She attached to this word "guilty" only the sense of a warm regret for the pain she was causing him, but he seized upon it greedily. In his confusion he longed to hold fast to the idea that Annette was the victim of a seduction and that she had repented. . . . He had an extreme need of this notion of "repenting"; it was for him a kind of compensation for the hurt he had suffered, a balm for the wound it could not heal but could render endurable; it gave him a moral superiority over Annette of which--to be fair to him--he would never have made use. In short, since he had no doubt about Annette's sin, he also had none about the need of repentance. His Christian nature was imbued with both these ideas. The most liberal Christian never frees himself from them. But Annette had sprung from a race with a different kind of soul. The Rivières might be pure or impure, in the sense that Christian morality attaches to this word; but if they were pure it was not in obedience to an invisible God or his too visible representatives and their Tables of the Law. It was because they loved purity as moral cleanliness, as beauty. And if they were impure they regarded it as an affair between themselves and their own consciences, not the consciences of others. Annette could not admit that she must give an account of herself to others. If she confessed herself to Julien, it was a gift of love that she was making him. In all honesty, she owed him merely an account of her life. But of her inner life she did not owe him any account. She gave it to him of her own free will. She saw now that Julien would have preferred to have her embellish the truth. But she was too proud to profit by a lying excuse of which she felt no need. On the contrary, when she understood what he wanted her to say she took pains to make it clear that she had given herself to her lover. Julien, who was completely upset, would not listen to her. "No, no, I don't believe you," he said. "You are too generous. Don't accuse yourself to defend that man who deserves nothing but contempt." "But I'm not accusing anyone," she said simply. Her words struck against his consciousness, but he refused to understand. "You are trying to exonerate him." "I am not exonerating him. No one's to blame." Julien struggled. "Annette, I implore you not to talk that way." "Why?" "You know very well it's wrong!" "I know nothing of the kind." "What? You don't regret anything?" "I regret making you unhappy. But I didn't know you then, my friend. I was free and alone; I had no obligations except to myself." "Is that nothing?" he thought. He did not dare to say it. "But still you regret it?" he said, insistently. "You know very well you made a mistake." He did not want to accuse her. But he so longed to have her accuse herself. "Perhaps," she said. "Perhaps," he took her up, dejectedly. "I don't know," said Annette.