"Now, be quiet. That's enough. You are going too far. . . ."

But her charms no longer listened, there was nothing to do but to let

them have their way. . . . And it was so amusing! Naturally, that idiot

had taken fire immediately. How silly men are! He thought that if anyone

was nice to him, it must be for his beauty. . . . But he was handsome,

just the same. . . . And now what would the fish do, between two hooks?

Was he going to presume to gobble them both? What was he going to

decide? . . . "Well, old chap, make a choice!"

She did not facilitate his choice for him by effacing herself in favor

of Annette. And no more did Annette. From now on she instinctively

redoubled her efforts in order to eclipse Sylvie. The two sisters were

devoted to each other. Sylvie was as proud of the praise given Annette

as Annette was of the impression produced by Sylvie. They took counsel

together; each supervised the details of the others toilet. With an

unerring sense, they knew how to serve as a foil to each other. At the

evening parties in the hotel they attracted all eyes. But, in spite of

themselves, they came to be looked upon as rivals. And when they danced,

neither one could help evaluating the success of the other, no matter

how severely both forbade themselves to do this. Especially success with

the man who was, decidedly, preoccupying them much more than they would

have wished. . . . And he preoccupied them the more now that he was

uncertain which of them preoccupied him the more. Annette began to feel

vaguely miserable when she saw Tullio in ardent attendance upon her

sister. Both girls were good dancers, each in her own manner. Annette

did all that she could to establish her superiority; and it was certain

that she danced better in the eyes of the connoisseurs. But Sylvie,

while less correct, had more abandon; and as soon as she realized

Annette's intention she became irresistible. Nor did Tullio resist. To

Annette came the sorrow of seeing herself forsaken. After a succession

of dances with Sylvie, Tullio and she went out together, talking and

laughing, into the fine summer night. Annette could no longer control

herself. She too had to quit the room. Without daring to follow them

into the garden, she tried to catch sight of them from the glassed-in

gallery that led into the garden; and she did see them, on the

path,--she saw them bending towards each other, exchanging kisses as

they walked.

But the pain of this was nothing to what followed. When Annette, sitting

in the dark after having gone up to her room, saw Sylvie come in, all

animation, and when Sylvie exclaimed at finding her alone in the

darkness, kissed her cheek, and showed a thousand and one signs of usual

affection; when Annette, after giving the excuse of a sudden headache

that had obliged her to retire, asked Sylvie how she had spent the rest

of the evening and if she had gone walking with Tullio, Sylvie

ingenuously replied that she had not gone walking and that she did not

know what had become of Tullio; that besides Tullio was beginning to

bore her, and then she didn't like men who were too handsome, and

besides he was foppish, and he was a little too dark. . . . Upon which

she went to bed, humming a waltz.

Annette did not sleep. Sylvie slept soundly; she had no suspicion of the

tempest she had unchained. . . . Annette was the prey of unleashed

demons. What had happened was a catastrophe, a double catastrophe.

Sylvie was her rival, and Sylvie was lying to her. Sylvie, her beloved!

Sylvie, her joy and her faith! . . . Everything was crumbling. She could

no longer love her. No longer love her? Could she, could she no longer

love her? . . . Oh, how deep-rooted that love was, so much more so than

she had thought! . . . But is it possible to love someone whom one

distrusts? Oh! Sylvie's treachery wouldn't be anything. . . . There was

something else. It was. . . . It was. . . . Go ahead, say what it

was! . . . Yes, it was that man, whom Annette did not respect, whom she

did not love, and whom she loved now. . . . Loved? No! . . . Whom she

_wanted_. A fever of jealous pride demanded that she take him, that she

tear him away from the _other_; and, above all, that the other should not

tear him away from her. . . . ("_The other_" that was what Sylvie had

become for Annette! . . .)

That night she did not rest a single hour. The sheets burned her skin.

And from the neighboring bed there rose the light breathing of the sleep

of innocence.

When they found themselves face to face the next morning, Sylvie saw at

a glance that everything had changed; and she did not understand what

had happened. Annette, with circles under her eyes, pale, hard and

haughty, but strangely more beautiful (at once more beautiful and more

homely, as though all her secret forces had arisen in answer to a

summons)--Annette, helmeted in pride, cold, hostile, with a wall about

her, looked at Sylvie and listened while she chattered as usual, then

scarcely said good-morning, and left the room. . . . Sylvie's babble

stopped in the middle of a word. She too went out, and with her eyes

followed Annette who was descending the stairs. . . .

She understood. Annette had caught sight of Tullio, who was seated in

the hall, and crossing the room she went straight to him. He too

recognized that the situation had changed. She sat down beside him. They

talked banalities. With her head up, disdainful, she stared straight

ahead, avoiding looking at him. But he had no doubt: it was he she was

staring at. Under her bluish eyelids, that glance, which she was hiding

as though to avoid a too intense light, was saying:

"Do you want me?"

And he, relating an insipid story in a satisfied tone, while he

contemplated his finger nails,--he, like a big cat, was peering sidelong

at that body with its firm breasts, and asking:

"So you want it too?"

"I want you to want me," was the reply.

Sylvie did not hesitate. Making a turn of the hall, she came and took a

chair between Annette and Tullio. Annette's irritation was betrayed in a

glance, in only one: that was enough. Sylvie received its contempt full

in the face. She blinked her eyelids and pretended not to see, but she

bristled like a cat that has felt an electric current; she smiled, and

held herself ready to bite. The three-handed, fair-spoken duel began.

Annette, ignoring Sylvie's presence, taking no notice of what she said,

talked over her head to Tullio, who was embarrassed; or, when she was

compelled to listen--for the other had a glib tongue--she called

attention with a smile or an ironic word to one of those minute

grammatical errors that still adorned Sylvie's discourse (for, despite

her skill, the little gossip had not succeeded in weeding them all from

her garden). Sylvie, mortally wounded, no longer saw her sister, she saw

only a rival, and she thought:

"You'll get yours."

And, showing her teeth:

"A tooth for a tooth, and an eye for an eye. . . . No, both eyes for

one. . . ."

And she threw herself into the fray. Imprudent Annette! Sylvie was not

hampered, as she was, by her pride: any weapon was good enough for her,

so long as she won. Annette, armored in pride, would have thought

herself degraded had she allowed Tullio to glimpse a shadow of her

desires. Sylvie was embarrassed by no such scruples; she was going to

play with the gentleman the game that flattered him most. . . .

"Which do you prefer? Do you like to inspire a fine disdain, or

admiration? . . ."

She knew man: the vain animal. Tullio adored incense, and she gave him

full measure. With a calm, ingenuous impudence the little rogue listed

the perfections of the young Gattamelata of the Palace Hotel: body,

mind, and clothing. Clothing principally, for she was right in thinking

that this was his chief pride. All homage pleased him. To be sure. But

that he was handsome was no credit to him; and as regarded his mind, his

great name was a guarantee of that. But his dress was his individual

work, and he was susceptible to the approbation of an expert Parisienne.

With the eye of a connoisseur, secretly amused at certain glaring

naïvetés of taste, Sylvie admired everything from top to bottom.

Annette blushed from shame and anger; her small sister's ruse seemed so

crude to her that she asked herself: "Can he possibly bear it?"

He bore it very well: Tullio was lapping up milk. When she had

descended, step by step, from the orange cravat to the lilac belt, to

the shoes of green and gold, Sylvie suddenly stopped: she had an idea.

While going into raptures over the delicacy of Tullio's feet (he was

very proud of them), she exhibited her own, which were decidedly pretty.

With a roguish coquetry she put them next to Tullio's, she compared

them, showing her leg up to the knee. Then, turning to Annette, who was

disdainfully leaning back in her rocking chair, she said with a

delicious smile:

"Let's see yours too, dear!"

And with a rapid gesture she uncovered them, along with Annette's thick

ankles and the rather heavy columns of her legs. For two seconds only.

Annette clutched at the malicious little claw, and it withdrew,

contented. Tullio had seen. . . .

Nor did she stop there. All morning long she brought about apparently

unpremeditated comparisons from which Annette did not emerge to

advantage. Under pretext of appealing to Tullio's superior taste

regarding a collar, a blouse, or a scarf, she managed to draw attention

to what was certainly not her worst feature, and not Annette's best.

Annette, boiling within, pretending not to understand, had to hold

herself back to keep from strangling her. Between two of her tricks,

Sylvie, ever charming, would press her fingers to her mouth and throw

Annette a kiss. But there were times when their flashing eyes

clashed. . . .

(Annette)--"I loathe you!"

(Sylvie)--"Possibly. But it's me he loves."

"No, no!" Annette would cry.

"Yes, yes!" retorted Sylvie.

They exchanged challenging glances. But Annette was not strong enough to

hide her animosity for long beneath a smile, like that little snake

beneath the flowers. Had she remained, she would have screamed. Abruptly

she left the field free to Sylvie. She went off with her head high,

flinging a last look of defiance at her sister. And Sylvie's mocking

eyes replied:

"Who laughs last, laughs best."

XI

The battle continued the next day, and the days following, beneath the

eyes of an amused gallery; for the people in the hotel had seen how

things stood; twenty pairs of idle eyes were watching, bets were made.

The two rivals were too much preoccupied with their own game to give a

thought to that of the others.

The truth was that, for them, it was a game no longer. Sylvie, as well

as Annette, was seriously involved. A demon troubled them, goading their

senses. Tullio, proud of his victory, had no trouble adding fuel to the

flame. He was really handsome, he did not lack wit, he burned with the

desires that he had fired: he was worth conquering. None knew it better

than he.

Every evening the two hostile sisters met in their rooms. They hated

each other; yet they pretended not to know it. Bed neighbors at night,

their position would have become untenable had they admitted the fact to

themselves; it would have come to a public rupture, a thing they wished

to avoid. They so arranged it that they came and went at different

times, talked no longer, pretended not to see each other; or, as that

was practically impossible, they would coldly say, "Good-morning," and

"Good-evening," as though nothing were the matter. The most

straightforward, sensible thing would have been to come to an

understanding. But they did not wish to. They could not. When passion is

unleashed in a woman there is no longer any question of

straightforwardness, still less of common sense.

In Annette passion had become a poison. A kiss that Tullio, profiting by

his strength, had violently imprinted upon the mouth of the proud girl,

one evening at a turn in the path, had unchained in her a sensual

torrent. Humiliated and enraged, she fought against it. But she was the

less capable of resistance because it was the first time the flood had

invaded her. Misfortune of too well defended hearts! When passion

enters, the chastest is the most abandoned. . . .

One night, in one of those fits of feverish insomnia that were consuming

her, Annette slipped into sleep while thinking she was still awake. She

saw herself lying on her bed, with open eyes; but she could not budge,

her limbs were bound. She knew that Sylvie, at her side, was pretending

to sleep, and that Tullio was going to come. She could already hear the

floor creak in the corridor, and the shuffle of cautious steps

advancing. She saw Sylvie raise herself from the pillow, swing her legs

from under the sheets, get up, and slip towards the door that half

opened. Annette wanted to get up too, but she could not. As though she

had heard her, Sylvie turned around, came back to the bed, looked at

her, leaned over to see her better. She was not at all, not at all, like

Sylvie: she did not resemble her, and yet it was Sylvie; she laughed

wickedly, uncovering her teeth; she had long black hair, straight and

stiff, that fell over her face when she leaned down, and brushed

Annette's mouth and eyes. Annette felt on her tongue the taste of a

rough mane and its hot odor. The face of her rival came closer, closer.

