ROMAIN ROLLAND (continued 7)

One afternoon she fled. She went to Sylvie's and asked her to let her child stay with her for a few days, pleading as an excuse that she had to go away. Sylvie asked for no explanation; one glance was enough. This woman, whose curiosity was so often indiscreet, and who was unable in so many ways to understand her sister's ideas, had an instinct for love and its tragic tricks. In the days of the old intimacy with Annette, she had never confided to her the secrets of her own love affairs, and she did not expect Annette to open herself to her. She knew that every woman has a right to her hours of silence, her great hours, and that at such times no one can help her. One must save oneself alone or perish alone. She offered her sister the shelter of a little house she owned in the suburbs, near Jouy-en-Josas. Annette was touched, and she kissed her and accepted. In this little rustic house, on the edge of the woods, she shut herself up for a fortnight. She had not even told Marc where she was going. Her retreat was known only to Sylvie.

Scarcely had she left Paris and its enchanted circle than she perceived the excesses of the past few weeks and passed judgment on them. She was terrified by them. She, this mad creature, this miserable slave drunk with her own servitude! Passion, the destroyer of the soul! . . . Its clasp loosened. She breathed again, this evening, she saw and felt once more the fields, the woods, the calm of the earth. For two months an opaque red veil had concealed the living world from her. Even those closest to her, her son, had come to seem far away. . . . But when she reached the house in the fields, the veil was torn away in the rays of the setting sun. She heard the bells, the birds, the voices of the peasants; she wept with relief. . . . In the middle of the night, however—she had fallen asleep exhausted—she awoke suddenly with a pang of anguish. She felt about her throat the coils of the serpent.

She spent her days in a succession of humiliating tortures, bland impulses, moments of sudden, keen, absolute clairvoyance that pierced the great deception. She had a perpetual feeling of insecurity. Even though she was prepared and armed, a mere nothing would have caused her to give way. She prolonged her absence.

She was not without danger of imperilling her situation. In this sudden eclipse, she was losing her lessons. The little clientele that she had gathered with so much trouble was passing into other hands. Sylvie forwarded letters and information to her sister, but she added nothing but good news about the child's health. She avoided giving her any advice. Annette alone was to judge.

Annette knew full well that she ought to return, but she still lingered. . . . It was in vain that she stayed on; she could not prevent her thoughts from returning to Philippe. What was he doing? Wasn't he hunting for her? . . . From him nothing had come. She dreaded any news, and she sought for it. She dismissed him from her mind, she thought she had freed herself. But he had not given her up and suddenly he rose before her.

One evening she was wandering, idle, full of haunting thoughts, under the arbor that skirted the low wall of the garden, when, between the branches, she saw an automobile coming towards her in the distance down the white road. And she thought, "It's he!" . . . She stepped back out of sight. The car drove past along the wall to the end of the little yard. Annette, with her heart tightening, listened to its roaring, heard it slow down. Thirty paces farther on the road forked and the car stopped. Annette, behind the screen of leaves, ventured to glance, out and saw the back of the man who was hesitating, turning round, exploring the horizon. She recognized him. Terror seized her. She ran and flung herself behind a hedge of box and sank down upon the ground, her nails scratching the earth; she lowered her head and the blood flooded her cheeks as she thought, "He is going to take me again!" She wanted to say "No" and her blood cried "Yes!" She felt the dry turf crumbling under her fingers, and, with her face buried in the boxwood, she tried to stop the roaring of the blood in her ears so that she could listen to the steps on the other side of the wall. She heard the car starting off again. She ran to the corner of the garden on the road and cried, "Philippe!"

The car disappeared at the turn.

The next day Annette went back to Paris. Did she know what she wanted or what she was going to do? Sylvie looked at her pityingly and said to herself, "It's no better." But she did not question her.

Annette, full of gratitude, remained seated without speaking, her body broken with fatigue, in a corner of her sister's room, seeking peace in this warm presence. Sylvie came and went, leaving her to recover herself in the silence. At last Annette got up to go home. As she was about to leave, Sylvie, placing her hands on either side of her forehead, looked at her a long time, shook her head and said, "If you can't do otherwise, submit; don't struggle any longer. It will pass. Everything passes, the good, the bad and we ourselves. . . . How little it all matters!"

But to Annette it mattered a great deal. The question was not merely between Philippe and herself. It was between her and herself. To return to Philippe and confess herself conquered by him would have given her a bitter pleasure. But what terrified her was a deeper, more intimately personal defeat that would have no witness but herself. She carried her mortal adversary within her. Never once, for many years, had she failed to realize this, though from pride and prudence perhaps she had pleased herself by not thinking of it. This gulf of desire and sensual delight that a former life (her father's?) had dug within her. . . . Everything that gave her strength and pride of life, her will, her healthy soul, the free, pure breath that bathed her lungs, everything was being sucked down into it. Mors antmœ. . . . And Annette, whose reason did not seem to believe in the soul, did not wish her soul to die.

Carried back to Paris, where Philippe was, like a captive on some Assyrian bas-relief, with a rope about her neck, she did not look for Philippe. She avoided him.

Philippe, as much possessed by Annette as Annette was by him, had come and knocked at her door in her absence. He was indignant over this sudden departure. He would not admit that she could escape him. He tried to find her address. He had Sylvie's and he went to see her. The first glance was a declaration of war. Sylvie had understood. Armed with a bitter defiance, she sized Philippe up with her own eyes and not with those of Annette—a man who would be dangerous as an enemy and more dangerous as a lover, the kind of man who destroys what he loves. She knew that sort and she would never have anything to do with them. To Philippe's peremptory questions regarding Annette's whereabouts, she replied coldly that she knew nothing about them, taking pains that he should see that she knew everything. Philippe made an effort to conceal his annoyance. He tried to wheedle her. Sylvie remained stolid. He went away in a rage.

He wasted no time in beating the bushes for her, and it never entered his head to cover himself with dust travelling in a car to Jouy-en-Josas. He did not even look for Annette. He had no intention of sacrificing his days in a vain pursuit. He was sure she would come back. But that she should fail him, that she should allow herself to upset him at such a moment as this, was more than he could forgive; and his resentment, no less than a furious need of diversion, flung him back upon his wife. It was a provisional reconciliation and humiliating enough to this woman who was only a substitute. For it was only for want of something better; he was waiting for the other one.

But Noémi was not going to be proud when her advantage opposed it. She did not waste her time. The ordeal had revealed to her former mistakes. She had realized that to hold a man it is not enough to make him love you. You must flatter his pride and his whims. Philippe was astonished at the interest she showed in his present campaign, astonished that she had even taken the trouble to find out about it. He suspected her motives, but whether Noémi's interest was real or not, it was very agreeable to him. It pleased him to discover Noémi's intelligence. She no longer concealed it. It was through this that Annette had ousted her. She made use of these weapons and improved on them. Unlike Annette, she did not trouble to go to the bottom of the dispute. She left this to her husband and master. She limited her rôle to suggesting the most skilful tactics for assuring him the victory. Philippe admired her ingenuity.

