The house was filled with an inexhaustible babble, with a chattering that had neither head nor tail, no end, and no reason to end. In no matter what place, in no matter what costume, perched on the arm of an easy chair, or comb in hand arranging their hair, or abruptly halted upon a step of the stairs, or in bathrobes after the morning tub,--the two friends talked, talked, talked; and, once started, this might last for hours or days. They forgot to go to bed; their aunt protested in vain, coughed, rapped on the ceiling. They tried to put a mute on their voices, to stifle their laughter; but at the end of five minutes . . . Pouf! Sylvie's little hautboys began to shrill, and there sounded the happy or indignant exclamations of Annette, who was always getting into a tangle, and whom the younger girl could easily put up a tree. This time the raps on the ceiling became really annoyed. Then they decided to "hit the hay"; but they still kept it up while they undressed. The two rooms adjoined, the doors were left open, and they were constantly crossing their frontiers, talking in skirts, talking without skirts; and they would have talked all night long, from one bed to the other, had not the sleep of youth come suddenly to put an end to their cluckling. It swooped down upon them in a flash, as a sparrow-hawk upon a chicken. They fell back upon their pillows, with open mouths, in the middle of a phrase. Annette slept like a lump; her sleep was heavy, frequently disturbed, stormy, drenched with dreams; she rumpled the sheets, she talked in her sleep, but she never awakened. Sylvie, a light sleeper with a tiny snore (if you had told her that, she would have cloaked herself in wounded dignity), would awake and listen in amusement to her sister's gibberish; sometimes she would get up and go over to the bed where Annette lay prostrate, with the sheets thrust up in a mountain by her crossed knees; and, bending over in the light of the night-lamp (for Annette could not sleep without a light), Sylvie would fascinatedly watch the dull, heavy but strangely passionate, sometimes tragic face of the sleeper who was drowning in the ocean of her dreams. She no longer recognized her. . . . "Annette? That? That's my sister? . . ." She wanted to waken her abruptly and put her arms about her neck. "Wolf, are you there?" But she was too sure that the wolf was there to try the experiment. Less pure and more normal than her dangerous elder sister, she played with fire, but she was not burned by it. They studied each other at length, while they were dressing and undressing, comparing themselves curiously. Annette had fits of primitive modesty that amused Sylvie, who was at once freer and franker. Annette often appeared cold, one would have said almost hostile; she went into tantrums, or she wept without cause. The fine Lyonnaise poise, of which she had formerly been so proud, seemed definitely lost. And the worst of it was--that she did not at all regret it.