Sylvie opened the bed, and got into it. Annette felt a hard knee

pressing against her hip. She was suffocating. Sylvie had a knife; the

chill blade grazed Annette's throat, and she struggled, screamed. . . .

She found herself in the quiet of her room, sitting up in bed, the

sheets in confusion. Sylvie was sleeping peaceably. Annette, quelling

the beating of her heart, listened to her sister's reassuring breathing;

and still she trembled from hate and horror. . . .

She hated. . . . But whom? . . . And who was it that she loved? She

appraised Tullio, she did not respect him, she mistrusted him, she had

no confidence in him whatsoever. And yet for this man whom she had known

only two weeks, who was nothing to her, she was ready to hate her sister,

the person she had loved best of all, whom she still loved. . . .

(No! . . . Yes! . . . whom she still loved. . . .) To this man she had

sacrificed, offhand, all the rest of her life. . . . But how . . . how

could that be possible! . . .

She was aghast; but she could only admit the omnipotence of her madness.

At certain moments a flash of good sense, an ironical start, a returning

wave of her old affection for Sylvie would lift her head above the

stream. But a jealous glance, the sight of Tullio whispering with

Sylvie, was enough to plunge her back again. . . .

It was obvious that she was losing ground. It was precisely for that

reason that her passion was maddened. She was clumsy. Annette did not

know how to hide her wounded dignity. Tullio, kindly prince, had

consented not to choose between them; he deigned to toss his

handkerchief to both. Sylvie picked it up in a trice; she did not stand

on ceremony; later she would make Tullio dance to her liking. She was

not bothered when she saw this Don Juan snatching a few kisses from

Annette in the arbor. And even if it had displeased her, she saw no

reason why she had to show it. One could dissimulate. . . . But Annette

was incapable of it. She would countenance no division of favors, and

she allowed herself to show only too plainly the repulsion which

Tullio's equivocal play aroused in her.

Tullio was beginning to cool towards her. This serious passion

embarrassed him, bored him. A little seriousness in love is all right.

But not too much; that makes it a burden, and not a pleasure. He thought

of passion as a prima donna who, after singing her great cavatina,

returns with extended arms to salute the public. But Annette's passion

did not seem to know that the public existed. She played only for

herself. She played badly. . . .

She was too sincere, too truly in love to remove the traces of her

suffering, of her torments, and those ordinary blemishes that a more

attentive woman effaces or mitigates more than once a day. She did not

appear at all to advantage. She became even homely, in the measure that

she felt herself beaten.

The triumphant Sylvie, sure of her victory, watched the disabled Annette

with ironical satisfaction, spiced with a grain of malice, and, at

bottom, a little pity. . . .

"Well, have you had enough? Is that what you wanted? You're certainly a

sight! . . . A poor beaten dog. . . ."

And she wanted to run and hug her. But when she approached, Annette

displayed so much animosity that Sylvie turned her back in vexation,

grumbling:

"You don't want me to, my girl? . . . Have it your own way! Look after

yourself! I'm all right! . . . Everyone for himself, and that for the

others! After all, if the fool is suffering, it's her own fault! Why is

she always so ridiculously serious?"

(That was what they were all thinking.)

Annette ended by withdrawing from the combat. Sylvie and Tullio were

getting up a program of tableaux, in which Sylvie could show off all her

charms, and a few more besides. . . . (She was a little Parisian

magician who, with a shred of material, could transform herself into a

series of "doubles," all much prettier than the original, but which, by

completing that original, made it appear more charming than them all,

since it gave birth to them all.) . . . To try to fight her on this

ground would have been disastrous for Annette. She knew it only too

well: she was beaten in advance; what would she have been afterwards?

She asked to be left out of the entertainment, giving her health as an

excuse: her ill appearance was excuse enough. And Tullio did not insist.

Scarcely had she refused when she suffered the more at having retired

fully armed from the battle. Even when hope is dead, a struggle

engenders fresh hope. Now she had to leave Tullio and Sylvie alone

together for a part of the day. In order to embarrass them she obliged

herself to attend all the rehearsals. She didn't embarrass them much. On

the contrary she stimulated them, especially that brazen girl, who

insisted on rehearsing ten times a scene that showed the abduction of a

fainting odalisque by a Byronian corsair with eyes of sombre fire,

gnashing teeth,--fatal, feline, ready to leap like a jaguar. Tullio

played the rôle as though he were going to put the whole Palace Hotel

to fire and sword. As for Sylvie, she might have given points to the

twenty thousand houris who hold the Prophet's beard in Paradise.

The evening of the performance arrived. Annette, hidden away in the last

row of the hall, happily forgotten in the midst of the enthusiasm, could

not stay until the end. She left in torture. Her head was afire; her

mouth was bitter; she was chewing the cud of her suffering. Love scorned

was gnawing at her vitals.

She went into the fields that surrounded the hotel; but she could not go

far away, she kept circling around that lighted hall. The sun had set,

darkness was falling. With an animal instinct she smelled out the door

by which the two would certainly make their exit; a little side door

that enabled the actors, without coming through the hall, to regain the

dressing rooms in another wing of the building. They actually did come

out, and before they had gone far they lingered in the shadow of the

field to talk. Hidden behind a clump of trees, Annette could hear Sylvie

laughing, laughing . . .

"No, no, not to-night!"

And Tullio was insisting: "Why not?"

"First of all, I want to sleep."

"There's plenty of time to sleep!"

"No, no, never enough! . . ."

"Well then, to-morrow night."

"It's the same for the other nights. And then I'm not alone at night;

I'm spied on."

"Then it will never be?"

And that little rascal of a Sylvie replied, twisting with laughter:

"But I'm not afraid of the daylight! Are you afraid of it? . . ."

Annette could listen no longer. A storm of disgust, fury, and

unhappiness swept her away, running, into the night, into the fields.

Perhaps they heard the noise of her mad flight and the crackling of

branches, like that which follows on the heels of a fleeing animal. But

she no longer cared whether she was heard or not. Nothing mattered any

more. She was fleeing, fleeing. . . . Whither? She did not know. She

never knew. . . . She ran through the night, moaning. She did not see

ahead of her. She ran on for five minutes, twenty minutes, an hour? She

never knew how long. . . . Until her foot struck a root, and she fell

full length, her head against a tree trunk. . . . And then she screamed,

she howled, with her mouth against the ground, like a wounded beast.

Around her, the night. A sky without moon or stars, black. A mute earth,

untroubled by a breath or by the cries of insects. Only the sound of a

trickle of water over the pebbles, dripping at the foot of the slim fir

against which Annette had struck her forehead. And from the depths of

the gorge that cut the high, abrupt plateau, there rose the fierce

rumbling of a mountain stream. Its plaint mingled with the plaint of the

wounded woman. They seemed the eternal _lamento_ of the earth. . . .

So long as she cried, she did not think. Her body, shaken by convulsive

sobs, was ridding itself of the burden of evil that had crushed it down

for days. The mind was silent. Then the body, exhausted, ceased to moan.

Mental misery rose to the surface. And Annette again became conscious of

her forsakenness. She was alone and betrayed. The circle of her thoughts

could stretch no further. She had not the strength to reassemble their

dispersed company. She had not even the strength to get up. Stretched

out, she abandoned herself to the earth. . . . Oh! if only the earth

wished to take her! . . . The rumbling of the mountain stream was

speaking, thinking for her.

It was bathing her wound. After a period (long, no doubt) of prostrate

suffering, Annette slowly raised her stricken body. The bruise on her

forehead pained her sharply enough, and preoccupation with this hurt

eased her mind. She dipped her scratched hands in the rivulet, she

pressed them against her wounded, burning forehead. And so she remained

seated, her eyes and forehead sunk in her wet palms, feeling the

penetration of that icy purity. . . . And her grief became a distant

thing. . . . She observed its moaning as might a stranger; and she no

longer understood the meaning of those transports. She was thinking:

"Why? . . . What's the good? . . . Is it worth the pain? . . ."

And in the night the torrent answered:

"Folly, folly, folly . . . all is vain . . . all is nothing . . ."

And Annette smiled a bitter smile of pity.

"What was it that I wanted? . . . I don't even know, any more. . . .

Where is it, that great happiness? Take it who will. . . . I shall not

dispute it. . . ."

And then suddenly there returned to her in waves pictures of that

happiness that she had desired, hot gusts of those desires by which her

body was, and for a long time would be, possessed, even while her reason

denied them. In the path traced by their bitter goad, they trailed after

them a musty smell of jealous rages. . . . She suffered their attack in

silence, bent over as beneath the wing of a passing wind. Then, raising

her head, she said aloud:

"I have been wrong. . . . It is Sylvie he loves. . . . That is as it

should be. She is better made for love. She is much prettier. I know it,

and I love her. I love her because she is so. So I should be happy in

her happiness. I am an egotist. . . . Only why, why has she lied to me?

All the rest, but not that! Why has she deceived me? Why didn't she tell

me frankly that she loved him? Why has she treated me like an enemy? Oh!

And then all those things about her that I would rather not see, that

are not very nice, not very good, not very beautiful! . . . But she is

not to blame. How could she know? What a life she must have led from

childhood! And have I the right to reproach her? . . . Were the feelings

that I had any nicer? . . . That I had? That I have! . . . I know

perfectly well that they are still there. . . ."

She sighed, worn out. Then she said:

"Come, this must end! I am the elder. And the greater folly is

mine! . . . Let Sylvie be happy!"

But after having said, "Come," she still remained for a while without

stirring. She hearkened to the silence and dreamed, sucking the knuckles

of her bruised fingers. And then she sighed, stood up without a word,

and began to walk.

XII

She was returning, through the night. The moon had not yet appeared; it

was still far off, but one could feel it rising behind the horizon, from

an abyss of shadows. A feeble light edged the summits that encircled the

plateau like the edges of a cup; and, minute by minute, their black

profiles grew clearer against an aureoled background. Annette walked

unhurriedly; and her breast, breathing regularly once more, was drinking

in the scent of new-mown meadows.

Far off in the darkness, she heard precipitate steps upon the road. Her

heart pounded. She halted. She recognized them, and then walked forward

again, at a quicker pace, to meet them. Someone had heard on the other

side, too. An anxious voice called:

"Annette!"

Annette did not reply, she could not; she was seized with the joy that

coursed through her: all of her suffering, all was effaced. She did not

answer, but she walked faster, still faster. And the other was running

now. She repeated, "Annette!" in an agonized voice.

In the vague phosphorescence of the moon, that was climbing up behind

the great dark wall, an indistinct figure emerged from the whitening

shadow. Annette cried, "Darling!" and flung herself forward with

outstretched arms, like a blind person. . . .

In their haste to be united, their bodies collided. Their arms went

around each other. Their lips sought, and found . . .

"My own Annette!"

"My own Sylvie!"

"My sister! my love!"

"My little darling!"

In the darkness they were running their hands caressingly over cheeks

and hair, over neck and shoulders, once more taking possession of

happiness, of the friend who had been lost.

"Darling!" exclaimed Sylvie, feeling Annette's bare shoulders, "you

haven't your cloak! You have nothing around you! . . ."

Annette realized that as a matter of fact she was clad only in her

evening dress; and, seized by a chill, she shivered.

"You are mad! you are mad!" cried Sylvie, enveloping her, clasping her

in her cape. And her hands, continuing their inspection, took note of

damages.

