Chapter VII: Part TWO: I (3)

"Will power in such matters! . . ." exclaimed Marcel, with his shrewd smile. ". . . It is as though one decreed that a red fire should be a green fire. Love is a lighthouse of changing fires."

But Annette obstinately said:

"Not for me! . . . I don't want it to be!"

She was perfectly aware, and with the same conviction, of the need of change and of the need of permanence, those two passionate instincts of all vigorous lives. But, turn and turn about, whichever one of these two felt itself threatened, revolted.

Marcel, being well acquainted with the proud and obstinate girl, bowed politely.

Annette, who judged herself as accurately as he judged her, said a little shamefacedly:

"After all, I shouldn't like . . ."

And, with this concession made to the spirit of truth, she continued more firmly, now feeling herself to be on ground of which she was sure:

"But I should like, in exchange for the gift of mutual affection, that each should preserve the right to live according to his own soul, to walk in his own way, to seek his own truth, to secure, if need be, his own field of activity,--to carry out, in a word, the proper law of his own spiritual life, and not sacrifice himself to the law of another, even the dearest person of all: for no one has the right to immolate another's soul, or his own for the sake of another. It is a crime."

"That's all very fine, my dear friend," said Marcel, "but for me, you know, the soul is a little beyond my depth. Perhaps it may mean more to Roger. But I am afraid that in that case he will not understand it in the same fashion. I can't quite see the Brissots, in their family circle, conceiving the possibility of any spiritual law save that of the political and private fortunes of the Brissots."

"By the way," said Annette, smiling, "to-morrow I'm going to their place in Burgundy to spend two or three weeks."

"Well," remarked Marcel, "that will be a case of confronting their idealism with your own. For they are great idealists, they too! After all, perhaps I am mistaken. At bottom you are admirably made to get along together."

"Don't dare me!" said Annette. "Perhaps I shall come back an accomplished Brissot."

"Dear me! That wouldn't be so cheerful! . . . No, no, I beg of you! . . . Brissot, or not Brissot, preserve us Annette!"

"Alas! I should like to lose her, but I can't, I'm afraid," Annette replied.

He said good-bye, kissing her hand.

"It's a pity, all the same! . . ."

He left. Annette, too, told herself that it was a pity, but not in the same sense that Marcel meant. It was in vain that he saw her clearly; he understood her no more than did Roger, who did not see her at all. To understand her required more "religious" souls--more religiously free--than those of almost all these young Frenchmen. Those who are religious, are so in the tradition of Catholicism, which means obedience and the renunciation of intellectual liberty (especially in the case of a woman). And those whose minds are free rarely suspect the profound needs of the soul.

XI

Roger was waiting with the carriage at the little Burgundy station, where Annette arrived the following day. The instant she saw him, her cares took flight. Roger was so happy! And she was no less so. She was grateful to the Brissot ladies for having found weak excuses for not coming to meet her.

It was a clear spring evening. The golden horizon encircled the gentle undulations of pale, new grass and red, plowed land. Larks were chirping. The two-wheeled cart flew over the white road, which rang under the hoofs of the spirited little horse, and the sharp air whipped Annette's red cheeks. She sat pressed against her young companion, who, even while he drove, laughed and talked with her, and, suddenly bending over her lips, took and gave a kiss in mid-flight. She did not resist. She loved him, she loved him! But this did not prevent her realizing that she would soon begin to judge him again, to judge herself. It is one thing to judge, and another to love. She loved him as she loved this air, this sky, this breath from the fields, like a bit of spring. To-morrow was time enough to clarify her thoughts! To-day she gave herself a holiday. Let us enjoy this delicious hour! It will not come again. . . . It seemed to her that she was flying above the earth, with her beloved.

They arrived only too soon, although they went slowly at the last turning, when they were ascending the poplar-lined road, and even though, when they stopped to rest the horse beneath the shadow of the high hedges that masked the front of the château, they embraced for a long time without speaking.

The Brissots put their best foot forward. They knew how to find delicate words by which tactfully to evoke the memory of her father. That first evening in the family circle, Annette let herself be mothered, grateful and touched; she had so long been deprived of the affectionate warmth of a home! She wanted to delude herself. Everyone helped her to do this. Her resistance slumbered. . . .

But when she awoke in the middle of the night, and listened to the gnawing of a mouse in the silence of the old house, the idea of a mouse-trap came into her mind; and she said to herself:

"I am caught. . . ."

She felt a pang, she tried to reason with herself.

"No, no, I don't want to be; I am not . . ."

A nervous sweat moistened her shoulders. She said:

"To-morrow I shall talk to Roger seriously. He must know what I am like. We must see each other honestly if we are going to live together. . . ."

But when the next day came, she was so glad to see Roger again, to let herself be enveloped in his warm affection, to breathe with him the intoxicating sweetness of the spring countryside, to dream of happiness--(impossible perhaps, but who knows, who knows? . . . perhaps it is close . . . one need only stretch out a hand . . .)--that she put off explanations until the next day. . . . And then, to the next. . . . And then, to the day after. . . .

