"No!"
"Why not?"
She refused to explain.
And Sylvie asked mockingly:
"You think it's good enough for me?"
And Annette exclaimed:
"No, darling. You know perfectly well that I love you, as you are."
But Sylvie was not far wrong. Through affection, Annette (while she sighed to herself) refused to judge Sylvie's free loves. But for herself she rejected the thought of them. It was not merely the puritanism inherited from her mother that would have considered them dishonorable. It was her "entire" nature, it was the very plenitude of her Desire that refused to parcel itself into small bits. Despite the obscure appeal of a powerful sexual life, it would have been impossible for her, at this moment of her life, to receive without revolt the idea of a love in which the whole being, senses, heart and thought, self-respect, respect for the other person, and the religious ardor of the impassioned soul, did not all equally have their places at the feast. To give her body and withhold her mind,—no, there could be no question of that. . . . It would be treachery! . . . Then there remained only one solution,—marriage, monogamous love? Was that a possible dream, for an Annette?
Possible or not, it cost nothing to dream it, in advance. She did not deprive herself of it. She had arrived at the edge of the wood of adolescence, at that beautiful, final instant when, still savoring the shadow and the shelter of dreams, one sees opening before one, on the plain, long white roads in the sunlight. On which shall we imprint out steps? There is no haste to choose. The mind laughingly delays, and it chooses them all. A happy young girl, without material cares, radiating love, her arms full of hope, sees offered to her heart the possibility of twenty different lives; and, even before asking herself, "Which do I prefer?" she takes up the whole sheaf, to breathe their sweetness. In imagination Annette tasted, one by one, the future shared with this and that, and then with another, mate, dropping the bitten fruit, nibbling at another, then returning to the first, trying a third, without deciding on any one. Age of uncertainty, at first happy and exalted, but soon to know weariness, crushing depression, and sometimes even despairing doubt.
So Annette dreamed of her life,—of her lives to come. To Sylvie alone she confided her uncertain waiting. And Sylvie was amused at her sister's languorous, troubled indecision. She knew little about such things, for it was her habit (she boasted of it in order to scandalize Annette) to decide before choosing. To decide immediately. Afterwards, there was time to make one's choice. . . .