"Your dress is torn. . . . What in the world have you been doing? What

has happened? . . . And your hair is down over your face. And here,

here, what's the matter with your forehead? . . . Annette, did you

fall? . . ."

Annette did not respond. With her mouth on Sylvie's shoulder, she

abandoned herself and wept. Sylvie made her sit down beside her on a

bank by the road. The moon, clearing the barrier of the mountains,

lighted up Annette's injured forehead, and Sylvie covered it with

kisses.

"Tell me what you have been doing. . . . Tell me what's happened. . . .

My treasure, my little lamb, I was so upset when I went to your room and

didn't find you there! I called you everywhere. . . . I've been hunting

for you for an hour. . . . Oh! I was so miserable. . . . I was afraid, I

was afraid. . . . I can't say what I was afraid of. . . . Why did you go

off? Why did you run away? . . ."

Annette did not wish to reply.

"I don't know," she said. "I felt ill, and I wanted to walk . . . to

breathe. . . ."

"No, you aren't telling the truth, Annette; tell me everything!"

Then she bent over her and said more softly:

"Dear heart, it wasn't because of that? . . ."

Annette interrupted her:

"No! No!"

But Sylvie insisted.

"Don't lie! Tell me the truth. Tell me! Tell your little one! It was

because of him?"

Annette, wiping her eyes and trying to smile, replied:

"No, I assure you. . . . I was a little hurt, it's true. . . . It's

foolish. . . . But it's all over now. I'm glad he loves you."

Sylvie jumped up and struck her hands angrily together.

"So it was he! Oh! But I don't love him, I don't love him any more, that

creature! . . ."

"Yes, you do love him. . . ."

"No! No! No!"

Sylvie stamped on the road.

"It amused me to love him, I did it as a game; but it meant nothing to

me, nothing in comparison with you. . . . Why! All a man's kisses

couldn't make up for one of your tears. . . ."

Annette was overwhelmed with happiness.

"You mean it? You mean it?"

Sylvie sprang into her arms.

When they had grown somewhat calmer, Sylvie said to Annette:

"Now confess! You loved him, too!"

"Too! Now you see! You admit that you loved him. . . ."

"No, I tell you. I forbid you to say so. . . . I won't hear any more

about it. It's ended, ended."

"It's ended," Annette repeated.

They went back along the road bathed in the light of the moon, overjoyed

at having recovered each other. Suddenly Sylvie halted, and, shaking her

fist at the moon, she cried:

"Oh! the beast! . . . He'll pay me for it!"

And, as youth never loses its rights, she burst out laughing at her

malediction.

"But do you know what we are going to do?" Sylvie continued spitefully.

"We are going to pack as soon as we get back, and to-morrow, to-morrow

morning, we'll be off by the first post. When he comes to the table at

luncheon time, he'll find no one. . . . The birds will have flown! . . .

Oh! . . . and then . . ." (she burst out laughing) "I made a date with

him for about ten o'clock, in the woods up there. . . . He'll be running

after me all morning. . . ."

She laughed more heartily than ever; and so did Annette. The spectacle

of Tullio, disappointed and furious, seemed so amusing to them. The two

madcaps! Already their sufferings were far away.

"Just the same," observed Annette, "it's not very nice, dear, to

compromise yourself like that."

"Piffle! What's that to me?" replied Sylvie. "I don't matter. . . .

Yes," she went on, taking a passing nip at Annette's hand that was

patting her ear, "I should be more careful now that I'm your

sister. . . . I will be, I promise you. . . . But you, my dear, you

know that you weren't so much more careful."

"No, that's true," answered Annette contritely. "And I was afraid at

times that I might be still less so. . . . Oh!" she exclaimed, pressing

closer to her sister, "how strange the heart is! One never, never knows

when it's going to rise up inside you and carry you away . . . whither?"

"Yes," said Sylvie, hugging her, "that's why I love you! That heart of

yours is a powerful affair!"

They were ready to go in again. The roofs of the hotel were gleaming

under the moonlight. Sylvie slipped her arm around Annette's neck and

whispered in her ear with an intensity and a seriousness she herself did

not realize:

"My darling! I shall never forget what you have suffered to-night . . .

what you have suffered because of me. . . . Yes, yes, don't say no! I

had time to think of it while I was running in search of you, trembling

that some misfortune . . . If it had happened! . . . Oh! what would I

have done! . . . I should have never come back."

"Darling," exclaimed Annette, deeply moved, "it was not your fault, you

couldn't know how you were hurting me."

"I knew perfectly well. I knew that I was making you suffer, and

it--listen, Annette!--it even gave me pleasure!"

Annette's heart contracted; and a short while ago she too had thought

that she would like to make Sylvie suffer until the blood ran. She said

so. They clasped each other in their arms.

"But what's the matter with us? What are we?" they asked each other,

shamefaced and stricken, yet relieved to know that the other's feelings

had been the same. . . .

"It was love," said Sylvie.

"Love," Annette repeated mechanically. Then she went on, frightened:

"That is love?"

"And you know," said Sylvie, "it was only the beginning."

Annette protested vigorously that she never wanted to love again.

Sylvie made fun of her. But Annette repeated in perfect seriousness:

"I don't want to any more. I'm not made for it."

"Oh, well," said Sylvie, laughing, "there's not a chance, my poor

Annette! You, why you'll stop loving when you stop living!"

_ANNETTE AND SYLVIE_

PART TWO

I

First days of October, gray and sweet. Still air. Warm rain falling

straight down, unhurriedly. The hot and fleshly odor of moist earth,

ripe fruits in the cellar, vatsful in the cider press. . . .

Near an open window in the Rivière's country house, in Burgundy, the

two sisters were sitting opposite each other, sewing. With heads bent

over their work, they seemed to be pointing their round, smooth

foreheads at each other,--the same rounded forehead, prettier in Sylvie,

stronger in Annette, capricious in the one, obstinate in the other,--the

goat and the little bull. But when they raised their heads, their eyes

exchanged an understanding glance. Their tongues were resting, having

chimed away for entire days. They were ruminating on their fever, their

transports, the hosts of words that had passed between them, and all

that they had acquired and learned from each other during the preceding

days. For this time they had given themselves completely, eager to take

all and give all. And now they were silent, the better to think of all

this hidden booty.

But they had desired in vain to see all and to possess all: in the last

analysis, each remained an enigma to the other. And to every human

being, no doubt, every other human being is an enigma; and that is an

attraction. How many things there were in each that the other would

never understand! And they said truly (for they knew it):

"Of what importance is understanding? To understand is to explain. One

doesn't have to explain in order to love. . . ."

But all the same, it makes considerable difference! It amounts to this,

that without understanding one cannot possess completely. And then as

regarded loving, precisely how did they love? They had not at all the

same way of loving. Raoul Rivière's two daughters both inherited,

undoubtedly, an abundant vigor from their father, but it was

concentrated in the one and dispersed in the other. In nothing were the

two sisters more different than in love. Sylvie's affection was

perfectly unrestrained, laughing, gamin-like, impudent, but at bottom

extremely sensible; she was always on the move, but she never lost her

sense of direction, always fluttering her wings, but never flying beyond

the pigeon yard. In Annette there dwelt a strange demon of love, of

whose presence she had been aware for scarcely six months; she

suppressed it, endeavoured to hide it, for she was afraid of it; her

instinct told her that others would misunderstand it: Eros caged, with

blindfolded eyes, troubled, hungry and starving, silently bruising

himself against the bars of the world, and slowly gnawing away the heart

in which he is imprisoned! The burning, incessant, noiseless, biting

pain insensibly plunged Annette's mind into a confused, wounded

lethargy, that was not wholly unpleasant, for she found a certain

pleasure in the sensations that caused her suffering: it was like being

wrapped in a rough-surfaced material, turned wrong side out, or like

running one's hand over the harsh surface of a piece of furniture or the

chill of a rugose wall. Chewing the bitter bark of some twig that she

was nibbling, she would sink at times into a forgetfulness of self and

time, into lapses of consciousness that lasted Heaven knows how long,--a

quarter of a second or an hour? And she would precipitately pull herself

out of them, suspicious and ashamed, sensing the invisible gaze of

Sylvie upon her, for her sister while pretending to work was maliciously

spying on her from the corner of her eye. Without understanding it very

well, Sylvie with her little nose smelled out this inner life of

Annette's that was sleeping in the sun and coiling itself, with sharp

warnings, like an adder beneath the leaves. She thought that her big

sister was very strange, a little cracked, really different from other

people. . . . She was not so much astonished by Annette's passionate

movements, her ardors, and what she could guess of her troubled

thoughts, as by the almost tragic seriousness with which Annette

invested them. Tragic? What an idea! Serious? Why be that? Things are as

they are. One takes them as they are. Sylvie was not going to bother

herself about the fifteen hundred notions that passed through her head!

They come, and then they go away. Everything that's nice and agreeable

is simple and natural; and everything that isn't nice and agreeable is

just as natural, too. Nice or not nice, I swallow them: they are soon

down! Why make such a fuss? . . . Poor Annette, all tangled up! with her

bundles of hot and cold thoughts, her snarl of fears and desires, and

her clusters of passions and decencies all mixed up in every

corner! . . . Who will untangle her? But the fact that she was so

abnormal, exaggerated and incomprehensible amused and attracted Sylvie

greatly; and she loved her only the better for it. . . .

The prolonged silence was heavy with disquieting secrets. Sylvie would

abruptly break it, and begin to talk at random. . . . Quickly, very

quickly, and in a low voice, with her nose over her work as though she

were reviling it, she would begin to mutter a litany of crazy little

words, of inarticulate sounds, generally in _i_,--the _kikikiki_ of a

chaffinch wriggling with delight. And then, presto, she would again

assume a serious expression, as if to say: "Who? I? I didn't do

anything. . . ." Or, nibbling her thread, she would sing in her thin,

nasal voice some silly ballad that had to do with flowers and

"twittering birds," or a snatch of an obscene song from which she would

select a particularly racy bit, with the air of a wise child. And

Annette would start up, half-laughing, half-annoyed, and exclaim:

"Will you please be good enough to shut up!"

But they would be relieved. The air was cleared. Words matter little;

voices, like hands, reestablish contact. They were united again. Where

were we? . . . Beware of silence! Do we know where it may carry you,

carry me, with the flutter of a wing, in a moment of forgetfulness?

Speak to me! I am talking to you. I am holding you. Hold me tight! . . .

They held on to each other. They were firmly decided that whatever

happened they would not let go again. Whatever happened, it would in no

wise affect the essential fact: "I am I. You are you. We accept each

other. Agreed! There's no going back." It was a mutual gift, a tacit

contract, a kind of soul marriage, much more efficacious than any

external bond; neither written engagement, nor religious or civil

sanction could outweigh it. And what did it matter that they were so

different? It is a mistake to think that the best unions are founded on

affinities,--or even on contrasts. They are founded on neither one nor

the other, but on an inner act, on an "I have chosen, I wish, I vow," of

good metal and solidly stamped with the mark of an inflexible dual

decision, as in the case of these two girls with rounded foreheads. "I

have you, and I am no more able to give you back than to take myself

back. . . . Besides you are free to love whom you choose, to do what you

please . . . you may commit any folly, even a little crime if you have

to (I know that you won't! but just the same!)--it will not affect our

pact in any way. . . ." Explain it who will! Scrupulous Annette, if she had

dared to follow her thought to its conclusion, would have been forced to

confess that she was not quite sure of Sylvie's moral worth or of her

future actions. And clear-sighted Sylvie would not have staked her hand

that Annette would not, some day, be capable of disconcerting acts. But

this had to do with others, it did not concern them, the two of them. As

for themselves, they were sure, they had an absolute confidence in each

other. The rest of the world could manage its affairs as it pleased! No

matter what either might do--since it could not affect their mutual

love--they forgave everything in advance, with closed eyes.

