He looked her in the face, "You will be beaten," he said.
"I know it. One always is. But what's the difference? One fights just the same."
Under the cold mask her eyes smiled defiantly. But the blue gaze of the other penetrated her like a stab. She had given herself away.
Philippe was a forceful man. His force was part of his genius. He carried it as much into his clinic, in his terrible diagnostics and the sureness of his hand, into the operating-room, as into the acts of his life and his decisions. Accustomed to reading at a glance the depths of human bodies, he had understood Annette completely at once—Annette, her passions, her pride and her troubles, her temperament and her strong nature. And Annette felt that she had been caught. With her helmet fallen so soon, her visor broken, furiously angry, she betrayed henceforth to the eyes of her adversary only an icy armor. In the constriction at her heart, she knew now that the enemy had come. The enemy? Yes, love. . . . (Ah, that insipid word, so far from the cruel force itself! . . .) To the sudden awakening of interest which she had perceived in him, she opposed an ironical inflexibility that very inadequately concealed the hostility she felt. It only completed her self-betrayal. She was too genuine, too passionate. She could not pretend. Her very animosity revealed the depths of her being. Philippe was the only one to see this. He did not attempt to revive the conversation again; he had learned enough, and, with a detached air, recounting to the company one of those bitter, amusing stories that were stamped with his own harsh experience, he measured with his eye the woman he intended to capture.
None of the others who were present had observed anything. The Mouton-Chevalliers were regretfully convinced that Annette and Philippe were unsympathetic to each other: between their two characters there was nothing in common. However, in bringing Annette and the Villards together, they had hoped that Annette and Mme. Villard would become friends. "They were made for each other." And so far as that was concerned, they had the pleasure of seeing that they were not mistaken.
Noémi Villard was a delightful Creole, with small bones, plump flesh gilded like a roast pigeon, the eyes of a roe, a fine nose, spare cheeks, a prominent little mouth that always seemed to be ready to snap something up; round, innocent, youthful breasts, generously revealed, frail arms, a slender waist, small feet, delicate legs. She played the part of a child-woman, with her infatuations, her languors, her enthusiasms, her laughs and tears and lisping words. She seemed to be a fragile creature, expansive, sensitive, not too intelligent. In reality she was just the opposite. With plenty of brains, sensual, dry and passionate, observing everything, calculating everything, unweariable, unbreakable, fragile, yes, like a willow that bends and—bing!—comes lashing back, made of solid cement under the friable enamel. She alone could have told how much energy this delicate enamel cost. As for intelligence, she had enough of it and to spare: she kept it in the bank, but she utilized it only for the object that interested her, her husband, whom she held jealously. Theirs had been, on both sides, a passionate marriage of the head and the senses—passionate in its pleasures and its vanity. Noémi's decision had long preceded Philippe's choice, and even his attention. This man who, after the example of his illustrious Parisian confrères, carried on with equal ardor his crushing professional activity and a ceaseless social life, had found the time to indulge in many love affairs. His triumphant reputation had had a good deal to do with Noémi's mad love and her determined desire to capture him, for herself alone, and keep him. Philippe cared nothing about intelligence in women. He wanted them to be well-made, healthy, elegant and stupid. He went so far as to say that a woman could never be stupid enough. Noémi certainly was not, but that made no difference. A woman who desires a man can assume, before her mirror, the mind as well as the eyes that he likes. She intoxicated Philippe with her youthful body and her idolatry. She absorbed him greedily.