And each night she was seized anew by piercing pangs, by heart burnings. . . .

"I must. . . . I must speak. . . . It has to be done for Rogers sake. Every day he is more enchained, and enchains me more. I have no right to keep silent. It is deceiving him. . . ."

Heavens, heavens! How weak she was!

. . . Yet she was not so, in ordinary life. But the breath of love is like those hot winds whose burning languor breaks your joints and makes your heart faint. An extreme lassitude of obscure pleasure. A fear of stirring. A fear of thinking. . . . The soul, cowering in its dream, fears awakening. Annette knew perfectly well that at her first gesture the dream would be shattered. . . .

But even if we do not move, time moves for us; and the flight of days is sufficient to carry away the illusion that we would preserve. In vain one watches oneself; two persons cannot live together from morn till evening without, at the end of a short time, showing themselves as they really are.

The Brissot family revealed its true colors. The smile was façade. Annette had become part of the household. She saw busy, morose, middle-class people, who administered their wealth with a bitter pleasure. There was no question here of socialism. Of immortal principles, they invoked only the Declaration of the Landlord's Rights. It was not good to attack this. Their watchman was ceaselessly occupied in setting up barriers against trespassing. They personally exercised a strict surveillance that was to them a kind of sorry delectation. They seemed to be carrying on a guerrilla warfare with the servants, their farmers, the grape gatherers, and with all their neighbors. The spirit of sharp practice, that was native to the family and to the province, flourished here. When father Brissot succeeded in trapping someone he had his eye out for, he laughed heartily. But he did not laugh last: his adversary was made of the same Burgundian clay, not to be caught napping; the next day he retaliated by a trick of his own. And then it began all over again. . . .

Of course, Annette was not invited to participate in these ructions; the Brissots talked about them among themselves, in the drawing-room or at table, when Roger and Annette seemed occupied with each other. But Annette's keen attention followed everything that was said around her. Besides, Roger would interrupt the most loving dialogue to take part in the discussion that passionately interested them all. Then they grew heated, they all talked at once, they forgot Annette. Or they called upon her to witness facts of which she was ignorant.--Until finally, Madame Brissot, recalling the listener's presence, cut short the colloquy, and, turning her melting smile upon Annette, shifted the conversation into more flowery paths. Then, with no transition, they returned to affable good fellowship. There was in the general tone of the conversation a curious alloy of prudery and frankness,--just as liberality and stinginess were mingled in the château life. Lively Monsieur Brissot made puns. Mademoiselle Brissot talked poetry, and on this subject everyone had his say. They all pretended to a knowledge of it. Their taste dated back some twenty years. On everything to do with art, they had fixed opinions. They relied on the tried and true opinions of their "friend so and so" who belonged to the Institute and was much decorated. No more timid minds, in the face of authority, could be imagined than these big bourgeois who thought that they were as advanced in art as in politics, and who were advanced in neither one nor the other; for in both they never, wittingly, arrived on the field until after the battle had been won.

Annette felt herself far away from them. She looked, listened, and asked herself:

"What have I to do with these people?"

The idea that one or another of them might presume to act as her guardian did not even repel her any more, it made her want to laugh. She asked herself what Sylvie would have thought, had she been blessed with a family of this sort. What shouts, what bursts of laughter! . . .

Annette answered them sometimes, when she was all alone in the garden. And it happened that Roger heard her one day, and asked in astonishment:

"What in the world is making you laugh?"

To which she replied:

"Nothing, dear. I don't know. Nonsense. . . ."

And she tried to reassume her soberest expression. But it was stronger than she: she began laughing harder than ever, even in front of the Brissot ladies. She begged pardon, and the Mesdames Brissot, indulgent and a little vexed, said:

"The child! She has to get rid of her laughter!"

But she was not always laughing. Shadows passed abruptly over her good humor. After hours of radiant tenderness and confidence with Roger, she experienced, without transition, and for no cause, attacks of melancholy, doubt, and anxiety. The instability from which her thoughts had suffered since last autumn, far from being calmed, was accentuated during these months of requited love. There came, in flurries, an invasion of strangely unharmonious instincts: irritability, grotesque humor, malignant irony, umbrageous pride, inexplicable fits of spite. Annette found it hard to put a damper on them. And the result was not so splendid, for when she did she seemed plunged in a hostile and disquieting taciturnity. As her intelligence remained clear, she was astonished at these sudden changes, and reproached herself for them. That didn't improve matters. But the realization of her own imperfections gave her a certain indulgence--more wished for than sincere--towards those of these "clowns." . . . (Again! . . . Impertinent girl! . . . Forgive me! I won't do it again! . . .) Since they were Roger's relations, she ought to accept them, if she accepted Roger. The rest, Good Heavens, the rest is of no great importance when there are two to defend each other.

