A new cloud of irritation passed over Annette's brows. . . . Rights! Rights over his child! . . . His child! The child of that man, that blind moment which he has already forgotten and which binds me for life! . . . Never! . . . My child is mine! . . . She said, "My child belongs to me." "He will belong to whom he likes." "Oh, I know whom he's going to like!" "Seducer! And suppose that, in spite of everything, he reproaches you some day for depriving him of a father!" "I shall fill his heart so full that there won't remain the tiniest place for regrets for anyone else." "You are a monster of egoism." "I said I was." "You will be punished." "Well, so much the worse for me if I can't make him love me! What's to prevent me from loving him and why shouldn't he love me?" "If you really love him you should think first of his future. Plenty of other people have been obliged to accept a disagreeable marriage for the sake of the child." "You revolt me," said Annette, "praising those women who condemn themselves to a false marriage, sometimes one built on hatred, out of love for the child. You remind me of that mother who told her daughter she had endured hell for her sake by remaining married. The daughter replied: 'Do you think hell is a good home for a child?'" "The child needs a father." "But how about the thousands of people who have gone without one? How many have never known one at all! How many have lost their fathers in early childhood and have been brought up by their mothers alone! Are they inferior to other people? The child needs a protecting love. Why should not mine be enough?" "You overestimate your strength. Do you know what is awaiting you?" "I know, I know! The little arms of a child about my neck." "But do you know the price the world will make you pay for it? It would be much better for you to be married and an adulteress four times over than to have people brand you with the name of an unmarried mother. To dare to assume the pains and responsibilities of motherhood without having first accepted the stamp of their official marriage is something for which a woman of their class is never pardoned. It would be all right for me. What people like myself do is of no consequence. Your bourgeois people even find that it pays to have things so. They are ready enough to praise free love in the working-class, as they do in _Louise_, but a girl of the bourgeoisie belongs in a private preserve. You are their property. They can buy you by contract, before a lawyer; you can't give yourself in the presence of heaven and say, 'It's my right.' Good Lord, where would we end if property revolted against its master and said, 'I am free! Let anyone who wishes come and cultivate me.'" Even when she was indignant Sylvie could not speak seriously.