 Book 3, Chapter 5, Part 2, of The Old Wives' Tale, by Arnold Bennett. Book 3, Sophia, Chapter 5, Part 2, IV About a fortnight later—it was a fine Saturday in early August—Sophia, with a large pinafore over her dress, was finishing the portentous preparations for disinfecting the flat. Part of the affair was already accomplished, her own room and the corridor having been fumigated on the previous day, in spite of the opposition of Madame Foucault, who had taken amiss Lawrence's tale-telling to Sophia. Lawrence had left the flat, under exactly what circumstances Sophia knew not, but she guessed that it must have been in consequence of a scene elaborating the tiff caused by Madame Foucault's resentment against Lawrence. The brief, factitious friendliness between Lawrence and Sophia had gone like a dream, and Lawrence had gone like a dream. The servant had been dismissed. In her place, Madame Foucault employed a charwoman each morning for two hours. Finally, Madame Foucault had been suddenly called away that morning by a letter to her sick father at Saint-Mans-Eussain. Sophia was delighted at the chance. The disinfecting of the flat had become an obsession with Sophia, the obsession of a convalescent, whose perspective unconsciously twists things to the most rye shapes. She had had trouble on the day before with Madame Foucault, and she was expecting more serious trouble when the moment arrived for rejecting Madame Foucault as well as all her moving belongings from Madame Foucault's own room. Nevertheless Sophia had been determined whatever should happen to complete an honest fumigation of the entire flat. Hence the eagerness with which, urging Madame Foucault to go to her father, Sophia had protested that she was perfectly strong and could manage by herself for a couple of days. Owing to the partial suppression of the ordinary railway services in favour of military needs, Madame Foucault could not hope to go and return on the same day. Sophia had lent her a louis. Fans of sulfur were mysteriously burning in each of the three front rooms, and two pairs of doors had been pasted over with paper to prevent the fumes from escaping. The charwoman had departed. Sophia, with brush, scissors, flower paste and news sheets, was sealing the third pair of doors when there was a ring at the front door. She had only to cross the corridor in order to open. It was Chirac. She was not surprised to see him. The outbreak of war had induced even Sophia and her landlady to look through at least one newspaper during the day, and she had, in this way, learnt from an article signed by Chirac that he had returned to Paris after a mission into the Vosge country for his paper. He started on seeing her. Ah! He breathed out the exclamation slowly, and then smiled, seized her hand and kissed it. The sight of his obvious extreme pleasure in meeting her again was the sweetest experience that had fallen to Sophia for years. Then you are cured. Quite. He sighed, You know, this is an enormous relief to me, to know veritably that you are no longer in danger. You gave me a fright, but a fright, my dear madam. She smiled in silence. As he glanced inquiringly up and down the corridor, she said, I am all alone in the flat. I am disinfecting it. Then that is Sulphur that I smell. She nodded, Excuse me while I finish this door. She said, He closed the front door. But you seem to be quite at home here. He observed. I ought to be, said she. He glanced again inquiringly up and down the corridor. Ah! And you are really all alone now? He asked. So to be doubly, sure. She explained the circumstances. I owe you my most sincere excuses for bringing you here, he said confidentially. But why, she replied, looking intently at her door, they have been most kind to me. We could have been kinder, and Madame Laurence being such a good nurse. It is true, said he. That was a reason. In effect they are both very good natured little women. You comprehend, as a journalist, it arrives to me to know all kinds of people. He snapped his fingers. And as we were opposite the house, in fine I pray you to excuse me. Hold me this paper, she said, it is necessary that every crack should be covered, also between the floor and the door. Ah! You English are wonderful! He murmured as he took the paper. Imagine you doing that. Then he added, resuming the confidential tone, I suppose you will leave the Foucault now, eh? I suppose so, she said carelessly. You go to England? She turned to him as she patted the creases out of a strip of paper with a duster, and shook her head. Not to England? No. If it is not in discreet, where are you going? I don't know, she said candidly. And she did not know. She was without a plan. Her brain told her that she ought to return to Bursley, or at least right, but her pride would not hear of such a surrender. Her situation would have to be far more desperate than it was before she could confess her defeat to her family, even in a letter. A thousand times, no. That was a point which she had forever decided. She would face any disaster, and any other shame, rather than the shame of her family's forgiving reception of her. And you, she asked, how does it go, this war? He told her, in a few words, a few leading facts about himself. It must not be said, he added, of the war, but that will turn out ill. I know you'll comprehend. Only, she answered, with casualness, you have heard nothing of him? Shirak asked. Who? Gerald? He gave a gesture. Nothing. Not a word. Nothing. He will have gone back to England. Never, she said positively. But why not? Because he prefers France. He really does like France. I think it is the only real passion he ever had. It is astonishing, reflected Shirak, how France is loved, but yet. But to live, what will he do? Must live! Sophia merely shrugged her shoulders. Then it is finished between you two, he muttered awkwardly. She nodded. She was on her knees at the lower crack of the doors. There, she said, rising, it's well done, isn't it? That is all. She smiled at him, facing him squarely in the obscurity of the untidy and shabby corridor. Both felt that they had become very intimate. He was intensely flattered by her attitude, and she knew it. Now, she said, I will take off my pinnacle. Where can I niche you? There is only my bedroom, and I want that. What are we to do? Listen, he suggested differently. Will you do me the honour to come for a drive? That will do you good. There is sunshine, and you are always very pale. With pleasure, she agreed cordially. While dressing, she heard him walking up and down the corridor. Occasionally they exchanged a few words. Before leaving, Sophia pulled off the paper from one of the key-holes of the sealed suite of rooms, and they peered through one after the other, and saw the green glow of the sulphur, and were troubled by its uncanniness. And then Sophia refixed the paper. In descending the stairs of the house, she felt the infirmity of her knees, but in other respects, though she had been out only once before, since her illness, she was conscious of a sufficient strength. Her disinclination for any enterprise had prevented her from taking the air as she ought to have done, but within the flat she had exercised her limbs in many small tasks. The little Chirac, nervously active and restless, wanted to take her arm, but she would not allow