Chapter V: Part ONE: I (5)

She did not know that one of the insidious paths through which love finds its way is the fond vanity of believing that one is necessary--that feeling which is so strong in the heart of a true woman: it satisfies her double need of doing good, which she confesses, and of pride, which she does not confess. It is so strong that when she has a well-developed soul she often prefers the man for whom she cares less, but whom she can protect, to the man for whom she cares more, but who can get along without her. Is not this the essence of maternity? Suppose the big boy were to remain the little chick as long as he lived! The woman with a mother's heart, like Annette, finds it easy to attribute to a man whose love appeals to her a charm he does not possess. Her instinct disposes her to observe only his good qualities. Julien had plenty of these. Annette rejoiced to see his timidity vanishing and his real nature, which had been repressed, expanding in the daylight with the soft happiness of the convalescent. She said to herself that hitherto no one had understood this man, not even the mother of whom he was always talking and of whom she was beginning to be jealous. As for poor Julien, he did not know himself. . . . Who would have suspected that under this rough shell there was a tender, delicate soul? . . . (She was exaggerating.) . . . He needed confidence and he had lacked it: confidence in others, confidence in himself. To believe in himself he needed another believer. Well, she believed! She believed in Julien, for Julien's sake, so much that she ended by believing in him also for her own. . . . He blossomed under her eye as a plant in the sunlight. And it is good to be the sun for somebody else. "Open, my heart!" Was it to Julien's heart or her own that she was speaking? Already she had ceased to know. For she too was blossoming as a result of the good she was doing. An abundant nature dies if it cannot nourish others from itself. "To give myself!"

Annette gave too much. She was irresistible. Julien no longer concealed his passion. And Annette--a little late--recognized that she was in danger.

When she saw love rising within her, she threw up a feeble defence; she tried not to take Julien's feelings seriously. But she did not believe herself, and all she did was to make Julien more importunate. He became pathetic.

Then she was seized with fear. She besought him not to love her, to let them remain good friends.

"Why?" he asked. "Why?"

She did not want to say. She had an instinctive fear of love; she remembered what she had suffered through it, and an intuition warned her of what she would have to suffer again. She summoned it and she drove it away from her; she desired it and she fled from it. Julien's entreaties she resisted sincerely, and in the bottom of her heart she prayed that her adversary might conquer her; resistance.

The combat would have dragged on if a certain event had not hastened the issue.

XIX

With her sister's husband Annette was on terms of the frankest friendship. This good soul, for all his slight vulgarity, lacked neither heart nor integrity. Annette respected him, and Leopold treated her with a rather ceremonious consideration. Ever since their first meetings he had gathered that she belonged to a different species from his and Sylvie's; she intimidated him. He was all the more grateful for the kindness she showed him. At the time when he was paying court to Sylvie, she had been his ally; more than once she had come to his aid when he was exposed to the ridicule of his fiancée, who was too sure of her power not to abuse it. Later she had even discreetly interposed in misunderstandings in the household, or when Sylvie yielded to sudden whims, crotchets and deviltries, now and then, escaping from her own vexations by vexing her husband. Leopold, who did not understand such things, would come and tell his troubles to Annette, who undertook to bring Sylvie back to reason. He had even gone so far as to confide to his sister-in-law more than one matter which he had not mentioned to his wife. Sylvie was not unaware of this, and she teased Annette, who took it gaily. Everything was natural and frank among the three. Leopold had never complained of the place held in his home by his wife's sister and the little boy, though they were often rather in the way; he thought, in fact, that Sylvie did not do enough to help Annette, whose courage he admired; and he spoiled the child. Annette, who knew through Sylvie what Leopold thought, was grateful to him.

The period of Sylvie's pregnancy was not, for those about her, especially the husband, a happy time. Frequent discords drove Leopold and his consort apart. Not that Sylvie meant to get along without him. She thought very little about her maternity and was unwilling to make any change in her manner of living. But he did think about it. Those long months of gestation were far from being for her what they had been for Annette, an endless dream of languid happiness that was finished too soon. Sylvie was not made to brood on dreams. She was impatient and had no intention of giving up one of her duties, one of her rights or one of her pleasures: she overtaxed herself. Her health was affected by her nervous state, and her character did not gain by it. When one is tormented, one is glad to torment others. Sylvie, who was uncomfortable, was indignant because her husband was not; and she undertook to make him so. She harassed him with her teasing, malicious, perpetually changing moods. She was even (unexpectedly enough) jealously amorous, though this did not prevent her from abusing him. There were days when he did not know which way to turn.

