He lived in a large way, for he had acquired the taste for luxury. He could give it up, however, on a day's notice; but, leading this life, he led it whole-heartedly. His wife was part of his luxury. He enjoyed them both and he never demanded of them anything they could not give. He did not ask Noémi to share in his intellectual life; he did not give her a chance to do so. Noémi did not care; if she had the rest, she had, as she thought, the important part. He had made up his mind that in any case this was all that women ought to have. A woman who thought was a cumbersome bit of furniture. Why, then, was he so immediately captivated by Annette? Through that which resembled himself. Through the quality in the Annette of this period that was like himself, the quality he alone could perceive. At the first crossing of their glances, as their first responses struck, steel against steel, he said to himself, "She sees these people as I see them. She's one of my kind." Of his kind? It scarcely seemed so, to judge by the facts. Annette had fallen out of the social sphere into which Philippe had succeeded in elbowing himself, and they had met each other, in passing, on one of the rungs of the ladder. But at this particular moment they were on an equal footing, they both felt that they were strangers in this world, adversaries of this world, that they both really belonged to another race, once mistress of the soil, but now dispossessed, scattered over the earth and almost vanished. After all, who knows the mysteries of races and their vicissitudes, that mingling of all, in the ultimate future towards which, as it seems, humanity is moving for the final triumph of mediocrity? . . . But it has its unexpected resurgences, and sometimes the former master of the soil resumes his estate for a day. Whether it was his estate or not, Philippe claimed it as his own. And in this way he had just appropriated Annette. XL