(She spoke of a picture as one speaks of a hat.)
"What should one admire? Once I know, I shall be able to do it as well as anyone else. . . ."
But on other occasions she was not so conciliatory; she held out stoutly for the hero of some newspaper serial or for some insipid romance which was to her the last word in art and sentiment. However, she obliged her elder sister to discover the value, or rather the artistic promise, of a genre that Annette had always insisted on running down without knowing anything about it: the movies, which Sylvie adored, indiscriminately.
It sometimes happened, too, that although she was incapable of feeling the beauty of a book which they were reading together, Sylvie understood better than Annette the power of certain pages, whose strange truth disconcerted her sister; for Sylvie knew life better than Annette did. And that is the Book of Books. Read it not who will. Everyone carries it in himself, written from the first to the last line. But to decipher it, one must be taught the language by the harsh master Experience. Sylvie had received lessons from him at an early age; she read fluently. Annette was beginning late. Slower to reach her, the lessons were to sink deeper.
[X]
The summer, this year, was excessively hot. By the middle of August the beautiful trees in the garden were already parched. In the close nights, Sylvie gasped for a passing breath of air. She had recuperated, but she was still wan and had little appetite. She was always a small eater, and if she could have had her way she would have frequently dined on nothing but an ice and fruit. But Annette kept watch over her, Annette grumbled. She was kept busy. Finally she decided on the trip to the mountains, that had been put off from week to week with the underlying hope that it might be avoided. She would have liked to keep her sister entirely to herself, all summer long.
They repaired to a spot in the Grisons that Annette remembered from a former visit as having a good, simple hotel, in a pastoral, restful setting of old Switzerland. But a few years had transformed everything. The hotel was swarming with people. It was a city of pretentious palaces. Automobile roads cut through the fields; and, in the depths of the woods, one could hear the grinding of an electric tramway. Annette wished to flee. But they were tired from a night and day of suffocating travel; they did not know where to go, and all they asked was to lie stretched out without stirring. Where they were, even if everything else had changed, the air at least had preserved its crystalline purity; Sylvie sucked it in with her tongue, as though she were licking a Parisian ice from a glass cup while she stood beside the cart of an ambulatory merchant in the midst of a roaring street. They told themselves they would stay for a few days, until it became a little cooler. And then they got used to it. They discovered the charm of the place.
It was a lively season. A tennis tournament was attracting the alert youth of three or four nations. There were informal dances, little plays. A buzzing swarm was loafing, flirting, showing off. Annette could have done without it; but Sylvie was frankly entertained, and the pleasure that she showed communicated itself to her sister. Both were high-spirited and had no reason to frown on the diversions of their age.
Young, gay and attractive, each in her own way, it was not long before they were very much surrounded. Annette was blooming. In the open air and at sports she showed to her best advantage. Strong, strapping, fond of walking and all active games, she was a brilliant tennis partner, with a sure eye, supple wrist, quick hand, and lightning-like return. Usually restrained in her gestures, she displayed, when occasion demanded, admirable nerve and furious bursts of speed. Sylvie, marvelling, clapped her hands as she watched her leap about; she was proud of her sister. She admired her the more because she felt incapable of imitating her: this svelte Parisienne was inept at all sports, and she did not particularly understand their attraction. They called for too much action! She found it more agreeable—and above all, more prudent—to remain a spectator. But she did not waste her time. . . .
She formed a little court, over which she queened it as though she had done nothing else all her life. Sly one that she was, she knew how to copy from the fashionable young women she observed all those mannerisms that were well-bred, smart, and easily borrowed. Looking as though butter would not melt in her mouth, deliciously distrait, her eyes and ears were always open; she missed nothing. But Annette still remained her best model. With a sure instinct, she knew not only how to copy her in many a detail, but how to improve the copy by slight changes, and even in certain cases how to take the opposite tack,—oh! just enough to appear incorrect, by one refinement the more. She showed still more intelligence by never overstepping the limits within which she felt solid ground beneath her feet. In her own province she was perfect, in manners, bearing, and tone. Exquisite distinction raised to an extravagant point. Annette could not help laughing when she heard Sylvie, with charming aplomb, retailing to her court little tid-bits with which Annette had stuffed her the evening before. Sylvie would slip her a sly wink. It would not have done, certainly, to push her too far in conversation. For all her wit and excellent memory, she would have gotten her foot into it; but she didn't slip, she watched her step. And then, too, she knew how to choose her partners. The majority of them were young sportsmen from foreign lands: Anglo-Saxons, Roumanians, who were more sensitive to a mistake in play than to an error in language. The great favorite of the little feminine circle was an Italian. Bearing the sonorous name of an old Lombard family (extinct for centuries, but the name never dies), he was of a type that is very common among the youth of the Peninsula, and which is characteristic of a period rather than of a race. In it one finds curiously blended the American of Fifth Avenue, and the condottiere of the fourteenth century, which gives to the ensemble a rather grand air—(Operatic). A handsome fellow, tall and straight, well built, with a round head and clean shaven face, very brown skin, fiery eyes, a great conquering nose, bluish nostrils, and a heavy jaw, Tullio walked with supple loins and chest thrust out. His manners were a mixture of hauteur, obsequious courtesy, and brutality. An irresistible man. He had but to stoop to gather hearts. He did not stoop. He waited for them to be placed in his hand.