Annette was at hand to receive his lamentations. He would climb up to her floor, complaining; she would listen to him patiently, and she found a way to make him laugh at his little misfortunes. These meetings, as they went on, established between them a sort of complicity, for they had so many feelings in common. And sometimes, in Sylvie's presence, they would exchange a malicious glance. Perfectly honest, both of them, they took no precautions and abandoned themselves to a familiarity which, if it was innocent, was not entirely harmless. Annette did not dream that there was any risk, and these friendly coquetries amused her. Leopold was captivated by them; he asked for nothing better. He had been attracted for a long time by the radiant force of joy that issued from her. Just at that moment Annette was discovering Julien's love, and it troubled her deliciously. The rest of the world was all a haze. When she had just seen Julien, and Leopold was talking to her, she listened to Leopold and replied to him, but it was to Julien that she was smiling. Leopold had no means of guessing this.

He knew what he wanted. He resisted like a decent fellow. But a decent fellow is a man. He should not play with fire.

One Sunday in May the four of them, Sylvie, Annette, Leopold and little Marc, went for a walk in the direction of Sceaux. After an hour of strolling, Sylvie, who was a little tired, sat down at the foot of a slope and said, "Well, young people, climb it if you want to! You will find us still here."

She remained behind with the child. Annette and Leopold went gaily on. Annette was animated, joyous, the best of company. Leopold, with his jolly talk, eased the moral tension in which Julien's love and his intellectual conversation held her. The path wound between the long wall of a great estate and a rise of ground covered with flowering bushes. Through the holes in the hedges they saw, as they climbed, the sloping orchards with their white and pink tufts.

A fantastic sky, with the busy clouds racing over its delicate blue. The laughing wind, like a young dog, bit them by fits and starts. Annette was walking ahead, picking flowers, singing. Leopold was following her; he watched her bending over, watched her robust frame under the tightly fitting dress, her bare hands, her bare neck, reddened by the lash of the wind, and amid the foaming hair the red shell of her ear, the tip of which looked like a drop of blood. The slope rose again to the right, and the road formed a passage in which the rushing wind streamed down upon them. Annette, without turning, asked her companion a question. He did not reply. She went on, bending over, picking flowers and talking. And as she joked with Leopold, who was silent, it suddenly occurred to her that there was something dangerous in this silence. She let her flowers fall. She straightened herself, but she did not have time to turn when . . . she almost fell. He had clasped her in his arms. She had been brutally seized, and she felt on her neck a panting breath. An eager mouth was kissing her throat, her cheeks. Instantly stiffening, bracing herself, with all her unconscious fighting forces collected, with her chest and her spine she furiously shook the man who had seized her: she broke his hold and found herself face to face with the aggressor. Her eyes flamed with anger, but he did not relax his grip. A rough struggle followed, like that of animals that hate each other. Rough and brief. Annette, whose outraged instincts gave her an added strength, violently repulsed the man, and he tripped and stumbled. He remained there before her, doubly humiliated, panting, scarlet, and they looked at each other with rage in their eyes. Not a word was said. Suddenly Annette clambered up the bank, crept through a hole in the hedge to the other side, and fled. Leopold, who had come to his senses, called after her. She stopped twenty paces away and would not let him approach. They redescended the hill on different sides of the hedge, keeping their distances, on their guard, hostile and ashamed. Leopold, in a changed voice, implored Annette to come back, begged her pardon. Annette turned a deaf ear towards him, but she heard him: the confusion of this voice reached her through the barrier of her bitterness. She slackened her pace.

"Annette!" he besought her. "Annette! Don't run away! I don't want to pursue you. See, I'm staying here, I shan't come near you. I've behaved like a brute. I'm ashamed, ashamed. Call me any names you like, but don't run away. I shall never touch you again, not even with the tip of my finger. I'm disgusted with myself. I ask your pardon on my knees!"

He knelt down awkwardly on the pebbles. He looked utterly wretched. He was ridiculous.

Annette, who was listening to him in cold silence, motionless, with her face turned away, threw him a side-glance without looking at him. She saw this humiliated man. She was touched by his humiliation; her warm heart had the faculty of opening to the emotions of others as if they were her own, and she blushed at Leopold's shame. She made a movement towards him and said, "Get up!"

He rose, and she instinctively recoiled a few steps. "You are still afraid," he said. "You will never forgive me."

"Don't speak of it any more," she answered dryly. "It's ended."

They descended the road again. Annette was dumb and frozen. He had difficulty in keeping silent. He was mortified, and he was trying to justify himself. But he was not very eloquent, the poor man. His style was not exactly noble. "I am a dirty cur!" he repeated angrily.

Annette, still agitated, repressed a smile. Her mind was in a tumult, and she found difficulty in calming it. She felt at the same time the loathsomeness and the absurdity of the scene. She had not forgiven him, and she was ready to pity the man who was accusing himself so pathetically beside her. He continued to flounder. She listened to him with bitterness, compassion, irony. He struggled to explain "this filthy madness that passes through your body." . . . Yes, this madness, she knew it, although it was not the time to tell him so. But he looked so wretched that, in spite of herself, she said to him, "I know. One is mad sometimes. What's done is done."