At this moment the controversy was at the most violent stage. Noémi, overcoming the repugnance and boredom that she felt at these quarrels between men, perceived that she must fling herself resolutely into the arena. She set to work upholding, with the wittiest effrontery, in drawing-rooms, the daring arguments her husband had launched. Her grace, her humor, her laughing enthusiasm, her impishness, her passionate earnestness, caused some slight scandal and a great deal of amusement. She won over to her side a number of young women who were delighted to show how free they were from social prejudices. The skilful Noémi took pains not to break with appearances. Even while she gave them the most disrespectful raps, she contrived to procure indulgence for herself in the camp of morality and respectable people. She gravely maintained that the right of the poor to have no children had its counterpart in the duty of the rich to supply the State and Society with them. It required self-possession to say this and not lose her assurance, for during seven years of married life she had never found the time to fulfil this duty herself. But she was heroic. She discovered this now.

XLVI

Philippe was not slow in discovering that Annette had come back. He tried to find her in her apartment at the hours when he knew she was alone. But Annette distrusted herself. He found the door shut. In spite of his resentment and his distractions, his passion had not weakened. Annette's resistance exasperated him. He was not the man to let himself be dismissed.

Annette caught sight of him a few steps away in the street. She turned pale, but she did not try to escape from him. They approached each other. He said, with decision, "You are going home. I am going with you."

"No," she replied.

Together they entered a small square that backed upon a church. A dusty tree barely concealed them from the stream of passers-by in the street. They had to restrain themselves.

"You are afraid of me."

"No," she said, "of myself."

Philippe was burning with passion and resentment. But when his hard glance encountered Annette's, which did not avoid him, he perceived the suffering that she was firmly controlling. His anger melted, and in a softened voice he asked, "Why did you run away?"

"Because you are killing me."

"Don't you know what it is to love?"

"I do know, and that is why I ran away. I am afraid of hating you."

"Well, hate me, if you like. Hating is a way of loving."

"Not for me," she said. "I can't endure it."

"You are not so weak that you can't endure both the good and evil of a complete love."

"I am not so weak, Philippe. I want a complete love. Body and soul. I don't want merely half."

"The soul is all nonsense," he said.

"Then to what purpose have you devoted all your energy? For what have you sacrificed yourself, ever since you were born, if not to your Idea?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Delusion!" he said.

"You live by it. I have mine too. Don't kill it."

"What do you want?"

"I want us to avoid seeing each other till the day when we decide whether we are to unite our lives or not."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want, I don't want to hide any longer. I don't want any more sharing. I don't want it, I don't want it."

But she did not utter her deepest reason. ("If I gave in once more, I should soon cease to have the will to desire anything else. I should no longer belong to myself. I should be a toy that is broken after it has been spoiled.")

But he was incapable of understanding this instinctive revolt against one's enslavement to one's deadly desires. He could see in it nothing but defiance and a feminine trick to get the best of him. If he did not put this into words, he did not by any means conceal his feeling. When Annette perceived this, she made an impetuous movement to leave him. Philippe, trembling with impatience and the effort he was making not to betray it to the eyes of passers-by, seized Annette's arm, pressed it and said in a furious voice which he tried to muffle, "As for me, I will not, will not give you up. I will see you. Be still! Don't answer. . . . We can't talk here. . . . I shall come and see you this evening."

"No, no!" she said.

"I shall come," he said. "I cannot live without you. Nor can you live without me."

"I can," she said, rebelliously.

"You lie!"

They struggled, without moving, in low, violent voices, lashing each other's souls. They measured each other with their eyes. Philippe's gave way. "Annette!" he besought her.

But her cheeks still burned with the brutal lie he had given her, the shame of thinking that she really had lied. She stiffened, freed herself from the hand that held her, and went away.

In the evening Philippe came. She had spent the whole day in terror of this moment, in terror lest she might not have the strength to keep her door shut. For she did not want to face again this pitiless passion. She was convinced of the impossibility of living with this torch fastened to her breast. She must tear it away while the strength still remained to her. Did enough still remain? She loved him, she loved the flame that was consuming her. The next day she would love the shame and the outrage to which she had submitted. She blushed to admit it to herself, but even in her revolt against him that morning there had been an element of sensual delight.

She recognized his steps as they came up the stairs. She heard him ring and did not move from her chair. He rang again and knocked. Annette, with her arms hanging and her shoulders flung back, kept repeating to herself, "No! No!"

Even had she wished to rise and open the door her breath would have failed her.

She heard nothing more. Had he gone away? She was on her feet before she had even thought of it. She slipped with tottering, noiseless steps to the door. A board in the floor creaked. Annette stopped. Some seconds passed. . . . Nothing stirred. But she was aware of Philippe's presence watching behind the door. And Philippe knew that Annette was listening on the other side. There was a heavy silence. They were spying on each other. . . . Philippe's voice, close to the door, said, "Annette, you are there. Open!"

Annette, leaning against the wall, felt her heart give way. She did not answer.

"I know you are there. Don't try to hide! Annette, open! I must speak to you."

He lowered his voice so as not to be heard on the stairway, but a flood of mingled passions was rising in him. He was on the point of shaking the door.

"I must see you. . . . Whether you wish it or not, I mean to come in. . . ."

Silence.

"Annette, I hurt you this morning. Forgive me! . . . I want you. What do you want me to do? Tell me. I will do it. . . ."

Silence. Silence.

Philippe clenched his fists. He could have strangled her. With his mouth against the door, he growled, "You are mine. You haven't the right to take yourself back.

"Think hard!" he said. "If you don't open, it is finished for ever.

"Annette, my Annette!" he said.

"Coward!" he said furiously. "You are afraid to see me. You are only strong behind a closed door."

"Why do you torture me?" said a voice behind the door.

Philippe was silent.

"My friend," the tired voice went on, "you are killing me."

Philippe was touched, but his wounded pride was unwilling to show it. "What do you want?" he said.

"Mercy!" she answered.

The tone of her voice touched him, but he did not understand. "What do you need?"

"Leave me!" she said.

His anger sprang up again. "You are driving me away?"

"I am begging you for peace. Peace! . . . Leave me alone for a few weeks."

"You don't love me any longer?"

"I am defending my love."

"Against whom? Against what?"

"Against you."

"Madness! . . . You will open to me."

"No!"

"I demand it. I want you."

"I am not your prey."

Quivering, she held herself straight and proud. Her eyes defied him through the door. Though he could not see them, these eyes pierced him. "Good-bye!" he cried to her.

She heard him go away, and her blood froze. He would never forgive.

XLVII

He did not forgive. Philippe did not return.

Annette kept repeating to herself, "It had to be, it had to be. . . ."

But she could not accept it. She longed to see Philippe once more, to make him understand, gently—why had he been so furious?—that she was not leaving him, that she was jealously defending her love, their love, their common pride which he was destroying with unconscious brutality. She wanted them both to have a chance to collect themselves, to recover themselves amid the torrent of passion that was rolling them along with its mud and foam, so that they might consider things and make up their minds with perfect liberty. If he finally chose her, let it be in a fashion compatible with his wife's and his own self-respect.

But Philippe would never forgive a woman he loved who had raised a barrier against his will. If he had belonged to another social class he would have violated her. Confined as he was in the cage of his own, obliged to handle with tact this world he wished to master, his wounded passion turned into an exasperated denial of itself. Losing the woman, he destroyed the feeling he had for her. This, as he knew, would strike her to the heart. For his instinct told him that, in spite of everything, Annette loved him.

After three months of burning solitude, of a bitter and tormented self-communion, of hope, renunciation, pride, servility of soul, inner reproaches, after three months of hopeless, sterile waiting, Annette learned one day from the delighted Solange of the happiness that had fulfilled the longings of the Villard household. Noémi was about to have a child.

XLVIII

Annette would have liked to take refuge with her child and hide her unhappy head under the wing of the love which, they say, never fails one—that of the son for the mother. Alas, it fails like all the others. Annette could not look to Marc for a sign of tenderness or even interest. Never had the young boy seemed colder, more indifferent, more unfeeling. He saw nothing of the torments that ravaged his mother. To be sure, she did her best to conceal them from him. But she concealed them so badly! He might have seen them in her eyes, hollow as they were with sleeplessness, in her pale face, in her thin hands, in her whole body, which was wasted by cruel passion. He saw nothing. He did not even look. He was concerned with nothing but himself, and what took place in him he kept to himself. He saw her only at meal-times, when he never said a word; the efforts Annette made to talk only made him more obstinate in his silence. She could scarcely induce him to say good-morning and good-night at the beginning and the end of the day, for he had made up his mind that all such things were mere affectation, and he only agreed to them—and that not every day—for the sake of peace. He would hastily offer his mother's lips a bored forehead, and when he did not go out to school or on some affair of his own—it was not easy to get him to tell about the latter—he shut himself up in his workroom, a store-room, about the size of a large wardrobe, wedged in between the dining-room and his bedroom; and it was a mistake to disturb him there. At the table or in the sitting-room, he seemed like a stranger. Annette said to herself bitterly, "If I died he would not even weep."

And she thought of the dream she had once conceived of the dear little companion, blood of her blood, pressed close against her, divining, sharing, without words, all the secrets of her heart. How lacking in affection he was! Why was he so hard? One would have said at moments that he was angry with her. Why? Because she loved him too much?

"Yes, that is my weakness, loving too much. People do not need it. It bores them. . . . My son does not love me! He is only too anxious to leave me. My son is so little my son! He feels nothing of what I feel. He feels nothing!"

During these very days Marc's young heart was aflame with love and poetry. He had fallen madly in love with Noémi. It was one of those childish loves that are so absurd and all-consuming. He hardly knew what he wanted of this woman: was it to see her, feel her, touch her, taste her? Of course, he never dreamed of what possession meant: he was the possessed one. Marc almost fainted when he touched the little hand that Noémi held out to him, touched it with his lips and the tip of his nose, the greedy puppy's nose that inhaled, in the frail flower of the wrist, the intoxicating mystery of the feminine body. For him she was a living fruit and flower. He was dying with desire to implant his teeth in it—very gently—dying of terror lest he might yield. Once—oh, shame!—he did yield. . . . What was going to happen? Red and trembling, he expected the worst: public humiliation, indignant words, an ignominious dismissal. But she burst out laughing, called him "puppy," boxed his ear, rubbed his nose once, twice, three times, over the spot he had bitten, saying, "Beg my pardon, little wretch!"

From that moment she had amused herself playing with the young animal. She meant no harm, she meant no good. She enjoyed exciting the young lover. For her it was a matter of no moment. She never suspected how serious it might be for the boy. But for him (for him who, in spite of appearances, was the true child of Annette) it was tragic.

Since the first time he had seen her, she had been for him the forbidden Paradise, that marvellous mirage, woman, which appears before the awakening glance of an innocent child. The fascinating image is shaped as much from what exists as from what does not exist, as much from what he sees as from what he does not see, what he does not know, what he fears and desires, what he wants and what he does not want, the terrifying attraction that thrills the adolescent body at the ecstatic, brutal appeal of nature. As for Noémi's features, he probably did not see one of them just as it was. But each of her features and each of her movements, the folds of her dress, the curls of her hair, her voice, her perfume, and the gleam of her eyes, everything stirred in his hungry heart and body the wild, leaping waves of joy and hope, cries of happiness, the need of tears.

On the very day when the heart-broken Annette saw him so hard, so hostile, so icy, when her awkward effort to learn the cause, to drag out of him one word, one single word of affection, had brought down upon her a cutting reply—on just that day the young boy had had his most moving revelation of the enchanted dream. For eight days he had been living in a state of intoxication. Noémi, whom he continued to see, without his mother's knowing it, and who used him as a little spy who innocently brought her word of all the movements in the enemy's camp—Noémi, whom he had once surprised in her drawing-room, looking at herself, as she talked, in a tiny mirror hidden in the folds of her handkerchief, had amused herself painting his pale lips with her lipstick. He had had in his mouth the taste of the beloved mouth. And ever since he had carried it on the tongue that sucked it; he was impregnated with it. He saw this pomegranate red, this ever-open mouth with the lip drawn up, too short and too restless to meet the other lip, which was as full as a cherry—saw it everywhere on that morning when, leaving his mother's apartment, after rudely slamming the door, he decided to play hockey from school and go for a walk. It blossomed in the cloud-orchard of the beautiful July sky, in the little playful ripples of a fountain, in the absent-minded smiles of passing women. It obsessed him.

He was walking at random, with his blond head bare to the summer wind. But, abstracted as he was and full of his own fancies, his lynx-eyes recognized his Aunt Sylvie, in the distance, coming towards him on the other sidewalk. He hastily turned off into a side street. The last thing he wanted was to meet her. Not that he was afraid of being caught playing truant: she would have been much more likely to laugh at that. But when he had a secret, with her—it was not like this with his mother!—he never felt safe. Of secrets of this kind, his instinct told him, Aunt Sylvie was an expert reader.

She had not seen him. He breathed freely again. He could enjoy his love the whole morning. And as he strolled along—his love did not prevent him from halting before the shop-windows to look at a necktie, a trifle of some kind, an illustrated paper—his steps led him unawares straight to his goal. He was like those pigeons in Paris that fly every morning over the great piles of dusty houses seeking the green gardens and cool old trees. The boy was seeking them too. He felt the need of their rustling shade.

He went down the Mont Sainte-Geneviève and, leaving the old, crowded streets, found himself in the clear, calm spaces of the Jardin des Plantes before he was aware that this was the spot to which he had wished to come.

