But Philippe was no longer in a hurry. He was passionate, yes, but he had many other passions that were of far more importance to him: his ideas, his struggles, the controversy that was absorbing him at the moment when Annette would have liked him to think of nothing but herself. He had no intention of stirring up a conjugal scandal and hampering himself with a noisy divorce-case before he had emerged from the fire of the present battle. He had made up his mind to keep his promises. But later! Annette must have patience. It was easy enough for him to be patient. He enjoyed her. He was quite willing to leave things as they were. He flattered himself that he could impose the same forbearance upon Noémi. He flattered himself too much! He did not wish to see how intolerable this waiting was to the two women. . . .
"Naturally," thought Annette, "a man—a man worthy for us to love—will never love us as much as his ideas, his science, his art, his politics. A naïve egoism that thinks it is disinterested because it incarnates itself in ideas. The egoism of the brain, more murderous than that of the heart. How many hearts have been broken by it!"
She was not surprised at this, for she knew life; but it hurt her. If it had only been a question of suffering she would have accepted it, however, perhaps even with that secret enjoyment of self-sacrifice which is familiar to women and which they willingly consider the price of love. But not to the point of sacrificing her self-respect and her son's honor in a humiliating situation. It hurt her that Philippe did not feel this. Of course he was not sensitive. She knew what he thought of women and love. He could not help thinking as he did; he had been shaped by his education and his rough experiences, and it was for this that she loved him. But she had flattered herself with the hope that she would change him. Instead, she perceived that day by day she was losing her power over him. And worst of all, over herself. Annette felt herself invaded by the demon of sensuality; day by day she became less the mistress of her will, more enslaved.
The duel of passion only preserves its nobility as long as there is equality between the combatants. When one is conquered the other abuses his victory and the vanquished becomes debased. Annette was at that poignant moment which precedes and determines defeat. She knew it: her strength would not sustain her any longer. Philippe knew this also, and his attitude showed it. It made no difference that he cared just as much—perhaps more, for Annette; he showed less consideration for her and he made brutal use of what belonged to him. He treated her like a conquered province. With all his days absorbed in his regular and passionate life of toil and his nights by Noémi (for he wished to keep up appearances), he saw Annette only during brief and burning encounters. No intimacy of the heart. He maintained, cynically, that she had the best of it all.
She wanted to tear herself away from this degradation in which her senses were accomplices, but every day they became more imperious. Once, when she wished to flee from their tyranny, they refused to obey with a violence that dismayed her. A woman of such fervent energy who, after having severely disciplined and repressed her passions for ten years, opens the door of their cage at the most fiery moment of the stormy summer, runs the risk of being destroyed.
Annette could only retrieve herself by forcing Philippe to respect the wife she wished to be—the companion "rei humanœ atque divinœ"—the equal. She asked Philippe, she besought him in anguish, to give her up till the time came when they could love and marry openly. Philippe refused: he was as unwilling to be hampered in his passions as in his public life. He was unwilling either to do without Annette or to marry her at a time that did not suit him. He pretended to consider Annette's attempt to leave him as a rather degrading manœuvre to attach him to her. And this although he knew very well what a whole-hearted gift she had made of herself! She was insulted by the outrageous suspicion—and she gave herself again with a despairing passion and disgust.
As for himself, he would see nothing of all this. He came back, demanding his own selfish rights as a lover, never realizing that, although she consented to them, every one of these carnal victories left a wound in his partner.
Annette was degraded in her own eyes. She ceased to give herself; she prostituted herself to love. Unless she flung herself off the slope down which her mad body was sliding, she was lost. . . .
One afternoon she fled. She went to Sylvie's and asked her to let her child stay with her for a few days, pleading as an excuse that she had to go away. Sylvie asked for no explanation; one glance was enough. This woman, whose curiosity was so often indiscreet, and who was unable in so many ways to understand her sister's ideas, had an instinct for love and its tragic tricks. In the days of the old intimacy with Annette, she had never confided to her the secrets of her own love affairs, and she did not expect Annette to open herself to her. She knew that every woman has a right to her hours of silence, her great hours, and that at such times no one can help her. One must save oneself alone or perish alone. She offered her sister the shelter of a little house she owned in the suburbs, near Jouy-en-Josas. Annette was touched, and she kissed her and accepted. In this little rustic house, on the edge of the woods, she shut herself up for a fortnight. She had not even told Marc where she was going. Her retreat was known only to Sylvie.
Scarcely had she left Paris and its enchanted circle than she perceived the excesses of the past few weeks and passed judgment on them. She was terrified by them. She, this mad creature, this miserable slave drunk with her own servitude! Passion, the destroyer of the soul! . . . Its clasp loosened. She breathed again, this evening, she saw and felt once more the fields, the woods, the calm of the earth. For two months an opaque red veil had concealed the living world from her. Even those closest to her, her son, had come to seem far away. . . . But when she reached the house in the fields, the veil was torn away in the rays of the setting sun. She heard the bells, the birds, the voices of the peasants; she wept with relief. . . . In the middle of the night, however—she had fallen asleep exhausted—she awoke suddenly with a pang of anguish. She felt about her throat the coils of the serpent.