Only, were there two? Would Roger defend her? And, even before considering whether she would accept Roger, would Roger accept her sincerely and with a generous heart when he finally saw what she was like? For up to date he had seen only her mouth and eyes. As regarded what she thought and wished--the true Annette--it did not seem that he had tried very hard to become acquainted with her; he found it more comfortable to invent her. However, Annette cradled herself in the hope that, with the aid of love, it would not be impossible, after bravely looking into each other's hearts, for them to say to each other: "I take you, I take you as you are. I take you with your faults, your demons, with your little demands, with your law of life. You are what you are. As you are, I love you."

She knew that, for her part, she was capable of this act of love. During the last days she had observed Roger at length, with her bright eyes in which, unknown to him, everything was mirrored. Roger, no long unsure of himself, had frequently shown himself to be more of a Brissot than she would have wished; he was obsessed by the interests and the quarrels of his tribe, and even brought to them the same tricky spirit. Certain little hard, crafty sides of him did not please her. But she did not wish to judge them severely, as she would have done in the case of others. To her these traits seemed imitative. In many things, Roger appeared to her still an uncertain child, under the thumb of his family, whom he religiously copied, with marked timidity of spirit, despite all his big words. Although she began to perceive a lack of consistency in his projects for social reform, and although she was no longer completely duped by his eloquent idealism, she bore him no grudge for that, for she knew that he was not trying to deceive her, and that he was his own first dupe; she was even ready, with a tender irony, to remove from his path all that might disturb the illusion by which he had to live. And even his naïve egotism, which he sometimes displayed in a cumbersome fashion, did not repel her; it seemed to her devoid of evil intention. At bottom, all his faults were faults of weakness. And the amusing thing was that he posed as strength itself. . . . The man of bronze. . . . _Æs triplex_. . . . Poor Roger! . . . It was almost touching. Annette laughed very softly, but she reserved for him a wealth of indulgence. She loved him dearly. Despite everything, she saw him as good, generous and ardent. She was like a mother who treats with a gentle hand the little, and to her eyes not very serious, vices of a dear child: she does not hold him responsible for them, she is only the more disposed to fuss over him and coddle him. Ah! and then Annette had for Roger not merely the indulgent eyes of a mother! She had the very partial eyes of a lover. The body was speaking; and its voice was very strong. The voice of reason could say what it pleased: there was a way of hearing that made these very faults set fire to desire. Annette saw everything clearly. But just as one may bend one's head and squint one's eyes in order to harmonize the planes of a landscape, so Annette, when she looked at Roger's unpleasant traits, viewed them from an angle that softened them. It would have not been much beyond her to love even deformities: for one gives more of oneself when one loves the faults of one's beloved; in loving what is fine, one does not give, one takes. Annette thought:

"I am glad that you are imperfect. If you knew what I see, it would annoy you. Forgive me! I have seen nothing. . . . But I, I am not like you; I want you to see me as imperfect! I am what I am, and I hold to it; my imperfections are myself, more than the rest. If you take me, you take them. Do you take them? . . . But you don't wish to know them. When will you finally take the trouble to really look at me?"

XII

Roger was in no hurry. After a few futile attempts to lead him on to this dangerous ground from which he seemed to flee, Annette, interrupting their conversation in the midst of a walk, stopped, took both his hands in hers, and said:

"Roger, we must have a talk."

"Talk!" he exclaimed, laughing. "But it doesn't seem to me that we deprive ourselves of that!"

"No," she said, "I don't mean talking pretty things; I mean a serious talk."

Immediately his expression grew a little frightened.

"Don't be afraid," she said, "it's about myself that I want to talk to you."

"About you?" he said, once more serene. "Then it's bound to be charming."

"Wait! Wait!" she exclaimed. "Perhaps you won't say that when you have heard me."

"What could you tell me now that would surprise me? Haven't we told each other everything, after being together for so many days?"

"So far as I'm concerned, I've scarcely said anything but _Amen_," said Annette, laughing. "You do all the talking."

"Oh! the bad girl!" exclaimed Roger. "Isn't it you that I talk about?"

"Yes, it's about me, _too_. And you even speak for me."

"You think that I talk too much?" asked Roger innocently.

Annette bit her lips.

"No, no, my dear Roger, I love it when you talk. But when you talk about me, I just listen to you; and it is so beautiful, so beautiful that I say, 'So be it!' But it's not true."

"You are the first woman to complain of her picture being beautiful."

"I should prefer it to be me. It's not a beautiful picture that you are going to hang up in your family home, Roger. I am a living woman, who has her desires, her passions, and her thoughts. Are you sure that she can come into your home with all her baggage?"

"I am taking you with my eyes closed."

"I am asking you to open them."

"I see your limpid soul, revealed in your face."

"Poor Roger! Good Roger! . . . You don't want to look."

"I love you. That's enough for me."

"I love you too. And that isn't enough for me."