There were few people here at this hour. A handful of scattered strollers. Paris hummed like a hive in the distance. The blue vibration of a beautiful summer morning. He picked out a bench that was hidden at the foot of a group of trees, and he closed his eyes on his treasure. He pressed his long, feverish, adolescent hands against his breast as if he wished to shelter his heart from rash eyes. What was he hiding, what thing so precious that he scarcely dared to think of it? A remark Noémi had thoughtlessly uttered, a remark of which he had made a world. . . . The last time he had seen her she had thrown him a chance smile. She had been scarcely aware of the boy's presence, for her attention was absorbed in the great things that had happened (the reconquest of Philippe, the humiliation of Annette, the final victory! . . . "But one never knows! Nothing is certain. Let us be satisfied with to-day! . . .") She sighed from fatigue, relaxation, pleasure. Marc asked her why. Amused by the boy's alarmed, ingenuous gaze, she said, with another great sigh, to puzzle him, "It's a secret."

"What secret?"

A malicious thought darted through her mind and Noémi replied, "I can't tell you. You must guess."

Trembling with emotion, he said, "I don't know. Tell me."

She lowered her lids over her languorous eyes. "No, no, no!"

Blushing, stammering, he was afraid to understand.

To keep up the game, she assumed a mysterious air and said, "Would you like to have it?"

In his emotion he was ready to cry, "No!"

"Well, not to-day. . . . I'll tell you some other time."

"When?"

"Soon."

"How soon?"

"Soon. . . . Next week, when you come to dinner."

The week had passed. This was the evening, Marc was thinking, when he was to see her again. He was only living in the expectation of that moment. He had lived it through twenty times in advance! He never dared to go to the end of the scene. It was too agonizing. . . . But to linger on the way was so sweet! On the garden-bench he gave way to his languor. A clock struck noon. Behind a screen of trees the sand of a sunny path crunched under the feet of a little girl who passed singing. Further on, in an aviary, some exotic birds were chirping in a strange, agitating language. From far away, on the Seine, came the long-drawn-out sound of the siren of a tug. And noiselessly, without seeing him, two lovers passed him slowly with their arms entwined as they walked, a tall, dark girl and a pale young workman whose lips touched and who devoured each other with their eyes. Holding his breath, the boy gazed after them till their path turned, and as they disappeared he sobbed with happiness, the happiness that had passed, the happiness that was coming. The happiness that was in them, in everything that surrounded him, in this July noon—in his own burning heart which embraced it all.

He went home in the halo of this moment of ecstasy. It was infinitely greater than the feminine image that had aroused it. The shadow of Noémi melted into a golden bath, and he had to make an effort to summon it up again. Marc tried to do so, but it escaped him. He was cheating himself, pretending to find under this happiness, which was so intense that it was painful, in everything that filled his heart to overflowing, the boundless hopes, the heroic resolutions, the strength and good will that bore him up like wings as he ran upstairs, four steps at a time. But the moment he caught sight of his mother's severe face—he was three-quarters of an hour late for lunch—the glory faded. He fell back beneath the sullen cloud of silence.

Annette did not try to talk to him. She had her own burden of anxieties, and she could not share his. Her son, sitting opposite her at table, seemed self-centred and far away. He ate ravenously. He was hungry and eager to finish so that he could plunge back again into his daydreams.

Annette thought, "I am nothing to him but the person who gives him his food."

She no longer had even the courage to protest. She felt abandoned. Towards the end of the meal he became aware that he had not spoken, and he felt vaguely remorseful. But he was afraid that if he said a word she would begin to question him. He thrust his badly folded napkin into its ring, rose hurriedly, and, taking care not to catch his mother's eye, went out . . . or was going out, when, on a sudden impulse, he asked—he was sure, for Noémi had told him, but he wanted confirmation—"It's tonight we are dining at the Villards'?"

Annette, who was still sitting there, motionless and dejected, said, without looking up, "We are not dining out."

Marc stopped, astonished, on the threshold. "What! They told me so!"

"Who told you?"

In his embarrassment the boy did not answer. His mother knew nothing about his visits to Noémi. He hastened to turn aside the question with another question, "But when are we going, then?"

Annette shrugged her shoulders. There were never going to be any more dinners at the Villards'. Noémi had said, for fun, "Next week," as she might have said, "In the year forty."

Marc let go of the door-knob and turned back in distress. Annette looked at him, saw how disappointed he was, and said, "I don't know."

"What! You don't know?"

"The Villards have gone away," said Annette.

"No!" Marc cried.

She did not seem to hear him. Marc laid an impatient hand on his mother's arm, which was stretched out over the table, and besought her, "It isn't true?"

Annette roused herself from her torpor, rose and began to clear the table.

"But where, where?" cried Marc, overwhelmed.

"I don't know," said Annette. She gathered up the dishes and went out.

Marc stood there, haggard, before his ruined dream. He did not understand. This sudden departure, without a word of warning. . . . Impossible! . . . He started to follow his mother, to drag some explanation out of her. But, no! He stopped short. . . . No, this wasn't true! He understood now. . . . Annette had discovered his love. She wanted to separate them. She was lying, she was lying! Noémi had not gone away. . . . And he hated his mother.

He slipped out of the apartment, tumbled down the stairs, walked, ran, with a beating heart, to the Villards'. He was going to make sure that they had not left. And as a matter of fact, they were there. The footman said that Monsieur had just gone out; Madame was tired and was not receiving anyone. But Marc urged that she would let him have a moment's conversation with her. The servant returned. Madame was sorry, but it was impossible. The boy insisted, feverishly, that he must see her just for a moment; he had something very important to tell her. . . . Meanwhile, he said all sorts of incoherent things, stuttering and choking in a broken voice, making awkward gestures; he blushed, he was on the point of weeping. The curious, mocking eyes of the impassive footman made him lose the thread of his ideas. He was pushed towards the door. He resisted stupidly, crying out that he forbade anyone to touch him. The servant told him to get out, said that if he did not hold his tongue he would telephone to the concierge and have him taken down by force. . . . The door closed behind him. Ashamed and furious, he remained on the threshold, unable to make up his mind to leave. And as he leaned mechanically against the door, he saw it was not shut tight and was yielding. He pushed it open and stepped inside again. He meant at all costs to reach Noémi. The vestibule was empty. He knew where the room was and slipped into the corridor. He heard Noémi's voice from within. She was saying to the footman, "Never in the world! He bores me to death! You did quite right in pushing him out, the little fool!"

He found himself back on the landing. He fled, he wept, he ground his teeth, he was distracted. He sat down, choking, on one of the steps of the staircase. He did not want people to see him crying in the street.

