Annette was expecting that the inhuman constraint which Sylvie had imposed upon herself would be paid for by a fresh crisis when they returned to the house. But she was not allowed to stay with her sister. Sylvie harshly forbade it. Annette's presence was intolerable to her. . . . Annette had her son! On the following day the anxious husband came to tell Annette that Sylvie had not gone to bed. She had not wept, she had not groaned, she was eating her heart out in silence. She had relentlessly resumed her work in the shop, a mechanical duty that was more imperative than life. No one would have perceived her state of mind except for certain accidents, errors that had never happened before. She cut a gown wrongly and afterwards destroyed it without a word, and she hurt her fingers with her scissors. They induced her to go to bed at night, but she remained sitting upright without sleeping, and she did not reply when they spoke to her. And every morning, before appearing in the workroom, she made a visit to the cemetery. This went on for fifteen days. Then, in the middle of the afternoon, she disappeared. Customers came in and waited. At supper-time she had not returned. Ten, eleven o'clock passed. Her husband feared that something desperate had happened. Towards one o'clock she came in, and that night she slept. No one could find out anything from her. But the next evening she vanished again, and on the two following days she did the same thing. She talked now; she seemed to have relaxed. But she did not say where she had gone. The workers gossiped. Her good husband shrugged his shoulders with pity and said to Annette, "If she is deceiving me I can't be angry with her. She has suffered too much. . . . And besides, if it can only save her from her obsession, well, all right!"