But body and mind are twin brothers that do not keep step. In their double growth there is always one of the two--it is not always the same one--that loiters on the road while the other gallops on ahead. Marc's body remained that of a child; and while the spirit roamed about aloft a cord held him by the foot and brought him down again where it was pleasant to amuse himself. Then, for want of anything better, he would condescend to play--he would even play with his whole heart, without condescension, with the silly little girl. These were happy interludes. They did not last long. There were too many inequalities between the two children, not only in their age, nor because she was a girl. Their temperaments were too different. Odette, who was not pretty, and rather suggested her father, though she had Annette's eyes and a chubby, well-rounded figure, with her flattish nose, was a robust, healthy child whose warmth of feeling did not disturb her physical equilibrium but seemed the natural overflow of an abounding vitality. She had escaped all the little ailments of childhood. Marc, on the contrary, had been stamped by the illness of his first year; and although later the soundness of his constitution was to come out on top, this struggle of the organism, in which he was often beaten, had spoiled part of his childhood. He had remained susceptible to the least chill and was often checked by slight returns of bronchitis or fever. His self-respect suffered from this, for all his instincts were those of pride and strength. Towards the end of 1911, one year after the reconciliation of the two sisters, Marc had one of those winter illnesses, complicated by influenza, that caused a passing anxiety. Odette went to see him when he was in bed. She had been forbidden to do so for fear of infection, but she had found a way of slipping into the room one evening when the two mothers were busy in the next room. She was full of sympathy, and Marc, who was a little feverish, let himself go as he had never done before. He was restless. "What are they saying, Odette?" (He imagined they were hiding from him the gravity of his illness.) "I don't know. They don't say anything." "What does the doctor say?" "He says it isn't anything." He was somewhat relieved, but he was still suspicious. "Is that true? No, it isn't true. They're concealing it from me. . . . I know very well what I've got." "What have you got?" He was silent. "Marc, what have you got?" He retreated into a proud and hostile silence. Odette was in agony. She ended by believing that he was very ill, and her anxiety communicated itself to him. With that passionate exaggeration of hers which assumed melodramatic forms she clasped her hands. "Oh, Marc, I implore you, don't be so ill. I don't want you to die."