She knew now that she could not get along without them; and her father's smile came to her lips when she recalled her childish declarations at the idea of marriage. Love had left its wasp's dart in her flesh. Chaste and burning, innocent and sophisticated, she knew her desires; and if she thrust them into the penumbra of her mind, they manifested their presence by the confusion into which they threw the remainder of her ideas. Her whole mental activity was disorganized. Her powers of reflection were paralyzed. At work, writing or reading, she felt herself somehow impaired. She could no longer concentrate on an object save at the cost of disproportionate effort; and afterwards she was exhausted, disgusted. And it was in vain, for the knot of her attention would always come undone. Clouds crept into all her thoughts. The perfectly clear--too clear and too well-lighted--goals that she had fixed for her intelligence, were dimmed in the fog. The straight road that was to lead her to them broke off, was cut at every step. Annette discouragedly thought: "I shall never get there." Having formerly attributed to women all the intellectual powers of men, she experienced the humiliation of saying to herself: "I was mistaken." Under the impression of lassitude which oppressed her, she recognized (rightly or wrongly) certain cerebral weaknesses of her sex, due perhaps to woman's long unaccustomedness to disinterested thought, to that objective and detached activity of mind which is demanded by true science and true art; but more probably due to the mute obsession of those great, sacred instincts, the rich and heavy deposit of which nature has placed in her. Annette felt that, alone, she was incomplete; incomplete in mind, body and heart. But of these last two, she thought as little as possible; they recalled only too much to her mind. She had reached the time of life when one can live no longer without a mate; and woman even less than man, for in her it is not only the lover, but the mother also, that is awakened by love. She does not realize it: the two aspirations are confounded in a single sentiment. Annette, as yet without defining a single one of her thoughts, had a heart swollen with the need of giving itself to some human being, at once stronger and weaker than herself, who would take her in his arms and who would drink at her breast. At the thought of this, she grew faint with tenderness; would that all the blood in her body might be turned to milk, that she might give of it. . . . Drink! . . . Oh, my well beloved! . . .