But the career of a mistress is not a sinecure. It requires the expenditure of a kind of genius. And there is never a moment of rest! After a long period of mutual amorous servitude Philippe was beginning to grow weary. Noémi, marvellously prompt in perceiving in the heart of her husband-lover the least signs of a veering of the wind, slept with one eye open; always jealously on the watch, while Philippe was unaware of it, she was able to turn danger aside with one stroke and entrap again, by the allurement of the senses and her subtle wit, the man who was about to escape her. It was a game at first, but not for long. Still more than Philippe she had to watch herself, to be always attentive, always ready to ward off the unexpected ravages of the perfidious minutes, the infallible ravages of the days and the years. Noémi no longer had all her first freshness; her complexion was mottled; the fineness of her face was turning to dryness, her throat was growing heavy, and the pure cords of her neck were menaced. Art flew to the aid of the endangered masterpiece and even added a few additional charms. But what tension this always meant! The least moment of abandon would have betrayed the secret to the keen eye of the master, who would not have forgotten it. Never to allow oneself to be taken unawares! . . . What a tragedy one morning when one of the little upper incisors broke! Noémi had remained half the day invisible at the dentist's, for if, on her return, Philippe had not seen her exhibit her impeccable smile, he would have had suspicions into which jealousy did not enter. (Though even jealousy is less terrible than a broken tooth!) She had to play a fast game. Philippe was not one of those husbands whom one can easily deceive in regard to the quality of one's physical wares. He belonged to that trade himself. Noémi always felt her heart beat a little when he turned on her one of those "X-Ray" glances (as she called them, laughing, to put him on the wrong scent) with which he made her undergo a visit of inspection. "Does he see?" she would, wonder. He saw, but he did not show it. Noémi's art seemed to him a part of nature; and so long as the effect pleased him everything went well. But look out for the day when the effect might fail! . . . She could not sleep two nights running on her laurels. She had to win them anew every morrow morning. And she was not permitted to appear anxious. To please the master she had to seem always gay, young, radiant. It was crushing at times. In moments of weariness, when she knew she was not being seen, she slid down in the hollow of a divan, with a hard wrinkle between her eyes, a shrivelled smile, her carmine lips bleeding. . . . But the attack of weakness never lasted more than a minute or two. She had to set out again. And she did set out. Young, gay, radiant. . . . Why not? She was so. And she did not slacken. . . . Besides, there are ways of avenging oneself against, a tyrant whom one cannot do without and who abuses one. Enough! She had her secrets. . . . We shall speak of them presently if she is willing. For the moment she laughs, not merely with her lips; she is satisfied with herself and with him, she is sure, she has kept him! . . . And naturally this is the hour when he escapes from her. . . . In vain all her talent! All this trouble in vain! There always comes a moment when the attention is relaxed. Even Argus slept. And the caged animal, the heart of the chambered lover, regains its liberty.
Through one of those aberrations to which nature is accustomed, which the good mediator finds to her advantage, Noémi, for once, saw a woman without distrust. And that woman was Annette.
She was relying on the deceptive assurance that Philippe abhorred intellectual women. Annette was the last one to cause her any uneasiness. From the physical portrait of her rivals in the past, from her own portrait, Noémi had made an image of the woman who might steal her husband away from her. She saw her as small, like herself, rather dark, pretty, of course, delicately made, coquettish, knowing how to make the best of her advantages. Philippe professed the humorous opinion that woman, being exclusively made for the service of man, should, in modern life, be an extremely finished drawing-room trinket, but one that was easy to handle—that, without taking up too much space, she should agreeably furnish the drawing-room and bedroom. He did not like large women and valued grace more highly than beauty. As for the qualities of the mind, he said that, when he needed them, he found them in men, and that the only mind he demanded of a woman was the "mind of the body." Noémi did not contradict him in this: she corresponded with the portrait. Annette did not correspond with it at all. Large and strong, with a heavy beauty, in repose, when nothing animated her, and (when she did not wish to have it) without grace. A Juno-heifer slumbering in a meadow—so Noémi judged her reassuringly; and the fact that Annette appeared so frigid with Philippe made her attractive. On her side, Annette, who was very susceptible to prettiness in women, and inclined to like what did not resemble herself, was charmed by Noémi; in talking with her she showed that she too, when she wished, had an enchanting smile. Philippe lost nothing of this; and his new-born flame blazed up for this Annette with her two masks, one of which was not for him. (Wasn't it for him? The love one repulses has such clever ways of re-entering the place from which it has been expelled!) At the same time that Annette was preventing Philippe from scrutinizing her mind and intrenching herself behind her most unattractive manner, she was not displeased that he should see her most captivating expression over the wall. . . . Yes, he had seen it clearly. From the opposite corner of the drawing-room, as he was describing to his hosts some recent experience, he observed his wife, who was working for him unawares. Annette and Noémi were lavishing on each other all the little graces with which Noémi was always well supplied, inspiring in Annette a complex feeling from which the uneasy thought of Philippe was not absent. And her ear followed, from the opposite corner of the room, the derisive voice that knew it was being listened to.
She hated him, she hated him. . . . He represented the deepest part of her repressed nature, the nature she wished to repress, the good and the bad, the hard, commanding pride, the need of dominating, the demands of the will, those of the intelligence, of a sensual, violent body, passion without love, stronger than love. And as she hated this faun of the soul, hated it in herself, she hated it in him. But this was to engage in an unequal combat. There were two against her—he and her own self.