They continued on their way, without speaking, their hearts heavy, sad and embarrassed. Just as they were arriving at the spot where they had left Sylvie, Annette made a gesture as if she were about to hold out her hand to Leopold. But instead of doing so, she said, "I've forgotten it."

He was relieved, though he was still troubled. Like a schoolboy caught in some misdemeanor, he asked, "You won't say anything about it?"

Annette gave him a little pitying smile.

No, she said nothing. But at the first glance the sharp eye of Sylvie had seen it all. She asked no questions. They spoke of other things. And while all three, to hide their thoughts, made a great parade of chattering all the way home, Sylvie observed the two others.

From that day forward Annette and Leopold were never again alone together. The jealous one was always watching; Annette too was on her guard. In spite of herself she allowed her distrust to be viable. And Leopold, who was hurt, brooded over his unconfessed bitterness.

XX

Annette's eyes were opened. She could no longer remain undistrustful of herself and others. She could no longer pass along, laughing, as she had done before, heedless, because she did not seek them, of the desires she aroused. Society being as it is, customs being as they are, her situation as a single woman, young and free, not only exposed her to pursuit, but legitimized it. No one could believe that she had freed herself, in the boldest fashion, in order to shut herself up afterwards in a widowhood the constancy of which was without an object. She imagined she had changed with maternity, and no doubt maternity was a great flame. But another flame still burned in her. She tried to forget it, because she was afraid of it; and she imagined that no one saw it. But this was not so; in spite of her, the fire of love burned on. And other people, if not she, were in danger of being its victims. Leopold's adventure had shown her this. It was hideous. She was revolted by it. In the disillusioned eyes of one who is not in love, the act of love seems a grotesque or disgusting bestiality. As Annette saw it, Leopold's attempt was both. But Annette did not have a calm conscience. She had fanned these desires. She remembered her thoughtless coquetries, her arts, the provocations she had given him. What had driven her into them? That repressed force, that inner fire which she was obliged to foster or stifle. Stifle it one cannot, one should not! It is the sunlight of life. Without it, everything is plunged in shadow. But at least it should not consume that to which it ought to give life, like the chariot that was given into the hands of Phaëton. Let it follow its regular course through the sky! Marriage then? After having so long avoided it, the perception of the dangers that menaced her led her to tell herself that a marriage of affection and esteem, of calm sympathy, would be a bulwark against the demons of the heart and a protection against pursuit from without. The more she convinced herself (and everything conspired to convince her: her material and moral security, the attraction of a home and the solicitations of her heart), the less resistance she opposed to Julien's supplications. In order to yield to them, she went over all the reasons she had for loving him. But she did not wait for these reasons in order to love him. For already there had begun within her that construction of the mind which creates an exalted vision of the chosen one. Julien had preceded her in this, but as she had a richer and more passionate nature she had soon outdistanced him.

No longer on her guard, surrendering to the ardor of her frank nature, she used none of those artifices with which a cleverer woman masks her defeat when her heart is captured and she allows people to believe that she is still mistress of it. Annette had made a gift of hers. She told Julien. And from that very moment Julien began to be uneasy.

He knew very little about women. They fascinated him and disconcerted him. Rather than know them he preferred to judge them. He idealized some, he condemned others. Towards those who fell into neither of the two categories he remained indifferent. Very young men--and Julien, owing to the slightness of his experience, had remained very young--are always hasty in their judgments. As they are full of themselves and their desires, they seek in others only for what they wish to find. Whether on the moral or the carnal side, naïve persons are like roués in one respect: when they love they are always thinking of themselves and never of the woman. They refuse to see that she exists outside of them. Love is the one test that can teach them. It teaches the few who are capable of learning--but generally to their cost and that of their partners; for when at last they know it is too late. The naïve astonishment, old as the ages, that bewails the irreducible duality which is the bitter fruit of love, that disappointed dream of unity, is the usual result of this initial misunderstanding. For what does "love" mean if it is not "loving someone else"? Without possessing the egoism of Roger Brissot, Julien, through ignorance, had no less difficulty in getting outside of himself; and he had a still more limited view of the feminine universe. He needed to be led prudently by the hand.

Prudent was the one thing Annette was not by nature, and love did not teach her. It gave her the need of a generous confidence. Now that she was sure of loving and being loved, she concealed nothing. Nothing in the man she loved could have repelled her: why should she paint herself up? She was healthy-minded, and she did not blush at being what she was. Whoever loved her should see her as she was! She had clearly seen Julien's naïveté, his lack of understanding, his alarm. She found a tender and malicious pleasure in them. She was glad that she was the first to reveal to him a feminine soul.

One day she went to surprise him in his apartment. His mother opened the door. An old lady, with gray hair tightly drawn across a calm brow that was lighted up by two severe, watchful eyes, she inspected Annette with a distrustful politeness and showed her into a neat, cold little drawing-room with horsehair furniture.

