She understood. Annette had caught sight of Tullio, who was seated in the hall, and crossing the room she went straight to him. He too recognized that the situation had changed. She sat down beside him. They talked banalities. With her head up, disdainful, she stared straight ahead, avoiding looking at him. But he had no doubt: it was he she was staring at. Under her bluish eyelids, that glance, which she was hiding as though to avoid a too intense light, was saying: "Do you want me?" And he, relating an insipid story in a satisfied tone, while he contemplated his finger nails,--he, like a big cat, was peering sidelong at that body with its firm breasts, and asking: "So you want it too?" "I want you to want me," was the reply. Sylvie did not hesitate. Making a turn of the hall, she came and took a chair between Annette and Tullio. Annette's irritation was betrayed in a glance, in only one: that was enough. Sylvie received its contempt full in the face. She blinked her eyelids and pretended not to see, but she bristled like a cat that has felt an electric current; she smiled, and held herself ready to bite. The three-handed, fair-spoken duel began. Annette, ignoring Sylvie's presence, taking no notice of what she said, talked over her head to Tullio, who was embarrassed; or, when she was compelled to listen--for the other had a glib tongue--she called attention with a smile or an ironic word to one of those minute grammatical errors that still adorned Sylvie's discourse (for, despite her skill, the little gossip had not succeeded in weeding them all from her garden). Sylvie, mortally wounded, no longer saw her sister, she saw only a rival, and she thought: "You'll get yours." And, showing her teeth: "A tooth for a tooth, and an eye for an eye. . . . No, both eyes for one. . . ." And she threw herself into the fray. Imprudent Annette! Sylvie was not hampered, as she was, by her pride: any weapon was good enough for her, so long as she won. Annette, armored in pride, would have thought herself degraded had she allowed Tullio to glimpse a shadow of her desires. Sylvie was embarrassed by no such scruples; she was going to play with the gentleman the game that flattered him most. . . . "Which do you prefer? Do you like to inspire a fine disdain, or admiration? . . ."