But how could she know, when he looked at her as though he were drinking in her very soul! Think, how could she think, how recover herself! . . . She no longer knew, she was lost. . . . And, meanwhile, it was so good to feel that she was loved! All that she could do, with an immense effort, was to ask Roger not to hasten the marriage. And immediately Roger looked so disappointed, so cast down, that Annette had not the courage to go on. How could she hurt so dear a boy? She hastened tenderly to reassure him, to tell him that she loved him; feebly she tried to cling to her postponement, which he repulsed as energetically as though it were a matter of life and death. Finally, after a loving bargaining on both sides, they agreed to compromise; and their marriage was fixed for the middle of the summer. Afterwards, Roger left; and Annette, regarding herself sheepishly in the mirror, found there all her indecision again. . . . How could she get out of it? She contemplated the interrupted preparations for her journey. "Well done!" said she. She shrugged her shoulders, laughed. . . . How charming Roger was! . . . Back into the closet went her lingerie and the things she had taken out for her trunk. . . . "But just the same," she was thinking, "I don't want to, I don't want to! . . ." Nervously she let fall a pile of chemisettes. . . . Thump! And toilet brushes went tumbling after. . . . Impatiently she kicked the heap. . . . And then she gathered them up, bending down to the floor. In the midst of her tidying, she let herself go and sat down on the parquet, not very proud of her will power. . . . "Nonsense!" she exclaimed, stretching herself out on the carpet, "I still have four months to change my mind. . . ." And with her face thrust into a cushion, lying flat on her stomach, she counted the days. . . . X The Brissots prudently gave their approval of Annette's expressed desire to prolong the engagement: they did not wish to imperil their success by showing too much haste. But they felt it necessary to surround Annette during these months of waiting. It would not do to leave her to herself; there was always a risk of the strange girl escaping. Easter Sunday was approaching. The Brissots invited Annette to spend Easter week with them at their country place in Burgundy. Annette accepted regretfully; she was tempted and afraid; afraid of adding to the chains that already bound her, afraid of being completely captured or of breaking everything; and afraid of still other things, more dangerous, that she did not like to consider. She did not wish to escape from the state of amorous uncertainty in which she was allowing herself to be cradled: she suffered from it a little, and she found a certain charm in it. She would have liked to prolong it. But she knew perfectly well that it was not wholesome, and that she had not the right to do so, face to face with Roger.