"It's not enough?" he asked in a tone of consternation.

"No. I have to see."

"What is it you want to see?"

"I want to see _how_ you love me."

"I love you more than everything else in the world."

"Naturally! You couldn't do less. But I am not asking you _how much_, I am asking you _how_ you love me. . . . Yes, I know that you want me; but what is it, precisely, that you want to make of your Annette?"

"Make her half of myself."

"There you are! . . . Now the point is, my friend, that I am not a half. I am a whole Annette."

"That's just a way of speaking. I mean that you are me, and that I am you."

"No, no, don't be me, Roger! Let me be that!"

"When we unite our lives, won't we make them one?"

"That's what worries me. I am afraid I can't quite do that."

"What's troubling you, Annette? What are these ideas? You love me, don't you? You love me? That's the essential thing! Don't bother about the rest. The rest is my business. You'll see, I shall arrange--I, and my family that will be yours--we shall arrange your life so well that you will have nothing to do but let yourself be carried along."

Annette was looking at the ground and tracing letters in the dirt with her toe. She was smiling.

(He didn't understand at all, the dear boy. . . .)

She raised her eyes to Roger, who, with perfect tranquillity, was awaiting her response. She said:

"Roger, look at me. Haven't I good legs?"

"Good and beautiful," said he.

"That!" she said, menacing him with her finger, "that is not the question. . . . Am I not a strong walker?"

"Of course," he said. "And I like you to be."

"Well, then, do you think that I am going to let myself be carried? . . . You are very kind, very kind, and I thank you; but let me walk! I am not one of those who fear the fatigues of the road. To take them away from me is to take away my appetite for life. I rather have the impression that you and your family would like to free me from the trouble of acting and of choosing, would like to arrange everything in advance in prescribed pigeonholes, very comfortably--your life, their life, my life--the whole future. I shouldn't want that. I don't want it. I feel that I am at the beginning. I am seeking. I know that I have need of seeking, of seeking myself."

Roger's air was benevolent and bantering.

"And what can you seek?"

He saw here the crotchets of a young girl. She felt it, and said in a provoked tone:

"Don't make fun of me! . . . I don't amount to much, I don't pretend that I do. But after all I know what I am, and that I have a life . . . a poor little life. . . . It's not so long, a lifetime, and one has it only once. . . . I have the right. . . . No, not the right if you will! that seems egotistical. . . . It is my duty not to lose it, not to throw it away at random. . . ."

Instead of being touched, he assumed a hurt air.

"You think that you are throwing it away at random? Is your life going to be lost? Won't it have a fine, a very beautiful purpose?"

"Beautiful, no doubt. . . . But what? What do you offer me?"

Once again he ardently described his political career, the future of which he dreamed, his great personal and social ambitions. She listened to him talk, then, gently stopping him in the middle (for of such a subject he was never weary), she said:

"Yes, Roger. Certainly. That is very, very interesting. But to tell you the truth--no, don't be ruffled--I haven't quite as much faith as you in this political cause to which you are consecrating yourself."

"What! you don't believe in it? But you did believe in it when I spoke to you about it those first times that I saw you in Paris. . . ."

"I have changed a little," said she.

"What has changed you? . . . No, no, it's not possible. . . . You will change back again. My generous Annette couldn't be disinterested in the cause of the people, in the reform of society!"

"But I am not disinterested in it," she replied. "What I am disinterested in is the political cause."

"They are the same thing."

"Not entirely."

"The victory of one will be the victory of the other."

"I rather doubt it."

"Yet it is the only way of serving progress and the people."

(Annette thought: "While serving himself." But she reproached herself for it.)

"I see other ways."

"What are they?"

"The oldest is still the best. Like those who followed Christ, to give all, to leave all behind, in order to go to the people."

"What a utopia!"

"Yes, I believe you. You are not a Utopian, Roger. I thought that you were at first; I think so no longer. In politics you have the sense of reality. With your great talent, I am perfectly sure of your future success. If I doubt the cause, I don't doubt you. You will have a splendid career. I can see you already at the head of a party, an applauded orator, winning a majority in Parliament, a minister . . ."

"Stop!" he said. ". . . _Macbeth, you will be King!_ . . ."

"Yes, I am something of a witch . . . for others. But what vexes me is that I am not for myself."

"Yet it's not so difficult. If I become minister, that concerns you too. . . . Now see here, frankly, wouldn't that please you?"

"What? To be a minister? Heavens above! Not in the least! . . . Forgive me, Roger . . . it would make me glad for your sake, of course. And if I were with you, you may be sure that I would play my part to the best of my ability, and I would be happy to help you. . . . But (you wanted me to be frank, didn't you?) I must confess that such a life would not fill my life, not at all."

"Of course, I understand that. The woman best fitted in the world to share a life of political activity--take my admirable mother for example!--couldn't limit herself to that. Her real task is in the home. And her proper vocation is motherhood."