Wiping away his tears, he assumed an air of calm that covered his mad grief and, without knowing where he was going, he set out for home again. He was desperate. To die, he wanted to die! Life was no longer posable. It was too ugly, too base, it lied, everything lied. He could not breathe. As he crossed the Seine he thought of flinging himself into it. But another unfortunate had been ahead of him. The banks looked as if they were blade with flies. Thousands of women and children were leaning over the parapet, eagerly watching as the drowned man was drawn out. What feelings stirred them? A very few felt a sadistic thrill. A few more felt pity. The immense majority felt the attraction of the unusual event, idle curiosity. A good number, perhaps, looked into their own hearts to see how a person suffers ("how I might suffer"), to see how a person dies ("how I might die"). Marc perceived only a base curiosity, and it horrified him. Kill himself, yes, but not in public! He was like Annette. He had a shy, fierce pride; he could never make a spectacle of himself before this rabble, never be mauled by their hands, violated in his nakedness by their dirty glances. He clenched his teeth and hurried home, hurried faster, resolved to kill himself.

In the course of the minute searches which, during his mother's absences, he had devoted to the apartment he had found a revolver. It was Noémi's; Annette had picked it up after she had left and placed it, too carelessly, in a drawer. He had appropriated it and hidden it. His mind was made up. As, with a child, an act, whenever it is possible, immediately follows the thought, Marc meant to carry out his resolution at once. Re-entering the apartment as noiselessly as he had gone out, he shut himself up in his room and loaded the revolver as he had seen a schoolmate do: the latter, who was hardly older than himself, had carried one of these dangerous playthings in his pocket and, holding it between his legs, in the Greek class, had explained to his attentive neighbors how to handle it. The weapon was ready now. Marc was prepared to fire. . . . Where should he place himself? He must not miss. There, standing before his mirror. . . . But afterwards where would he fall? . . . It would be better to sit here, leaning on the table, with the mirror in front of him. He unhooked the mirror, placed it on the table, and propped it up with a dictionary. . . . There, he could see himself perfectly. He took the revolver and pressed it. . . . Where? Against the temple; they say that's the best place. . . . Would it hurt very much? He did not give a thought to his mother. His passion, his sufferings and the preparations completely occupied him. . . . His eyes in the mirror touched his heart. . . . Poor Marc! . . . He felt the need of expressing, of making known before he disappeared, what he had suffered from the world and how much he despised it. . . . The need of avenging himself, of leaving regrets behind him, of arousing admiration. . . . He hunted up a big sheet of school-paper, folded it across—he was in a hurry—and wrote in his uncertain, laborious, childish script, "I cannot live any longer, for she has betrayed me. The whole world is wicked. I don't love anything any longer, so I would rather die. All women are liars. They are mean. They don't know how to love. I despise her. When they bury me I ask them to put this paper over me: 'I die for Noémi.'"

At this dear name he wept; he pressed his handkerchief against his mouth in order not to make a noise. He wiped away his tears, reread his lines, and thought gravely, "I mustn't compromise her."

Then he tore up the sheet and began again. Almost in spite of himself he breathlessly dashed off his despairing lines. When he reached the sentence "They don't know how to love," he continued, "I have known and I die." In the midst of his grief he was very much pleased with this phrase: it almost consoled him. It disposed him to be kind to those he was leaving behind him, and he ended generously, "I forgive you all." He added his signature. A few seconds more and all would be over; he would be delivered, and he saw in advance the fine effect it would produce. But just as he was passing the pen once more over the childish flourishes where the ink had failed, the door of the little room opened suddenly behind him. He had just enough time to hide the weapon and the papers under his arms. Annette saw only the mirror placed against the dictionary and she thought Marc was admiring himself. She made no comment. She seemed terribly tired and, in a low voice, as if she were exhausted, she said she had forgotten to buy milk for dinner and that Marc would be very kind if he would spare her the trouble of climbing up and down the four flights by going after it. As for him, he had only one idea, that she should not see what his arms covered. He did not wish to move and replied roughly that he did not have the time; he was busy. With a sad smile, Annette closed the door and went out.

He heard her slowly descending the stairs. (She had looked worn out.) He was seized with remorse. He could not forget the expression of her face and her tired voice. . . . He threw the revolver hastily into a drawer, buried the farewells to life under a pile of books and rushed out of the apartment. He jostled his mother on the stairs and called to her, in a cross voice, that he was going to do the errand. Annette came upstairs again, her heart somewhat lightened. She was thinking that the boy was not as contrary as he seemed. But she had been pained by his rudeness and his harshness. Heavens, how unaffectionate he was! . . . Well, so much the better for him! Poor child, he would suffer less from life. . . .

When Marc came back, he had quite forgotten his intention to commit suicide. It gave him no pleasure to find the famous Testament, imperfectly hidden, on his table. He hastened to place it completely out of sight in the bottom of a band-box. He dismissed the depressing thought. He felt now how cowardly, how cruel, it would have been to his mother, whose health worried him. But he expressed his concern clumsily; he did not know how to ask her about it and she did not know how to reply. Through misplaced pride he did not want to show his real feelings; it would have seemed as if he were awkwardly performing a mere polite duty. And she, as proud as himself, did not want to worry him, and she turned the conversation away from it. So they both fell back into their silence. Freed from his anxiety, Marc now felt that he had the right to be angry with his mother because for her he had sacrificed his suicide. . . . He was well aware that he no longer felt the least desire for this; but he needed to avenge himself for what he had suffered. When you cannot avenge yourself on others you do so on your mother; she is always there, at hand, and she does not strike back.

So they remained walled-up, each one absorbed in his own grief. And Marc, whose own sorrow had begun to weigh upon him, felt his animosity against Annette's increasing. He was relieved when he heard the door-bell announcing Aunt Sylvie—for he knew her ring. She had come to take him to a performance of Isadora's, for she had suddenly gone crazy over dancing. In spite of the duty that he felt to retain in his soul and also on his face—especially on his face—the fatal mark of the ordeal through which he had passed, he could not hide his joy at escaping. He ran to dress, leaving the door open so as to lose none of the gay talk of his aunt, who, the moment she had arrived, had launched into a frivolous story. And Annette, who was forcing herself to smile, though she was broken-hearted, thought, "Can this be the woman who cried her heart out a year ago over her child's body? Has she forgotten?"

She did not envy this elasticity. But her son's laugh, as he answered Sylvie's sallies from the other room, evidenced an equal gift of forgetfulness. Annette, who was pained by this apparent heartlessness, did not know that she too possessed this cruel and marvellous gift. When Marc reappeared, beaming, ready to start, she could not command her face enough to conceal her harsh disapproval. Marc was more hurt by this than he would have been by out-and-out censure. He avenged himself by exaggerating his gaiety. He became almost noisy and seemed in such a hurry to get away that he forgot to say good-bye to his mother. He thought of it after he had gone out. Should he go back? Let her worry! He pouted. It comforted him to leave behind him that reproachful face, that sadness, the depressing atmosphere he felt in the house, and the disturbing traces of the day's troubles. . . . That immense day! . . . A whole world! . . . Several lifetimes in a few hours, the peak of joy and the depths of despair. . . He ought to have been crushed under such a load of emotions, but it weighed no more on the elastic adolescent than a bird weighs on a branch. The bird flies away, the branch swings back and sways in the wind. They had flown away, the joys and sorrows of the day that was past! Only a dream remained of them. To enjoy the new joys and the new sorrows, he hastened to efface it.