Dull family photographs and pictures from museums added a finishing touch to the freezing atmosphere of the room. Annette waited alone. After a whispered consultation in the adjoining bedroom, Julien dashed in. He was delighted and he was frightened; he did not know what to say. He spoke absent-mindedly. They were sitting in uncomfortable chairs with stiff backs that thwarted every natural movement. Between them was one of those drawing-room tables that you cannot lean upon, tables with sharp edges that hurt your knees. The cold glitter of the carpetless floor and the dead faces under glass, like plants in a herbarium, congealed the words on their lips and made them lower their voices. This drawing-room absolutely froze Annette. Was Julien going to keep her here during the whole of her call? She asked him if he did not want to show her the room where he worked. He could not refuse, he even wanted to do so. But he looked so hesitant that she said, "Would you rather not?"

He protested, explaining that it was not in order, and took her in. It was in much better order than her own rooms had been at the time of Julien's first call, but there was no air of gaiety in Julien's room. It served him both for working and sleeping. Books, a well-known engraving that represented Pasteur, papers on the chairs, a pipe on the table, a student's bed. She noticed overhead a little crucifix with a branch of boxwood. Settled in the badly upholstered arm-chair, she tried to put her host at his ease by gaily recalling to him the memory of their student days. She talked without prudery of what they both knew. But he was distrait, embarrassed by her presence and her freedom of speech; he seemed preoccupied with what was going on in the next room. Annette, embarrassed by contagion, held out bravely and succeeded in making him forget the "what will she think of it?" At last he became quite lively and they had a good laugh. When she got up to go he became awkward again, leading her out. In the corridor they passed the mother's room; the door was ajar; Mme. Dumont, from discretion or in order not to have to speak to the stranger, pretended not to see them. The two women had only exchanged a glance, and they were enemies already. Mme. Dumont, the mother, was shocked by the call of this bold girl with her free and easy ways, her dear voice, her laughter, her animation: she scented danger. And Annette, who, during the visit, had perceived between Julien and herself this invisible presence, had felt angry: passing the room of the old lady who turned her back on her, she spoke and laughed more loudly still. And she jealously thought, "I'm going to take him away from her."

A week later, Julien came in turn, one evening, after dinner. He had had his first discussion with his mother on the subject of Annette; and he meant to assert his will. They were alone. Leopold had taken little Marc to the circus. When Julien left her, a little before eleven o'clock, Annette suggested walking back with him for the pleasure of enjoying together the fresh night air. But when they reached his door, Julien was troubled at the idea of leaving Annette to return alone. She made fun of his fear. None the less, he masted on going back with her again, and she did not protest. She would have him all the longer with her! So they returned by the most roundabout way; and without quite knowing how they got there, they found themselves on a steep bank of the Seine. It was a June night. They sat down on a bench. The poplars rustled above the dark water in which were spread the reddish and yellow lights of the lamps on the bridges. The sky was far away, the stars were feeble, as if the monstrous city had drawn all the life out of them. The darkness was above and the light below. They were silent. Words could no longer express their thoughts, but, without looking at each other, each read the other's mind. Julien's desire set Annette's heart aflame; but his timidity kept him bound and motionless, and he did not dare even to lift his eyes to her. She smiled and watched him, without turning her head, as she kept her eyes upon the red reflexions on the river; he could not make up his mind! Then she leaned towards him and kissed him.

Drunk with love and gratitude, he kissed her in return, while the insidious point of a dull anxiety fastened itself in his brain. A harsh remark of his mother's: "These bold, poverty-stricken girls who are trying to find somebody to marry them. . . ." He had pulled it angrily out not long before, but the tip of the sting had remained under the skin. He was ashamed. Mentally he asked Annette's pardon. He knew that the insulting suspicion was false. He believed in her religiously, but he was troubled. And each new visit troubled him more. Annette's freedom, the freedom of her manners, the freedom of her ideas, the freedom of her opinions on every kind of subject--especially on social morality--her calm lack of prejudices, terrified him. He was as narrow in his way of thinking as in his dress, rather dull in his ideas, inclined to severity. She, on the other hand, was generously indulgent and full of laughter. It did not occur to him that she might be as much of a Puritan as he where she herself was concerned, while with an ironical tolerance she applied to others their own measure. Tolerance and irony disconcerted him. She saw this; and when he expressed himself on some question with an unjust and excessive harshness she did not attempt to oppose his way of thinking; she smiled at this naïve rigidity which did not displease her. Her smile disturbed Julien more than her words. He had the impression that she knew more than he. It was true. But how much more? And just what did she know? What experience had she had?

