Chapter V: Part TWO: I (1)

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. . . .