Annette returned to the house, disappointed. She had cherished great hopes of a frank talk. Although she had anticipated resistance, she had counted on Roger's heart illumining his mind. The most distressing thing was not that Roger had not understood, but that he had not made the least effort to understand. He seemed to see nothing pathetic in the question for Annette. He was all on the surface, and he saw everything in his own image. Nothing could be more painful to a woman with a strong inner life.
She did not deceive herself. Roger had been embarrassed, irritated by Annette's words, but he had completely failed to perceive their seriousness; he considered them inconsequential. He thought that Annette had bizarre and rather paradoxical ideas, that she was "original": it was troublesome. Madame and Mademoiselle Brissot knew how to be superior without being "original." But one could not demand this perfection in everyone. Annette had other qualities,—that, perhaps, Roger did not place so high, but to which he clung (it must be said) much more firmly at the moment. In this preference the body had a greater share than the mind; but the mind, too, had its share. Roger took a keen delight in Annette's heedless ardor, when it was not exercised on subjects embarrassing to him. He was not disturbed. Annette, in her uprightness, had shown him that she loved him. He was convinced that she would not be able to disengage herself from him.
He little suspected the drama of conscience that was being played out at his side. In truth, Annette loved him so much that she could not bring herself to think him such a sorry figure. She wished to believe herself mistaken. She tested other possibilities, she tried to do her best. If Roger would not grant her an independent life, at least what part would he give her in his own? But the new conclusions at which she found herself compelled to arrive were discouraging. Roger's naïve egotism relegated her, in fine, to the dining table, the drawing-room, and the bed. He was very ready to tell her, prettily, about his affairs; but all she had to do, thereafter, was to approve of them. He was no more disposed to concede to his wife the rights of a collaborator who might discuss his political activities with him and modify them, than he was to permit her a social activity different from his own. It seemed to him perfectly natural—(it was always done)—that the woman who loved him should give him her whole life, and that she should receive only a portion of his. At the bottom of his nature he held that old masculine belief in his own superiority which made him feel that what he gave was of a finer essence. But he would not have admitted it, for he was a good fellow and a gallant Frenchman. If it happened that Annette presumed to base certain feminine rights on the example of the husband, Roger would smilingly say:
"It is not the same thing."
"Why?" Annette would ask.
And Roger would avoid a response. A conviction that one does not discuss suffers less danger of being shaken. Roger's conviction was firmly rooted. And Annette chose the wrong course to make him doubt himself. Her advances, her efforts to find a mutual ground of understanding, after her useless attempt to impose her ideas on him, were interpreted by Roger as a fresh proof of the power that he had over her. And he even grew vain. Suddenly Annette would become irritated, and a quivering note would mark her speech. Roger would pull himself up short, and return to the method that, in his opinion, had been so successful: he would laughingly promise all that was demanded of him. It is the tone, they say, that puts the song across. That was the case with Roger. Annette was conscious of the contempt.
Other more serious questions arose. Annette's intimacy with Sylvie had been dangerously menaced. It was evident that the free-minded girl would not be readily welcomed into this circle, and that the little seamstress would be still less so. Never would the vain, stiff-necked Brissots admit, for themselves or for their daughter-in-law, any such scandalous evidence of relationship. It would have to be hidden. And Sylvie would be no more ready to do this than Annette. Each had her pride, and each was proud of the other. Annette loved Roger, and she wanted him with a more burning desire than she confessed to herself; but she would never sacrifice her Sylvie to him. She had loved her too much; and if this love, perhaps, had waned, she did not forget that at moments it had made her touch the ultimate depths of passion:—(she knew it, she alone; even Sylvie suspected only half the truth). But, in the hours of her mutual confidence with Roger, Annette had told him much too much. Then Roger had seemed amused, touched. . . . Yes, but on the condition that all this belonged to the past. He had no intention of seeing a prolongation of this compromising sisterhood. Secretly, he had even decided to put an end to it, gently, without appearing to take a hand in the affair. He did not wish to share his wife's intimacy with anyone. His wife . . . "This dog is mine. . . ." Like all his family, he had a very keen sense of what belonged to him.