Like his mother--and some of his mother's spiteful remarks had contributed to make him so--this man of fine but impoverished vitality was vaguely alarmed by the brilliant health, the radiance of this woman. He had the most ardent desire for her, but he was afraid of her. In the walks they took together he felt that he cut a poor figure. Annette's perfect poise in every company added to his embarrassment. And although she would have liked this embarrassment if she had observed it, he was humiliated by it. But she did not observe it. She was utterly absorbed in the song within her. Annette mistakenly thought that no one but herself heard this song; and she did not see Julien's anxious glance when he asked himself, "At whom, at what, is she laughing?"

She seemed so far away!

He did not cease to see--he saw more clearly than ever--her great intellectual force, her moral energy. At the same time she remained for him a dangerous enigma. He was divided between two opposite feelings, an invincible attraction and an obscure mistrust that were like a remnant of the primitive instinct that recalls to the man and the woman of to-day the original enmity of the sexes, for which the carnal union was a form of combat. That suspicious instinct of defence is strongest perhaps in a man like Julien who is at once keenly intelligent and poor in experience. As it is impossible for him to see a woman just as she is, he sees her now too simply, now as full of snares.

Annette contributed to these oscillations of thought by her way of alternately saying everything and saying nothing, of revealing everything and concealing everything, her bursts of passionate expansiveness and her hermetic silences, which sometimes lasted during a good half of their walk. . . . These terrible silences--what man has not suffered from them?--during which the life of the companion who walks at your side goes down into those regions that you will never know! . . . Not that as a usual thing they cover very profound secrets. If you plunged into them you would find that they did not rise above your heel. But whatever the depth may be, the sheet of silence is opaque: the eye cannot penetrate it. And the tormented spirit of the man has plenty of time to conjure up all sorts of alarming mysteries. The idea would never have entered the head of a Julien that he might be the author of them, that if a woman is silent it is often because she knows so well how little the man understands her. Annette's silence, which was ironical and a little weary on some days, tolerated a false interpretation of her feelings on the part of her lover, for she knew that he loved the false and did not love the true.

"If you wish . . . As you wish! . . . Of course. I am not as I am. I am as you see me."

But these silences of acquiescence only lasted for a time. From the moment Annette perceived that there might be danger in frank explanations (since Julien was unable to understand them) and that it would be more prudent to hold her peace, she spoke. To be silent in order to avoid uselessly annoying Julien, yes. But to deceive him, no. And if there was danger in speaking, all the more reason. That was the time when you couldn't avoid speaking any longer. The greater the risk, the greater was the pride that desired to brave it. This test of love made her heart beat. If the test succeeded, she would love Julien all the more. If it did not succeed? . . . It would succeed. Didn't Julien love her? Let come what might!

She played the game loyally. But there are some men who would prefer to have their partners cheat. When Sylvie learned of Julien's love and the plan for the marriage, she scolded Annette: good heavens, she wasn't thinking of telling the whole truth? Of course it was absolutely necessary for him to learn a part of it. When they were married the official records would be sure to enlighten him. But there was always a way of dressing up the truth. Since this boy loved her he would close his eyes. She had only not to open them! To do so would be really too stupid! Later there would be time to tell each other everything. . . . Sylvie spoke honestly out of her experience. She wished her sister's welfare. (She wished her own too; she would not have been displeased to see them out of her house with all possible speed.) From her point of view one didn't owe the truth to everyone, especially to one's fiancé: it was enough to love him! Annette's truth, of course, was innocent, but men are weak. They cannot endure the full truth. It has to be given to them in small doses. . . .

Annette listened to Sylvie calmly and spoke of something else. Useless to reply: it would only make her more obstinate. Sylvie's morality was not hers, and she preferred not to say what she thought of it. Sylvie was Sylvie. She loved her. . . . But what a look she would have given anyone else who had spoken to her so!

"Poor Sylvie! . . . She judges men from those she has known. But my Julien belongs to another species. He loves me as I am. He will love me as I was. I have nothing to conceal from him. I have never done him an injury. If any injury was done I did it to myself alone."

Fully considering the risks, but trusting in Julien's magnanimity, she made up her mind to speak. She brought up the subject of her past life. With a common modesty, they had always avoided this topic. But more than once, Annette had read in Julien's eyes what he burned and trembled to ask, what he wanted both to know and not to know.

She placed her hand tenderly on Julien's hand and said, "My friend, you have always been so adorably discreet with me. I thank you for it. I love you. . . . But I must tell you at last something you don't know about me, something that I have been. You must know me. I am not free from reproach."

He made an apprehensive gesture that protested against what she was going to say, as if he half wished to prevent it. She smiled.

"Don't be afraid! I haven't committed any great crimes. At least I shouldn't call them so. But perhaps I am too indulgent to myself, for the world regards these matters differently. It is for you to judge. I believe in your judgment. I am what you decide I am."