"I know," said Annette. "We shan't argue about that vocation. But . . . (I am afraid of what I am going to say, I am afraid that you won't understand me) . . . I don't know yet what motherhood will bring me. I am very fond of children. I think that I would be very much attached to my own. . . . (You don't like that word? Yes, I seem cold to you. . . .) Perhaps I would be completely wrapped up in them. . . . It is possible. . . . I don't know. . . . But I shouldn't like to say something that I don't feel. And to be perfectly frank, this 'vocation' is not yet entirely awakened in me. While still waiting for life to reveal something of which I am ignorant, it doesn't seem to me that a woman ought, in any case, to bury her whole life in this love of children. . . . (Don't raise your eyebrows! . . .) I am convinced that it is possible to love one's child, loyally perform one's domestic task, and still keep enough of oneself--as one ought to--for the most essential thing."

"The most essential?"

"One's soul."

"I don't understand."

"How can one make one's inner life understood? Words are so uncertain, so obscure, botched! The soul . . . It is ridiculous to speak of the soul! What does it mean? I can't explain what it is. But it is. It is what I am, Roger, the truest and deepest."

"Don't you give me what is truest and deepest?"

"I can't give all," she said.

"Then you don't love me."

"Yes, Roger, I love you. But no one can give all."

"You are not enough in love. When one is in love, one doesn't think of holding back any part of oneself. Love . . . love . . . love . . ."

And he soared off into one of his great speeches. Annette heard him celebrate, in moving terms, the whole gift of self, the joy of sacrificing for the happiness of the beloved. And she thought:

(My dear, why do you say all that? Do you think I don't know it? Do you think that I couldn't sacrifice myself for you, if it were necessary, and find my joy in it? But on one condition: that you don't demand it. . . . Why do you demand it? . . . Why do you seem to expect it as your right? Why haven't you confidence in me, in my love?)

After he had finished, she said:

"That is very beautiful. . . . I wouldn't be capable, you know, of expressing these things as well as you. But perhaps, on occasion, I wouldn't be incapable of feeling them. . . ."

He exclaimed: "Perhaps! On occasion!"

"You find that very little, don't you? It is more than you think. . . . But I don't like to promise more . . . (perhaps it is less) . . . than I can fulfill. I don't know in advance. We must trust each other. We are upright people. We love each other, Roger. We shall do all that we can."

Again he raised his arms.

"All that we can! . . ."

She smiled and continued.

"Do you want to trust me? I need to draw on my credit. I have much to ask. . . ."

He was prudent: "Go ahead!"

"I love you, Roger, but I should like to be sincere. From my childhood I have lived alone a good deal and enjoyed a great deal of freedom. My father left in me a spirit of independence, which I haven't abused, because it seemed quite natural to me, and because it was wholesome. So I have acquired certain habits of mind that I should find difficult, now, to do without. I know that I am rather different from the majority of young girls of my class. Yet I believe that what I feel they feel too; only I dare to say it, and I have a clearer conscience. You ask me to unite my life with yours. It is my wish. For each of us it is our most profound desire to find our beloved mate. And it seems to me that you could be that mate, Roger . . . if . . . if you wished . . ."

"If I wished!" he exclaimed. "That's a good joke! I don't do anything but wish! . . ."

"If you _truly_ wished to be my mate. It is not a joke. Reflect! . . . To unite our lives means to suppress either one or the other. . . . What do you offer me? . . . You aren't aware of it, because the world has long been used to these inequalities. But they are new to me. . . . You do not come to me with only your affection. You come to me with your family, your friends, your clients, and your relatives, with your course mapped out, your career fixed, with your party and its dogmas, your family and its traditions,--with a whole world that is yours, a whole world that is you. And I, who have a world too, who am also a world,--you say to me: 'Abandon your world! Throw it away, and enter into mine!' I am ready to come, Roger, but I must come whole. Do you accept me as I am?"

"I want all," said he. "It was you, just now, who said that you could not give me all."

"You don't understand. I say: 'Do you accept me free? And do you accept all of me?'"

"Free?" responded Roger circumspectly. "Everybody has been free in France since '89. . . ." (Annette smiled: "The old platitude! . . .") "But, after all, we must understand each other. It is certainly evident that from the moment you marry you will not be completely free. By that act you will have contracted obligations."

"I don't like that word very much," said Annette, "but I am not afraid of the thing. I should joyously and freely take my part in the trials and labors of the man I loved, in the duties of our common life. But I won't renounce, on that account, the duties of my own life."

"And what other duties are there? After what you have told me and what I think I know, your life, my dear Annette, your life that until now has been so placid and so calm, does not seem to me to have experienced any very great exigencies? What could it demand? Is it your work that you mean? Would you like to go on with it? I confess that kind of activity seems wrong to me, for a woman. At least, as a vocation. It's bothersome, in the home. . . . But I can't believe that you are afflicted with this gift from Heaven. You are too human, and too well balanced."

