Sylvie was going to come. She had promised. . . . Annette was preparing everything for her reception. Where would she put her? There, in her pretty room. Sylvie would sit here, in her favorite place, before the open window. In imagination Annette saw everything through her sister's eyes, and took delight in showing Sylvie her house, her bibelots, her trees clothed in their softest greenery, and the vista yonder over the flowered hills. In sharing with Sylvie the grace and comforts of her life she enjoyed them with the freshness of new sensations. But the thought occurred to her that Sylvie's eyes might draw comparisons between her own lodging and the Boulogne house. A shadow fell across her joy. This inequality weighed upon her, as though it had been her fault. Couldn't she correct it by asking Sylvie to share with her the advantages that fate had given her? Yes, but this would be to give her still another advantage. And Annette foresaw that she would not gain her consent without a struggle. She remembered the mocking silence with which Sylvie had greeted her first invitations. Her sensitiveness would have to be humored. How could it be done? Annette reviewed four or five plans in her mind. None satisfied her. Ten times she changed the arrangement of the room: after having placed in it her most valuable possessions, with a childish pleasure, she carried them out again and left only the simplest things. There was not a detail--a flower on the landing, the place of a portrait--that she did not argue over. . . . Sylvie must not arrive before everything was in order! But Sylvie was in no hurry, and Annette had time to make and remake, again and again, her little arrangements. She found Sylvie very slow in coming, but she profited by this to revise her plans. Unconscious comedy! She was deluding herself by attributing importance to these trifles. All this bustle of arrangement and rearrangement was only a pretext to distract her attention from another bustle of passionate thoughts which was troubling the habitual order of her rational life. The pretext wore itself out. This time all was ready. And Sylvie did not come. In imagination Annette had already welcomed her ten times. She was exhausted with waiting. . . . Yet she could not go back to Sylvie's! What if, when she went to see her again, she should read in Sylvie's bored eyes that her sister could get along very well without her! At the very idea Annette's pride bled. No, rather than this humiliation, it would be better never to see her again! Yet . . . She decided hastily, and dressed herself to go in search of the forgetful girl. But she had not finished buttoning her gloves before she lost courage; and, with her legs sinking under her, she sat down on a chair in the vestibule, not knowing what to do. . . . And just at that moment,--when Annette had sunk down beside the door, with her hat on her head, all ready to go out, yet not able to make up her mind,--just then, Sylvie rang the bell!