As Annette's visit grew longer, this possessive grasp grew tighter,—from certain affectionate externalities with which they surrounded her. What the Brissots possessed, they possessed. The domestic despotism of the two women sharply manifested itself daily in a thousand minute details. Their "mind," as the saying goes, was "made up" on everything, whether it was a question of the household or the world, of everyday existence or of great problems of the moral life. It was screwed down, fixed, once for all. Everything was prescribed: what must be praised, what must be rejected,—especially what must be rejected! Such ostracisms! What men, what things, what ways of thinking or of acting, were judged, condemned without appeal, and for eternity! The tone and the smile removed the desire to argue. They had an air of saying (they often said, in so many words):
"There are not two ways of thinking, my dear child."
Or, when Annette none the less tried to show that there was a way also of her own:
"My dear, how amusing you are!"
Which had the effect of making her instantly shut her mouth.
They already treated her as a daughter of the house, not quite thoroughly trained, whom they were instructing. They instructed her regarding the order and course of the Brissot days, months, and seasons, regarding their relatives in the province and their relatives in Paris, their duties of kinship, their calls, their dinners, and the endless chain of those social tasks, about which the women complained, and of which they were very proud, because the harassment of this perpetual activity gave them the illusion that they were being of some service. This mechanical life, these false relationships, this perpetual convention, were all intolerable to Annette. Everything seemed regulated in advance: work and pleasure,—for they had their pleasures too,—but regulated in advance! . . . Hurrah for unforeseen ills that released one from the program! But there was little hope of release, even on the score of ills. Annette felt herself bricked in, like a stone in a wall! Sand and lime. Roman cement. Brissot mortar. . . .
She exaggerated the rigorousness of this life. Chance and the unexpected played their parts in it, as in all lives. The Mesdames Brissot were more redoubtable in words than in fact; they pretended to direct everything; but it was not impossible, if one attacked their weak spots, anointed them, flattered and worshipped them, to lead them by the nose; a cunning girl might have said to herself, while evaluating them at their proper worth:
"Keep on talking! I'll do things my own way!"
One would have thought that a tenacious energy, like Annette's, could never be stifled. But Annette was passing through that nervous fever of women who, by dint of staring too fixedly at the object which preoccupies them, cease to see it as it is. From a few words heard during the daytime, she forged monsters when she was alone at night. She was appalled at the battle which she had to wage continually, and she repeated to herself that she would never succeed in defending herself against them all. She did not feel strong enough. She mistrusted her own energy. She was afraid of her own nature, of those unexpected oscillations by which her troubled mind continued to be shaken, of those sharp gusts that she could not explain. And, indeed, they sprang from the complexity of her rich being whose new harmony could be slowly realized only by living; but, in the meantime, there was danger of their plunging her into many surprises of violence and weakness, of the flesh and of the mind, of the insidious hazards of fate, ambushed beneath the stones of the road. . . .
The basis of her trouble was that she was no longer sure of her love. She no longer knew. . . . She no longer loved, and yet she still loved. Her mind and heart—her mind and senses—were at battle. The mind saw too clearly; it was disillusioned. But the heart was not; and the body was irritated when it saw that it was going to lose what it coveted; passion grumbled:
"I do not want to renounce! . . ."
Annette felt this revolt, and she was humiliated by it; her natural violence reacted forcibly, appealing to her wounded pride. She said:
"I love him no longer! . . ."
And her now hostile glance espied in Roger the reasons for no longer loving him.
Roger saw nothing. He surrounded Annette with kindnesses, with flowers, with gallant attentions. But he thought that the game was won. Not for an instant did he dream of the proud savage soul that was observing him, from behind its veil, burning to give itself—but to him who would utter the mysterious password which shows that one is recognized. He did not utter it; and for a reason. On the contrary, he uttered irreflective words that, without her showing it, wounded Annette to the heart. The instant after, he no longer remembered what he had said. But Annette, who had not seemed to hear, could have repeated them to him ten days, ten years later. She kept the memory of them fresh, and the wound open. It was in spite of herself, for she was generous, and she reproached herself for not knowing how to forget. But the best of women may pardon intimate offenses; she never forgets them.
Day by day, rents appeared in the fine cloth woven by love. The cloth remained stretched tight, but the least breath made disquieting shivers pass over it. Annette, observing Roger in the family circle, with his family traits, the hardness, the dryness of certain of his speeches and his contempt for humble people, said to herself:
"He is fading. At the end of a few years there will remain nothing of what I love in him."
And since she loved him still, she wished to avoid the bitter disillusion, the degrading conflicts between them that she foresaw, if they were united.
