As soon as Annette's condition began to be visible, Sylvie obliged her sister to move away from Paris. It was the beginning of autumn; before long her friends would be coming back from their vacations. Surprisingly enough, Annette offered no resistance. She was not afraid of public opinion, but anything that might mean discord just now would have been intolerable to her; nothing must disturb her harmony! She allowed herself to be conducted by Sylvie to a place on the Côte d'Azure, but she did not stay there. It offered her no peaceful seclusion. The neighborhood of the sea made her feel uncomfortable. Annette was a landswoman. She could marvel at the ocean, but she could not live on familiar terms with it. She submitted to the powerful fascination of its breath, but this breath was not beneficial to her. It reawoke in her too many hidden anxieties; it aroused what she did not wish to be conscious of . . . not yet, not now. . . . There are beings whom we do not love because, they say, we are afraid to love them. (Does that mean we do love them?) Annette fought against the sea because she was fighting against herself, against a dangerous Annette from whom she was trying to escape. . . . She set out again northward, to the neighborhood of the Savoyard lakes, and took quarters for the winter in a little town at the foot of the mountains. Sylvie was only informed after she was settled. Kept in Paris by her work, she could only make her sister brief, occasional visits, and it troubled her to know that Annette was alone in this forsaken spot. But Annette, during this time, could not be alone enough, nor could the spot be sufficiently forsaken. She would have found a hermitage delightful. The richer her inner life was, the more need she felt for a clear, soundless atmosphere. She did not suffer, as Sylvie supposed, from being abandoned to strange hands in her condition. In the first place, she had so much affection to give that no one seemed to her a stranger, and, as sympathy attracts sympathy, she did not long remain a stranger to anyone else. It was not that the country-people, who had little curiosity, put themselves out to know her. They bowed back and forth, exchanged a few cordial words as they passed, or from their doorsteps or over the hedges. They wished each other well. Probably in case of need she could not have counted too far on this good will, but, such as it was, it still meant a good deal in the daily round. The days were lighter for it. Annette found the cool kindness of these good souls, of whom she knew nothing and who left her alone, more to her taste than the tyrannical exactions of relatives and friends who assume over us the rights of heavy-handed guardians.