it. The concierge and part of her family stared curiously at Sophia as she passed under the archway, for the course of her illness had excited the interest of the whole house. Just as the carriage was driving off, the concierge came across the pavement and paid her compliments, and then said, You do not know by hazard why Madame Foucault has not returned for lunch, Madame? Return for lunch, said Sophia. She will not come back till to-morrow. The concierge made a face. Ah! How curious it is! She told my husband that she would return in two hours. It is very grave! Question of business! I know nothing, Madame, said Sophia. She and Chirac looked at each other. The concierge murmured thanks, and went off muttering indistinctly. The fiacca turned down the roule la ferrière, the horse slipping and sliding as usual over the cobblestones. Soon they were on the boulevard, making for the Champs Elysees and the Bois de Boulogne. The fresh breeze and bright sunshine, and the large freedom of the streets quickly intoxicated Sophia. Intoxicated her, that is to say, in quite a physical sense. She was almost drunk, with the heady savor of life itself. A mild ecstasy of well-being overcame her. She saw the flat as a horrible vile prison, and blamed herself for not leaving it sooner and oftener. The air was medicine for body and mind, too. Her perspective was instantly corrected. She was happier, living neither in the past nor in the future, but in and for that hour. And beneath her happiness moved a wistful melancholy for the sufferer who had suffered such a captivity in such woes. She yearned for more and yet more delight, for careless orges of passionate pleasure, in the midst of which she would forget all trouble. Why had she refused the offer of Laurence? Why had she not rushed at once into the splendid fire of joyous indulgence, ignoring everything but the crude, sensuous instinct? Acutely aware as she was of her youth, her beauty, and her charm, she wandered at her refusal. She did not regret her refusal. She placidly observed it as the result of some tremendously powerful motive in herself, which could not be questioned or reasoned with, which was, in fact, the essential her. "'Do I look like an invalid?' she asked, leaning back luxuriously in the carriage, among the crowd of other vehicles. She rack hesitated. "'My fifth! Yes,' he said at length, "'but it becomes you. If I did not know that you have little love for compliments, I—' "'But I adore compliments,' she explained. What made you think that?' "'Well, then,' he youthfully burst out, "'you are more ravishing than ever.' She gave herself up deliciously to his admiration. "'After a silence,' he said, "'Ah! If you knew how disquieted I was about you away there, I should not know how to tell you. Veritably disquieted, you comprehend. What could I do? Tell me a little about your illness.' She recounted details. As the fiacco entered the Rue Royale, they noticed a crowd of people in front of the Madeleine, shouting and cheering. The cabman turned towards them. "'It appears there has been a victory,' he said. "'A victory? If only it was true,' murmured Shirak cynically. "'In the Rue Royale, people were running frantically to and fro, laughing and gesticulating in glee. The customers in the cafe stood on their chairs and even on tables to watch and occasionally to join in the sudden fever. The fiacco was slowed to a walking pace. Flags and carpets began to show from the upper stories of houses. The crowd grew thicker and more fee-brow. "'Victory! Victory!' rang hoarsely, shrilly and hoarsely again in the air. "'Oh, my God!' said Shirak, trembling, "'It must be a true victory. We are saved! We are saved! It is true!' "'But naturally it is true! What are you saying?' demanded the driver. At the Place de l'Encore, the fiacco had to stop altogether. The immense square was a sea of white hats and flowers and happy faces, with carriages anchored like boats on its surface. Flag after flag waved out from neighbouring roofs in the breeze that tempered the august sun. Then hats began to go up, and cheers rolled across the square, like echoes of firing in an enclosed valley. Shirak's driver jumped madly onto his seat and cracked his whip. "'Vive, love, arse!' he bawled, with all the force of his lungs. A thousand throats answered him. Then there was a stir behind them. Another carriage was being slowly forced to the front. The crowd was pushing it and crying, "'Marsayez! Marsayez!' In the carriage was a woman alone, not beautiful but distinguished, and with the assured gaze of one who is accustomed to homage and multitudinous applause. "'It is Guémard!' said Shirak to Sophia. He was very pale, and he too shouted, "'Marsayez!' All his features were distorted. The woman rose and spoke to her coachman, who offered his hand, and she climbed to the box-seat and stood on it and bowed several times. "'Marsayez!' the cry continued. Then a roar of cheers and the silence spread around the square like an inundation. And amid this silence the woman began to sing, the Marsayez. As she sang, the tears ran down her cheeks. Everybody in the vicinity was weeping or sternly frowning. In the pauses of the first verse could be heard the rattle of horses' bits, or the whistle of a tug on the river. The refrain, signalled by a proud, challenging toss of Guémard's head, leapt up like a tropical tempest, formidable, overpowering. Sophia, who had no warning of the emotion gathering within her, sobbed violently. At the close of the hymn, Guémard's carriage was assaulted by worshipers. All around, in the tumult of shouting, men were kissing and embracing each other, and hats went up continually in fountains. Shirak lent over the side of the carriage, and wrung the hand of a man who was standing by the wheel. Who is that? Sophia asked, in an unsteady voice, to break the inexplicable tension within her. I don't know, said Shirak. He was weeping like a child. And he sang out, Victory to Berlin! Victory! Five. Sophia walked alone, with tired limbs, up the damaged oak stairs to the flat. Shirak had decided that, in the circumstances of the victory, he would do well to go to the offices of his paper, rather earlier than usual. He had brought her back to the Rue Breda. They had taken leave of each other in a sort of dream or general enchantment, due to their participation in the vast national delirium which somehow dominated individual feelings. They did not define their relations. They had been conscious only of emotion. The stairs, which smelt of damp even in the summer, disgusted Sophia. She thought of the flat with horror, and long for green places and luxury. On the landing were two stoutish, ill-dressed men of middle age, apparently waiting. Sophia found her key and opened the door. Pardon my numb, said one of the men, raising his hat. And they both pushed into the flat after her. They stared, puzzled, at the strips of paper pasted on the doors. What do you want? She asked, haughtily. She was very frightened. The extraordinary interruption brought her down with a shock to the scale of the individual. I am the concierge, said the man who had addressed her. He had the air of a superior artisan. It was my wife who spoke to you this afternoon. This, pointing to his companion, this is the law. I regret it, but the law saluted and shut the front door. Like