Prudent was the one thing Annette was not by nature, and love did not teach her. It gave her the need of a generous confidence. Now that she was sure of loving and being loved, she concealed nothing. Nothing in the man she loved could have repelled her: why should she paint herself up? She was healthy-minded, and she did not blush at being what she was. Whoever loved her should see her as she was! She had clearly seen Julien's naïveté, his lack of understanding, his alarm. She found a tender and malicious pleasure in them. She was glad that she was the first to reveal to him a feminine soul.
One day she went to surprise him in his apartment. His mother opened the door. An old lady, with gray hair tightly drawn across a calm brow that was lighted up by two severe, watchful eyes, she inspected Annette with a distrustful politeness and showed her into a neat, cold little drawing-room with horsehair furniture.
Dull family photographs and pictures from museums added a finishing touch to the freezing atmosphere of the room. Annette waited alone. After a whispered consultation in the adjoining bedroom, Julien dashed in. He was delighted and he was frightened; he did not know what to say. He spoke absent-mindedly. They were sitting in uncomfortable chairs with stiff backs that thwarted every natural movement. Between them was one of those drawing-room tables that you cannot lean upon, tables with sharp edges that hurt your knees. The cold glitter of the carpetless floor and the dead faces under glass, like plants in a herbarium, congealed the words on their lips and made them lower their voices. This drawing-room absolutely froze Annette. Was Julien going to keep her here during the whole of her call? She asked him if he did not want to show her the room where he worked. He could not refuse, he even wanted to do so. But he looked so hesitant that she said, "Would you rather not?"
He protested, explaining that it was not in order, and took her in. It was in much better order than her own rooms had been at the time of Julien's first call, but there was no air of gaiety in Julien's room. It served him both for working and sleeping. Books, a well-known engraving that represented Pasteur, papers on the chairs, a pipe on the table, a student's bed. She noticed overhead a little crucifix with a branch of boxwood. Settled in the badly upholstered arm-chair, she tried to put her host at his ease by gaily recalling to him the memory of their student days. She talked without prudery of what they both knew. But he was distrait, embarrassed by her presence and her freedom of speech; he seemed preoccupied with what was going on in the next room. Annette, embarrassed by contagion, held out bravely and succeeded in making him forget the "what will she think of it?" At last he became quite lively and they had a good laugh. When she got up to go he became awkward again, leading her out. In the corridor they passed the mother's room; the door was ajar; Mme. Dumont, from discretion or in order not to have to speak to the stranger, pretended not to see them. The two women had only exchanged a glance, and they were enemies already. Mme. Dumont, the mother, was shocked by the call of this bold girl with her free and easy ways, her dear voice, her laughter, her animation: she scented danger. And Annette, who, during the visit, had perceived between Julien and herself this invisible presence, had felt angry: passing the room of the old lady who turned her back on her, she spoke and laughed more loudly still. And she jealously thought, "I'm going to take him away from her."
A week later, Julien came in turn, one evening, after dinner. He had had his first discussion with his mother on the subject of Annette; and he meant to assert his will. They were alone. Leopold had taken little Marc to the circus. When Julien left her, a little before eleven o'clock, Annette suggested walking back with him for the pleasure of enjoying together the fresh night air. But when they reached his door, Julien was troubled at the idea of leaving Annette to return alone. She made fun of his fear. None the less, he masted on going back with her again, and she did not protest. She would have him all the longer with her! So they returned by the most roundabout way; and without quite knowing how they got there, they found themselves on a steep bank of the Seine. It was a June night. They sat down on a bench. The poplars rustled above the dark water in which were spread the reddish and yellow lights of the lamps on the bridges. The sky was far away, the stars were feeble, as if the monstrous city had drawn all the life out of them. The darkness was above and the light below. They were silent. Words could no longer express their thoughts, but, without looking at each other, each read the other's mind. Julien's desire set Annette's heart aflame; but his timidity kept him bound and motionless, and he did not dare even to lift his eyes to her. She smiled and watched him, without turning her head, as she kept her eyes upon the red reflexions on the river; he could not make up his mind! Then she leaned towards him and kissed him.
Drunk with love and gratitude, he kissed her in return, while the insidious point of a dull anxiety fastened itself in his brain. A harsh remark of his mother's: "These bold, poverty-stricken girls who are trying to find somebody to marry them. . . ." He had pulled it angrily out not long before, but the tip of the sting had remained under the skin. He was ashamed. Mentally he asked Annette's pardon. He knew that the insulting suspicion was false. He believed in her religiously, but he was troubled. And each new visit troubled him more. Annette's freedom, the freedom of her manners, the freedom of her ideas, the freedom of her opinions on every kind of subject—especially on social morality—her calm lack of prejudices, terrified him. He was as narrow in his way of thinking as in his dress, rather dull in his ideas, inclined to severity. She, on the other hand, was generously indulgent and full of laughter. It did not occur to him that she might be as much of a Puritan as he where she herself was concerned, while with an ironical tolerance she applied to others their own measure. Tolerance and irony disconcerted him. She saw this; and when he expressed himself on some question with an unjust and excessive harshness she did not attempt to oppose his way of thinking; she smiled at this naïve rigidity which did not displease her. Her smile disturbed Julien more than her words. He had the impression that she knew more than he. It was true. But how much more? And just what did she know? What experience had she had?
Like his mother—and some of his mother's spiteful remarks had contributed to make him so—this man of fine but impoverished vitality was vaguely alarmed by the brilliant health, the radiance of this woman. He had the most ardent desire for her, but he was afraid of her. In the walks they took together he felt that he cut a poor figure. Annette's perfect poise in every company added to his embarrassment. And although she would have liked this embarrassment if she had observed it, he was humiliated by it. But she did not observe it. She was utterly absorbed in the song within her. Annette mistakenly thought that no one but herself heard this song; and she did not see Julien's anxious glance when he asked himself, "At whom, at what, is she laughing?"
She seemed so far away!
He did not cease to see—he saw more clearly than ever—her great intellectual force, her moral energy. At the same time she remained for him a dangerous enigma. He was divided between two opposite feelings, an invincible attraction and an obscure mistrust that were like a remnant of the primitive instinct that recalls to the man and the woman of to-day the original enmity of the sexes, for which the carnal union was a form of combat. That suspicious instinct of defence is strongest perhaps in a man like Julien who is at once keenly intelligent and poor in experience. As it is impossible for him to see a woman just as she is, he sees her now too simply, now as full of snares.
Annette contributed to these oscillations of thought by her way of alternately saying everything and saying nothing, of revealing everything and concealing everything, her bursts of passionate expansiveness and her hermetic silences, which sometimes lasted during a good half of their walk. . . . These terrible silences—what man has not suffered from them?—during which the life of the companion who walks at your side goes down into those regions that you will never know! . . . Not that as a usual thing they cover very profound secrets. If you plunged into them you would find that they did not rise above your heel. But whatever the depth may be, the sheet of silence is opaque: the eye cannot penetrate it. And the tormented spirit of the man has plenty of time to conjure up all sorts of alarming mysteries. The idea would never have entered the head of a Julien that he might be the author of them, that if a woman is silent it is often because she knows so well how little the man understands her. Annette's silence, which was ironical and a little weary on some days, tolerated a false interpretation of her feelings on the part of her lover, for she knew that he loved the false and did not love the true.