"My dear, how pretty you are! . . . There, let us talk of something else! . . ."
[XIII]
Annette returned to the house, disappointed. She had cherished great hopes of a frank talk. Although she had anticipated resistance, she had counted on Roger's heart illumining his mind. The most distressing thing was not that Roger had not understood, but that he had not made the least effort to understand. He seemed to see nothing pathetic in the question for Annette. He was all on the surface, and he saw everything in his own image. Nothing could be more painful to a woman with a strong inner life.
She did not deceive herself. Roger had been embarrassed, irritated by Annette's words, but he had completely failed to perceive their seriousness; he considered them inconsequential. He thought that Annette had bizarre and rather paradoxical ideas, that she was "original": it was troublesome. Madame and Mademoiselle Brissot knew how to be superior without being "original." But one could not demand this perfection in everyone. Annette had other qualities,—that, perhaps, Roger did not place so high, but to which he clung (it must be said) much more firmly at the moment. In this preference the body had a greater share than the mind; but the mind, too, had its share. Roger took a keen delight in Annette's heedless ardor, when it was not exercised on subjects embarrassing to him. He was not disturbed. Annette, in her uprightness, had shown him that she loved him. He was convinced that she would not be able to disengage herself from him.
He little suspected the drama of conscience that was being played out at his side. In truth, Annette loved him so much that she could not bring herself to think him such a sorry figure. She wished to believe herself mistaken. She tested other possibilities, she tried to do her best. If Roger would not grant her an independent life, at least what part would he give her in his own? But the new conclusions at which she found herself compelled to arrive were discouraging. Roger's naïve egotism relegated her, in fine, to the dining table, the drawing-room, and the bed. He was very ready to tell her, prettily, about his affairs; but all she had to do, thereafter, was to approve of them. He was no more disposed to concede to his wife the rights of a collaborator who might discuss his political activities with him and modify them, than he was to permit her a social activity different from his own. It seemed to him perfectly natural—(it was always done)—that the woman who loved him should give him her whole life, and that she should receive only a portion of his. At the bottom of his nature he held that old masculine belief in his own superiority which made him feel that what he gave was of a finer essence. But he would not have admitted it, for he was a good fellow and a gallant Frenchman. If it happened that Annette presumed to base certain feminine rights on the example of the husband, Roger would smilingly say:
"It is not the same thing."
"Why?" Annette would ask.
And Roger would avoid a response. A conviction that one does not discuss suffers less danger of being shaken. Roger's conviction was firmly rooted. And Annette chose the wrong course to make him doubt himself. Her advances, her efforts to find a mutual ground of understanding, after her useless attempt to impose her ideas on him, were interpreted by Roger as a fresh proof of the power that he had over her. And he even grew vain. Suddenly Annette would become irritated, and a quivering note would mark her speech. Roger would pull himself up short, and return to the method that, in his opinion, had been so successful: he would laughingly promise all that was demanded of him. It is the tone, they say, that puts the song across. That was the case with Roger. Annette was conscious of the contempt.
Other more serious questions arose. Annette's intimacy with Sylvie had been dangerously menaced. It was evident that the free-minded girl would not be readily welcomed into this circle, and that the little seamstress would be still less so. Never would the vain, stiff-necked Brissots admit, for themselves or for their daughter-in-law, any such scandalous evidence of relationship. It would have to be hidden. And Sylvie would be no more ready to do this than Annette. Each had her pride, and each was proud of the other. Annette loved Roger, and she wanted him with a more burning desire than she confessed to herself; but she would never sacrifice her Sylvie to him. She had loved her too much; and if this love, perhaps, had waned, she did not forget that at moments it had made her touch the ultimate depths of passion:—(she knew it, she alone; even Sylvie suspected only half the truth). But, in the hours of her mutual confidence with Roger, Annette had told him much too much. Then Roger had seemed amused, touched. . . . Yes, but on the condition that all this belonged to the past. He had no intention of seeing a prolongation of this compromising sisterhood. Secretly, he had even decided to put an end to it, gently, without appearing to take a hand in the affair. He did not wish to share his wife's intimacy with anyone. His wife . . . "This dog is mine. . . ." Like all his family, he had a very keen sense of what belonged to him.
As Annette's visit grew longer, this possessive grasp grew tighter,—from certain affectionate externalities with which they surrounded her. What the Brissots possessed, they possessed. The domestic despotism of the two women sharply manifested itself daily in a thousand minute details. Their "mind," as the saying goes, was "made up" on everything, whether it was a question of the household or the world, of everyday existence or of great problems of the moral life. It was screwed down, fixed, once for all. Everything was prescribed: what must be praised, what must be rejected,—especially what must be rejected! Such ostracisms! What men, what things, what ways of thinking or of acting, were judged, condemned without appeal, and for eternity! The tone and the smile removed the desire to argue. They had an air of saying (they often said, in so many words):