On the half-light of the room, with its closed shutters, Annette was sitting on her bed, smiling, with her white dressing-gown wrapped about her. Her unbound hair, which she had just washed, covered her shoulders. Through the open windows could be seen the motionless, golden warmth of an August mid-afternoon; without observing it, one felt out there the torpor of the Jardin de Boulogne sleeping in the sunlight. Annette shared in this beatitude. She could rest there for hours, stretched out, without stirring, without thinking, without needing to think. It was enough for her to know that there were two of her; and she did not even make an effort to talk with the "little one" who was inside her, because—of this she was sure—he felt what she felt, they understood one another without speaking. Waves of tenderness passed through the happy somnolence of her body. And then she relapsed again into a happy smile. But if her mind was drowsy, her senses had retained a marvelous clairvoyance; they followed from moment to moment the fine vibrations of the air and the light. . . . A fragrant odor of strawberries in the garden. . . . She enjoyed it with her nostrils and her tongue. Her amused ear caught the slightest sound, the leaves brushed by a breeze, a footstep on the gravel, a voice in the street, a bell ringing for vespers. And the rumble ascending from the great crowds: Paris in 1900 . . . the summer of the Exposition. In the vat of the Champ de Mars thousands of human grapes were fermenting in the sun. . . . Far enough away, yet close enough to the monstrous bubbling to feel its presence and to be safe from it, Annette rejoiced in the contrast of the peace and the shade of her nest. Vain tumult! The truth dwells within me.
