She was unwilling to attribute this to anything but physical exhaustion; and to prove to herself that her happiness was in no way altered she manifested it in more clamorous effusions than were necessary. Especially before others, as if she were afraid that they would discover in her what she did not wish to be seen. This exaggerated gaiety was followed later, when she was alone, by depression. Sadness? No. An obscure uneasiness, a vague restlessness, the feeling, which she repressed, of a partial dissatisfaction. Not that she expected anything from outside (she could still get along without that), but she suffered from the unemployment of a part of her nature. Certain forces of the mind had been at a standstill for a long time; the economy of her being had undergone a disturbance. Annette, deprived of society, driven back upon herself alone and feeling the sting of a nostalgia that she tried to stifle, tried to find a resource in the company of books. But the volumes remained open at the same page; the brain had become unaccustomed to the effort of following the unfolding chain of the words; the continual breaks which the constant preoccupation with the child made in her thought dislocated her attention and shook it, somnolent and enervated as it was, as a moored ship dances on the current without the power either to advance or to remain still. Instead of reacting, Annette remained shut up in herself, musing drowsily over the open book; or she tried to divert herself in a flood of passionate nonsense with the child. Sylvie, who saw that she could not find expression for her multiple energy with the little one, said to her, "You should go out more, take exercise, walk as you used to do." For the sake of peace, Annette said she would go out, but she did not budge. She had a reason which she kept to herself: she was afraid of meeting her old friends and exposing herself to some slight, some coldly distant greeting. A superficial reason which she gave herself. In former times she would have ignored these petty offences, but now she had a neurasthenic tendency to avoid all contacts. Then why not leave Paris and live in the country, as Sylvie advised? She did not say she would not, but she did nothing; it involved making a decision, and she was not willing to stir from her torpor. So she allowed her motionless days to float along, without a wave, like a becalmed sea that is preparing to ebb. An interlude, an apparent arrest in the eternal rhythm of respiration: the breath is suspended. Joy is tiptoeing away. Trouble is approaching on muffled feet. The trouble has not yet come. But a _nescio quid_ warns one: "Do not move!" It is waiting outside the door. VIII It entered. But it was not what she had expected. It is useless to attempt to foresee happiness or trouble. When they arrive they are never what we have looked for.