Annette in stupefaction saw herself surrounded in a flash by the entire Brissot family, radiant and affectionate. Madame Brissot covered her with kisses, while she sponged her own eyes with a handkerchief and kept repeating: "Love him well!" Mademoiselle Brissot was saying: "My little sister!" And Monsieur Brissot, always a blunderer: "At last! . . . You've taken long enough! . . ." Meanwhile Roger was kneeling before Annette, kissing her hands and begging her with eyes that were fearful and a little shamefaced, asking forgiveness and imploring: "Don't say no!" Annette, petrified, yielded to his kisses; the supplication of those beloved eyes forged the last link in her chains. She made a final effort to protest: ("Why, I haven't said anything! . . .") But she saw in Roger's eyes a grief so sincere that she could not bear it; and when Roger's face lighted up with happiness, her own became radiant at the joy she had caused. She clasped his head between her hands. Roger rose, crying out in relief. And, beneath the benevolent eyes of his family, they exchanged their kiss of betrothal. IX That night, when Annette found herself alone in her own home, she was thunderstruck. She no longer belonged to herself. She had given herself. . . . Given! Given her life! . . . Her heart contracted in anguish. She still exaggerated the tightness of the bonds that she had just accepted. She was not one of those young girls who jest lightly with their fiancés regarding the possibility of divorce. She did not give with one hand to take back with the other. She was no longer her own. She belonged to the Brissots. And suddenly the Brissots appeared inimical. All that her eyes had seen during these past weeks came before her, with accentuated outlines: all their manœuvres of approach in order to envelop her, their conspiracy against her freedom, the final comedy that had extorted her consent by surprise. . . . (Had not Roger, Roger himself, been an accomplice? . . .) And she bristled like a cornered animal that sees the circle close around him, feels himself lost, and is ready to charge with lowered head against the hunters, either to clear a passage or to die and win vengeance. For the first time, everything in the Brissots that displeased her, thoughts of which she had hitherto avoided, appeared to her magnified, hateful, and intolerable. . . . Even Roger! . . . Never could she live immured in that man, that family, that circle of interests which were not her own, which never could be. She decided to break away. . . .