She took her in her strong arms and raised her up. She felt this young body, shaken by sobs, abandoning itself, defenceless, and she thought, "Is it possible that I am the one who causes this suffering?"
Another voice said to her, "Would you not buy your love at the cost of any amount of suffering?"
"My own suffering, yes."
"Your own and other people's. Why should the others be privileged?"
She looked at Noémi as she held her, half-fainting. . . . So light! . . . A bird! . . . It seemed to her that she was her daughter and, without quite meaning to do so, she pressed her in her arms. Noémi opened her eyes and Annette thought, "If she were in my place would she spare me?"
But Noémi turned towards her a broken look. Annette laid her in her chaise longue, and, standing beside her, placed her hand on her head. (Noémi shivered at the hateful contact, but she did not show it.) She asked her, as if she were addressing a weeping child, "So you love him very much?"
"I love nothing but him."
"I, too, love him."
Noémi gave a jealous start. "Oh," she said harshly, "but I am young. You, you" (she hesitated), "you have had your life, you can get on without him."
Annette repeated to herself, bitterly, the words she had not uttered: "It is because I shall soon be old that I cling to this last hour of youth, this supreme light, and will not give it up. . . . Ah! If I had the treasure of youth before me as you have!"