The least affected was the father. On the day of the funeral his grief was painful; his throat and his chest panted like those of a fallen horse. But a fortnight later he was already caught up again by his business and the powerful demands of his physical life; he was working, eating twice as much as ever, travelling, forgetting. Of the two women Annette seemed to be the real mother. She could not be consoled. Her grief became all the more bitter the more the traces of the little girl were obliterated. Odette for her was like a chosen child, a child created not of her flesh, but of her need of affection, more hers than Sylvie's, more hers than her son. She accused herself of not having loved her enough, of having begrudged the caresses of which this eager little heart had never had enough. And she persuaded herself that she alone preserved the memory of the child to which the others were false. Sylvie exhibited now a strange, busy, agitated gaiety. She talked in a high voice, with a wearisome flow of words, flashes of jocularity, harsh tittle-tattle that made her little group of workers burst out laughing. Marc quietly drank it all in when he happened to be there and heard it flying about him. He too had relaxed; he was working less, loafing, running about the streets, always looking for opportunities to do nothing and laugh. His organism was shielding itself against the terror within. . . . What outsider could have suspected it? We are impenetrable to one another; we seem indifferent; we want to unbosom ourselves and we cannot do so. . . . "There is no communion possible in suffering." But Annette, whose intense devotion to the dead child made her unjust to the living, saw only their egoism. In every way it was trying to return to life and let the stone of memory drop to the bottom; and she was angry with them.