"And he was very fond of you, too. He often told me so."
Annette's passionate hands, her large nervous hands, trembled and clasped each other. Sylvie watched them. With contracted throat, Annette asked:
"He spoke to you of me, often?"
"Often," repeated the innocent Sylvie.
There was no assurance that she spoke the truth; but Annette, who had scant skill in hiding her own thoughts, did not suspect the words of others, and those of Sylvie touched her heart. . . . So, her father spoke of her to Sylvie, they talked about her together! And she, to the very last day, had known nothing; he had seemed to confide in her, and he had duped her; he had kept her out of things, she had not even known of her sister's existence! Such inequality, such injustice overwhelmed her. She felt that she was beaten. But she did not wish to show it; so she sought a weapon, found it, and said:
"You must have seen very little of him during the last years."
"Yes," conceded Sylvie regretfully, "during the last years that was so. He was sick. They kept him shut up."
There was a hostile silence. Both were smiling, both were champing at the bit: Annette, rigid and strained; Sylvie, her expression as false as a gambler's counter, caressing, mannered. Before going on with the game, they were counting up the points. Annette, a little relieved at having won a (very slight) advantage, and secretly ashamed of her evil thoughts, tried to put the conversation on a more cordial basis. She spoke of the desire she had felt to meet the girl in whom, too, her father lived again,—"a little." But it was in vain; despite herself she made it clear that there was a difference between their shares, and she let it be understood that hers was the privileged one. She told Sylvie about Raoul's last years, and she could not help showing how much more intimate she had been with him. Sylvie profited by a pause in the narrative to furnish Annette, in return, with her own memories of the paternal affection. And each, against her will, envied the other's share; and each tried to make her own seem the bigger. Speaking or listening (not wishing to listen, but hearing just the same) they continued to inspect each other from head to foot. Sylvie complaisantly compared her long legs, slim ankles and small bare feet, lost in their slippers, with Annette's somewhat heavy extremities and awkward ankles. And Annette, studying Sylvie's hands, did not fail to note the cultivated moons of the over-pink nails. It was not merely two young girls who confronted each other; it was two rival households. So, despite the apparent freedom of the conversation, they remained armed with eye and tongue, and observed each other harshly. The fierce sharpness of jealousy made each bluntly penetrate, at first glance, to the very depths of the other; to the faults and hidden vices unsuspected perhaps by their possessor. Sylvie recognized in Annette the demon of pride, inflexibility of principle, despotic violence, which had not yet, however, found occasion to exert itself. Annette recognized in Sylvie a practised sharpness and a smiling falseness. Later, when they loved each other, they would have given much to forget what they had seen. But for the instant their animosity gazed through a magnifying glass. There were seconds when they hated each other. Annette, with a bursting heart, was thinking:
"It isn't right, it isn't right! I should set the example."
Her eyes made a tour of the modest room, taking in the window, the lace curtains, the roof and chimneys of the opposite house under the moonlight, the lilac branch in the broken water jug.