Perhaps it was not very moral, but what of that! They would have time to

be moral on some other occasion.

Annette who was a bit of a pedant, who knew life through books--which

did not however keep her from discovering it later (for life has not

quite the same ring when it is heard outside of books)--Annette

remembered those beautiful verses of Schillers:

"_Oh, my sons, the world is full of lies and of hatred; everyone loves

himself alone; all bonds formed by a fragile happiness are

insecure. . . . That which caprice has joined together, that will caprice

put asunder. Nature alone is sincere, it alone rests upon unshakable

anchors. All else floats at the will of stormy waves. . . . Inclination

gives you a friend, interest a companion; happy is he to whom birth has

given a brother. . . . Against this world of war and treachery, they are

two to stand together_. . . ."

Sylvie did not know these verses, that is certain! And, no doubt, she

would have thought that they employed entirely too many confused words

for the expression of a simple sentiment. But as she looked at Annette,

who was not working now, at her bowed head, the firm nape of her neck,

and her heavy mass of twisted hair, she thought:

"She is still dreaming, the big dear; she is deep again in her chest of

follies. What that chest must hold! It's lucky that I'm here, now! It

won't be opened without me. . . ."

For the younger sister had a conviction, perhaps exaggerated, of her

superior sense and experience. And she said to herself:

"I shall protect her."

She might have needed to protect herself first; for in her own chest

there was no lack of follies either. But she knew all about these in

advance, and she regarded them as a landlord regards his tenants. If one

lodges them, it is not for nothing. . . . And then, "Do what you wish,

come what may!" So long as it concerned only herself it was not of

enormous importance. One could always find a way out. . . . But to

protect someone else, that was a new and delectable feeling. . . .

Yes, but . . . Annette, with her head bowed and her hands idle, was

cherishing precisely the same feeling. She was thinking: "My dear little

madcap! . . . It's lucky that I came along in time to look after

her! . . ."

And for Sylvie's future she made plans that were certainly charming, but

concerning which Sylvie had not been consulted. . . .

Then when each had thoroughly pondered the happiness of the other (and

her own into the bargain, of course) . . .

"Hang! my needle is broken. . . . One can't see a thing any more. . . ."

They threw aside their work and went outdoors together to stretch their

legs; both wrapped in the same greatcoat, they walked through the rain

to the end of the garden, beneath weeping trees whose locks were

falling; from the arbor they plucked a bunch of white grapes, all the

better for being moist; they talked, and they talked. . . . And then

suddenly they fell silent, drinking in the autumn wind, the delectable

odor of fallen fruits, of dead leaves, and the tired October light that

faded at four o'clock, the silence of the numbed, slumbering fields, the

earth drinking up the rain, the night . . .

And, hand in hand, they dreamed with quivering Nature, that brooded over

the fearful, burning hope of spring,--the enigma of the future. . . .

II

During those fine, foggy October days, when the fog rolled up like a

spider's web, their intimacy became so necessary to them that they

wondered how they had ever done without it.

Yet they had done without it, and they would again. Life, at the age of

twenty, does not confine itself to a single intimacy, however dear it

may be,--especially the life of two such winged creatures. They must

essay the airy spaces. Firm as the affirmation of their heart's desire

may be, the instinct of their wings is stronger. When Annette and Sylvie

said to each other tenderly: "How could we have lived so long without

each other?" they did not confess to themselves, "But sooner or later

(what a pity!) we shall have to live without each other again!"

For another cannot live for you, in your place; and you would not wish

it. Assuredly the need of their mutual affection was profound, but the

two little Rivières felt another, stronger need, that went deeper, to

the very sources of their being: the need of independence. They who had

so many different traits had precisely this trait in common (it was not

by chance!). And they were perfectly aware of it; it was even one of the

reasons for which, without saying so, they loved each other the more;

for in it each saw herself. But then, what would become of their plans

to fuse their two lives? While each was cradling herself in a dream that

she might protect the other's life, she knew that the other would

consent to it no more than she herself would consent. It was a fond

dream with which they played. They were trying to make the play last as

long as possible.

And yet it could not last for long.

It would have amounted to nothing had they both been merely independent.

But these two little Republics, that were so jealous of their freedom,

had, without realizing it, like all Republics, despotic instincts. As

each considered its own laws excellent, each had a tendency to export

them to the other. Annette, who was capable of self-criticism, would

blame herself when it was too late for trampling upon her sister's

domain,--but then she would do it all over again. Hers was a willful and

passionate character, which, despite herself, was inclined to dominate.

Her nature was quite capable of temporary weakness, beneath the veil of

a great affection, but it remained unchanged. It must be confessed,

besides, that if Annette made an effort to adapt herself to Sylvie's

wishes, Sylvie did not make the task easy for her. All her actions were

headstrong, and within twenty-four hours her head had more than

twenty-four whims, that were not always mutually compatible. Annette,

who was methodical and orderly, laughed at first and after that grew

impatient at these sudden shifts and caprices. She called Sylvie _Rose

of the Winds_, and _I want_ . . . _What is it I Want_? And Sylvie called

her _Squall, Madame I Ordain_, and _Noon at Twelve Sharp_, because she

was plagued by Annette's punctuality.

Even while they were devoted to each other, it was difficult for them to

accommodate themselves for very long to the same manner of living. They

had neither the same tastes nor the same habits. Because they loved each

other, Annette could lend an indulgent ear to the little splutterings of

Sylvie, who had an excellent eye for the main chance, and a still better

ear, but not a very good tongue. And Sylvie, swallowing an amused yawn

("Get along! Will you get along! . . .), was capable of appearing

interested in the deadly reading, the pleasure of which Annette wished

to share with her. . . .

"My! how pretty that is, dear!"

Or, commenting to herself on certain preoccupations with ridiculous

thoughts on life, death, or society . . .

(What a bore! . . . Tootle-too-too! . . . They have plenty of time to

waste! . . .)

"And you," Annette would ask, "what do you think of it, Sylvie?"

("Piffle!" thought Sylvie.)

"I think the same as you do, dear."

This in no wise prevented them from adoring each other; but at the same

time it somewhat hampered their conversation.

And what could they do with their days, alone in the sombre house by the

edge of the woods, confronted by stripped fields, under a low autumn sky

that mingled with the bare plain in the fog? In vain had Sylvie asserted

and believed that she adored the country; she had soon exhausted its

pleasures, and in the country she was idle, out of place, lost. . . .

Nature, nature. . . . Let us be frank! Nature bored her. . . . A land of

rustics! No! She could not bear the little inclemencies: wind, rain, mud

(the mud of Paris, in comparison, seemed pleasant to her), the mice

trotting up and down behind old partitions, the spiders who came indoors

to take up their winter quarters, and those frightful beasts, the

buzzing mosquitoes, who regaled themselves on her wrists and ankles. She

could have wept with irritation and boredom. Annette, rejoicing in the

open air and in the solitude with her beloved sister, invulnerable to

boredom, laughing at mosquito bites, tried to drag Sylvie along on her

muddy walks, without noticing her sullen, disgusted expression. A gust

of wind and rain intoxicated her; forgetting Sylvie, she would set off

with great strides over the plowed earth or through the woods, shaking

the wet branches; and it was not until long after that she remembered

the little straggler. And Sylvie, who was sulking and piteously

examining her swollen face, would wait vainly, thinking:

"When are we going back?"

But among the thousand and one desires of the younger Rivière girl,

there was one that was good and praiseworthy, that nothing could alter,

and the country air served only to lend it new lustre. She loved her

trade. She really loved it. Of good Parisian working stock, work was

necessary to her; she needed her needle and her thimble to busy her

fingers and her thoughts. She had an innate love of sewing; it was a

physical pleasure for her to spend hours handling some piece of

material, a dainty fabric, a silk muslin, folding it, gathering it,

giving a touch to a knot of ribbons. And then her little noddle, which

did not flatter itself, Heaven be praised, that it understood the ideas

lodged in Annette's big brain, knew that here in her own domain, in the

kingdom of chiffons, she had ideas too, enough and to spare. . . . Well

then, could she give up her ideas? It is thought that a woman can enjoy

no greater pleasure than to wear pretty dresses! . . . For a really

gifted woman it is a much greater pleasure to make them. And once one

has tasted this pleasure, one cannot forego it. In the downy idleness in

which her sister kept her, while Annette was running her hands over the

piano keys, Sylvie felt homesick for the noise of big shears and the

sewing machine. All the works of art in the world, had they been offered

to her, would not have made up for the fine, headless dummy that one can

drape according to one's fancy, that one can twist and turn, before

which one squats, that one slyly maltreats, and that one takes in one's

arms for a dance when the forewoman is absent. A few casual words

sufficiently indicated the drift of her thoughts; and impatient Annette,

seeing her eyes light up, knew that she was in for another story of the

shop.

So when Sylvie announced, after their return to Paris, that she was

going back to her lodging and her regular work, Annette sighed; but she

was not surprised. Sylvie, who had expected opposition, was much more

touched by this sigh, by this silence, than she would have been by any

words. She ran to her seated sister, and, kneeling before her, she

clasped her arms around her waist and held her mouth up to her.

"Annette, don't be angry with me!"

"Darling," Annette replied, "your happiness is mine, and you know it."

But she was suffering, and Sylvie was too.

"It is not my fault," she protested. "I love you tremendously, I swear!"

"Yes, dearest, I know that."

Annette was smiling, but she heaved another deep sigh. Sylvie, still on

her knees, took her sister's face between her hands and put her own

close to it.

"I forbid you to sigh! . . . Villain! If you sigh like that I sha'nt be

able to leave. I'm not a little wretch."

"No, darling, you aren't. . . . It was wrong of me, and I won't do it

any more. But I wasn't blaming you. It's because we are leaving each

other."

"Leaving each other! . . . The idea! . . . Naughty girl! We shall see

each other every day. You will come, and I shall come. You will keep my

room for me. Were you going to presume, by any chance, to take it away

from me? No, no, it's mine, and I won't give it back. When I am tired, I

count on coming here to be petted. And you know, some evenings when you

aren't expecting me, I shall arrive at the most unreasonable hours; I

have a key, I shall come in and surprise you. . . . Beware if you play

any tricks! . . . You will see, you will see, we shall love each other

all the better. . . . Leave each other! Do you think that I would want

to leave you, that I could get along without my pretty Annette!"

"Oh! the wheedler, the little rascal!" said Annette, laughing, "how well

she knows how to cajole one! The damned little liar!"

"Annette! Don't swear!" exclaimed Sylvie severely.

"Well then, simply liar. . . . Is that all right?"

"Yes, that may pass," replied Sylvie magnanimously. . . .

She threw herself on Annette's neck and suffocated her with kisses.

"Lie to you, lie to you, I'm eating you! . . ."

The affectionate, cunning girl had other ways of winning forgiveness.