the concierge, the law emitted an odour, the odour of uncleanliness, on a hot August day. The rent, exclaimed Sophia, did no madam, not the rent, the furniture. Then she learnt the history of the furniture. It had belonged to the concierge, who had acquired it from a previous tenant, and sold it on credit to Madame Foucault. Madame Foucault had signed bills and had not met them. She had made promises and broken them. She had done everything except discharge her liabilities. She had been warned and warned again. That day had been fixed as the last limit, and she had solemnly assured her creditor that on that day she would pay. On leaving the house she had stated precisely and clearly that she would return before lunch with all the money. She had made no mention of a sick father. Sophia slowly perceived the extent of Madame Foucault's duplicity and moral cowardice. No doubt the sick father was an invention. The woman, at the end of a tether, which no ingenuity of lies could further lengthen, had probably absented herself solely to avoid the pain of witnessing the seizure. She would do anything, however silly, to avoid an immediate unpleasantness. Or perhaps she had absented herself without any particular aim, but simply in the hope that something fortunate might occur. Perhaps she had hoped that Sophia, taken unaware, would generously pay. Sophia smiled grimly. Well, she said, I can't do anything. I suppose you must do what you have to do. You will let me pack up my own affairs. Perfectly, Madame. She warned them as to the danger of opening the sealed rooms. The man of the law seemed prepared to stay in the corridor indefinitely. No prospect of delay disturbed him. Strange and disturbing the triumph of the concierge. He was a locksmith by trade. He and his wife and their children lived in two little dark rooms by the archway, an insignificant fragment of the house. He was away from home about fourteen hours every day, except Sundays, when he washed the courtyard. All the other duties of the concierge were performed by the wife. The pair always looked poor, untidy, dirty, and rather for But they were steadily levying toll on everyone in the big house. They amassed money in forty ways. They lived for money, and all men have what they live for. With what arrogant gestures Madame Foucault would descend from a carriage at the great door, what respectful attitudes and tones the aging courtesan would receive from the wife and children of the concierge. But beneath these conventional fictions, the truth was that the concierge held the whip. At last he was using it, and he had given himself a half holiday in order to celebrate his second requirement of the ostentatious furniture and the crimson lampshades. This was one of the dramatic crises in his career as a man of substance. The national thrill of victory had not penetrated into the flat with the concierge and the law. The emotions of the concierge were entirely independent of the Napoleonic foreign policy. As Sophia, sick with a sudden disillusion, was putting her things together, and wondering where she was to go and whether it would be politic to consult Shirak, she heard a fluster at the front door, cries, protestations, implorings. Her own door was thrust open, and Madame Foucault burst in. Save me! exclaimed Madame Foucault, sinking to the ground. The feeble theatricality of the gesture offended Sophia's taste. She asked sternly what Madame Foucault expected her to do, had not Madame Foucault knowingly exposed her without the least warning to the extreme annoyance of this visit of the law, a visit which meant practically that Sophia was put into the street. You must not be hard! Madame Foucault sobbed. Sophia learnt the complete history of the woman's efforts to pay for the furniture, a ferrago of folly and deceptions. Madame Foucault confessed too much. While scorned confession for the sake of confession, she scorned the impulse which forces a weak creature to insist on its weakness, to revel in remorse, and to find an excuse for its conduct in the very fact that there is no excuse. She gathered that Madame Foucault had in fact gone away in the hope that Sophia trapped would pay, and that in the end she had not even the courage of her own trickery, and had run back driven by panic into audacity, to fall at Sophia's feet, which Sophia might not have yielded, and the furniture had been seized. From beginning to end the conduct of Madame Foucault had been fatuous and despicable and wicked. Sophia coldly condemned Madame Foucault for having allowed herself to be brought into the world with such a weak and more than character, and for having allowed herself to grow old and ugly. As a sight the woman was positively disgraceful. Save me!" she exclaimed again. I did what I could for you. Sophia hated her, but the logic of the appeal was irresistible. But what can I do? she asked reluctantly. Lend me the money. You can. If you don't, this will be the end of me. And a good thing, too, thought Sophia's hard sense. How much is it? Sophia glumly asked. It isn't a thousand francs, said Madame Foucault with eagerness. All my beautiful furniture will go for less than a thousand francs. Save me!" She was nauseating, Sophia. Please rise, said Sophia, her hands fidgeting undecidedly. I shall repay you surely, Madame Foucault asseverated. I swear! Does she take me for a fool, thought Sophia, with her oaths? No, said Sophia, I won't lend you the money. But I tell you what I will do. I will buy the furniture at that price, and I will promise to resell it to you as soon as you can pay me. Like that you can be tranquil. But I have very little money. I must have a guarantee. The furniture must be mine till you pay me. You are an angel of charity!" cried Madame Foucault, embracing Sophia's skirts. I will do whatever you wish. Ah! You English women are astonishing! Sophia was not an angel of charity. What she had promised to do involved sacrifice and anxiety without the prospect of reward. But it was not charity. It was part of the price Sophia paid for the exercise of her logical faculty. She paid it unwillingly. I did what I could for you. Sophia would have died sooner than remind any one of her benefit conferred. And Madame Foucault had committed precisely that enormity. The appeal was inexcusable to a fine mind, but it was effective. The men were behind the door, listening. Sophia paid out of her stock of notes, needless to say the total was more and not less than a thousand francs. Madame Foucault grew rapidly confidential with the man. Without consulting Sophia, she asked the bailiff to draw up a receipt transferring the ownership of all the furniture to Sophia, and the bailiff struck into obligingness by glimpses of Sophia's beauty, consented to do so. There was much conferring upon forms of words and flourishing of pens between thick, vile fingers and scattering of ink. Before the men left, Madame Foucault uncorked a bottle of wine for them and helped them to drink it. Throughout the evening she was insupportably deferential to Sophia, who was driven to bed. Madame Foucault contentedly went up to the sixth floor to occupy the servant's bedroom. She was glad to get so far away from the sulphur, of which a few faint fumes had penetrated into the corridor. The next morning, after a stifling night of bad dreams, Sophia was too ill to get up. She looked round at the furniture in the little room, and she imagined the furniture in the other rooms, and dismally thought, all this furniture is mine, she will never pay me, I am saddled with it. It was cheaply bought, but she probably could not sell it even for what she had paid. Still, the sense of ownership was reassuring. The charwoman brought her coffee and Cherac's newspaper, from which she learned that the news of the victory which had sent the city mad on the previous day was utterly false. Tears came into her eyes as she gazed absently at all the curtained windows of the courtyard. She had youth and loveliness. According to the rules, she ought to have been irresponsible, gay and indulgently watched over by the wisdom of admiring age. But she felt towards the French nation as a mother might feel towards adorable, wilful children suffering through their own charming foolishness. She saw France personified in Cherac. How easily, despite his special knowledge, he had yielded to the fever. Her heart bled for France and Cherac on that morning of reaction and of truth. She could not bear to recall the scene in the Place de la Concorde. Madame Foucault had not descended. Chapter 6 The Siege 1 Madame Foucault came into Sophia's room one afternoon with a peculiar guilty expression on her large face. And she held her peignoir close to her exuberant body in folds consciously majestic, as though endeavouring to prove to Sophia by her carriage that despite her shifting eyes she was the most righteous and sincere woman that ever lived. It was Saturday the third of September, a beautiful day. Sophia, suffering from an unimportant relapse, had remained in a state of inactivity and had scarcely gone out at all. She loathed the flat, but lacked the energy to leave it every day. There was no sufficiently definite object in leaving it. She could not go out and look for health, as she might have looked for flowers, so she remained in the flat, and stared at the courtyard and the continual mystery of lives lived behind curtains that occasionally moved. And the painted yellow walls of the house and the papered walls of her room pressed upon her and crushed her. For a few days Chirac had called daily, animated by the most adorable solicitude. Then he had ceased to call. She had tired of reading the journals, they lay unopened. The relations between Madame Foucault and herself, and her status in the flat, of which she now legally owned the furniture, these things were left unsettled. But the question of her board was arranged on the terms that she halved the cost of food and service with Madame Foucault. Her expenses were thus reduced to the lowest possible, about eighteen francs a week. An idea hung in the air, like a scientific discovery on the point of being made by several independent investigators simultaneously, that she and Madame Foucault should co-operate in order to let furnish rooms at a remunerative profit. Sophia felt the nearness of the idea, and she wanted to be shocked at the notion of any avowed association between herself and Madame Foucault, but she could not be. Here are a lady and a gentleman who want a bedroom, began Madame Foucault, a nice large bedroom furnished. Oh! said Sophia, who are they? They will pay a hundred and thirty francs a month in advance for the middle bedroom. You've shown it to them already, said Sophia, and her tone implied that somehow she was conscious of her right to overlook the affair of Madame Foucault. No, said the other. I said to myself at first I would ask you for a council. Then will they pay all that for a room they haven't seen? The fact is, said Madame Foucault, sheepishly, the lady has seen the room before. I know her a little. It is a former tenant. She lives here some weeks. In that room? Who knows? She was poor enough then. Where are they? In the corridor. She is very well, the lady, and naturally one must live. She like all the world, but she is veritably well. Quite respectable, what would never say. Then there would be the meals we could demand. One franc for the café au lait, or two and a half francs for the lunch, and three francs for the dinner. Without counting other things, that would mean over five hundred francs a month, at least. And what would they cost us, almost nothing? Why, what appears, he is a plutocrat. I could thus quickly repay you. Is it a married couple? Ah, you know, one cannot demand the marriage certificate. Madame Foucault indicated by a gesture that the roue-breda was not the Paradise of Saints. When she came before this lady, was it with the same man? So far asked, coldly, my faith no, exclaimed Madame Foucault, for idling it was her bad sort the other. Ah! Ah! No! Why do you ask my advice? So far abruptly questioned, in a hard inimical voice. Is it that it concerns me? Tears came at once into the eyes of Madame Foucault, and do not be unkind. She implored. I am not unkind, said Sofar, in the same tone. Shall you leave me, if I accept this offer? There was a pause. Yes, said Sofar, bluntly. She tried to be large-hearted, large-minded, and sympathetic, but there was no signs of these qualities in her speech. And if you take with you the furniture, which is yours? Sofar kept silence. How am I to live, I demand of you? Madame Foucault asked weakly. By being respectable, and dealing with respectable people, said Sofar, uncompromisingly, in tones of steel. I am unhappy, murmured the elder woman. However, you are more strong than I. She brusquely dabbed her eyes, gave a little sob, and ran out of the room. Sofar listened at the door, and heard her dismiss the would-be tenants of the best bedroom. She wondered that she should possess such moral ascendancy over the woman. She so young and ingenuous. But of course she had not meant to remove the furniture. She could hear Madame Foucault sobbing quietly in one of the other rooms, and her lips curled. Before evening a truly astonishing event happened. Perceiving that Madame Foucault showed no signs of bestowing herself, Sofar, with good nature in her heart, but not on her tongue, went to her, and said, Shall I occupy myself with the dinner? Madame Foucault sobbed more loudly. And this would be very amiable on your part. Madame Foucault managed at last to reply, not very articulately. Sofar put a hat on, and went to the grocers. The grocer, who kept a busy establishment at the corner of the rue Closill, was a middle-aged and wealthy man. He had sent his young wife and two children to Normandy, until victory over the Prussians should be more assured. And he asked Sofar whether it was true that there was a good bedroom to let in the flat where she lived. His servant was ill of smallpox. He was attacked by anxieties and fears on all sides. He would not enter his own flat on account of possible infection. He liked Sofar, and Madame Foucault had been a customer of his, with intervals for twenty years. Within an hour he had arranged to rent the middle bedroom at eighty francs a month, and to take his meals there. The terms were modest, but the respectability was prodigious. All the glory of this tenancy fell upon Sofar. Madame Foucault was deeply impressed. Characteristically she began at once to construct a theory that Sofar had only to walk out of the house in order to discover ideal tenants for the rooms. Also, she regarded