Marcel laughed at this passionate outburst. "You can't understand me," said Annette. "You have not seen Marc, my little masterpiece. And even if you saw him, you wouldn't know how to look at him. You are a good judge of pictures, statues, useless knick-knacks. You couldn't judge that unique marvel, the body of a little child. It would do no good for me to describe him to you." She did describe him, however, lovingly and at length. She laughed at her own ardent, exaggerated expressions, but she could not keep them back. She broke off as she saw Marcel's indulgent, bantering look. "I am boring you. Excuse me! You don't understand, do you?" "Of course." Marcel understood. Marcel understood everything. Everyone to his own taste. He would not dispute that. "In short," he said, "to sum it up, you have blossomed out into maternity. You have flown in the face of public order and the family as established by law. And, far from regretting it, you defy authority." "What authority?" Annette asked. "I defy nothing." "Well, then, public opinion, tradition, the Code Napoléon." "I have nothing to do with all these things." "That's the worst kind of defiance, the kind people will never pardon. But so be it! You have broken with everything, you have rid yourself of the whole clan. What are you going to do now?" "Just what I did before." Marcel looked sceptical. "What, do you think I can't live as I used to do?" "It would hardly be worth while. And besides . . ." Marcel unhappily recalled the call at Lucile's: if she wished to resume her old place in society Annette would meet with little success. She knew this: it was unnecessary for anyone to tell her, and in her wounded pride she had no desire to repeat the experience. But she was surprised by Marcel's insistence in pointing this out to her; he was usually more tactful. "Well," she said, "it matters very little now that I have my child." "But you can't reduce your existence merely to him." "I don't think that would be reducing it. Enlarging it, I should say. I see a world in him, a world that is going to grow. I shall grow with it." With much solicitude and no less irony, Marcel set to work to prove to her that this world would not be enough for a nature as eager and exacting as hers. With knitted brows and a pang at her heart Annette listened to him. Mentally, in her irritation, she protested, "No, no!" She could not help being anxious, however, when she remembered that once before Marcel had had such clear foresight. But why was he so bent upon convincing her of it? Why should he take so much trouble to prove to her that she should profit by the liberty she had won, that she should not be afraid of living on the fringe of society? (He called it "outside and above the bourgeois conventions.")