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thing!" said my father. "After all Cyril's a nice boy, isn't he?"
    "And Cécile is a nice girl," said Anne. "That's why I should be heartbroken if anything should happen to her, and it seems to me inevitable that it will, if you consider what complete freedom she enjoys here, and that they are constantly together and have nothing whatever to do. Don't you agree?"
    At her last words I looked up and saw that my father was very perturbed.
    "You are probably right," he said. "After all, you ought to do some work, Cécile. You surely don't want to fail in philosophy and have to take it again?"
    "What do you think I care?" I answered. He glanced at me and then turned away. I was bewildered. I realised that procrastination can rule our lives, yet not provide us with any arguments in its defence.
    "Listen," said Anne, taking my hand across the table. "Won't you exchange your rô1e of a wood nymph for that of a good schoolgirl for one month? Would it be so serious?"
    They both looked at me expectantly; seen in that light, the argument was simple enough. I gently withdrew my hand.
    "Yes, very serious," I said, so softly that they did not hear it, or did not want to.
    The following morning I came across a phrase from Bergson:
    "Whatever irrelevance one may at first find between the cause and the effects, and although a rule of guidance towards an assertion concerning the root of things may be far distant, it is always in a contact with the generative force of life that one is able to extract the power to love humanity."
    I repeated the phrase, quietly at first, so as not to get agitated, then in a louder voice. I held my head in my hands and looked at the book with great attention. At last I understood it, but I felt as cold and impotent as when I had read it the first time. I could not continue. With the best will in the world I applied myself to the next lines, and suddenly something arose in me like a storm and threw me onto the bed. I thought of Cyril waiting for me down in the creek, of the swaying boat, of the pleasure of our kisses, and then I thought of Anne, but in a way that made me sit up on my bed with a fast-beating heart, telling myself that I was stupid, monstrous, nothing but a lazy, spoilt child, and had no right to have such thoughts. But all the same, in spite of myself I continued to reflect that she was dangerous, and that I must get rid of her. I thought of the lunch I had endured with clenched teeth, tortured by a feeling of resentment for which I despised and ridiculed myself. Yes, it was for this I reproached Anne: she prevented me from liking myself. I, who was so naturally meant for happiness and gaiety, had been forced by her into a world of self-criticism and guilty conscience, where, unaccustomed to introspection, I was completely lost. And what did she bring me? I took stock: She wanted my father; she had got him. She would gradually make of us the husband and step-daughter of Anne Larsen; that is to say, she would turn us into two civilised, well-behaved and happy people. For she would certainly make us happy. How easily, unstable and irresponsible as we were, we would yield to her influence, and be drawn into the attractive framework of her orderly plan of living. She was much too efficient: already my father was estranged from me. I was obsessed by his embarrassed face turning away from me at table. Tears came into my eyes at the thought of the jokes we used to have together, our gay laughter as we drove home at dawn through the empty streets of Paris. All that was over. In my turn I would be influenced, re-orientated, re-modelled by Anne. I would not even mind it, she would act with intelligence, irony and sweetness, and I would be incapable of resistance; in six months I should no longer even wish to resist.
    At all costs I must take steps to regain my father and our former life. How infinitely desirable those two years suddenly appeared to me, those happy years I was so willing to renounce the other