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: