"It would hardly be worth while. And besides . . ."
Marcel unhappily recalled the call at Lucile's: if she wished to resume her old place in society Annette would meet with little success. She knew this: it was unnecessary for anyone to tell her, and in her wounded pride she had no desire to repeat the experience. But she was surprised by Marcel's insistence in pointing this out to her; he was usually more tactful.
"Well," she said, "it matters very little now that I have my child."
"But you can't reduce your existence merely to him."
"I don't think that would be reducing it. Enlarging it, I should say. I see a world in him, a world that is going to grow. I shall grow with it."
With much solicitude and no less irony, Marcel set to work to prove to her that this world would not be enough for a nature as eager and exacting as hers. With knitted brows and a pang at her heart Annette listened to him. Mentally, in her irritation, she protested, "No, no!"
She could not help being anxious, however, when she remembered that once before Marcel had had such clear foresight. But why was he so bent upon convincing her of it? Why should he take so much trouble to prove to her that she should profit by the liberty she had won, that she should not be afraid of living on the fringe of society? (He called it "outside and above the bourgeois conventions.")
There were in Annette two or three Annettes who always bore one another company. As a general thing, only one spoke while the others listened. Just now two of them were speaking at once: the passionate, sentimental Annette who was the victim of her impressions and their willing dupe, and another who observed and was amused at the hidden motives of the heart. She had good eyes. She saw through Marcel. They had changed places. Formerly it had been he who read her secret thoughts. To-day, to-day there had come to Annette (just when?—exactly from the moment of her 'metamorphosis') an insight into souls and their secret movements—intermittent, to be sure—the novelty of which surprised and amused her in the midst of her anxieties.
Stretched out in her chair, with her head thrown back, her arms behind her neck and her mouth slightly open, she studied the ceiling; but out of the corner of her half-closed eyes she watched Marcel as he talked. She could have uttered in advance the words he was about to say; she could have sworn what was going to happen. With an amused curiosity that was a little sarcastic, for which she reproached herself, she let him go on.
(One must see and know, as he said just now, one must learn . . . learn. . . .)