But Annette, who had no means of knowing what was passing through his head, Annette, who, like him, was a passionate soul, attributed everything to herself; and, as she listened to his laughter receding down the stairs, she was struck to the heart by his joy at leaving her. She thought he hated her, for her passion always exaggerated things in every way. . . . She was a burden on him, yes, that was quite clear. He longed to be free from her. When she was dead he would be happier. . . . Happier! . . . She would be happier too. It stabbed her through and through, this absurd thought that her son, her child, might desire her death. . . . (Absurd? Who can tell? In his innermost heart, in a moment's madness, what child has not desired his mother's death?) . . . The terror of this intuition, striking Annette at this moment when she was holding on to life with one weak hand, was a mortal blow to her.

All day she had been devastated by the furious return of her passion. Now that her decision had been made and carried out, the irreparable deed consummated, now that she had deliberately done her duty, she no longer had the strength to resist the attack of the enemy within. And the enemy had rushed upon her like a torrent.

She was a party to it. She had opened the gates to it. When all is lost, one has at least the right to enjoy one's despair! My suffering concerns only myself. Let me feel the whole of it. Bleed, bleed, my heart! Let me stab you by forcing you to see again all you have lost! Philippe. . . . He was there before her. . . . The evocation was so strong that she saw him, spoke to him, touched him. . . . He, everything that she loved in him, the attraction of that which resembles and that which is opposed to us, the antagonistic union, burning with the double fire of love and combat, the embrace and the struggle: they are the same thing. And this illusory embrace had such a carnal violence that the possessed soul, possessed by love, bent like Leda beneath the swan. The flood of passion ebbed despairingly. Then came those agonies that are part of the life of every woman who is made for love and to whom her share of love has been refused—agonies that come at this time of life when, if a love dies, she thinks that love itself is dying. On this night Annette, alone in her room, abandoned by her son, with her passion mutilated, suffered tortures in the destitution of her heart, and the haunting belief that love was lost forever, that life was lost without love, gripped her by the throat. It did not give her a moment's respite. She drove it away; it returned. Annette tried in vain to fill her mind with other things. She picked up her work, tossed it aside, got up, sat down. With her head on the table, she wrung her hands. The fixed idea maddened her. She had reached that point of suffering when to escape from herself a woman is ready for the worst aberrations. Annette felt that she was on the verge of madness, and she was aware, in her delirium, of a savage impulse, the frightful desire to go down into the street and to debase herself in her fury, destroy her body and her tortured heart, prostitute herself to the first man she met. When she became aware of this bestial thought, she cried out in horror; and as a result of this horror the infamous idea would not relax its grip. Then, like her son, she thought of killing herself. She could no longer control her obsession. . . .

She rose and went towards the door, but to reach it she had to pass close to the open window; she decided that, once there, she would fling herself out! . . . A strange instinct of purity that wished to save her soul from pollution! That illusory soul! Her reason was not duped by the conventional morality. But her instinct was stronger and it saw more clearly. . . . Entirely occupied by her double obsession—the door and the window—she did not see what was close to her. Walking towards the window, she struck herself violently in the stomach against the sharp corner of the sideboard. The pain was so severe that she could not breathe. Doubled over, with her hands on the wounded spot, she felt a keen, revengeful joy that her stomach had been struck. She would have liked to break to pieces in her body the blind and drunken master, the tiger-god. . . . Then the reaction came. She sank down on a low chair that fitted in between the sideboard and the window, and her strength failed her. Her hands were icy, her face beaded with perspiration; the beating of her disordered heart wavered. Ready to slip into the abyss, she had only one thought, "Quicker, quicker! . . ."

She fainted.

XLIX

When she opened her eyes again—(When was it? After a few seconds? . . . A gulf . . . )—her head was thrown back as if on a block, her neck was lying against the window-sill, her body wedged into the narrow angle of the wall. She opened her eyes and over the dark roofs, in the July night, she saw the stars. . . . One of them pierced her with its divine gaze.

Silence, unprecedented, vast as a plain. . . . Yet the wagons were rolling by in the street below; the glasses on the sideboard vibrated. She heard nothing. . . . Suspended between earth and sky. . . . "A noiseless fight." . . . "She was not entirely awake. . . ."

She put off the moment. She was afraid of finding again what she had left behind—the horrible lassitude, the torment, the snare of love: love, maternity, implacable egoism, that of nature who cares so little for my troubles, who only watches till I awaken so as to break my heart. . . . Never to wake again! . . .

She became conscious, none the less. And she saw that the enemy was no longer there. Her despair had vanished. . . . Vanished? No, it was still there, but it was no longer in her. She saw it outside. She heard its rustle. . . . Magic. . . . A terrible music disclosing unknown spaces. . . . Paralyzed, Annette heard, as if some invisible hand were conjuring it up in the room, the sound of sobbing, the Fatum of a Chopin prelude. Her heart was flooded with a joy she had never before experienced. It had nothing but the name in common with the poor joy of everyday life which is afraid of pain, which only exists because it denies pain, denies that immense joy which is also pain. . . . Annette listened with closed eyes. The voice stopped. There was an expectant silence. And suddenly from the torn soul a wild cry of deliverance flew upward as if on wings. As a diamond leaves its track on a piece of glass, it streaked across the vault of the night. In her exhaustion, as she lay on her hard pillow, Annette, on the threshold of this night of sorrow, gave birth to a new soul. . . .

The silent cry whirled far away and disappeared in the abyss of thought. Annette remained silent and motionless. A long time. . . . At last she rose, her neck aching, her limbs stiff. But her soul was delivered. An irresistible force pushed her towards the table. She did not know what she was going to do. Her heart was in her throat. She could not keep it all to herself. She took up her pen and, in a whirlwind of passion, without metre, in a rough and jerky rhythm, in a single torrent, she poured out the flood of pain. . . .

Tempest, sea-waves crashing against the rocks, a soul laden with spray, flashing with lightning, a surf foaming with passions and tears dashed up towards the sky. . . .

And at the last cry of the wild birds the soul fell back suddenly. And Annette, exhausted, flung herself on her bed and slept.

L

When morning came, nothing remained of the sorrows of the night but a light snow that melted in the sun. . . . Cosi la neve al sol si disigilla. . . . And the aching peace of a body that has fought and knows it has conquered.

She felt satiated, satiated with her grief. Grief is like passion. To deliver oneself from it, one has to glut oneself with it. But few people have the hardihood to do this. They feed the snarling dog with crumbs from their table. The only people who conquer grief are those who dare to embrace its excess, who say to it, "I take you to myself. You shall bring forth children through me. . . ." That powerful embrace of the creative soul, as brutal and fertile as actual possession. . . .

