She walked down the street, hastening her steps, tense, looking neither to right nor left . . . the years, the years, the life that was coming . . . that of her child, her own, the new life, the Annette of to-morrow. X She had this vision in her eyes on the evening when she established herself in Sylvie's house. Sylvie, as soon as her shop was closed, hastened to climb up to her sister's apartment to distract her from the regrets she supposed the latter must be feeling. She found her walking back and forth in her narrow room, not at all tired after the exhausting day, trying to make her too diminutive cupboards hold her clothes and her linen. Unsuccessful in this, perched on a stool, with her arms full of sheets, looking at the filled shelves, she was meditating another plan, whistling like a boy a Wagnerian fanfare that she absent-mindedly travestied, giving it a burlesque turn. Sylvie looked at her and said, "Annette, I admire you." (She did not mean quite as much as this.) "Why?" asked Annette. "If I were in your place, how I should rage!" Annette began to laugh. Absorbed in her work, she made a sign to her sister to be silent. "I think I've got it," she said. She buried her head and her arms in the cupboard, arranging, disarranging, rummaging. "I said so," she remarked, "and I have." (She was addressing a cupboard that was full, arranged, conquered.) She descended, victorious, from the stool. "Rage, Sylvie?" she said. (She was holding her by the chin.) "When you were a child you played at building houses with dominoes. When the house fell, did you get angry?" "I banged the dominoes on the floor," said Sylvie. "And I said, Biff! I'll build another." "You'll have to admit that you shook the table!" "Well, I wouldn't swear I didn't," said Annette. Sylvie called her an anarchist. "What!" said Annette. "Isn't that just what you are?" Sylvie was not. She could laugh at order and authority when she wanted to do so, but she felt the need of order and authority. Even if it was only to apply them to other people. For her, as for others, there was no pleasure in revolting unless it was against some authority. And as for order, Sylvie was well supplied with it. She did not cavil at the established order except in so far as it was not her own. She did not reproach it for being established. An order should be established. Since she too was established, as an employer, directing her own business, she was all for a stable order. Annette made this discovery with surprise. Nor was this the only discovery she made. You do not know another human being unless you see him in that everyday activity which brings his energies to a head and reveals his natural movements and gestures. Annette had never seen Sylvie except during her idle times, her times of relaxation. Who can judge of a cat stretched out on a soft cushion? You must see it on the warpath with its back arched and the green fire in its eyes.