After she had walked for an hour or two in the country, along the snowy roads, alone yet not alone, alone but with all the company in the world, under the grey canopy of the winter sky, listening to the song of her own springtime, she turned back towards the town, her cheeks whipped red by the cold wind, her eyes shining. Before the baker's window she would yield to the attraction of some dainty made of chocolate or honey. (What a glutton the little fellow was!) Then she would go and sit down, at nightfall, in the church, before an altar, dark and golden like the honey. And she who had no practical religion, no religious faith--or thought she had no faith--would remain there till they closed the doors, dreaming, praying, loving. Night fell; the altar-lamps, faintly swinging, collected the last gleams in the darkness. Annette became stiff, chilly, a little numb in her woolen overcoat as she warmed herself at her own sun. A holy calm was within her. She was dreaming for the child of a life enveloped in sweetness, in silence--in her own loving arms. IV On one of the first days of the year the child was born. A boy. Sylvie arrived just in time to welcome him. In spite of her suffering, which drew from her an occasional groan--no tears, Annette, interested, absorbed, was a little disappointed to find, surprisingly, that she was more present at the event than the cause of it. The great emotion she had expected had not appeared. When travail begins, one is caught in a trap. No means of escaping: one has to go through with it. One resigns oneself and bends all one's strength to reach the end as quickly as possible. One's mind is clear, but one's energy is entirely occupied in enduring the pain. One scarcely thinks of the child at all. No room for tender or exalted feelings. Those that have previously filled one's heart vanish. It is truly hard, harsh "labor," a labor of the flesh and the muscles, wholly physical, with nothing beautiful or beneficent about it. Up to the very moment when one's liberation comes, when one feels the little body slip from one's own body . . . At last! Then, instantly, one's joy returns. With her teeth chattering, worn out, almost collapsing at the bottom of an Arctic ocean, Annette stretched out her cold hands to grasp and press to her own bruised limbs her living fruit--her dearly beloved.