the advent of the grocer as a reward from Providence for her self-denial in refusing the profits of sinfulness. Sofar felt personally responsible to the grocer for his comfort, and so she herself undertook the preparation of the room. Madame Foucault was amazed at the thoroughness of her house wiffery, and at the ingenuity of her ideas for the arrangement of furniture. She sat and watched with admiration sicker-fantic but real. That night, when Sofar was in bed, Madame Foucault came into the room and dropped down by the side of the bed and begged Sofar to be her moral support for ever. She confessed herself generally. She explained how she had always hated the negation of respectability, how respectability was the one thing that she had all her life passionately desired. She said that if Sofar would be her partner in the letting of furnished rooms to respectable persons, she would obey her in everything. She gave Sofar a list of all the traits in Sofar's character which she admired. She asked Sofar to influence her, to stand by her. She insisted that she would sleep on the sixth floor in the servant's tiny room, and she had a vision of three bedrooms led to successful tradesmen. She was in an ecstasy of repentance and good intentions. Sofar consented to the business proposition, for she had nothing else whatever in prospect, and she shared Madame Foucault's rosy view about the remunerativeness of the bedrooms. With three tenants who took meals, the two women would be able to feed themselves for nothing, and still make a profit on the food, and the rents would be clear again. And she felt very sorry for the aging, feckless Madame Foucault, whose sincerity was obvious. The association between them would be strange. It would have been impossible to explain it to St. Luke's Square. And yet, if there was anything at all in the virtue of Christian charity, what could probably be urged against the association? Ah! murmured Madame Foucault, kissing Sofar's hands. It is to-day, then, that I recommence my life. You will see. You will see. You have saved me. It was a strange sight. The time-worn, disfigured courtesan, half prostrate before the beautiful young creature, proud and unassailable in the instinctive force of her own character. It was almost a didactic tableau, fraught with lessons for the vicious. Sofar was happier than she had been for years. She had a purpose in existence. She had a fluid soul to mould to her will according to her wisdom. And there was a large compassion to her credit. Public opinion could not intimidate her. For in her case there was no public opinion. She knew nobody. Nobody had the right to question her doings. The next day, Sunday, they both worked hard at the bedrooms from early morning. The grocer was installed in his chamber, and the two other rooms were cleansed as they had never been cleansed. At four o'clock, the weather, being more magnificent than ever, Madame Foucault said, If we took a promenade on the boulevard. Sofar reflected. They were partners. Very well, she agreed. The boulevard was crammed with gay, laughing crowds. All the cafes were full. None who did not know could have guessed that the news of Sedan was scarcely a day old in the capital. Delirious joy reigned in the glittering sunshine. As the two women strolled along, content with their industry and their resolves, they came to a national guard who, perched on a lado, was chipping away the N from the official sign of a court tradesman. He was exchanging jokes with a circle of open mouths. It was in this way that Madame Foucault and Sophia learned of the establishment of a republic. Vive la République! cried Madame Foucault incontinently, and then apologized to Sophia for the lapse. They listened along while to a man who was telling strange histories of the Empress. Suddenly Sophia noticed that Madame Foucault was no longer at her elbow. She glanced about and saw her in earnest conversation with the young man whose face seemed familiar. She remembered it was the young man with whom Madame Foucault had quarrelled on the night when Sophia found her throne in the corridor, the last remaining worshipper of the courtesan. The woman's face was quite changed by her agitation. Sophia drew away, offended. She watched the pair from a distance for a few moments. And then, furious in disillusion, she escaped from the fever of the boulevards and walked quietly home. Madame Foucault did not return. Suddenly Madame Foucault was doomed to be the toy of chance. Two days later Sophia received a scrolled letter from her, with the information that her lover had required that she should accompany him to Brussels, as Paris would soon be getting dangerous. He adores me always. He is the most delicious boy. As I have always said, this is the grand passion of my life. I am happy. He would not permit me to come to you. He has spent two thousand francs on clothes for me, and naturally I had nothing, and so on. No word of apology. Sophia, in reading the letter, allowed for a certain exaggeration and twisting of the truth. Young fool! Fool! She burst out angrily. She did not mean herself. She meant the fatuous adorer of that dilapidated, horrible woman. She never saw her again. Doubtless Madame Foucault fulfilled her own prediction to her ultimate destiny, but in Brussels. Two. Sophia still possessed about a hundred pounds, and had she chosen to leave Paris and France, there was nothing to prevent her from doing so. Perhaps if she had chance to visit the Gar Salazar, or the Garde du Nord, the sight of tens of thousands of people flying sea-woods might have stirred in her the desire to flee also from the vague coming danger. But she did not visit those Termini. She was too busy looking after Monsieur Nips, her grocer. Moreover, she would not quit her furniture, which seemed to her to be a sort of rock. With a flatful of furniture, she considered that she ought to be able to devise a livelihood. The enterprise of becoming independent was already indeed begun. She ardently wished to be independent, to utilize in her own behalf the gifts of organization, foresight, common sense, and tenacity, which she knew she possessed and which had lain idle, and she hated the idea of flight. Chirac returned as unexpectedly as he had gone. An expedition for his paper had occupied him. With his lips he urged her to go, but his eyes spoke differently. He had, one afternoon, a mood of candid despair, such as he would have dared to show only to one in whom he felt a great confidence. They will come to Paris, he said. Nothing could stop them, and then he gave a cynical laugh. But when he urged her to go, she said, and what about my furniture? And I promised Monsieur Nips to look after him. Then Chirac informed her that he was without a lodging, and that he would like to rent one of her rooms. She agreed. Shortly afterwards he introduced a middle-aged acquaintance named Carlier, the secretary general of his newspaper, who wished to rent a bedroom. Thus, by good fortune, Sophia let all her rooms immediately, and was sure of over two hundred francs a month, apart from the profit on meals supplied. On this latter occasion Chirac and his companion, too, was quite optimistic, reiterating an absolute certitude that Paris could never be invested. Briefly, Sophia did not believe him. She believed the candidly