surrounded her, and she had found nothing upon which to

lean, nothing but her reason, which had often deceived her. She was

always seeking; she sought for other ways of thinking in which she might

breathe freely. And when she encountered a sincere conscience like

Julien's she scrutinized it eagerly: would this voice respond to the

appeal of her heart? She aspired to believe, this woman in revolt! She

was seeking, seeking for her moral homeland. . . . How she would have

loved to enter Julien's, to subscribe to its laws, even if they

condemned her! But it was not enough to long. She could not do it. What

Julien desired simply wasn't human!

"I realize," she said to him tenderly, "that you are judging me as the

world judges. I don't reproach you. I admire the rigorous, preservative

force of its laws. They have their place in the sum of things and I know

that their roots are deep in your family. It is natural for you to obey

them. I respect them in you. But, my friend, all the efforts of my will

could never make me deny an action, even if it is condemned by everyone,

which has given me my child. Dear Julien, how could I deny what is my

only consolation, the purest joy perhaps that heaven will grant me in my

whole life? Don't try to blight it, but if you love me share my

happiness! There is nothing in it that can injure you!"

She knew, even as she spoke, that he did not understand; she only

irritated him the more. And she was broken-hearted. But what could she

do? Lie to him? It was too dreadful that she had even thought of this

humiliating resource. But could she allow the breach to grow wider in

this affection that was so dear to her? It was as if this breach had

extended to her heart. . . . She was in mortal terror every time she

found herself in Julien's presence. What was he going to read to-day in

her face?

As for him, he abused her love with all the baseness of a man who is

certain that he is loved. He knew that he was hurting her and he went on

hurting her. He in turn felt his power, and he began to desire her less

now he was sure that she desired him.

She understood it all! She was in despair because she had betrayed her

weakness. But she went on. She abandoned herself to a superstitious

feeling: if fate intended her to be Julien's wife, she would be,

whatever she said; whatever she said, she would lose him if that was her

fate.

But secretly she wished to believe that, in exchange for her submission,

fate would be favorable to her. Julien would be touched.

"I put myself in your hands. Will you love me the less for that?"

XXI

A strange travail was going on in Julien's mind. He loved her--no, he

desired her--as much as always. Who could say which it was? (He did not

want to know.) . . . In short, he still wanted her. But he was sure now,

not only that his mother would never consent to his marriage, but that

he himself would never be able to make up his mind to it. For many

reasons: bitterness, wounded vanity, moral disapproval, what might be

called a jealous repulsion. But he preferred not to dwell on these

reasons. "Yes, we know you, but don't show yourselves." His mind

arranged expedients to satisfy at once his hidden reasons and his

desires. . . . Annette, in the past, had declared herself a free woman

in love. He did not approve of this, no; but, after all, since she was

as she was, why should she not be just this with him whom she loved?

He did not put it to her as bluntly as this. He pleaded all the things

that made marriage impossible (he brought forth new ones as fast as she

refuted them): the insurmountable obstacles, his mother's opposition,

the necessity of living with his mother, his financial straits, with

Annette accustomed to wealth, to society--poor Annette, reduced for two

years to giving private lessons!--the difference in their minds and

temperaments. . . . (This last argument came up just at the end, to the

dismay and terror of Annette, when she believed she had surmounted the

others.) With obstinate unfairness, Julien depreciated himself, the

better to mark the difference between them. It was enough to make one

laugh and weep. It was pitiable to see him looking for all these poor

pretexts for escaping, while she, forgetting her pride, pretended not to

understand, wore herself out finding replies, struggled feverishly to

keep him from leaving her.

He was not leaving her. He did not refuse to take. He refused to give.

When Annette perceived the object of all these barricades and what he

wanted of her, she had a feeling less of revolt than of prostration. She

did not have enough strength left to be indignant. To struggle was no

longer worth the trouble. That was what he wanted! . . . He! . . .

Wretched soul! . . . So he didn't know himself? So he didn't realize how

he appeared in her eyes? If he had been loved it was just because of his

solid integrity. It wasn't at all, not at all, becoming for him to play

the Don Juan, the libertine, the free lover! (For, in spite of her

grief, Annette's mind kept its ironical clearness, and it never failed

to seize the comic that was mingled with the tragic in life.)