"No, it isn't a question of a special vocation. That would be simple, for then one would have to follow it. . . . The demand, the exigence (as you say) of my life is less easy to formulate: for it is less precise and much more vast. It is a question of the right laid upon every living soul: the right to change."

Roger cried: "To change! To change love?"

"Even while always remaining faithful, as I have said, to a single love, the soul has the right to change. . . . Yes, I know, Roger, that the word 'change' frightens you. . . . It disturbs me, too. . . . When the passing hour is beautiful, I should like never to stir. One sighs that it cannot be held forever! . . . And yet, Roger, one ought not to do it; and, first of all, one cannot. One does not remain stationary. One lives, one goes forward, one is pushed,--one must, must advance! This does no injury to love; one takes that along. But love should not wish to hold us back, shut up with it in the immobile sweetness of a single thought. A beautiful love may last for a whole lifetime, but it cannot entirely fill it. Think, my dear Roger, that while still loving you I might find myself some day, perhaps (I find myself already), cramped within your circle of action and thought. I would never dream of arguing with you the excellence of your choice. But would it be just for it to be imposed on me? And don't you find it equitable to grant me the right of opening the window, if I haven't enough air,--and even the door, a little--(oh! I won't go far)--and for me to have my own little province of activity, my intellectual interests, my friendships, not to remain confined to one point of the globe, to the same horizon, but to try and enlarge it, to seek a change of air, to emigrate. . . . (I say: if it is necessary. . . . I don't know yet. But in any case I need to feel that I am free to do it, that I am free to wish, free to breathe, free . . . free to be free . . . even if I never make use of my liberty.) . . . Forgive me, Roger, perhaps you find this need absurd and childish. It is not, I assure you; it is the most profound need of my being, the breath that gives me life. If it were taken away from me, I should die. . . . I can do everything, for love. . . . But constraint kills me. And the idea of constraint makes me a rebel. No, the union of two beings ought not to become a mutual enchainment. It should be a twofold blooming. I should like each, instead of being jealous of the other's free development, to be happy in assisting it. Would you be, Roger? Would you know how to love me enough to love me free, free of you? . . ."

(She was thinking: "I should be yours only the more! . . .")

Roger was listening to her anxiously, nervous, and a little vexed. Any man would have been. Annette should have been capable of more adroitness. In her need of frankness and her fear of deception, she was always led into exaggerating the most startling features of her thought. But a stronger love than Roger's would not have set this all at naught. Roger, his self-love touched above all, wavered between two sentiments: that of not taking this feminine caprice seriously, and the annoyance that he felt at this moral insurrection. He had not perceived its passionate appeal to his heart. All that he understood of it was that it was a sort of obscure menace and attack upon his proprietary rights. If he had possessed more cunning in his management of women, he would have hidden his secret vexation, and promised, promised, promised . . . all that Annette desired. "Lover's promises, as many as the wind will carry. Why then be niggardly? . . ." But Roger, who had his faults, also had his virtues: he was, as they say, "a simple young fellow," too much filled with himself to be well acquainted with women, with whom he had had recent dealings. He lacked the skill to hide his vexation. And when Annette awaited his generous answer, she suffered the disappointment of seeing that while listening to her he had thought only of himself.

"Annette," said he, "I confess that I can scarcely understand what you ask of me. You talk of our marriage as of a prison, and your one idea seems to be to escape from it. My house has no bars at the windows, and it is large enough for one to be comfortable in it. But one cannot live with all the doors wide open, and my house is made to be lived in. You talk to me about leaving it, about having your individual life, your personal relationships, your friends, and even, if I have rightly understood, of your privilege to leave the home at will, in search of Heaven knows what you fail to find there, until it happens to please you to come back again some day. . . . This can't be serious, Annette! You haven't thought about it! No man could grant his wife a position that would be so humiliating for him and so equivocal for her."

These reflections were not, perhaps, lacking in good sense. But there are times when perfectly dry good sense, with no intuition of the heart, is a kind of nonsense. Annette, somewhat ruffled, answered with a proud frigidity that masked her emotion:

"Roger, it is necessary to have faith in the woman one loves; when one marries her, one must not do her the wrong of believing that she would not have the same care as yourself for your honor. Do you think that such a woman as myself would lend herself to an equivocation in order to humiliate you? Any humiliation for you would be a humiliation for her as well. And the freer she were, the more bound she would feel to watch over that part of yourself which you had confided to her. You will have to esteem me more highly. Aren't you capable of having confidence in me?"

He felt the danger of alienating her by his doubts; and, telling himself that after all there was no need of attaching an exaggerated importance to these feminine ideas, and that there would be time later to correct them--(if she remembered them!)--he returned to his first idea, which was to take the whole thing as a joke. So he believed that he was doing very well, when he said gallantly:

"Perfect confidence, Annette! I believe in your fair eyes. Only swear to me that you will love me always, that you will love me alone! I ask nothing more of you!"