despairing Chirac. She had no information, no wide theory, to justify her pessimism, nothing but the inward conviction, that the race capable of behaving as she had seen it behave in the Place de l'Encourde was bound to be defeated. She loved the French race, but all the practical teutonic sagacity in her wanted to take care of it in its difficulties, and was rather angry with it for being so unfitted to take care of itself. She let the men talk, and with careless disdain of their discussions and their certainties, she went about her business of preparation. At this period, overworked and harassed by novel responsibilities and risks, she was happier for days together than she had ever been, simply because she had a purpose in life, and was depending upon herself. Her ignorance of the military and political situation was complete. The situation did not interest her. What interested her was that she had three men to feed, wholly or partially, and that the price of eatables was rising. She bought eatables. She bought fifty pecks of potatoes at a franc a peck, and another fifty pecks at a franc and a quarter, double normal price. Ten hams at two and a half francs a pound, a large quantity of tin vegetables and fruits, a sack of flour, rice, biscuits, coffee, and neon sausage, dried prunes, dried figs, and much wood and charcoal. But the chief of her purchases was cheese, which her mother used to say that bread and cheese and water made a complete diet. Many of these articles she obtained from her grocer, all of them, except the flour and the biscuits, she stored in the cellar belonging to the flat. After several days' delay, for the panacea and workmen were too elated by the advent of a republic to stoop to labour, she caused a new lock to be fixed on the cellar door. Her activities were the sensation of the house. Everybody admired, but no one imitated. One morning, on going to do her marketing, she found a notice across the shuttered windows of her creamery in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lauret, closed for want of milk. The siege had begun. It was in the closing of the creamery that the siege was figured for her, in this, and in eggs at five sous apiece. She went elsewhere for her milk, and paid a franc a litre for it. That evening she told her lodgers that the price of meals would be doubled, and that if any gentleman thought he could get equally good meals elsewhere, he was at liberty to get them elsewhere. Her position was strengthened by the appearance of another candidate for a room, a friend of Neeps. She had once offered him her own room, at a hundred and fifty francs a month. You see, she said, there is a piano in it. But I don't play the piano, the man protested, shocked at the price. That is not my fault, she said. She agreed to pay the price demanded for the room, because of the opportunity of getting good meals much cheaper than in the restaurants. Like Monsieur Neeps, he was a siege widower, his wife having been put under shelter in Brittany. Sophia took to the servant's bedroom on the sixth floor. It measured nine feet by seven, and had no window save a skylight. But Sophia was in a fair way to realise a profit of at least four pounds a week after paying for everything. On the night when she installed herself in that chamber, amid a world of domestics and poor people, she worked very late, and the rays of her candle shot up intermittently through the skylight into a black heaven. At intervals she flitted up and down the stairs with a candle. Unknown to her, a crowd gradually formed opposite the house in the street, and about one o'clock in the morning, a file of soldiers woke the concierge and invaded the courtyard, and every window was suddenly populated with heads. Sophia was called upon to prove that she was not a spy signaling to the Prussians. Three-quarters of an hour passed before her innocence was established, and the staircases cleared of uniforms and disheveled curiosity. The childish, impossible unreason of the suspicion against her completed in Sophia's mind the ruin of the reputation of the French people as a sensible race. She was extremely caustic the next day to her borders. But for this episode the frequency of military uniforms in the streets, the price of food, and the fact that at least one house in four was flying either the ambulance-flag or the flag of a foreign embassy, in the absurd hope of immunity from the impending bombardment, the siege did not exist for Sophia. The men often talked about their guard duty and disappeared for a day or two to the ramparts, but she was too busy to listen to them. She thought of nothing but her enterprise, which absorbed all her powers. She arose at six a.m. in the dark, and by seven-thirty Mr. Nieps and his friend had been served with breakfast, and much general work was already done. At eight o'clock she went out to market. When asked why she continued to buy at a high price, articles of which she had a store, she would reply, I am keeping all that till things are much dearer. This was regarded as astounding astuteness. On the fifteenth of October she paid the quarter's rent of the flat, four hundred francs, and was accepted as tenant. Her ears were soon quite accustomed to the sound of cannon, and she felt that she had always been a citizeness of Paris, and that Paris had always been besieged. She did not speculate about the end of the siege. She lived from day to day. Occasionally she had a quorum of fear. When the firing grew momentarily louder, or when she heard that battles had been fought in such and such a suburb, but then she said it was absurd to be afraid when you were with a couple of million people all in the same plight as yourself. She grew reconciled to everything. She even began to like her tiny bedroom, partly because it was so easy to keep warm. The question of artificial heat was growing acute in Paris, and partly because it ensured her privacy. Everyone in the flat, whatever was done or said in one room, could be more or less heard in all the others, owing to the prevalence of doors. Her existence in the first half of November had become regular, with the monotony almost absolute. Only the number of meals served to her borders varied slightly from day to day. All these repasts, saved now and then one in the evening, were carried into the bedrooms by the charwoman, so fire did not allow herself to be seen much, except in the afternoons. Though Sophia continued to increase her prices, and was now selling her stores at an immense profit, she never approached the prices current outside. She was very indignant against the exploitation of Paris by its shopkeepers, who had vast supplies of provinda, and were hoarding for the rise. But the force of their example was too great for her to ignore it entirely. She contented herself with about half their gains. Little Monsieur Niep's did she charge more than to the others, because he was a shopkeeper. The four men appreciated their paradise, in them developed that agreeable feeling of security, which solitary males find only under the roof of a landlady, who is at once prompt, honest, and a votary of cleanliness. Sophia hung a slate near the front door, and on this slate they wrote their requests for meals, for being called, for laundry work, etc. Sophia never made a mistake, and never forgot. The