Since his serious illness, he had been a child who at a first glance would have been called nervous and impressionable (as perhaps he was). But as you watched him, he disconcerted you with his calm ways, his air of indifference, his reserved expression. Not disagreeable, not sulky, not saying no. . . . "Yes, Mamma." . . . But you saw at once that he was not paying any attention to what you said. He had not heard it. . . . Or had he heard it? It was hard to be sure. . . . And he looked at his mother to see what was going to happen next, and she looked at him. . . . The little sphinx! . . . All the more a sphinx because he didn't know that he was one. He knew no more about himself than Annette knew about him, though this was the last thing to cause him any anxiety. When you are seven you have ceased trying to understand yourself and have not yet begun to do so again. On the other hand, he was trying to understand her, his mistress and servant. And he had the time for this because she shut him up with herself for days together. They observed one another mutually. But she was no match for him. Annette deceived herself in thinking that he did not resemble any one she knew. There were astonishing similarities between his spirit and that of his grandfather Rivière. But Annette, though this occurred to her, had known very little about her father. He had charmed her so much that she had never seen the real Raoul Rivière. She had merely had a few suspicions, especially since she had read the famous correspondence. She had not wanted to dwell on this. Even if she had to bolster them up, she preferred to keep the pious and tender memories that had been momentarily shaken. Besides, she had only known the Raoul of the last phase. But if old Rivière had been able to return and inspect the little love-child, as he would have known so well how to do, he would have said, "I am beginning again." He was not beginning again. Nothing ever begins again. He had merely come back in certain details.