But among the thousand and one desires of the younger Rivière girl, there was one that was good and praiseworthy, that nothing could alter, and the country air served only to lend it new lustre. She loved her trade. She really loved it. Of good Parisian working stock, work was necessary to her; she needed her needle and her thimble to busy her fingers and her thoughts. She had an innate love of sewing; it was a physical pleasure for her to spend hours handling some piece of material, a dainty fabric, a silk muslin, folding it, gathering it, giving a touch to a knot of ribbons. And then her little noddle, which did not flatter itself, Heaven be praised, that it understood the ideas lodged in Annette's big brain, knew that here in her own domain, in the kingdom of chiffons, she had ideas too, enough and to spare. . . . Well then, could she give up her ideas? It is thought that a woman can enjoy no greater pleasure than to wear pretty dresses! . . . For a really gifted woman it is a much greater pleasure to make them. And once one has tasted this pleasure, one cannot forego it. In the downy idleness in which her sister kept her, while Annette was running her hands over the piano keys, Sylvie felt homesick for the noise of big shears and the sewing machine. All the works of art in the world, had they been offered to her, would not have made up for the fine, headless dummy that one can drape according to one's fancy, that one can twist and turn, before which one squats, that one slyly maltreats, and that one takes in one's arms for a dance when the forewoman is absent. A few casual words sufficiently indicated the drift of her thoughts; and impatient Annette, seeing her eyes light up, knew that she was in for another story of the shop. So when Sylvie announced, after their return to Paris, that she was going back to her lodging and her regular work, Annette sighed; but she was not surprised. Sylvie, who had expected opposition, was much more touched by this sigh, by this silence, than she would have been by any words. She ran to her seated sister, and, kneeling before her, she clasped her arms around her waist and held her mouth up to her. "Annette, don't be angry with me!" "Darling," Annette replied, "your happiness is mine, and you know it." But she was suffering, and Sylvie was too. "It is not my fault," she protested. "I love you tremendously, I swear!" "Yes, dearest, I know that." Annette was smiling, but she heaved another deep sigh. Sylvie, still on her knees, took her sister's face between her hands and put her own close to it. "I forbid you to sigh! . . . Villain! If you sigh like that I sha'nt be able to leave. I'm not a little wretch." "No, darling, you aren't. . . . It was wrong of me, and I won't do it any more. But I wasn't blaming you. It's because we are leaving each other."