Two nights before Easter, her decision was made. A miserable night. There were many desires to be vanquished, obstinate hope that did not wish to die had to be trodden under foot. She had, in imagination, built her nest with Roger. So many dreams of happiness that they had whispered to each other! Renounce them! Recognize that they had been mistaken! Admit that one was not made for happiness! . . .
For that is what she told herself in her discouragement. Another, in her place, would not have been cast down. Why was she not capable of accepting it? Why could she not sacrifice a part of her nature? . . . But no, she could not! How badly life is arranged! One cannot live without mutual affection; no more can one live without independence. The one is as sacred as the other. One as much as the other is necessary to the air we breathe. How can they be reconciled? They say to you: "Sacrifice! If you do not sacrifice, you do not love enough. . . ." But it is almost always those who are capable of a great love who are also the most enamoured of independence. For in them, all is strong. And if they sacrifice to their love the principle of their pride, they feel themselves degraded even in their love, they dishonor love. . . . No, it is not so simple as the morality of humility would have us believe—or that of pride,—the Christian or the Nietzschean doctrine. In us a strength is not opposed to a weakness, a virtue to a vice; it is two forces confronting two virtues, two duties. . . . The sole true morality, according to the true life, would be a morality of harmony. But, so far, human society has known only a morality of repression and renunciation,—tempered by lies. Annette could not lie. . . .
What was to be done? . . . To escape from equivocation as quickly as possible, at any price! Since she was convinced that it would be impossible to live in this union, to break it the next day! . . .
Break! . . . She imagined to herself the family's stupefaction, the scandal. . . . That was nothing. . . . But Roger's grief. . . . Immediately she pictured to herself in the darkness the image of his beloved face. . . . At this vision a new surge of passion swept everything away. . . . Annette, burning and icy, motionless in her bed, upon her back, with her eyes open, suppressed the beatings of her heart. . . .
"Roger," she implored, "my Roger, forgive me! . . . Oh! If I could spare you this pain! . . . I cannot, I cannot! . . ."
Then she was bathed in such a flood of love and of remorse that she nearly went running to fling herself at the foot of Roger's bed, to kiss his hands, and say to him:
"I will do everything you wish. . . ."
What! She still loved him? . . . She rebelled. . . .
"No, no! I don't love him any more! . . ."
She lied to herself furiously. . . .
"I don't love him any more! . . ."
In vain! . . . She still loved him. She loved him more than ever. Perhaps not with the noblest part of her—(but what is noble, and what is not?)—Yes! with the noblest too, and with the least! Body and soul! . . . If one could only stop loving when one stopped respecting! How comfortable that would be! . . . But to suffer at the hands of the beloved has never exempted one from loving him: one feels it only the more cruelly when one is forced to love him! . . . Annette was suffering in her wounded love—from lack of confidence, lack of faith in herself, lack of Roger's profound love. She was suffering from the bitter consciousness of all the destroyed hopes which she had hatched and which would never see the light of day. It was because she loved Roger so ardently that she insisted on making him accept her independence. She wanted to be to him more than a woman who abdicates, passive in the union,—a free and sure companion. He took no stock in it. She felt within herself a sorrow, an anger of offended passion. . . .
"No! no! I love him no longer! I ought not to, I don't want to. . . ."
But her strength crumpled, and, even before she could finish her cry of rebellion, she wept. . . . In the night, in silence. . . . Beneath the ice of reason, alas! she was on fire. . . . There was that which she did not wish to say: what joy she would have found in sacrificing to him all that she had, even her independence, if only he had made a generous move, a gesture, a simple gesture, to sacrifice himself, rather than to sacrifice her! . . . She would not have let him do it. She would have demanded no more than an outburst of the heart, a proof of true love. But that proof, although he loved her in his own way, he was incapable of giving. It did not enter his thoughts. He had judged Annette's desire as a feminine requirement that must be received smilingly, but in which there was not touch sense. What could she wish? Why the devil was she crying? Because she loved him? Well then? . . .
"You love me, don't you? You love me? That is the essential thing. . . ."
Ah! that word, she had not forgotten that either! . . .
Annette smiled amid her tears. Poor Roger! He was what he was. One could not grudge him that. But one does not change. Neither he, nor I. We cannot live together. . . .
She dried her eyes.
"Come now, one must put a stop to this. . . .”