She stopped singing, and went and sat down with her hands folded in her lap. Braun complimented her: but to his way of thinking there had been a lack of softness in her singing. Christophe said nothing. He sat watching her. She smiled vaguely, knowing that he was looking at her. All the evening there was a complete silence between them. She knew quite well that she had risen above herself, or rather, that she had been “herself,” for the first time. And she could not understand why.
From that day on Christophe began to observe Anna closely. She had relapsed into her sullenness, her cold indifference, and her mania for work, which exasperated even her husband, while beneath it all she lulled the obscure thoughts of her troubled nature. It was in vain that Christophe watched her, he never found her anything but the stiff ordinary woman of their first acquaintance. Sometimes she would sit lost in thought, doing nothing, with her eyes staring straight in front of her. They would leave her so, and come back a quarter of an hour later and find her just the same: she would never stir. When her husband asked her what she was thinking of, she would rouse herself from her torpor and smile and say that she was thinking of nothing. And she spoke the truth.
There was nothing capable of upsetting her equanimity. One day when she was dressing, her spirit-lamp burst. In an instant Anna was a mass of flames. The maid rushed away screaming for help. Braun lost his head, flung himself about, shouted and yelled, and almost fell ill. Anna tore away the hooks of her dressing-gown, slipped off her skirt just as it was beginning to burn, and stamped on it. When Christophe ran in excitedly with a water-bottle which he had blindly seized, he found Anna standing on a chair, in her petticoat with her arms bare, calmly putting out the burning curtains with her hands. She got burnt, said nothing about it, and only seemed to be put out at being seen in such a costume. She blushed, awkwardly covered her shoulders with her arms, and with an air of offended dignity ran away into the next room. Christophe admired her calmness: but he could not tell whether it proved her courage or her insensibility. He was inclined to the latter explanation. Indeed, Anna seemed to take no interest in anything, or in other people, or in herself. Christophe doubted even whether she had a heart.
He had no doubt at all after a little scene which he happened to witness. Anna had a little black dog, with intelligent soft eyes, which was the spoiled darling of the household. Braun adored it. Christophe used to take it to his room when he shut himself up to work; and often, when the door was closed, instead of working, he would play with it. When he went out, the dog was always waiting for him at the door, looking out for him, to follow at his heels: for he always wanted a companion in his walks. She would run in front of him, pattering along with her little paws moving so fast that they seemed to fly. Every now and then she would stop in pride at walking faster than he: and she would look at him and draw herself up archly. She used to beg, and bark furiously at a piece of wood: but directly she saw another dog in the distance she would tear away as fast as she could and tremblingly take refuge between Christophe’s legs. Christophe loved her and used to laugh at her. Since he had held aloof from men he had come nearer to the brutes: he found them pitiful and touching. The poor beasts surrender with such absolute confidence to those who are kind to them! Man is so much the master of their life and death that those who are cruel to the weak creatures delivered into their hands are guilty of an abominable abuse of power.
Affectionate though the pretty creature was with everyone, she had a marked preference for Anna. She did nothing to attract the dog: but she liked to stroke her and let her snuggle down in her lap, and see that she was fed, and she seemed to love her as much as she was capable of loving anything. One day the dog failed to get out of the way of a motorcar. She was run over almost under the very eyes of her masters. She was still alive and yelping pitiably. Braun ran out of the house bareheaded: he picked up the bleeding mass and tried to relieve the dog’s suffering. Anna came up, looked down without so much as stooping, made a face of disgust, and went away again. Braun watched the little creature’s agony with tears in his eyes. Christophe was striding up and down the garden with clenched fists. He heard Anna quietly giving orders to the servant. He could not help crying out:
“It doesn’t affect you at all?”
She replied:
“There’s nothing to be done. It is better not to think of it.”
He felt that he hated her: then he was struck by the grotesqueness of her reply: and he laughed. He thought it would be well if Anna could give him her recipe for avoiding the thought of sad things, and that life must be very easy for those who are lucky enough to have no heart. He fancied that if Braun were to die,