She began to tell her story. More frightened than she wanted to appear, she had prepared in advance what she intended to say. But simple as she imagined it would be to utter this, it was very painful to her. To overcome this constraint she made herself appear more free from emotion than she was. She even revealed at moments a touch of irony, directed at herself, which scarcely corresponded with the anxiety this recital stirred in her: she resorted to it in order to protect herself. . . . Julien did not understand it at all. He saw in this attitude only a shocking light-mindedness and lack of conscience.

She said first that she was not married. Julien had feared this. To tell the truth, he had even been silently sure of it. But he had always hoped that the contrary would turn out to be the case, and that Annette should tell him this, that doubt should no longer be possible, filled him with consternation. Intensely Catholic at heart, under his superficial liberalism, he had not freed himself from the idea of sin. Instantly he thought of his mother: she would never accept it. He foresaw a struggle. He was very much in love. In spite of the grief that Annette's confession caused him, in spite of the real fall her past weakness signified for him, the "error" of her whom he loved, he loved her, he was ready, in order to have her, to fight against his mother's opposition. But someone must help him; Annette must second him. He was weak; to endure the combat, he needed to summon all his strength, not the least element of which was the strength of illusion. He needed to idealize Annette, and if Annette had been clever she would have helped him to do so.

She saw the grief which her words caused. She had expected it; she was sorry for it, but she could not spare him. Since they were to live together, each would have to take his share of the trials and even the errors of the other. But she did not suspect the conflict that was taking place in him; and if she had thought of it, she would have remained confident of the victory of love.

"My poor Julien," she said, "I am giving you pain. Forgive me. It is hard for me too. You believed that I was better than I am. You gave me a higher place, too high, in your mind. . . . I am a woman. I am weak. . . . At least, if I have made a mistake, I have never deceived anyone else. I have always acted in good faith. I have always done that."

"Yes," he said hastily. "I'm sure of it. He deceived you, didn't he?"

"Who?" asked Annette.

"That wretch. . . . Forgive me! . . . That man who left you."

"No, don't accuse him," she said. "I am the guilty one."

She attached to this word "guilty" only the sense of a warm regret for the pain she was causing him, but he seized upon it greedily. In his confusion he longed to hold fast to the idea that Annette was the victim of a seduction and that she had repented. . . . He had an extreme need of this notion of "repenting"; it was for him a kind of compensation for the hurt he had suffered, a balm for the wound it could not heal but could render endurable; it gave him a moral superiority over Annette of which--to be fair to him--he would never have made use. In short, since he had no doubt about Annette's sin, he also had none about the need of repentance. His Christian nature was imbued with both these ideas. The most liberal Christian never frees himself from them.

But Annette had sprung from a race with a different kind of soul. The Rivières might be pure or impure, in the sense that Christian morality attaches to this word; but if they were pure it was not in obedience to an invisible God or his too visible representatives and their Tables of the Law. It was because they loved purity as moral cleanliness, as beauty. And if they were impure they regarded it as an affair between themselves and their own consciences, not the consciences of others. Annette could not admit that she must give an account of herself to others. If she confessed herself to Julien, it was a gift of love that she was making him. In all honesty, she owed him merely an account of her life. But of her inner life she did not owe him any account. She gave it to him of her own free will. She saw now that Julien would have preferred to have her embellish the truth. But she was too proud to profit by a lying excuse of which she felt no need. On the contrary, when she understood what he wanted her to say she took pains to make it clear that she had given herself to her lover.

Julien, who was completely upset, would not listen to her.

"No, no, I don't believe you," he said. "You are too generous. Don't accuse yourself to defend that man who deserves nothing but contempt."

"But I'm not accusing anyone," she said simply.

Her words struck against his consciousness, but he refused to understand.

"You are trying to exonerate him."

"I am not exonerating him. No one's to blame."

Julien struggled. "Annette, I implore you not to talk that way."

"Why?"

"You know very well it's wrong!"

"I know nothing of the kind."

"What? You don't regret anything?"

"I regret making you unhappy. But I didn't know you then, my friend. I was free and alone; I had no obligations except to myself."

"Is that nothing?" he thought. He did not dare to say it.

"But still you regret it?" he said, insistently. "You know very well you made a mistake."

He did not want to accuse her. But he so longed to have her accuse herself.

"Perhaps," she said.

"Perhaps," he took her up, dejectedly.

"I don't know," said Annette.

She saw where Julien wanted to lead her. Perhaps she had made a mistake, if yielding to a transport of sincere love and pity was a mistake. Perhaps, yes. "But if in my heart I can regret a sincere error, I don't need to excuse myself for it. My heart has remained alone with its suffering, communing with it alone in the silence. It must commune now with its regrets. They concern nobody. . . . Regrets? . . . Let's be honest to the end! There are no regrets!" After reflecting, she said, "I don't think I made a mistake."