"My friend," she thought, tenderly, pityingly, disgustedly, "I loved you

better when you condemned me. Your rather narrow but lofty idea of love

gave you the right to do so. But now you no longer have that right. What

have I to do with this inferior love you are proposing to me to-day, this

love without trust? If trust is lacking there is nothing left between

us."

Every love has its essence: where one blossoms, another withers. Carnal

love dispenses with respect. The love that is based on respect cannot

lower itself to ample enjoyment.

"Why," cried Annette in her heart, which was rising in revolt, "I would

rather be the mistress of the first passer-by who pleased me than of

you, you whom I love!"

For with him it would be degrading. Everything or nothing!

To Julien's suggestions she thus opposed a firm, affectionate refusal

that hurt him. They continued to love one another, while judging each

other severely; and neither of them could resign himself to the loss of

their happiness. There they were, appealing to each other, desiring each

other, even offering themselves--incapable as they were of pronouncing

the word that would bring them together--the one through inner weakness,

that moral debility which with rare exceptions (if a man can dare to say

it) belongs to man, and which he does not recognize, the other through

that deep-seated pride which belongs to woman and which she does not

confess either: for the two sexes have been so deformed by the moral

conventions of a society built upon the victory of man that they have

both forgotten their real character. The weaker of the two is not always

by nature the one who calls himself so. The woman is richer in the

energies of the earth, and if she is caught in the snare that man has

thrown over her she remains a captive who has not surrendered.

Julien dimly perceived the justice of Annette's motives, and he did not

question their honesty, but he could not do violence to the timidity of

his own heart. He followed the opinion of the world, which he respected

less than Annette. By himself he would have accepted Annette's past, but

he could not accept it under the eye of the world; and he persuaded

himself that this was the eye of his own conscience. He did not have the

courage to take for a wife this woman whom he desired; and his

pusillanimity he called dignity. He was not able to delude himself

completely; and he was angry with Annette because he had not been able

to delude her either. He ought to have broken with her, but he would not

consent to this. And when Annette spoke of leaving him he held her back,

hesitated, suffered, caused her suffering. He was no more willing to

accept her than to give her up. He played the cruel game of keeping up

her hope, which he later killed. He shunned her when she was most loving

and was most loving when she resigned herself. Annette went through

painful crises of wounded affection. She ate her heart out. Sylvie saw

this and finally extorted the truth from her. She had seen Julien and

she had made up her mind about him. "He is one of those people," she

said, "who never make a decision till they are forced to do so. You can

do it; make him consent. He will be grateful to you later."

But Annette had suffered too much from the thought that Julien might

reproach her some day (even if he never expressed it) if she married

him. When it was no longer possible to ignore the irremediable weakness

of his character and the futile hope of a lasting decision from which

his troubled spirit would no longer try to draw back, she settled the

question in good earnest. She wrote to Julien and told him not to

prolong this useless torment any further. She was suffering, he was

suffering, and they had to live. She had to work for her child, and he

had his own work. She had taken him away from it too long. They had both

been using up their strength, and they had none too much of it. Since

they could not do each other the good they had hoped for, let them not

do each other harm. They must not see each other any more. She thanked

him for all that he had been to her.

Julien did not answer. Silence fell between them. But in their hearts,

bitterness, regret, wounded passion still fought with one another.

XXII

Their love had not remained a secret from those who were close to them.

Leopold had watched it with an annoyance he had not been able to conceal

from Sylvie. His painful memory of that far from brilliant adventure of

his had left in his mind an involuntary resentment which had not become

less active a few months later. Far from it. For he found it possible to

pretend to himself that he had forgotten the reason for it. Sylvie,

already on the watch, was struck by his strange behavior: she observed

him and she found it impossible to doubt that he was jealous. In

accordance with the admirable logic of the heart, she was angry with

Annette. She took a violent dislike to her. In a measure the state of

her health explained these violent reactions. But the unfortunate thing

in such cases is that the reverberation is prolonged beyond the

condition that has caused them.