perfection of the domestic machine amazed these men, who had been accustomed to something quite different, and who every day heard harrowing stories of discomfort and swindling from their acquaintances. They even admired Sophia for making them pay, if not too high, still high. They thought it wonderful that she should tell them the price of all things in advance, and even show them how to avoid expense, particularly in the matter of warmth. She arranged rugs for each of them, so that they could sit comfortably in their rooms, with nothing but a small charcoal heater for the hands. Quite naturally they came to regard her as the paragon and miracle of women. They endowed her with every fine quality. According to them, there had never been such a woman in the history of mankind, who could not have been. She became legendary among their friends, a young and elegant creature, surpassingly beautiful, proud, greenly, unapproachable, scarcely visible, a marvellous manager, a fine cook and artificer of strange English dishes, utterly reliable, utterly exact, and with habits of order. They adored the slight English accent, which gave a touch of the exotic to her very correct and freely idiomatic French. In short, Sophia was perfect for them, an impossible woman. Whatever she did was right. When she went up to her room every night with limbs exhausted, but with head clear enough to balance her accounts and go through her money, she did this in bed with thick gloves on. If often she did not sleep well, it was not because of the distant guns, but because of her preoccupation with the subject of finance. She was making money, and she wanted to make more. She was always inventing ways of economy. She was so anxious to achieve independence that money was always in her mind. She began to love gold, to love hoarding it, and to hate paying it away. One morning, her charwoman, who by good fortune was nearly as precise as Sophia herself, failed to appear. When the moment came for serving Michonneepse's breakfast, Sophia hesitated, and then decided to look after the old man personally. She knocked at his door, and went boldly in with the tray and candle. He started at seeing her. She was wearing a blue apron as the charwoman did, but there could be no mistaking her for the charwoman. Neepse looked older in bed than when dressed. He had a rather ridiculous, undignified appearance, common among old men before their morning toilet is achieved, and a night-cap did not improve it. His rotund paunch lifted the bed-clothes, upon which, for the sake of extra warmth, he had spread unmogistic garments. Her smile to herself, but the contempt implied by that secret smile, was softened by the thought, poor old man. She told him briefly that she had supposed the charwoman to be ill. He coughed and moved nervously. His benevolent and simple face beamed on her paternally as she fixed the tray by the bed. "'I really must open the window for one little second,' she said, and did so. The chill air of the street came through the closed shutters, and the old man made a noise as of shivering. She pushed back the shutters and closed the window, and then did the same with the other two windows. It was almost day in the room. "'You will no longer need the candle,' she said, and came back to the bedside to extinguish it. The benign and fatherly old man put his arm round her waist. Fresh from the tonic of pure air, and with the notion of his ridiculous still in her mind, she was staggered for an instant by this gesture. She had never given a thought to the temperament of the old grocer, the husband of a young wife. She could not always imaginatively keep in mind the effect of her own radiance, especially under such circumstances. But after an instant her precocious cynicism which had slept sprang up. "'Naturally, I might have expected it,' she thought, with blasting scorn. "'Take away your hand,' she said bitterly to the amiable old fool. She did not stir. He obeyed sheepishly. "'Do you wish to remain with me?' she asked, and as he did not immediately answer. She said in the most commanding tone, "'Answer then?' "'Yes,' he said feebly. "'Well, behave properly.' She went towards the door. "'I wished only,' he stammered. "'I do not wish to know what you wished,' she said. Afterwards she wondered how much of the incident had been overheard. The other breakfasts she left outside the respective doors, and in future, neeps is also. The charwoman never came again. She had caught smallpox, and she died of it, thus losing a good situation. Strangely to say, Sophia did not replace her. The temptation to save her wages and food was too strong. She could not, however, stand waiting for hours at the door of the official baker and the official butcher, one of a long line of frozen women, for the daily rations of bread and tri-weekly rations of meat. She employed the concierge's boy at two Susan hours to do this. Sometimes he would come in with his hands so blue and cold that he could scarcely hold the precious cards which gave the right to the rations, and which cost Shirak an hour or two of waiting at the mayoral offices each week. Sophia might have fed her flock without resorting to the official rations, but she would not sacrifice the economy which they represented. She demanded thick clothes for the concierge's boy, and received boots from Shirak, gloves from Kaliye, and a great overcoat from neeps. The weather increased in severity, and provisions in price. One day she sold to the wife of a chemist who lived on the first floor, for a hundred and ten francs, a ham for which she had paid less than thirty francs. She was conscious of a thrill of joy in receiving a beautiful banknote and a gold coin in exchange for a mere ham. By this time her total cash resources had grown to nearly five thousand francs. It was astounding, and the reserves in the cellar were still considerable, and the sack of flour that encumbered the kitchen was still more than half full. The death of the faithful charwoman when she heard of it produced but little effect on Sophia, who was so overworked and so completely absorbed in her own affairs that she had no nervous energy to spare for sentimental regrets. The charwoman, by whose side she had regularly passed many hours in the kitchen, so that she knew every crease in her face and fold of her dress, vanished out of Sophia's memory. Sophia cleaned and arranged two of the bedrooms in the morning and two in the afternoon. She had stayed in hotels where fifteen bedrooms were in charge of a single chambermaid, and she thought it would be hard if she could not manage four in the intervals of cooking and other work. This, she said to herself, by way of excuse for not engaging another charwoman. One afternoon she was rubbing the brass knobs of the numerous doors in Michaud Niepsey's room when the grocer unexpectedly came in. She glanced at him sharply. There was a self-conscious look in his eye. He had entered the flat noiselessly. She remembered having told him, in response to a question, that she now did his room in the afternoon. Why should he have left his shop? He hung up his hat behind the door with the meticulous care of an old man. Then he took off his overcoat and rubbed his hands. "'You do well to wear clubs, madame,' he said, "'it is dog's weather.' "'I do not wear them for the cold,' she