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.