She descended, victorious, from the stool.
"Rage, Sylvie?" she said. (She was holding her by the chin.) "When you were a child you played at building houses with dominoes. When the house fell, did you get angry?"
"I banged the dominoes on the floor," said Sylvie.
"And I said, Biff! I'll build another."
"You'll have to admit that you shook the table!"
"Well, I wouldn't swear I didn't," said Annette.
Sylvie called her an anarchist.
"What!" said Annette. "Isn't that just what you are?"
Sylvie was not. She could laugh at order and authority when she wanted to do so, but she felt the need of order and authority. Even if it was only to apply them to other people. For her, as for others, there was no pleasure in revolting unless it was against some authority. And as for order, Sylvie was well supplied with it. She did not cavil at the established order except in so far as it was not her own. She did not reproach it for being established. An order should be established. Since she too was established, as an employer, directing her own business, she was all for a stable order. Annette made this discovery with surprise. Nor was this the only discovery she made. You do not know another human being unless you see him in that everyday activity which brings his energies to a head and reveals his natural movements and gestures. Annette had never seen Sylvie except during her idle times, her times of relaxation. Who can judge of a cat stretched out on a soft cushion? You must see it on the warpath with its back arched and the green fire in its eyes.
Annette was now seeing Sylvie in her own field, the portion of earth she had cleared for herself in the Parisian jungle. The little business woman had taken her trade seriously, and she was second to no one in the art of managing her affairs. Annette could observe her at leisure and close by; for, during the first weeks that followed her moving, she took her meals with Sylvie; it had been agreed that they should keep house together until the settling was entirely finished. Annette, to keep her own end up, tried to make herself useful, sharing in some of the tasks of the workshop. Thus she saw Sylvie at all hours of the day, now with the customers, now with the workers, now alone for a private talk, and she observed in her sister traits she had not known, or which had become accentuated in the last two or three years.