Perhaps she was exaggerating in reaction against Julien's unconscious pharisaism. (Poor Julien!) But even in the moments when she loved him the most she could not bring herself to utter the word of regret which he was expecting. . . . "I should so much like to say it! But I can't. It isn't true." Regret what? She had acted in accordance not only with her rights but with her happiness. For, costly as the latter had been, she had had it--the child. And she knew (she alone) that this gift of the child, far from dishonoring her, as a stupid public opinion supposed, had purified her, delivered her for a long time from her troubles, brought into her life order and peace. . . . No, for the sake of assuring her future love she would never be base enough to slander her past love. She even felt now a certain gratitude towards this Roger who had only been an agent of her destiny, so inferior to the love and the flame of life he had lighted in her.

Julien felt this jealously. "Ah, you still love that man?" he said.

"No, my friend."

"But you are not angry with him."

"Why should I be angry with him?"

"And you are thinking of him."

"I am thinking of you, Julien."

"But you haven't forgotten him."

"I could not forget anyone who had done me good, even if he ceased to exist. Don't reproach me, you who have done me so much more good!"

Julien was honest enough to respect Annette's frankness, and in his heart he felt her nobility. This for him was an unaccountable spectacle, the unwonted dignity of which revealed to him a new world--the new woman. But another part of his nature was in revolt. His masculine instincts were wounded. His Catholic and bourgeois prejudices were horrified. The idea that he had, that he continued to have, of Annette was poisoned with degrading suspicions. Instead of being surer of a woman who gave up her secret to him with complete loyalty, he was less sure of a woman whose past weakness had been revealed to him. He doubted her fidelity in the future. He thought of that other living man who had possessed her and whose child would be his. He was afraid of being deceived, he was afraid of being ridiculous. He was mortified, and he could not forgive her.

As soon as Annette fully perceived the dangerous struggle that was going on in Julien's mind and saw that the hope she had formed was menaced, she trembled. She was utterly in the grip of the love she had provoked. All her power of loving, all her capacity for happiness, she had centred in this Julien. And in truth she had half deceived herself. But she had only half deceived herself. Julien was not unworthy of her; his qualities were real; they deserved love. Different as they were, they would be able to live together with a little mutual effort to understand and tolerate each other--and a little suffering, no doubt; and was a little suffering too much to pay for a firm affection? Annette would have been good for him; she would have invigorated him; she would have been that great wind of confidence in life that would have swelled his sails and carried him whither he could never have gone without her. And Julien's delicate tenderness, his respect for woman, his moral purity, even that candid religious faith which Annette did not share, would have been wholesome for her; they would have given her passionate nature a basis of security, the peace of home and of a soul of which one is sure.

Ah, the misery of hearts that miss their destiny through a misapprehension which their passion exaggerates, that know it and reproach themselves for it and always will reproach themselves, but will never yield the point that separates them just because they love too much to make a moral concession to which they would disdainfully consent with those to whom they are indifferent!

Annette tormented herself now with the anxieties to which she had given birth in Julien's mind. Was Julien right? . . . She was not infatuated with her own judgment. She tried to understand other ways of judging. Her character was not entirely formed: her moral instinct was strong, but her ideas were not yet established; she reserved the right to revise them. While quite young she had realized how artificial was the morality of those who surrounded her, and she had found nothing upon which to lean, nothing but her reason, which had often deceived her. She was always seeking; she sought for other ways of thinking in which she might breathe freely. And when she encountered a sincere conscience like Julien's she scrutinized it eagerly: would this voice respond to the appeal of her heart? She aspired to believe, this woman in revolt! She was seeking, seeking for her moral homeland. . . . How she would have loved to enter Julien's, to subscribe to its laws, even if they condemned her! But it was not enough to long. She could not do it. What Julien desired simply wasn't human!

"I realize," she said to him tenderly, "that you are judging me as the world judges. I don't reproach you. I admire the rigorous, preservative force of its laws. They have their place in the sum of things and I know that their roots are deep in your family. It is natural for you to obey them. I respect them in you. But, my friend, all the efforts of my will could never make me deny an action, even if it is condemned by everyone, which has given me my child. Dear Julien, how could I deny what is my only consolation, the purest joy perhaps that heaven will grant me in my whole life? Don't try to blight it, but if you love me share my happiness! There is nothing in it that can injure you!"

She knew, even as she spoke, that he did not understand; she only irritated him the more. And she was broken-hearted. But what could she do? Lie to him? It was too dreadful that she had even thought of this humiliating resource. But could she allow the breach to grow wider in this affection that was so dear to her? It was as if this breach had extended to her heart. . . . She was in mortal terror every time she found herself in Julien's presence. What was he going to read to-day in her face?

As for him, he abused her love with all the baseness of a man who is certain that he is loved. He knew that he was hurting her and he went on hurting her. He in turn felt his power, and he began to desire her less now he was sure that she desired him.