She asked Annette to help her set up shop on her own account. This

"lass" of twenty wanted to be her own mistress, to take orders no

longer, to give orders in her turn,--if only to her dummy. Annette was

delighted at being able to give her money. The two sisters put their

heads together, endlessly discussed arrangements, ran about the

following day to find a place, then to choose furniture and materials,

then to arrange matters with the authorities; and they spent the

evenings making up lists of customers, making plan after plan, move

after move,--until Annette ended by having the illusion that it was she

who was setting up shop with Sylvie. And she forgot that their lives

were going to be divorced.

III

Customers were not slow in coming to Sylvie's. When Annette went

calling, she wore the little dressmaker's prettiest creations, and sang

her praises. She succeeded in sending to her many young women from her

own set. Sylvie, for her part, had no scruples about exploiting the

addresses of her old employer's customers. However, she was wise enough

not to enlarge the circle of her operations too rapidly. Little by

little. Life is long. There is plenty of time. . . . She loved work, but

not to the mad degree of certain human ants--and especially feminine

ones--whom she had seen kill themselves at their task. She had every

intention of leaving time for pleasure. Work is one of them, but it is

not the only one. "_A little of everything_." Hers was the motto of a

small appetite, but dainty and curious. . . .

Before long her life was so filled that not much of it remained for

Annette. Whatever happened, Sylvie guarded Annette's share; she clung to

it. But for Annette's heart, a share was little. She did not know how to

give herself in halves, or thirds, or quarters. She still had to learn

that in their affections people are like a small merchant: they deliver

them retail. She was long in understanding this, still longer in

accepting it. As yet she had not passed beyond the first lessons.

Without saying so, she suffered at seeing herself eliminated, little by

little, from Sylvie's days. Sylvie was never alone any more, at home or

in her shop. She had acquired a new sweetheart. Annette bowed to the

inevitable. Her love for her sister now defended her against her old

jealous spite and severity of judgment. But it did not defend her

against melancholy. Sylvie, who, despite her lightness, loved her sister

well enough to sense the pain she was causing her, would occasionally

tear herself away from the farandole of her activities, both business

and pleasure; and suddenly, in the midst of work or even a

tête-à-tête, she would drop the most pressing matters and run off to

Annette's. Then there was a whirlwind of passing tenderness. At the

moment, Sylvie was no less full of affection than Annette. But it

passed; and when the whirlwind carried Sylvie back to her business or

her pleasures, filled with Annette, Annette would sigh, grateful for the

little tempest of loving chatter, mad confidences, and laughing embraces

that had visited her, but feeling more alone than ever and more

troubled.

Yet it was not interests that she lacked. Her days were as full as

Sylvie's.

Her life, her double life, intellectual and social, that had been broken

off since her father's death, had resumed its natural course. Her mental

needs, which during the past year had been crowded aside by the needs of

her heart, had now reawakened stronger than ever. As much to fill the

hours left empty by Sylvie's absence, as because the intelligence of a

rich nature is matured by experiences of the passional life, she had

again applied herself to her scientific studies, and she was astonished

to find that she brought to them a clearer gaze than before. She became

interested in biology, and planned a thesis on the origins of the

æsthetic sentiment and its manifestations in nature.

She had also picked up the threads of her social life; she returned to

the world that she had formerly frequented with her father. And she

found in it a fresh pleasure: the pleasure of curiosity, of a greater

sophistication that discovered, in people she had thought she knew,

unexpected aspects of which she had not dreamed. There were other

pleasures too, of a very different sort, some that one acknowledged, and

others that one did not confess: the pleasure of pleasing; obscure

forces of attraction (of repulsion too) that awake in us and around us

magnetic relations which are established between minds and bodies, under

cover of deceptive words; dumb possessive instincts that momentarily

graze the even and monotonous surface of drawing-room thoughts,

instincts that efface themselves, but which quiver beneath the

surface. . . .

Yet society and work occupied only the smallest portion of her time.

Never had Annette's life been so peopled as now when she was alone.

Through the long evenings and night hours, when sleep tosses the mind

back into wakefulness, with its hallucinatory thoughts, as the

withdrawing tide leaves on the shore a myriad of organisms torn from the

nocturnal abysses of ocean,--Annette contemplated the ebb and flow of

her interior sea, and the littered shore. It was the great spring

equinox.

A part of the forces that stirred within her were not new to her; but,

as their energy increased tenfold, the mind became conscious of them

with an exalted clarity. Their contradictory rhythms caused an

intoxication of the heart, a vertigo. . . . It was impossible to grasp

the order hidden in this confusion. The violent shock of sexual passion

that, like a summer storm, had shaken Annette's heart, was leaving

behind it a lasting perturbation. In vain had the memory of Tullio been

effaced, the equilibrium of her being was for a long time shaken. The

tranquillity of her life, the absence of events, created an illusion for

Annette: she could have believed that nothing had happened, and could

have easily repeated the careless cry of those watchmen in the fine

Italian nights: _Tempo sereno!_ . . . But the hot night was hatching new

storms, and the unstable air was shivering with disquiet eddies. A

perpetual disorder. The thrusts of dead souls, revivified, clashed in

this soul in fusion. . . . Here, the dangerous paternal heritage

consisting of those desires that were ordinarily dormant and forgotten,

rose abruptly like a wave from the deep. There, opposing forces: a moral

pride, the passion for purity. And that other passion for independence,

the imperious constraint of which Annette had already experienced in her

union with Sylvie; she anxiously foresaw, too, that this passion for

independence would some day engage in still more tragic conflicts with

love. All this inner travail occupied her, filled her, during the long

winter days. The soul, like a chrysalis encased in a cocoon of foggy

light, was dreaming of its future, and indulging itself in its

dream. . . .

Suddenly, she went beyond her depth. There occurred one of those lapses

of consciousness such as she had experienced last autumn, here and

there, in Burgundy; one of those voids into which one sinks. . . .

Voids? No, they were not voids; but what went on in their depths? Those

strange phenomena, unperceived, perhaps non-existent until ten months

before, that had been released especially since the amorous crisis of

the summer, and since then had become more frequent. Annette had a vague

feeling that these gulfs of consciousness sometimes opened at night,

too, while she slept . . . the heavy sleep of hypnosis. . . . When she

came out of them, she returned from a great distance; there remained no

memory of them, and yet she had the haunting sense that she had

encountered important events and worlds, unspeakable things, things

beyond what the reason permits and tolerates, bestial and superhuman,

reminiscent of the Greek monsters or the cathedral gargoyles. A formless

clay adhered to her fingers. One felt oneself bound alive to that

stranger of one's dreams. There weighed a sorrow, a shame, the fresh

burden of a complicity that could not be defined. One's skin remained

impregnated by an unsavory odor that lingered for days. It was as though

one bore a secret, in the midst of the day's fugitive images, hidden

behind the closed door of a smooth forehead unwrinkled by thought, while

one's indifferent eyes turned inward, and one's hands lay sagely folded

across one's breast--a sleeping lake. . . .

Wherever she went, Annette carried this perpetual dream: in the bustle

of streets, in the studious torpor of lectures and libraries, in the

amiable banality of drawing-room conversations, relieved by a hint of

flirtation and irony. At evening parties more than one person noticed

the absent glance of this young girl who smiled distractedly, less at

what was said to her than at what she was saying to herself, while she

caught by chance a few passing words, and then went far away again,

listening to no-one-knew-what hidden birds in the depths of her aviary.

So noisy was the chorus of little people within Annette that one day she

caught herself listening to it when Sylvie was with her,--Sylvie the

beloved, laughing at her, deafening her with her dear chatter, saying to

her. . . . What was it she was saying? . . . Sylvie perceived it, and

she laughingly shook her.

"You're asleep, you're asleep, Annette!"

Annette protested.

"Yes, yes, I saw you, you are dreaming standing up, like an old carriage

horse. What do you do with your nights?"

"Wretch! . . . And what about yours, if I asked you? . . ."

"Mine? You want to know? Very well! I'm going to tell you. You won't be

bored."

"No! No!" exclaimed Annette, laughing, now thoroughly awake.

She clapped her hand over her sister's mouth. But Sylvie freed herself

and, seizing Annette's head, looked straight into her eyes.

"Your beautiful sleep-walker's eyes. . . . Show us a little of what's in

there. . . . What are you dreaming, Annette? Tell me, tell me! Tell what

you're dreaming. Tell! Come along, let's hear!"

"What do you want me to tell?"

"Say what you are thinking about."

Annette resisted, but she always ended by yielding. For both of them it

was an acute pleasure of affection, and perhaps of egotism, to tell each

other everything. They left nothing out. So Annette tried to unravel her

dreams, much less for Sylvie's benefit than for her own comfort. She

explained, not without difficulty, but with a great scrupulousness and

seriousness that made Sylvie burst into laughter, all her mad

thoughts--the innocent, the candid, the grotesque, the daring, and

sometimes even . . .

"Well, well, Annette! I say, when you try! . . ." exclaimed Sylvie,

pretending to be scandalized.

Her own inner life was perhaps no less strange (neither more nor less

than that of all of us), but she did not suspect it, and she was not

interested in it, like a practical little person who believes once for

all in what she sees and touches, in the sensible and ordinary dream of

superficial earthly existence, and who avoids as absurd everything that

might disturb it.

She laughed with all her heart, listening to her sister. Now who would

ever have thought that of Annette! With her innocent air, she sometimes

tells you the most egregious things in all seriousness. And then she is

frightened at the simplest things, that everybody knows. (She shared

them with Sylvie, with a comical conviction.) Heaven knows what

ridiculous ideas are passing in her noddle! . . . Sylvie found her

complicated, adorable, twisted, deucedly tangled up. Always that disease

of being tormented to death by things that one should take as they come!

"The trouble is that they sing a half-a-dozen tunes at the same time,"

said Annette.

"Well, that's amusing," exclaimed Sylvie. "It's like the Lion de Béfort

fair."

"Horrors!" cried Annette, stuffing up her ears.

"Why, I adore it. Three or four shooting galleries, tram horns, steam

calliopes, bells, whistles, everyone yelling together, till one can't

hear oneself think, while one yells louder than all of them,--and

snorting, laughing and goings on that delight your heart. . . ."

"Little plebeian!"

"But, my little aristo, it's you (you've just said so), it's you who are

like that! If you don't like it, you have only to do as I do. I have

everything in order. Everything in its place. Every rabbit in its

hutch!"

And indeed she spoke the truth. Whatever hubbub went on in the Place

Denfert or in her own little brain, she knew how to manage in one case

as well as the other. She could instantly bring order from the most

inextricable disorder. She knew how to reconcile all her divers needs,

both of mind and body, middle class and otherwise. Each had its

pigeon-hole. As Annette said to her:

"A bureau full of drawers. . . . That's what you are! . . ." (showing

her the famous Louis XV chiffonier in which their father's letters had

been arranged).

"Yes," replied Sylvie, "there a resemblance. . . ."

(It was not of the piece of furniture that she spoke).

". . . At bottom, it's the _real me_. . . ."

She wanted to vex Annette. But Annette wasn't "rising" any more. She was

no longer jealous of her father's heredity; she had her share of it. She

could very well have given it up. It was, at times, a rather troublesome

guest! . . .

