"Cry louder, my darling! Yes, assert the life that is in you!" He asserted it with an energy that had no need of encouragement. Joy, anger, whims, he protested them loudly in every key. Annette, who was a novice in motherhood and a scandalously bad educator, found it all charming; she did not have the strength to resist these tyrannical appeals. She would get up ten times during the night rather than hear him groan. And from dawn to dark she let him cling to her breast like a greedy leech. The child could not have been happier, but it was not very good for her. When she saw her sister again in the spring, Sylvie found her thinner, and she was disturbed. Annette still seemed to be just as happy, but her expression had become a little feverish; the tears came into her eyes at any affectionate word. She admitted that she did not sleep enough, that she did not know how to get proper help, and she felt inadequate before the practical difficulties that arose in regard to the care and health of the child. She said all this, affecting to laugh at her faint-heartedness, but the fine assurance she had felt at the outset had vanished. She was startled to discover that she was not as robust as she had thought; as she had never been ill, she had not known the limits of her strength, and she believed she could use it uncalculatingly. She realized now that these limits were narrow and that she could not pass them with impunity. What a fragile thing life is! At other times this realization would not have affected her. But now that her life was double, and someone else, even more fragile than herself, depended upon this fragile thing. . . . Heavens, what would happen if she disappeared? During her sleepless nights Annette turned this fear over in her mind many a time. . . . She listened to her sleeping child, and at the least change in its respiration, a slightly quicker breath, a cry or even a silence, her own heart stopped beating. And as soon as this anxiety had once entered it took up its abode in her. Annette no longer knew the solemn, carefree calm of the night hours when the motionless body and the thought-free mind, dreaming without sleeping, floated like water-flowers, motionless, on the nocturnal pond. An Elysian quietude, in which the grace that is granted one is only felt by the heart after it has been lost. Henceforth, the watching soul is distrustful every moment. In the most confident moments apprehension lies concealed.