But she added, sadly, "I should make a mess of it a second time, I suppose."
Noémi had seen Annette's face darken and she was afraid she had imperilled the frail advantages she had just gained. She said hastily, "I know quite well that he loves you, that you are beautiful"—("Liar!" thought Annette)—"that you are superior to me in many things that he likes. I cannot even hate you because, in spite of everything, I love you"—("Liar! Liar!" repeated Annette)—"The match is not equal. It isn't fair! No . . . I am only a poor, weeping woman. I don't amount to anything. I know it. . . . But I love him, I love him, I can't live without him. What do you think will become of me if you take him away? Why did he love me once if it was only to abandon me? I can't endure it. He is my whole life. Everything else is nothing to me."
There was nothing false in her tone now, and Annette pitied her again. She was insensible to the rights Noémi invoked over her husband; she did not believe in the rights of one being over another, in these contracts of mutual proprietorship that people sign for life. But she was distressed by these tricks of cruel nature who, when she separates two hearts that have loved each other, never removes love from both hearts at once—no, but rather takes pains that one of the two shall cease to love before the other, so that the most loving is always sacrificed. And it was hateful to her to further the schemes of the great torturer. "Life belongs to the strongest. Yes, love does not hesitate. To attain its end it tramples everything else under foot. Woe to the weak! . . . But why is it that I can't say this? I should like to, but the words stick in my throat, I cannot. It revolts me. Is it because I do not love enough? I am old, as she says. I belong in the ranks of the weak. . . . No! No! No! It's a trick! . . . By what right does she come and step between happiness and me? I will not give up to her my bit of happiness! . . . Her tears, what are her tears to me? . . . I will trample on her!"
But as she looked angrily at Noémi lying there, Noémi, who was watching her through her tears, took the hand, the arm that hung down by the back of the chair, pressed it against her cheek and begged, "Let me keep him!"
Annette tried to free herself. Noémi held her fast. Rising in her chair, she slid her two hands up Annette's arm, forcing her to bend over and look at her. "Let me keep him!"
Annette snatched herself away from the fingers that gripped her. She rebelled. "No! No! I will not. He needs me."
"He needs nothing but himself," said Noémi, bitterly. "He loves nothing but himself. He finds his pleasure in you as he once found it in me. He will leave you as he left me. He is not attached to anything."
She judged him hardly and profoundly. Annette was struck by her intelligence. With what acuteness, born of bitterness and suffering, had he been read to the depths by this little creature who seemed so frivolous and heedless! Some of her terrible observations corresponded only too well with the apprehensions that her own experiences had awakened in Annette. "And yet you love him?" she said.
"I love him. He does not need me. It is I who need him. . . . Ah! Do you suppose I don't suffer in needing a man who has no need of me, a man who despises me, whom I despise? . . . I do despise him! I despise him! But I can't live without him. . . . Why did I ever know him? It was I who wanted him. I wanted him, I caught him. . . . And I am the one who is caught. If only, if only I had never known him! Ah, but I can't wish that! . . . I haven't the strength. I am too much in love. He holds me completely. I hate him. I hate love. Why, why does one love?"
She stopped, exhausted, with her hunted eyes wandering, seeking to the right, to the left, a way of escape. They bowed their heads, these two women, enslaved under the yoke of the savage force.