IV

She did not know quite how, but during the past year she had lost the

balance of her logical mind and of her stout legs that had been so

firmly implanted in the real world; and she did not see how she was

going to recover it. She would have given a good deal to put on Sylvie's

little boots that unhesitatingly went clattering over the ground with

their decided step. She no longer felt that she was bound firmly enough

to ordinary life, to the life of everybody and every minute. Contrary to

her sister, she was too much preoccupied with her inner existence, and

she was not enough preoccupied, any more, with that on which the sun

shone. It would, doubtless, have been the same, even had she not been

caught by the great sexual trap into which dreamers fall more quickly

and more clumsily than others. The insidious hour was approaching. The

snare was being prepared. . . .

But would this snare, even, suffice to hold a rather wild soul and a

thoroughbred for very long? . . .

While waiting to find out, she circled around,--certainly without

realizing it, for if she had realized it she would have recoiled in

exasperated revolt. No matter! Each of her steps brought her closer to

the trap. . . .

She had to confess it to herself--she who, a year before, had affected

to treat men with the calm assurance of a comrade; no doubt a little

coquettish and amiable, but indifferent; for from them she had seemed

neither to desire nor fear anything--she now looked on men with

different eyes. She maintained an attitude of observation and troubled

waiting. Since the adventure with Tullio, she had lost her fine,

insolent calm.

She knew now that she could not get along without them; and her father's

smile came to her lips when she recalled her childish declarations at

the idea of marriage. Love had left its wasp's dart in her flesh. Chaste

and burning, innocent and sophisticated, she knew her desires; and if

she thrust them into the penumbra of her mind, they manifested their

presence by the confusion into which they threw the remainder of her

ideas. Her whole mental activity was disorganized. Her powers of

reflection were paralyzed. At work, writing or reading, she felt herself

somehow impaired. She could no longer concentrate on an object save at

the cost of disproportionate effort; and afterwards she was exhausted,

disgusted. And it was in vain, for the knot of her attention would

always come undone. Clouds crept into all her thoughts. The perfectly

clear--too clear and too well-lighted--goals that she had fixed for her

intelligence, were dimmed in the fog. The straight road that was to lead

her to them broke off, was cut at every step.

Annette discouragedly thought:

"I shall never get there."

Having formerly attributed to women all the intellectual powers of men,

she experienced the humiliation of saying to herself:

"I was mistaken."

Under the impression of lassitude which oppressed her, she recognized

(rightly or wrongly) certain cerebral weaknesses of her sex, due perhaps

to woman's long unaccustomedness to disinterested thought, to that

objective and detached activity of mind which is demanded by true

science and true art; but more probably due to the mute obsession of

those great, sacred instincts, the rich and heavy deposit of which

nature has placed in her. Annette felt that, alone, she was incomplete;

incomplete in mind, body and heart. But of these last two, she thought

as little as possible; they recalled only too much to her mind.

She had reached the time of life when one can live no longer without a

mate; and woman even less than man, for in her it is not only the lover,

but the mother also, that is awakened by love. She does not realize it:

the two aspirations are confounded in a single sentiment. Annette, as

yet without defining a single one of her thoughts, had a heart swollen

with the need of giving itself to some human being, at once stronger and

weaker than herself, who would take her in his arms and who would drink

at her breast. At the thought of this, she grew faint with tenderness;

would that all the blood in her body might be turned to milk, that she

might give of it. . . . Drink! . . . Oh, my well beloved! . . .

Give all! . . . No! She could not give all! It was not permitted her.

Give all! . . . Yes, her milk, her blood, her body, and her love. . . .

But all? her whole soul? her whole will? and for her entire life? . . .

No, that, she was certain, she could never do. Even when she wished to,

she would be unable. One cannot give what is not one's own,--my free

soul. My free soul does not belong to me; it is I who belong to my free

soul. I cannot dispose of it. . . . To conserve its liberty is much more

than a right, it is a religious duty. . . .

There was in these thoughts of Annette a little of the moral rigidity

that she inherited from her mother. But in her, all took on a passionate

character; with her impetuous blood she could give warmth to the most

abstract ideas. . . . Her "soul!" . . . That "Protestant" word! . . .

(It was herself speaking. . . . She used the word often! . . .) Had

Raoul Rivière's daughter only one soul? She had a whole troop of them,

and in the lot there were three or four of notable stature that did not

always understand one another. . . .

Yet this internal conflict went on in an undefined sphere. Annette had

not yet had the occasion to put her contrary passions to the test. Their

opposition was still a mental game that was ardent and sufficiently

stirring, but devoid of risks; she did not have to decide; she could

permit herself the luxury of mentally trying one solution or another.

It was a subject of laughing discussions with Sylvie, one of those heart

problems that delight the heart of youth during periods of idleness and

waiting, until the time comes when reality brusquely decides for you,

without bothering about your elegant arrangements. Sylvie perfectly

understood Annette's double need; but, so far as she was concerned, she

could see no contradiction in it; one only had to do as she did: love

when it pleased you, be free when it pleased you. . . .

But Annette shook her head.

"No!"

"Why not?"

She refused to explain.

And Sylvie asked mockingly:

"You think it's good enough for me?"

And Annette exclaimed:

"No, darling. You know perfectly well that I love you, as you are."

But Sylvie was not far wrong. Through affection, Annette (while she

sighed to herself) refused to judge Sylvie's free loves. But for herself

she rejected the thought of them. It was not merely the puritanism

inherited from her mother that would have considered them dishonorable.

It was her "entire" nature, it was the very plenitude of her Desire that

refused to parcel itself into small bits. Despite the obscure appeal of

a powerful sexual life, it would have been impossible for her, at this

moment of her life, to receive without revolt the idea of a love in

which the whole being, senses, heart and thought, self-respect, respect

for the other person, and the religious ardor of the impassioned soul,

did not all equally have their places at the feast. To give her

body and withhold her mind,--no, there could be no question of

that. . . . It would be treachery! . . . Then there remained only one

solution,--marriage, monogamous love? Was that a possible dream, for an

Annette?

Possible or not, it cost nothing to dream it, in advance. She did not

deprive herself of it. She had arrived at the edge of the wood of

adolescence, at that beautiful, final instant when, still savoring the

shadow and the shelter of dreams, one sees opening before one, on the

plain, long white roads in the sunlight. On which shall we imprint out

steps? There is no haste to choose. The mind laughingly delays, and it

chooses them all. A happy young girl, without material cares, radiating

love, her arms full of hope, sees offered to her heart the possibility

of twenty different lives; and, even before asking herself, "Which do I

prefer?" she takes up the whole sheaf, to breathe their sweetness. In

imagination Annette tasted, one by one, the future shared with this and

that, and then with another, mate, dropping the bitten fruit, nibbling

at another, then returning to the first, trying a third, without

deciding on any one. Age of uncertainty, at first happy and exalted, but

soon to know weariness, crushing depression, and sometimes even

despairing doubt.

So Annette dreamed of her life,--of her lives to come. To Sylvie alone

she confided her uncertain waiting. And Sylvie was amused at her

sister's languorous, troubled indecision. She knew little about such

things, for it was her habit (she boasted of it in order to scandalize

Annette) to decide before choosing. To decide immediately. Afterwards,

there was time to make one's choice. . . .

"And at least," she said with her swaggering air, "one knows whereof one

speaks!"

V

In the society in which she moved, Annette was extremely successful. She

was much sought after by the majority of the young men. The young girls,

many of whom were prettier than she, did not take very kindly to this.

They had the more reason to be galled because Annette did not seem to

make any great effort to please. Distrait and a little distant, she did

nothing to pique the interest or flatter the vanity of the men who

sought her out. Calmly installed in a corner of the drawing-room, she

let them come to her, without appearing to note their presence, listened

smilingly (they were never sure that she had heard) and, when she

answered, she uttered only pleasant commonplaces. However, they all

came, and tried to charm her: the worldly, the brilliant, and the

respectable young men.

The jealous ones liked to believe that Annette was playing a deep game,

that her indifference was only the ruse of a practised coquette; they

remarked that for some time now Annette's rather cold correctness of

dress had given place to elegant toilettes, in which the fantastic note,

they said, was skilfully calculated to relieve the monotony of her

sleepy homeliness. Malicious tongues added that it was her fortune more

than her face that was courted. But, as regards the toilettes, their

charming artifice should not be attributed to Annette: Sylvie's taste

and wit were solely responsible. And, no doubt, she was a "good catch,"

but if her little court took cognizance of the fact, as it surely did,

it was only the nuance of respect which marked their attentions that

might be attributed to this consideration. Had she been less well

provided by fortune, they would have pursued her no less but more

boldly.

The allurement was deeper. Annette, without being a coquette, was well

enough served by her instincts. Rich and strong, there was no need of

anyone telling them what had to be done; their action was sure, for the

will had no part in it. While Annette, smiling indolently as though

submerged in her inner life, was allowing herself to be carried on the

pleasant tide of a vague revery, on a voluptuous wave, that did not

prevent her hearing and seeing,--her body was speaking for her: a

powerful attraction was emanating from her eyes and mouth and strong,

young limbs, from the youth of her being, charged with love like a

flowering glycine. The charm was so strong that no one seeing her (at

least, no one but a woman) could dream that she was homely. And if she

spoke little, only a few casual words are needed in an empty

conversation to evoke unusual mental horizons. Then too, she offered

herself no less to the desires of those who sought the soul, than to the

covetousness of those who had recognized in this dormant body (sleeping

water) a wealth of pleasure unknown to itself.

She did not seem to see; but she saw perfectly well. It is a feminine

gift. In Annette it was complemented by a vigorous intuition which often

goes with strong vitality, and which, without words or gestures,

immediately penetrates the speech of being to being. When she seemed

distrait, it meant that she was listening to this language. Dark forest

of hearts! . . . They were--they and she--on the hunt. Each sought his

track. Having drifted for a time from one to another, Annette chose her

own.

The young men among whom her choice lay belonged to that rich,

intelligent, active bourgeoisie, advanced in ideas (at least they

thought them advanced), of which Raoul Rivière had been a member. It

was shortly after the Dreyfus Affair, which had brought together men

belonging to different orders of thought, who yet found themselves

united by a common instinct of social justice. This instinct, as later

became apparent, was not very enduring. So far as it was concerned,

social justice was limited to a single injustice. One example among

thousands was Rivière himself, who had lost no sleep over the

iniquities of the world, who had even been capable of concluding with no

pangs of conscience some profitable business with the Sultan, when His

Highness was coolly engineering, amid the silence of a complaisant

Europe, the first Armenian massacre,--yet who, quite sincerely, had been

completely bowled over by the famous Affair. One cannot ask too much of

men! When they have fought for justice, once in their lives, they are

winded. They have been just on at least one occasion; one must be

grateful for that. They are grateful themselves. Rivière's society, the

families whose sons were now Annette's suitors, had no doubt concerning

the merit they had acquired in the championship of Right, nor concerning

the inutility of refreshing this merit by new efforts. They remained,

once for all, the crew of Progress, with folded arms.

With minds sufficiently at peace, besides, as regarded the international

landscape, in this fleeting hour when civic conflicts had nearly

extinguished national hatreds--save for the old ember of anglophobia,

still kept smoking by the Boer war,--possessed of a diluted and not at

all militaristic patriotism,--given to tolerance and good humor, because

they were well off, belonging to the victorious party,--they gave the

impression of an easy-going society, broad in its morality, vaguely

humanitarian, more certainly utilitarian and sceptical, with no very

great principles and no very great prejudices. . . . (They need not have

prided themselves on that! . . .) They counted in their ranks a number

of liberal Catholics, not a few Protestants, a greater number of Jews,

and a quantity of solid middle-class Frenchmen who were indifferent to

all religions, having found a substitute in a political doctrine that

bore various labels, but did not stray very far from the republicanism

which, having endured for thirty years, was beginning to be a form, the

most practical form, of conservatism. Socialism, too, was represented;

but by the rich and intellectual young bourgeois that had been won over

by the golden tongue and example of Jaurès. He was still on his

honeymoon with the Republic.

