"That's just a way of speaking. I mean that you are me, and that I am you." "No, no, don't be me, Roger! Let me be that!" "When we unite our lives, won't we make them one?" "That's what worries me. I am afraid I can't quite do that." "What's troubling you, Annette? What are these ideas? You love me, don't you? You love me? That's the essential thing! Don't bother about the rest. The rest is my business. You'll see, I shall arrange--I, and my family that will be yours--we shall arrange your life so well that you will have nothing to do but let yourself be carried along." Annette was looking at the ground and tracing letters in the dirt with her toe. She was smiling. (He didn't understand at all, the dear boy. . . .) She raised her eyes to Roger, who, with perfect tranquillity, was awaiting her response. She said: "Roger, look at me. Haven't I good legs?" "Good and beautiful," said he. "That!" she said, menacing him with her finger, "that is not the question. . . . Am I not a strong walker?" "Of course," he said. "And I like you to be." "Well, then, do you think that I am going to let myself be carried? . . . You are very kind, very kind, and I thank you; but let me walk! I am not one of those who fear the fatigues of the road. To take them away from me is to take away my appetite for life. I rather have the impression that you and your family would like to free me from the trouble of acting and of choosing, would like to arrange everything in advance in prescribed pigeonholes, very comfortably--your life, their life, my life--the whole future. I shouldn't want that. I don't want it. I feel that I am at the beginning. I am seeking. I know that I have need of seeking, of seeking myself." Roger's air was benevolent and bantering. "And what can you seek?" He saw here the crotchets of a young girl. She felt it, and said in a provoked tone: "Don't make fun of me! . . . I don't amount to much, I don't pretend that I do. But after all I know what I am, and that I have a life . . . a poor little life. . . . It's not so long, a lifetime, and one has it only once. . . . I have the right. . . . No, not the right if you will! that seems egotistical. . . . It is my duty not to lose it, not to throw it away at random. . . ." Instead of being touched, he assumed a hurt air. "You think that you are throwing it away at random? Is your life going to be lost? Won't it have a fine, a very beautiful purpose?" "Beautiful, no doubt. . . . But what? What do you offer me?" Once again he ardently described his political career, the future of which he dreamed, his great personal and social ambitions. She listened to him talk, then, gently stopping him in the middle (for of such a subject he was never weary), she said: "Yes, Roger. Certainly. That is very, very interesting. But to tell you the truth--no, don't be ruffled--I haven't quite as much faith as you in this political cause to which you are consecrating yourself."