"Wretch! . . . And what about yours, if I asked you? . . ."
"Mine? You want to know? Very well! I'm going to tell you. You won't be bored."
"No! No!" exclaimed Annette, laughing, now thoroughly awake.
She clapped her hand over her sister's mouth. But Sylvie freed herself and, seizing Annette's head, looked straight into her eyes.
"Your beautiful sleep-walker's eyes. . . . Show us a little of what's in there. . . . What are you dreaming, Annette? Tell me, tell me! Tell what you're dreaming. Tell! Come along, let's hear!"
"What do you want me to tell?"
"Say what you are thinking about."
Annette resisted, but she always ended by yielding. For both of them it was an acute pleasure of affection, and perhaps of egotism, to tell each other everything. They left nothing out. So Annette tried to unravel her dreams, much less for Sylvie's benefit than for her own comfort. She explained, not without difficulty, but with a great scrupulousness and seriousness that made Sylvie burst into laughter, all her mad thoughts—the innocent, the candid, the grotesque, the daring, and sometimes even . . .
"Well, well, Annette! I say, when you try! . . ." exclaimed Sylvie, pretending to be scandalized.
Her own inner life was perhaps no less strange (neither more nor less than that of all of us), but she did not suspect it, and she was not interested in it, like a practical little person who believes once for all in what she sees and touches, in the sensible and ordinary dream of superficial earthly existence, and who avoids as absurd everything that might disturb it.