But the little Cordelia, who could not reconcile herself to this trifling fashion of avoiding the honest response on which her life depended, stiffened against this impossible pledge.

"No, Roger, I can't, I can't swear that. I love you very much. But I cannot promise something that does not depend upon myself. It would mean deceiving you; and I shall never deceive you. I promise you simply to hide nothing from you. And if the time comes when I love you no longer, or love another, you will be the first to know it,--even before that other. And you do the same! Oh, Roger! let us be honest!"

That was scarcely possible. Embarrassing truth was something to which the house of Brissot was not accustomed. When it knocked on the door, they hastened to send word:

"Everyone is out!"

Roger did not fail to do it. He cried:

"My dear, how pretty you are! . . . There, let us talk of something else! . . ."

XIII

Annette returned to the house, disappointed. She had cherished great hopes of a frank talk. Although she had anticipated resistance, she had counted on Roger's heart illumining his mind. The most distressing thing was not that Roger had not understood, but that he had not made the least effort to understand. He seemed to see nothing pathetic in the question for Annette. He was all on the surface, and he saw everything in his own image. Nothing could be more painful to a woman with a strong inner life.

She did not deceive herself. Roger had been embarrassed, irritated by Annette's words, but he had completely failed to perceive their seriousness; he considered them inconsequential. He thought that Annette had bizarre and rather paradoxical ideas, that she was "original": it was troublesome. Madame and Mademoiselle Brissot knew how to be superior without being "original." But one could not demand this perfection in everyone. Annette had other qualities,--that, perhaps, Roger did not place so high, but to which he clung (it must be said) much more firmly at the moment. In this preference the body had a greater share than the mind; but the mind, too, had its share. Roger took a keen delight in Annette's heedless ardor, when it was not exercised on subjects embarrassing to him. He was not disturbed. Annette, in her uprightness, had shown him that she loved him. He was convinced that she would not be able to disengage herself from him.

He little suspected the drama of conscience that was being played out at his side. In truth, Annette loved him so much that she could not bring herself to think him such a sorry figure. She wished to believe herself mistaken. She tested other possibilities, she tried to do her best. If Roger would not grant her an independent life, at least what part would he give her in his own? But the new conclusions at which she found herself compelled to arrive were discouraging. Roger's naïve egotism relegated her, in fine, to the dining table, the drawing-room, and the bed. He was very ready to tell her, prettily, about his affairs; but all she had to do, thereafter, was to approve of them. He was no more disposed to concede to his wife the rights of a collaborator who might discuss his political activities with him and modify them, than he was to permit her a social activity different from his own. It seemed to him perfectly natural--(it was always done)--that the woman who loved him should give him her whole life, and that she should receive only a portion of his. At the bottom of his nature he held that old masculine belief in his own superiority which made him feel that what he gave was of a finer essence. But he would not have admitted it, for he was a good fellow and a gallant Frenchman. If it happened that Annette presumed to base certain feminine rights on the example of the husband, Roger would smilingly say:

"It is not the same thing."

"Why?" Annette would ask.

And Roger would avoid a response. A conviction that one does not discuss suffers less danger of being shaken. Roger's conviction was firmly rooted. And Annette chose the wrong course to make him doubt himself. Her advances, her efforts to find a mutual ground of understanding, after her useless attempt to impose her ideas on him, were interpreted by Roger as a fresh proof of the power that he had over her. And he even grew vain. Suddenly Annette would become irritated, and a quivering note would mark her speech. Roger would pull himself up short, and return to the method that, in his opinion, had been so successful: he would laughingly promise all that was demanded of him. It is the tone, they say, that puts the song across. That was the case with Roger. Annette was conscious of the contempt.

Other more serious questions arose. Annette's intimacy with Sylvie had been dangerously menaced. It was evident that the free-minded girl would not be readily welcomed into this circle, and that the little seamstress would be still less so. Never would the vain, stiff-necked Brissots admit, for themselves or for their daughter-in-law, any such scandalous evidence of relationship. It would have to be hidden. And Sylvie would be no more ready to do this than Annette. Each had her pride, and each was proud of the other. Annette loved Roger, and she wanted him with a more burning desire than she confessed to herself; but she would never sacrifice her Sylvie to him. She had loved her too much; and if this love, perhaps, had waned, she did not forget that at moments it had made her touch the ultimate depths of passion:--(she knew it, she alone; even Sylvie suspected only half the truth). But, in the hours of her mutual confidence with Roger, Annette had told him much too much. Then Roger had seemed amused, touched. . . . Yes, but on the condition that all this belonged to the past. He had no intention of seeing a prolongation of this compromising sisterhood. Secretly, he had even decided to put an end to it, gently, without appearing to take a hand in the affair. He did not wish to share his wife's intimacy with anyone. _His_ wife . . . "_This dog is mine_. . . ." Like all his family, he had a very keen sense of what belonged to him.