Annette was never seriously interested in politics. Her active inner

life left her no time for it. But, like the others, she had passed

through her hours of exaltation during the Affair. Her love for her

father modeled her in the image of his feelings. She was predisposed, by

the fire in her heart and by the instinct of liberty that she carried in

her blood, to find herself always on the side of the oppressed. So she

had known moments of passionate emotion when Zola and Picquart faced the

great Beast--unchained public opinion; and it is not impossible that,

like more than one young girl, when she passed by the Cherche-Midi

prison, her heart beat for the man who was shut within. But there was

little reason in these feelings, and Annette had not been able to bring

herself to a critical examination of the Affair. Politics repelled her;

when she had attempted to study them at close range, she had immediately

been turned aside by a mixture of boredom and repugnance which she did

not seek to analyse. Her viewpoint was too honest not to have glimpsed

the amount of pettiness and malpractise that was shared almost equally

by both sides. Less sincere than her eyes, her heart wished to continue

to believe that the party which upheld ideas of justice must be composed

of the justest men. And she reproached herself for what she called her

laziness in not becoming better acquainted with their activities. That

is why she made herself maintain an attitude of sympathetic waiting

towards them,--as when hearing the execution of a page of new music that

is guaranteed by an accepted name, a respectful listener, who does not

understand it, gives credit to beauties that he will discover later,

perhaps. . . .

Annette, being loyal, believed in the virtue of labels, ignorant of the

fact that the fraud is nowhere more current than in the commerce of

ideas. She still attributed some reality to the fabricated _isms_, whose

stamp distinguishes the various political faiths; and she was attracted

by those proclaimed by the advanced parties. A secret illusion made her

hope that it was on this side that she had the best chance of meeting

her mate. Accustomed to the open air, she went in the direction of those

who sought it, like herself, outside the old prejudices, ancient

follies, and suffocation of the house of the past. She spoke no evil of

the old dwelling. It had sheltered the lives and dreams of generations.

But the air was vitiated. Remain there who would! One must breathe. And

her eyes sought the friend who would help her construct her own house,

sanely and clear-sightedly.

In the drawing-rooms that she frequented there was no lack of young men

quite capable, it seemed, of understanding and aiding her. With or

without labels, many had daring minds. But an evil fate willed that

their daring should not be directed towards the same horizons as hers.

In the words of the philosopher, the _elan vital_ is limited. It never

exercises itself, simultaneously, in all directions. Infinitely rare are

the spirits that throw their light all around them as they walk. The

majority of those who have succeeded in lighting their lanterns (and

they are not numerous!) focus their searchlights straight ahead, upon

one point, a single point; and around them they do not see a speck. One

may even say that an advance in one direction is almost always paid for

by a retreat in another. Many a one who is a revolutionary in politics

is an imitative conservative in art. And if he is deprived of a handful

of his prejudices (those that he values least) he will only clasp the

others more avariciously to his breast.

Nowhere is the unevenness of this jolting march more clearly visible

than in the moral evolution of the two sexes. The woman who forces

herself to break with the errors of the past and who enters upon one of

the paths leading to the new society rarely ever encounters the man who

also wishes to found a new world. He takes another route. And if their

climbing paths must finally, perhaps, come together further up the

slope, for the moment they turn their backs upon each other. This

divergence of aims was particularly striking in France at this period,

when the feminine mind, so much longer held back, had been making, for

some years, a sudden advance, of which the men of that day took no

account. The women themselves did not always measure it accurately,

until there came the day when the shock of personal experience revealed

to them the wall that separated them from their mates. The shock was

rude. Annette, to her own cost, had to discover this unhappy

misunderstanding.

VI

From among the drifting souls that swarmed about her, Annette's eyes,

her distrait eyes that unsuspectedly surveyed them all, had finally made

their choice. But they had not admitted it. As long as possible she

tried to preserve the illusion of continued hesitation. When one no

longer needs to make a decision, then it is sweet to murmur to oneself,

"I am not bound as yet," and to leave the doors of hope wide open for

the last time.

There were two in particular between whom she liked to leave her future

in the balance, although she knew perfectly well which one she had

chosen; two young men between twenty-eight and thirty: Marcel Franck and

Roger Brissot. Both belonged to the comfortably situated middle class,

and were distinguished in manner, pleasant and intelligent, but

possessed of minds and characters of different orders.

Marcel Franck, of a half-Jewish family, was one of those charming types

that are sometimes produced by the mixed marriage of well chosen

individuals of two races. Of medium height, slim, graceful and elegant,

he had blue eyes set in a dead white face, a slightly curved nose, a

small fair beard, and an elongated, somewhat horsey profile that

recalled Alfred de Musset. His glance was intelligent and caressing, by

turns coaxing and impudent. His father, a rich cloth merchant, cautious

in business and strong in his passions, who had a taste for the new art,

patronized the young reviews, bought Van Goghs and Rousseaus, had

married a beautiful Toulousaine, who had won the second prize in comedy

at the Conservatory, and who for a time had been the rage at Antoine's

and Porel's. This lady, first taken by assault, and thereafter in lawful

wedlock, by the vigorous Jonas Franck, had abandoned the stage in the

midst of her success, to maintain intelligently, along with her

husband's affairs, a literary salon much frequented by artists. This

most united household, neither member of which, by tacit accord, looked

too closely into the other's conduct, and each of whom knew how to

handle gossip, had brought up a single son in an atmosphere of tolerant

and sharpened intelligence. At home Marcel Franck had learned that there

is a harmony of work and pleasure, and that the art of life depends upon

their wise union. He cultivated this art no less than the others, in

which he had become a discerning connoisseur. Attracted to the national

museums he had made a precocious reputation as a writer on art. Quite as

well as pictures, he knew how to observe living figures with his idle,

penetrating, insolent, indulgent glance. And among the young men who

were courting Annette, it was he who read her best. She was quite aware

of it. Sometimes as she was emerging from one of those absent-minded

reveries, during a conversation in which she was following every other

thought but the one she was uttering, she would meet his curious eyes

that seemed to say to her:

"Annette, I see you naked."

And the most astonishing thing was that she, the modest Annette, was not

embarrassed by this. She felt like replying:

"And how do you find me, that way?"

They exchanged an understanding smile. If he saw her unveiled, it was of

slight importance; she knew that she would never be his. Marcel read

this certainty in her. He was not troubled by it. He was thinking:

"We shall see about that!"

For he knew _the other_.

_The other_, Roger Brissot, had been a college chum of his. Franck

perfectly understood that Annette preferred him. . . . To begin with, at

least . . . ("Afterward? . . . That is another affair! . . .") Brissot

was a handsome fellow, with a fine open countenance, a frank expression,

gay brown eyes, regular features that were rather strong, a full face,

sound teeth,--clean-shaven, with a youthful abundance of black hair

combed back from an intelligent brow and parted at the side. Tall,

broad-chested, long of leg, and with well-muscled arms, his movements

were easy and his actions lively. He spoke well, very well, in a warm

musical voice, a little low and resonant, that people liked,--that he

liked. With his quick, ready, glittering intelligence, he rivaled Franck

in his studies, and was no less fond of athletics. In Burgundy, where

his family's property--woods and vineyards--adjoined the Rivière's

country place, he was an intrepid walker, hunter, and horseman. In the

old days Annette had met him more than once on his walks. But at that

time she had given scant thought to a companion, she liked to go her own

way; and Roger too, having slipped away from Paris for these months in

the open air, played the young Hippolyte, affecting to prefer his horse

and his dog to a girl. In passing, they had exchanged no more than bows

and glances. But those had not been entirely lost. Agreeable images

remained, and the vague attraction of two beings physically well suited.

The idea had occurred to the Brissot family. No less than their persons,

their fortunes seemed made for union. However, so long as Raoul Rivière

lived, the neighborly relations had remained polite enough, but rather

cold and distant. By a curious freak, Rivière, who would have yielded

to no man as a free thinker, had as an architect numbered his clients,

until the Dreyfus Affair, almost exclusively in the aristocracy and the

reactionary camp; and as he was too clever not to give them lip service,

and even to go to mass when it was useful that he should be noticed, he

passed for a reactionary and even a clerical (which made him laugh

heartily!) in the eyes of the radical republicans of his province. Now

the Brissots were pillars of radicalism. This family of the

robe--advocates and attorneys--who prided themselves on having been

republicans for more than a century (their republicanism dated, indeed,

from the days of the First Republic, but they forgot to mention that

their ancestor had received the Order of the Lily upon the return of the

Bourbons), believed in the Republic as others believe in God the Father,

and they considered themselves bound by their traditions: _noblesse

oblige_! So the Brissots had felt it was their duty to manifest their

austere censure of Raoul Rivière by holding him at a distance; which

did not bother him at all, as he expected no commissions from them. Came

the famous Dreyfus Affair, in which Rivière, as we have seen, found

himself, without dreaming of such a thing, in the Progressive party. In

a flash, he was whitewashed; a sponge was applied to his past, and

people even discovered in Rivière exalted civic and republican virtues,

which he himself would never have suspected, but from which he would

assuredly have derived excellent profit, had death not come to spoil his

plans.

The Brissots' plans had not suffered in consequence. These great

republicans who, for a century, had known boldly how to harmonize their

principles and their interests, were rich; and, naturally, they dreamed

of being more so. They knew that Rivière had left his daughter a very

tidy fortune. It would be very nice to unite his Burgundy property to

the Brissot possessions, which it would complete so happily. But with

people who had such principles as the Brissots, worldly reasons came

second,--even when it happened that they thought of them first: in a

question of marriage, it was the young girl who must first be taken into

account. The young girl, in this instance, answered all requirements.

Annette satisfied them by what they knew of her, by her serious ways,

and by what they had learned of her devotion to her father. They were

impressed by her intelligence and by her simplicity. Her bearing in

society was perfect. She had composure. Enough wit. Good health.

Doubtless her work at the Sorbonne, her studies and her diplomas, seemed

a little affected to them; but they considered these the pastimes of an

intelligent young girl who was bored, and who would put them aside when

her first child arrived. And the Brissots were not averse to showing

that they liked intelligence, even in a woman,--provided, naturally, it

did not become embarrassing. Annette would not be the first feminine

intellectual in the family, thank Heaven! Madame Brissot, the mother,

and Roger's sister Adèle, enjoyed the reputation, justified in a sense,

of being brainy women, no less than women of sentiment, who were able to

share the mental life as well as the active life of the men of their

household. Annette's intellectuality was at least a guarantee (the great

point!) that in her case there was no danger of clericalism. For the

rest, she would find in her new family affectionate guidance that would

know how to guard her from any extravagances. It would not be difficult

for the dear child to become part of the family whose name she was to

take: she had no parents, and she would be only too glad to put herself

under the aegis of a second mother and a slightly older sister, who

would ask merely to guide her. For the Brissot ladies, who were keen

observers, judged Annette to be really congenial, very distinguished,

sweet, polished, reserved, timid (from their point of view this was not

a fault) and a little cold (this was almost a virtue).