She understood it all! She was in despair because she had betrayed her weakness. But she went on. She abandoned herself to a superstitious feeling: if fate intended her to be Julien's wife, she would be, whatever she said; whatever she said, she would lose him if that was her fate.

But secretly she wished to believe that, in exchange for her submission, fate would be favorable to her. Julien would be touched.

"I put myself in your hands. Will you love me the less for that?"

XXI

A strange travail was going on in Julien's mind. He loved her--no, he desired her--as much as always. Who could say which it was? (He did not want to know.) . . . In short, he still wanted her. But he was sure now, not only that his mother would never consent to his marriage, but that he himself would never be able to make up his mind to it. For many reasons: bitterness, wounded vanity, moral disapproval, what might be called a jealous repulsion. But he preferred not to dwell on these reasons. "Yes, we know you, but don't show yourselves." His mind arranged expedients to satisfy at once his hidden reasons and his desires. . . . Annette, in the past, had declared herself a free woman in love. He did not approve of this, no; but, after all, since she was as she was, why should she not be just this with him whom she loved?

He did not put it to her as bluntly as this. He pleaded all the things that made marriage impossible (he brought forth new ones as fast as she refuted them): the insurmountable obstacles, his mother's opposition, the necessity of living with his mother, his financial straits, with Annette accustomed to wealth, to society--poor Annette, reduced for two years to giving private lessons!--the difference in their minds and temperaments. . . . (This last argument came up just at the end, to the dismay and terror of Annette, when she believed she had surmounted the others.) With obstinate unfairness, Julien depreciated himself, the better to mark the difference between them. It was enough to make one laugh and weep. It was pitiable to see him looking for all these poor pretexts for escaping, while she, forgetting her pride, pretended not to understand, wore herself out finding replies, struggled feverishly to keep him from leaving her.

He was not leaving her. He did not refuse to take. He refused to give.

When Annette perceived the object of all these barricades and what he wanted of her, she had a feeling less of revolt than of prostration. She did not have enough strength left to be indignant. To struggle was no longer worth the trouble. That was what he wanted! . . . He! . . . Wretched soul! . . . So he didn't know himself? So he didn't realize how he appeared in her eyes? If he had been loved it was just because of his solid integrity. It wasn't at all, not at all, becoming for him to play the Don Juan, the libertine, the free lover! (For, in spite of her grief, Annette's mind kept its ironical clearness, and it never failed to seize the comic that was mingled with the tragic in life.)

"My friend," she thought, tenderly, pityingly, disgustedly, "I loved you better when you condemned me. Your rather narrow but lofty idea of love gave you the right to do so. But now you no longer have that right. What have I to do with this inferior love you are proposing to me to-day, this love without trust? If trust is lacking there is nothing left between us."

Every love has its essence: where one blossoms, another withers. Carnal love dispenses with respect. The love that is based on respect cannot lower itself to ample enjoyment.

"Why," cried Annette in her heart, which was rising in revolt, "I would rather be the mistress of the first passer-by who pleased me than of you, you whom I love!"

For with him it would be degrading. Everything or nothing!

To Julien's suggestions she thus opposed a firm, affectionate refusal that hurt him. They continued to love one another, while judging each other severely; and neither of them could resign himself to the loss of their happiness. There they were, appealing to each other, desiring each other, even offering themselves--incapable as they were of pronouncing the word that would bring them together--the one through inner weakness, that moral debility which with rare exceptions (if a man can dare to say it) belongs to man, and which he does not recognize, the other through that deep-seated pride which belongs to woman and which she does not confess either: for the two sexes have been so deformed by the moral conventions of a society built upon the victory of man that they have both forgotten their real character. The weaker of the two is not always by nature the one who calls himself so. The woman is richer in the energies of the earth, and if she is caught in the snare that man has thrown over her she remains a captive who has not surrendered.

Julien dimly perceived the justice of Annette's motives, and he did not question their honesty, but he could not do violence to the timidity of his own heart. He followed the opinion of the world, which he respected less than Annette. By himself he would have accepted Annette's past, but he could not accept it under the eye of the world; and he persuaded himself that this was the eye of his own conscience. He did not have the courage to take for a wife this woman whom he desired; and his pusillanimity he called dignity. He was not able to delude himself completely; and he was angry with Annette because he had not been able to delude her either. He ought to have broken with her, but he would not consent to this. And when Annette spoke of leaving him he held her back, hesitated, suffered, caused her suffering. He was no more willing to accept her than to give her up. He played the cruel game of keeping up her hope, which he later killed. He shunned her when she was most loving and was most loving when she resigned herself. Annette went through painful crises of wounded affection. She ate her heart out. Sylvie saw this and finally extorted the truth from her. She had seen Julien and she had made up her mind about him. "He is one of those people," she said, "who never make a decision till they are forced to do so. You can do it; make him consent. He will be grateful to you later."