On the table Annette found what she had written. She tore it up. These disordered words had become as unbearable to her as the feelings they expressed. She did not want to disturb the sense of well-being that pervaded her. She had a feeling of relief, as if a knot, a link of the chain, had just been broken. . . . And in a flash she had a vision of the chain of servitudes from which, one by one, the soul slowly frees itself through a series of existences, its own and those of others (they are all the same). . . . And she asked herself: "Why, why these eternal attachments, these eternal ruptures? Towards what liberation does desire drive us in its sanguinary progress?"

It was only for a moment. Why worry about what is going to happen? It will pass, just like what has already happened. We know quite well that, no matter what happens, we shall make our way through. As the saying goes, that old heroic utterance of prayer and defiance: "May God only not lay upon our shoulders heavier burdens than we can bear!"

She had borne hers, that of a day. Well, one day at a time! . . . She was eased in heart and body. . . . To strive, to seek, NOT to find, and not to yield. . . . "It's all right. It's all right. . . . I haven't wasted my time. . . . Leave the rest to to-morrow!"

She rose. She was naked, and from over the roofs the morning sun bathed her body and the room. . . . She was happy. . . . Yes, in spite of everything!

Everything about her was just as it had been yesterday: the sky, the earth, the past and the future. But everything that had crushed her yesterday was radiant to-day.

Marc had come home very late in the evening. He had enjoyed himself without his mother, and now he felt remorse at having left her alone and made her sit up for him. For he knew that Annette would not go to bed until he had returned, and he had expected an icy reception. Although he was in the wrong he assumed as he went upstairs—if only for that reason—an attitude of defiance. With an insolent smile on his lips, although at bottom he was not sure of himself, he picked up the key from under the doormat and opened the door. Hanging up his coat in the vestibule, he listened. Silence. Nothing stirred. Noiselessly, he tiptoed into his room and went to bed. He felt relieved. Serious matters could wait until to-morrow! But before he was entirely undressed he was seized with anxiety. This stillness was not natural. . . . Like his mother he had a vivid imagination and one that was easily disturbed. . . . What had happened? . . . He was a thousand miles from suspecting the deadly storms that had raged that night in the room adjoining his own. His mother was inexplicable and disturbing to him. He never knew what she was thinking. Seized with alarm, in his nightshirt and bare feet, he went and pressed his ear to Annette's door. He was reassured. She was there. She was asleep; her breathing was loud and uneven. He pushed open the door, fearing that she was ill, and stole up to the bed. By the light from the street he saw her, stretched out flat on her back, with her hair over her cheeks, with that tragic face which, in nights of old, had stirred the curiosity of her companion Sylvie. Her breast rose and fell heavily, harshly, violently, with difficulty. Marc was seized with fear and pity for all the weariness and suffering he divined in this body. Bending over the pillow, in a low, trembling voice, he murmured "Mamma."

As if she had heard the call from far away in her sleep, she made an effort to free herself and groaned. The child drew back, frightened. She relapsed into her immobility. Marc went back to bed. The thoughtlessness of his age, the fatigue of the day, got the better of his anxiety. He slept without waking until morning.

When he got up, the fancies and fears of the past evening returned. He was surprised that his mother was not yet visible. As a rule, she came into his room to kiss him and say good-morning while he was in bed. She had not come in this morning. But he heard her coming and going in the neighboring room. He opened the door. Kneeling on the floor, she was dusting the furniture and did not turn round. Marc said good-morning to her. She turned her smiling eyes on him and said, "Good-morning, my dear." Then she went on with her work, paying no more attention to him.

He expected she would ask him about his evening. He detested these questions, but when she did not ask them he was vexed. She went into her room, put it in order and finished dressing. It was time for her classes; she was getting ready to go out He saw her looking at herself in the mirror, with dark circles about her eyes, her face still showing lines of fatigue, but with a light in her eyes! Her mouth was smiling. He was astonished at the sight. He had expected to find her sad and he was even ready to pity her in his heart; this disturbed his plans. The little man's logic was upset by it.

But Annette had her own logic. "The heart has its reasons" which a sense higher than reason understands. Annette had ceased to worry about what others might think. She knew now that you must not ask others to understand you. If they love you, it is with their eyes closed. They don't close them often! . . . "Let them be as they wish to be! Whatever they are, I love them. I cannot live without loving them. And if they don't love me I have enough love in my heart both for myself and for them."

She smiled into the mirror with a smile that came from far deeper depths than her eyes, smiled at the fire of which they were a spark, at eternal Love. She let her arms fall from her head, turned towards her son, saw the child's troubled face, remembered his evening out, took hold of the tip of his chin, and, letting the syllables drop, said gaily, "You were dancing? I'm so glad! And now you must sing!"

She laughed as she saw his amazed expression, caressed him with her eyes, kissed him on his nose and, picking up her bag from the table, went out, saying, "Good-bye, my little cricket!"

In the vestibule he heard her whistling a careless tune. (It was a talent he envied her even while he despised it, for she whistled much better than he.)

He was indignant! This indecent gaiety after all the evening's anxiety. . . . She had escaped him. He denounced the eternal caprices of women, their lack of seriousness, as he had heard others do . . . "la donna mobile."

He was about to go out when a piece of paper in the scrap-basket caught his attention. At a distance the sharp, prying eyes of the rapacious child unthinkingly deciphered a few words on a fragment of the sheet. He stopped short. . . . These words. . . . His mother's writing! He picked them up, read them feverishly, at random at first, one at a time. These flaming words! . . . As they were torn into bits, the emotion they called up, interrupted in the midst of its flight, was all the more fascinating. . . . He gathered them together, rummaged in the basket for the smallest fragments, took them all and patiently pieced them together. His hands trembled at the secret he had captured by surprise. When he had assembled all the pieces and was able to grasp the poem as a whole, he was completely taken aback. He did not understand it very well, but the wild fervor of this solitary song revealed to him unknown depths of passion and grief that exalted and dismayed him. Was it possible that these stormy cries had come from his mother's breast? . . . No, no, it wasn't possible! He wouldn't have it. He told himself that she had copied them from a book. . . . But from what book? He couldn't ask her. . . . And yet, suppose it wasn't taken from a book . . . ? The tears came, the need of crying out his emotion, his love, a longing to throw himself into his mother's arms, at her feet, to open his heart to her, to read her own . . . And he couldn't do it. . . .

When his mother came home at noon for lunch, the boy, who had spent the whole morning reading and copying the torn fragments and had thrust them in an envelope into his breast, said nothing to her. Sitting at his table, he even refrained from rising and turning his head towards her when she entered. The more burning was his desire to know, the stiffer was the constraint that led him to conceal his anxiety under a mask of insensibility. If, after all, these tragic words were not Annette's! Doubt returned to him at the sight of his mother's tranquil face. . . . But the other, the upsetting doubt, persisted all the same. . . . Supposing they were hers? . . . This woman, my mother? . . . Facing her at table, he did not dare look at her. . . . But when her back was turned and she moved about the room, looking for something, carrying a plate, he stared at her eagerly with questioning eyes that asked: "Who are you?"