It was then with the support of his whole family, previously consulted,

that Roger paid his court. He hid nothing from them, sure that he would

always meet with approval. This big fellow was idolized by his family,

and he repaid them in full measure. The Brissots practiced mutual

admiration. There was a hierarchy, but each had his worth. It had to be

recognized that they were all fairly evenly endowed on the mental side,

as well as with the advantages of body and of fortune. They recognized

the fact, but gracefully, like well-bred people. They never showed it to

those whom they considered plainly their inferiors. But the truth could

not be doubted, from the sweet certainty written on their features. Of

all their certainties, Roger was the most certain. He was their dearest

pride, and perhaps the best justified. Never had the Brissot tree borne

more thriving fruit. Roger had the best gifts of his race, and if he had

its faults as well, they were not startling: his charm and his youth

caused them to be forgotten. He was full of talent, all things were easy

for him, but especially speech. Eloquence was one of the family fiefs.

It already counted one barrister; and from birth all the Brissots had a

love of fine speech. It would have been an injustice to pretend that,

like those talkers of the Midi, they had to talk in order to think; but

they had to talk,--that was incontestable. Their real faculties bloomed

in phrases; silence would have atrophied them. Roger's father, one of

the most illustrious gabblers that ever honored the tribune of the

Chamber, and on whom the voters had played the scurvy trick of not

reelecting him, was suffocated by his stifled eloquence; and Roger, then

aged six, used to say to him naïvely when they were alone by the hearth:

"Papa, make me a speech!"

Now he made them on his own account. In a trice his youthful reputation

had been brilliantly established at the legal conferences at the

Palais-Bourbon. Like all the Brissots, he had turned his gifts towards

politics. The meetings in connection with the Dreyfus Affair had

furnished him with an excellent springboard; he bounded into the arena,

delivering speeches in mid-flight. The youthful fire, bravura, and well

chosen, overflowing speech of this handsome young man, won for him the

enthusiastic sympathy of the young feminine Dreyfusistes and many of his

juniors. The Brissots, ever desirous of not allowing themselves to be

outdistanced on the road of Progress, but very careful not to go a step

too far or too early, having carefully surveyed the terrain, spurred

their son, their young pride, along the way of serious socialism. Roger,

his nose to the trail, gave himself to the task. Like the flower of the

youth of his day, he was under the spell of Jaurès, and he tried to

model his orations on the splendid speeches of the great rhetorician,

filled with prophetic visions and illusory mirages. He proclaimed the

necessity of an understanding between the people and the intellectuals.

This furnished him a theme for the most eloquent speeches. Even though

the people--who lacked leisure--did not know much about it, they were

seriously disturbing the leisure of the young bourgeoisie. With personal

subscriptions and the assistance of a small group of friends, Roger

founded a study club, a newspaper, a party. He spent a great deal of

time and a little money on them. The Brissots, who were good reckoners,

also knew how to spend on occasion. They were pleased to see their son

become a leader of the younger generation. They prepared the ground for

the coming elections. Roger was marked for a place in the future

Chamber. Nor was he ignorant of the fact. Accustomed from childhood to

see his family believe in him, he believed in himself, too; and without

precisely knowing what his ideas were, he had an absolute faith in them.

In no way overweening. He was full of himself, but so naturally! He was

successful in everything; he was so accustomed to it that it did not

even occur to him to pride himself on the fact; but he would have been

dumbfounded had it been otherwise, his surest dogmas would have received

a serious blow. How likable he was! A naïve, unconscious and shallow

egotist, a good fellow and a handsome fellow, disposed to give but

determined to receive, and unable to conceive that anything could be

refused him, simple, polite, cordial, demanding, waiting for the world

to place itself at his feet. . . . He was really very attractive.

VII

Annette felt the attraction. She judged him accurately enough, but this

only made her love him the more. She smiled at his foibles, which were

infinitely dear to her. These made him seem to her less the man, and

more the child; and her heart rejoiced that he was one as well as the

other. One of Roger's charms was that he hid nothing; he showed his

entire self. His innocent satisfaction with himself gave him a perfect

naturalness.

He was all the more confiding because he was enamoured of Annette.

Ardently and without reservations. He loved nothing by halves. But he

never saw more than half of anything.

His fire for her was kindled one evening when he had been very eloquent

in some drawing-room. Annette had said nothing, but she had listened

marvelously. (At least he thought so.) Her intelligent eyes returned his

own thoughts to him, clearer and more winged. Her smile gave him joy in

what he had said so well, and it was all the sweeter because he felt

that it was shared. . . . How beautiful she was, that listening girl!

What an admirable mind, what an exceptional soul, could be discerned in

those attentive, speaking eyes, in that all-understanding smile! . . .

Although he was the only one to speak, he had the illusion that he was

talking with her. In any case, he no longer spoke save for her; and he

felt himself being lifted above himself by this inward dialogue, by the

mysterious exchange of these mute responses. . . .

As a matter of fact, Annette was scarcely listening. Sufficiently

intelligent to seize promptly the general drift of Roger's thought, she

followed absentmindedly, as was her habit, the fine balanced phrases.

But she profited by his absorption in his eloquence to study him

thoroughly: eyes, mouth and hands, the way he moved his chin when he

talked, his fine nostrils resembling those of a neighing colt, his habit

of prettily rolling certain letters, and all that this expressed, both

inside and out. . . . She could see into him. She perceived his desire

to be admired, she saw the pleasure that he took in pleasing, and she

judged him handsome, intelligent, eloquent, amazing. And it did not

occur to her at all (yes! a little, a very little . . .) to find him

comical. On the contrary, she found him very touching. . . .

. . . "Yes, my dear, you are handsome, you are charming, intelligent,

eloquent, amazing. . . . You want a little smile? . . . There, my dear,

I give you two . . . with my very sweetest eyes. . . . Are you

satisfied? . . ."

In her heart she laughed, when she saw him, all happiness and pride,

redouble his warbling like a spring bird.

Homage was sweet to him; he drank it undiluted, without a drop of irony;

he wanted more, he was never wearied. And, intoxicated by his own song,

he could no longer distinguish it from the person who admired it. She

seemed to him the incarnation of all that was beautiful, pure and genial

in it. He adored her.

She, into whose heart love had glided at first sight,--when she felt

herself bathed in this adoration, no longer offered the least

resistance. Even the gentle irony that, like a gorget, protected the

beatings of her heart, fell from her; and she offered her bare breast to

love. She was so hungry for affection! What happiness to slake her

thirst (she anticipated the joy) at the lips of this man who charmed

her! How he offered them to her, anticipating her desire, with such a

burst of ardor, permeating her with a passionate gratitude. . . .

The fire was well ablaze. Each burned with the other's desire, and fed

upon his own. And the more the one was exalted, the more he expected of

the other; and the more the other strove to surpass that expectation. It

was very tiring, but they had an immense youthful energy to spend.

For the moment, Annette's energy was reduced to a passive rôle. None

other was left her. Roger invaded her. She was submerged. He scarcely

gave her time to breathe. His expansive, overflowing nature felt the

need of telling all, of confiding all: future, past and present. And it

was long! But Roger held his ground! He also wanted to know all, to have

all. He forcibly penetrated Annette's secrets. Annette was hard pressed

to defend her last retreats. A little scandalized, happy and amused, she

had a faint desire to fly into a passion at this invasion; but the

invader was so adorable! . . . She abandoned herself, voluptuously; she

experienced, in yielding to this mental rape,--("_Et cognovit eam_. . . ."

He scarcely knew her! . . .)--secret feelings of revolt and

pleasure. . . .

It was not over-prudent, this complete surrender of self. There was the

risk that certain confidences, made in hours of abandon, might later be

employed as weapons by the confidant. But this was the very least of

Annette's and Roger's cares. At this hour of love, nothing in the

beloved could displease, nothing could astonish. All that the loved one

confided, far from surprising the lover, seemed a response to his own

unuttered vows. Roger no longer guarded--guarded less than ever--the

indiscreet confessions that Annette's indulgent ear was none the less

registering very faithfully, unknown to him.

What pleasure they took in sharing the past and the present; the present

and the past were linked together in the dream of the future, of _their_

future: for although Annette had said nothing, promised nothing, her

acceptance was so taken for granted, so anticipated, and so demanded,

that Annette herself ended by believing she had given it. Happily, with

eyes half closed, she listened to Roger set forth with tireless

enthusiasm the magnificent life of thought and action that was reserved

for him (for he was one of those who always enjoy to-morrow more than

to-day). . . . For whom? For him? For Roger. And for her too, of course,

since she was a part of Roger. She was not shocked by this absorption;

she was too busy seeing, hearing, drinking in, this marvellous Roger. He

talked a great deal of socialism, of justice, of love, of emancipated

humanity. He was really splendid. In words, his generosity knew no

bounds. Annette was stirred. It was intoxicating to think that she might

be associated with this work of powerful benevolence. Roger never asked

her what she thought about it. It was understood that she thought as he

did. She could not think otherwise. He spoke for her. He spoke for both

of them, because he was the better speaker. He said:

"We shall do. . . . We shall have. . . ."

And she did not protest. On the contrary she was grateful. All this was

so big, so vague, so disinterested, that she had no reason to be

disturbed by it. Roger was all light and liberty. . . . A little diffuse

perhaps. Annette, maybe, would have liked a little more precision. But

that would come later; one couldn't say everything at once. Let us make

the pleasure last! . . . To-day we have only to enjoy these limitless

horizons.

She took particular joy in his charming countenance, in the ardent

attraction of their two loving bodies, through which electric waves

suddenly passed, in the tide of physical vigor that filled them

both,--both rich in the endowment of a youth that was chaste, healthy,

robust, and aflame.

Never was Roger's eloquence more certain than when it halted and, in the

last vibrations of the words that had opened exalted vistas to them,

their eyes met: the sudden contact was like a physical embrace. Then

such desire flamed in them that their breathing stopped. Roger thought

no more of dazzling and talking. Annette no longer thought of the future

of humanity, nor even of her own. They forgot everything, everything

about them: the drawing-room, the public. In these instants they became

but a single being, a wax in the flame. Nothing more than the Desire of

nature,--unique, devouring, and pure like fire. Then Annette, with

distraught eyes and flaming cheeks, would wrench herself out of the

vertigo, with the trembling and intoxicating certainty that some day she

would succumb. . . .

VIII

Their love was no longer a secret to anyone. They were both incapable of

veiling it. Annette held her tongue in vain; her eyes spoke for her.

Their mute acquiescence was so eloquent that in the eyes of the world,

as in Roger's, she appeared tacitly engaged.

The Brissot family alone did not lose sight of the fact that she was

not. To Roger's declarations, Annette doubtless lent herself with an

evident pleasure. But she avoided answering; she was clever enough to

turn the conversation to some great subject, on which the innocent

Roger, leaving the prey for the shadow, launched himself endlessly, only

too happy to talk. And, once again, Annette had not spoken. Having

observed this manœuver several times, the Brissots, prudent folk that

they were, decided to take a hand. It was not that they could harbor a

doubt regarding Annette's decision and the happiness that so brilliant a

match would bring her; but, after all, one must always reckon with the

strange caprices of a young girl! They knew life. They knew its

pitfalls. They were crafty French provincials. When the decision that

they awaited was delayed on the way, prudence counseled them to go in

search of it. The two Brissot ladies took the road.