She was learning to understand a friend.
(Yes, I understand you. . . . An Annette fallen from the tree would be good to pick up again. He is gently shaking the tree to make her tumble off. He is speculating on Annette's confusion. And yet he is in love with her. Yes, he is certainly in love with her. Not very bright, brother man! His voice begins to have a coaxing sound. See how tender he is growing. And now, look out! I wager he is going to bend over me.)
Several seconds in advance she foresaw Marcel's blond beard leaning towards her; she foresaw the caressing mouth that was about to alight on hers. She wanted to spare him the humiliation. And just at the exact moment she rose, and, with her outstretched hands, gently pushed Marcel's shoulders away.
"Good-bye, my friend," she said.
Marcel looked into those penetrating eyes that were scrutinizing him with a little malice in their depths. He smiled. He had been mistaken. But it had been a good battle. He was perfectly aware that, with all the calmness in the world, he had been given his dismissal. And yet, of this he was sure, Annette's feeling towards him was not one of indifference. Let whoever could understand it! The strange girl was escaping him.
[VII]
Marcel did not reappear, and Annette took no steps to bring him back. They were still friends, but each was angry with the other. Just because Annette's feeling towards Marcel was not one of indifference, she was touched by what she had seen in him. She was not offended by this; it was the old story . . . Too old a story! . . . No, Annette had no grievance against Marcel. Only, only she could not forget what had happened! That is the way it is with forgivenesses granted by the mind which the heart does not ratify. Secretly bitter, she was forced to recognize, even more through Marcel's too free attempt than through the harsh welcome she had encountered in Lucile's drawing-room, that her situation was changed. She realized that she was no longer protected by the conventional consideration that society accords to those of its members who appear to submit to its laws. She would have to defend herself alone. She was exposed.
She closed her door to the world. She took care not to tell Sylvie of the experiences she had had; Sylvie had predicted them and she would be triumphant. She kept her secret and shut herself up with her child. She had decided henceforth to live only for him.
When little Marc came back from his airing in the evening, after Marcel's call, she welcomed him with transports. He laughed when he saw her and stretched out to her his four wriggling paws. She fell on him as a starved wolf falls on its prey; she devoured him with kisses; she pretended to eat every morsel of his body; she thrust his little feet into her mouth; and as she undressed him she tickled him from head to foot with her lips. "Yum-yum! I'm going to eat you up! That fool!" she exclaimed, calling him to witness. "That fool who had the impudence to tell me that you would not be enough for me! What insolence! You not enough for me, my king, my little god! Tell me that you are my little god! And what am I then? The little god's mother! The world belongs to us! All the things we are going to do together! See everything, have everything, try everything, taste everything, create everything!"
And indeed they did create everything. To discover and to create, are they not the same thing? To invent is to find. One finds what one invents, one discovers what one creates, what one dreams of, what one draws up from the fish-pond of one's musings. For the two of them, mother and child, it was the hour of great discoveries. The first words of the little boy, the game of exploration, when one measures the world with one's arms and legs. Every morning Annette, with her child, set out for conquest. She enjoyed it as much as he, perhaps more. It seemed to her that she was reliving her own childhood, but with complete consciousness and complete joy. He, the gay little soul, was full of joy too. He was a beautiful child, healthy, chubby all over, a little pink pig just ready for the spit. ("What else could you expect?" as Sylvie said.) In his plump, elastic body there was too much compressed force; he was like a rubber ball that insists upon bouncing. Every new contact with life threw him into a clamorous delight. The enormous power of dreaming that belongs to every baby amplified his discoveries and prolonged the vibrations of happiness into veritable chimes of bells. Annette was never behind him; it was as if they were having a contest as to who should be the happiest and make the most noise. Sylvie said that Annette was crazy, but she would have behaved the same way herself. And after this tumult they would both have hours of absolute, delicious, exhausted silence. The little one, tired out after so much movement, slept obliviously. Annette was dropping with fatigue, but for a long time she would refuse to go to sleep in order to enjoy the other's slumber; and the fire of her love, driven back into her heart, hidden like the light of a candle behind one's hand so as not to awaken the little sleeper, burned with a long silent flame that rose upward to heaven. She prayed . . . Mary beside the manger . . . She prayed to the child.