He had the air of being a sort of accomplice. Annette was confused, and she concealed her feeling with a touch of irony. Marcel went a step further: "You saw it much better than I did. We men are absurd enough to believe that we can teach women out of our own precious wisdom, and we get caught instead when, with their insidious voices, their big, beautiful eyes, they anxiously ask us what they ought to do. They know very well. They flatter our folly. We love to teach, but they can give us cards and spades. When I foretold that you would not be caught in the Brissots' net, I never suspected that you would escape from its meshes in such a masterly way. It was a wonderful stroke. Well done! What can't you do when you set your mind on it! I compliment you on your courage." Annette listened to this with a feeling of embarrassment. How strange it was! She had undertaken to vindicate her right to behave as she had done; the other day, at Lucile's, she had been ready to affirm it against the whole universe. But it made her uncomfortable to hear herself praised in this tone by Marcel. Her modesty and her dignity were hurt. "Don't compliment me," she said. "I have less courage than you think. I didn't desire in advance what has happened. I never thought of it." Then, seized with a scruple and too proud to lie, she continued, "I am mistaken. Yes, I did think of it. But only to fear it, not to desire it. And that is what remains incomprehensible to me. How could I have let it happen, the thing I feared, that I didn't want?" "Quite natural," said Marcel. "What we fear hypnotizes us. After all, it doesn't follow that because we fear a thing we don't desire it. But everyone does not dare to do what he is afraid to do. You did dare. You dared to make a mistake. One has to make mistakes in life. We learn through our mistakes, and we must learn. Only, while you were daring, I do think, my friend, that you might have taken precautions. Your partner seems to me very much to blame for having left you with this burden to bear." Annette, a little shocked, said, "It is not a burden to me." Marcel supposed that Annette in her generosity wanted to excuse Roger. "You still love him?" he asked. "Whom?" Annette asked. "Good!" said Marcel, laughing. "Evidently you don't still love him." "I love my baby," said Annette. "The rest belongs to the past. And, as for the past, one no longer feels sure that it ever existed. One doesn't understand it any more. It's sad." "That has its charm too," said Marcel. "Not for me," said Annette. "I am not a dilettante. But my son is the present, and it is a present that will last longer than I." "The present that repulses us, the present to which we in turn shall be the past some day." "So much the worse for me!" said Annette. "Even so, it will be good to be trampled on by his little feet."