As Annette's visit grew longer, this possessive grasp grew tighter,--from certain affectionate externalities with which they surrounded her. What the Brissots possessed, they possessed. The domestic despotism of the two women sharply manifested itself daily in a thousand minute details. Their "mind," as the saying goes, was "made up" on everything, whether it was a question of the household or the world, of everyday existence or of great problems of the moral life. It was screwed down, fixed, once for all. Everything was prescribed: what must be praised, what must be rejected,--especially what must be rejected! Such ostracisms! What men, what things, what ways of thinking or of acting, were judged, condemned without appeal, and for eternity! The tone and the smile removed the desire to argue. They had an air of saying (they often said, in so many words):

"There are not two ways of thinking, my dear child."

Or, when Annette none the less tried to show that there was a way also of her own:

"My dear, how amusing you are!"

Which had the effect of making her instantly shut her mouth.

They already treated her as a daughter of the house, not quite thoroughly trained, whom they were instructing. They instructed her regarding the order and course of the Brissot days, months, and seasons, regarding their relatives in the province and their relatives in Paris, their duties of kinship, their calls, their dinners, and the endless chain of those social tasks, about which the women complained, and of which they were very proud, because the harassment of this perpetual activity gave them the illusion that they were being of some service. This mechanical life, these false relationships, this perpetual convention, were all intolerable to Annette. Everything seemed regulated in advance: work and pleasure,--for they had their pleasures too,--but regulated in advance! . . . Hurrah for unforeseen ills that released one from the program! But there was little hope of release, even on the score of ills. Annette felt herself bricked in, like a stone in a wall! Sand and lime. Roman cement. Brissot mortar. . . .

She exaggerated the rigorousness of this life. Chance and the unexpected played their parts in it, as in all lives. The Mesdames Brissot were more redoubtable in words than in fact; they pretended to direct everything; but it was not impossible, if one attacked their weak spots, anointed them, flattered and worshipped them, to lead them by the nose; a cunning girl might have said to herself, while evaluating them at their proper worth:

"Keep on talking! I'll do things my own way!"

One would have thought that a tenacious energy, like Annette's, could never be stifled. But Annette was passing through that nervous fever of women who, by dint of staring too fixedly at the object which preoccupies them, cease to see it as it is. From a few words heard during the daytime, she forged monsters when she was alone at night. She was appalled at the battle which she had to wage continually, and she repeated to herself that she would never succeed in defending herself against them all. She did not feel strong enough. She mistrusted her own energy. She was afraid of her own nature, of those unexpected oscillations by which her troubled mind continued to be shaken, of those sharp gusts that she could not explain. And, indeed, they sprang from the complexity of her rich being whose new harmony could be slowly realized only by living; but, in the meantime, there was danger of their plunging her into many surprises of violence and weakness, of the flesh and of the mind, of the insidious hazards of fate, ambushed beneath the stones of the road. . . .

The basis of her trouble was that she was no longer sure of her love. She no longer knew. . . . She no longer loved, and yet she still loved. Her mind and heart--her mind and senses--were at battle. The mind saw too clearly; it was disillusioned. But the heart was not; and the body was irritated when it saw that it was going to lose what it coveted; passion grumbled:

"I do not want to renounce! . . ."

Annette felt this revolt, and she was humiliated by it; her natural violence reacted forcibly, appealing to her wounded pride. She said:

"I love him no longer! . . ."

And her now hostile glance espied in Roger the reasons for no longer loving him.

Roger saw nothing. He surrounded Annette with kindnesses, with flowers, with gallant attentions. But he thought that the game was won. Not for an instant did he dream of the proud savage soul that was observing him, from behind its veil, burning to give itself--but to him who would utter the mysterious password which shows that one is recognized. He did not utter it; and for a reason. On the contrary, he uttered irreflective words that, without her showing it, wounded Annette to the heart. The instant after, he no longer remembered what he had said. But Annette, who had not seemed to hear, could have repeated them to him ten days, ten years later. She kept the memory of them fresh, and the wound open. It was in spite of herself, for she was generous, and she reproached herself for not knowing how to forget. But the best of women may pardon intimate offenses; she never forgets them.

Day by day, rents appeared in the fine cloth woven by love. The cloth remained stretched tight, but the least breath made disquieting shivers pass over it. Annette, observing Roger in the family circle, with his family traits, the hardness, the dryness of certain of his speeches and his contempt for humble people, said to herself:

"He is fading. At the end of a few years there will remain nothing of what I love in him."

And since she loved him still, she wished to avoid the bitter disillusion, the degrading conflicts between them that she foresaw, if they were united.

Two nights before Easter, her decision was made. A miserable night. There were many desires to be vanquished, obstinate hope that did not wish to die had to be trodden under foot. She had, in imagination, built her nest with Roger. So many dreams of happiness that they had whispered to each other! Renounce them! Recognize that they had been mistaken! Admit that one was not made for happiness! . . .