He could not define his troubled, fascinated, uneasy impression. But Annette, full of her new life, noticed nothing.

LI

In the afternoon they went out, each about his own business. Marc watched his mother in the distance. He was torn by conflicting feelings: he admired her, he was irritated by her. . . . Women were too much for him! Women, every woman. At times they were so close, at other times so very far away! A strange race. . . . Nothing about them is like ourselves. One never knows what is going on in them, why they laugh, why they cry. He scorned them, he despised them, he needed them, he pined for them! He was angry with them just because of this obsession. He could have bitten the neck of that woman who was walking by as he had bitten Noémi's wrist—as he would have liked to bite it—till the blood flowed! At this sudden memory his startled heart gave a leap. He stopped, turned pale and spat with disgust.

He crossed the Luxembourg Gardens, where the young men were playing. He looked at them enviously. The best part of him, his secret desires, went out towards manly activity, without love, without women—sport, heroic games. But he was weakly: an unjust fate, his illness as a child, had placed him in a position of inferiority in the race of his own generation. And his sedentary life, his books, his dreams, the companionship of women, the two sisters, had poisoned him with this venom of love, transmitted by his mother, his aunt, his grandfather, by all the blood of the Rivières. How he would have liked to spill that blood, to open his veins! Ah, how he envied those young men with their beautiful limbs, empty of thought, full of light!

All the riches that were his he despised. He could think of nothing but those of which he was deprived, the games and contests of harmonious bodies. And in his injustice he did not see that other contest which his mother was waging so close to him. . . .

She walked on. The summer was pouring its splendid waves over the city. The blue gaze of the sky bathed the tops of the houses. . . . How good it would have been to be far away from the city in the fields! . . . But that was more than she could ask for: Annette did not have the means to leave Paris. No doubt Marc would be able to go off for a few weeks with his aunt to some beach in Normandy. But Annette would not go; her pride would not allow her to be a charge on her sister. Besides, ever since the days when she had seen them with her father, she had felt an aversion for summer-resorts, with all their bored people, those flirtations of the idle and the curious. She would stay at home alone. She did not mind this. She carried within herself the sea and the sky, the sunsets behind the hills, the milky fogs, the fields stretching out under the shroud of moonlight, the calm death of the nights. In the August afternoon, breathing the warm air, amid the uproar of the streets and the flood of human beings, Annette crossed Paris with the quick, sure step, the light, rhythmical step of other days, noting everything as she passed and yet very far away. . . . In the great, dusty street, shaken by the wheels of the heavy autobusses, she was wandering in her thought under the vaults of the forest in that Burgundian countryside where she had spent her happy childhood, and her nostrils caught the odor of bark and moss. She was walking over the fallen autumn leaves. A rain-laden wind swept through the stripped branches, brushing her cheek with its damp wing; a bird's song flowed magically through the silence; the rain-laden wind passed her. . . . Through these woods the young Annette passed also with her weeping lover, and there was the hawthorne hedge, there were the bees about the abandoned house. . . . Joys and sorrows. . . . So far away! She smiled at her own youthful image to which suffering was still so new. . . . "Wait, my poor Annette, you are only at the beginning. . . ."

"Do you regret nothing?"

"Nothing!"

"Neither what you have done nor what you have failed to do?"

"Nothing, deceitful spirit! Were you trying to spy out my regrets? You will find that your labor is lost! I accept everything, everything I have had and everything I have not had, my whole lot, wise and foolish. Everything has been as it should have been, the wise and the foolish. One makes mistakes: that is life. But it is never quite a mistake to have loved. Although age is overtaking me, my heart, at least, has no wrinkles. And although it has suffered, it is happy to have loved." And her grateful mind turned, with a smile, to those whom she had loved.

There was much tenderness in this smile and not a little French irony. Touched as she was at the thought of them, Annette perceived, curiously enough, the ridiculous side of all these torments, her own and those of others . . . that pitiful fever of desire and waiting! For what was she waiting? An end of love, for herself. For the others, too, in their turn!

She saw the others, her son, with his burning hands, quivering to grasp the uncertain future; Philippe, dissatisfied with the commonplace food that society offered his devouring hunger; Sylvie, trying to forget and looking to the future that would fill the gaping emptiness of her heart; the multitude of ordinary people yawning over the boredom of their life; and youth, restless youth, wandering and waiting. . . . For what was it waiting? Towards what were its hands stretched out?

Liberated from herself, she looked at all these burden-bearers, saw that herd, that mob in the streets, hastening, running, each ignoring every one else, each as if pursued by the sheep-dogs, and, under the apparent disorder, the sovereign rhythm—all believing they directed themselves, all directed. . . . Towards what? Whither was he leading them, the invisible shepherd? . . . The good shepherd? . . . No! Beyond good and evil. . . .

She gave her lessons as usual, patient and attentive, listening kindly, explaining clearly, making no mistakes. Even as she spoke, the dream continued to envelop her. Whoever has formed the habit finds it easy to live two lives at a time, one on a level with the ground, with other men, the other in the depths of the dream that is bathed by the inner sun. One neglects neither of them. One reads them both with a glance as a musician's eye reads a score. Life is a symphony: each moment of life sings in several parts. The reverberation of this warm harmony brought the color to Annette's face. Her pupils to-day were astonished at her youthful air, and they conceived for her one of those strong attachments which the young feel for their elders, the Heralds of life, and which they dare not confess. Annette knew nothing of the wake of love that her passing left that day in the hearts of those who were near her.

She came home towards evening in the same aerial state. With her light heart, she felt as if she were moving on air. She could not have explained it. The powerful enigma of a woman enveloped in her own radiance, in a joy without apparent reason, even in the face of reason! Everything that surrounds her, the whole external world is, at these moments, only a theme for the free improvisations of the passionate fantasy of her dreams.

She threaded her way, in the streets, through anxious groups of people. The newsboys were running about shouting the news which the passers-by were discussing. She saw and heard nothing. From a passing tram someone shouted something to her; she recalled who it was a moment later—Sylvie's husband. Without hearing what he said she had replied with a gay wave of her hand. . . . How excited everyone was! . . . Once more she had the brief sense of a dizzy current which, like the whirling spirals of star-dust, was rushing through a crevice in the vault into the abyss that drew it down. . . . What abyss? . . .

She climbed up to her apartment. Marc was awaiting her on the threshold, his eyes shining, and behind him, Sylvie, very much excited. They were eager to tell her the news. . . . What was it? Both spoke at once; each of them wanted to be the first. . . .

"But what on earth are you trying to tell me?" she said, laughing.

She distinguished one word, "War."

"War? What war?" But she was not surprised. . . . The abyss. . . . "So it was you? For a long time I have felt your breath drawing us down. . . ."

Their exclamations went on. To please them she roused herself—a little—from her somnambulistic state. . . . "War? Well, so be it! War, peace, it's all life, all part of the game. . . . I'll take my share! . . ."

She was a good player, the enchanted soul!

"I challenge God!"

THE END