replied. "'I wear them so as not to spoil my hands.' "'Ah, truly, very well, very well, may I demand some wood? Where shall I find it? I do not wish to derange you.' She refused his help and brought wood from the kitchen, counting the logs audibly before him. "'Shall I light the fire now?' she asked. "'I will light it,' he said. "'Give me a match, please.' As she was arranging the wood and paper, he said, "'Madame, will you listen to me?' "'What is it?' "'Do not be angry,' he said. "'Have I not proved that I am capable of respecting you? I continue in that respect. It is with all that respect that I say to you that I love you, madame. No, remain calm. I implore you.' The fact was that so far showed no sign of not remaining calm. It is true that I have a wife, but you wish she is far away. I love you madly.' He proceeded with a dignified respect. "'I know I am old, but I am rich. I understand your character. You are a lady. You are decided, direct, sincere, and a woman of business. I have the greatest respect for you. One can talk to you as one could not to another woman. You prefer directness and sincerity. Madame, I will give you two thousand francs a month and all you require from my shop if you will be amiable to me. I am very solitary. I need the society of a charming creature who would be some pathetic. Two thousand francs a month, it is money.' He wiped his shiny head with his hand. So far I was bending over the fire. She turned her head towards him. "'Is that all?' she said quietly. "'You could count on my discretion,' he said in a low voice. I appreciate your scruples. I would come very late to your room on the sixth. One could arrange—you see, I am direct like you.' She had an impulse to order him tempestuously out of the flat. But he was not a genuine impulse. He was an old fool. Why not treat him as such? To take him seriously would be absurd. Moreover, he was a very remunerative border. "'Do not be stupid,' she said, with cruel tranquillity. "'Do not be an old fool!' In the benign but fatuous middle-aged letter saw the enchanting vision of Sophia, with her natty apron and her amusing gloves, sweep and fade from the room. He left the house, and the expensive fire warmed an empty room. Sophia was angry with him. He had evidently planned the proposal. If capable of respect, he was evidently also capable of chicane. But she supposed these Frenchmen were all alike, disgusting, and decided that it was useless to worry over a universal fact. They simply had no shame, and she had been very prudent to establish herself far away on the sixth floor. She hoped that none of the other borders had overheard Niepce's outrageous insolence. She was not sure if Chirac was not writing in his room. That night there was no sound of cannon in the distance, and Sophia for some time was unable to sleep. She woke up with a start after a doze, and struck a match to look at her watch. It had stopped. She had forgotten to wind it up. Which omission indicated that the grocer had perturbed her more than she thought? She could not be sure how long she had snet. The hour might be two o'clock, or it might be six o'clock, impossible for her to rest. She got up and dressed, in case it should be as late as she feared, and crept down the interminable creaking stairs with the candle. As she descended, the conviction that it was the middle of the night grew upon her, and she stepped more softly. There was no sound save that caused by her footfalls. With her latchkey she cautiously opened the front door of the flat, and entered. She could then hear the noisy ticking of the small, cheap clock in the kitchen. At the same moment another door creaked, and Chirac, with hair all tarsled, but fully dressed, appeared in the corridor. So you have decided to sell yourself to him, Chirac whispered. She drew away instinctively, and she could feel herself blushing. She was at a loss. She saw that Chirac was in a furious rage, tremendously moved. He crept towards her, half crouching. She had never seen anything so theatrical as his movement and the twitching of his face. She felt that she too ought to be theatrical, that she ought nobly to scorn his infamous suggestion, his unwarrantable attack. Even supposing that she had decided to sell herself to the old Pasha did that concern him, the dignified silence and annihilating glance were all that he deserved, but she was not capable of this heroic behaviour. What time is it? She added weakly. Three o'clock. Three o'clock! Chirac sneered. I forgot to wind up my watch, she said, and so I came down to see. In effect, he spoke sarcastically, as if saying, I've waited for you, and here you are. She said to herself that she owed him nothing, but all the time she felt that he and she were the only young people in that flat, and that she did owe to him the proof that she was guiltless of the supreme dishonour of youth. She collected her forces and looked at him. You should be ashamed, she said, you will rake the others. Mr. Nieps, will he need to be wakened? Mr. Nieps is not here, she said. Nieps's door was unlatched. She pushed it open and went into the room, which was empty, and bore no sign of having been used. Come and satisfy yourself, she insisted. Chirac did so. His face fell. She took her watch from her pocket. And now wind my watch and set it, please. She saw that he was in anguish. He could not take the watch. Tears came into his eyes. Then he hid his face and dashed away. She heard a sob-impeded murmur that sounded like, forgive me! And the banging of a door. And in the stillness she heard the regular snoring of Monsieur Carlier. She too cried. Her vision was blurred by a mist, and she stumbled into the kitchen and seized the clock and carried it with her upstairs, and shivered in the intense cold of the night. She wept gently for a very long time. What a shame! What a shame! She said to herself. Yet she did not quite blame Chirac. The frost drove her into bed, but not to sleep. She continued to cry. At dawn her eyes were inflamed with weeping. She was back in the kitchen then. Chirac's door was wide open. He had left the flat. On the slate was written, I shall not take meals today. Their relations were permanently changed. For several days they did not meet at all, and when at the end of the week Chirac was obliged at last to face Sophia in order to pay his bill, he had a most grievous expression. It was obvious that he considered himself a criminal, without any defence to offer for his crime. He seemed to make no attempt to hide his state of mind. But he said nothing. As for Sophia, she preserved a mien of amiable cheerfulness. She exerted herself to convince him by her attitude that she bore no resentment, that she had determined to forget the incident, that, in short, she was the forgiving angel of his dreams. She did not, however, succeed entirely in being quite natural. Confronted by his misery, it would have been impossible for her to be quite natural, and at the same time quite cheerful. A little later the social atmosphere of the flat began to grow querellous, disputatious and perverse. The nerves of everybody were seriously strained. This applied to the whole city. Days of heavy rains followed the sharp frosts, and the town was, as it were, sodden with woe. The gates were closed, and though nine-tenths of the inhabitants never went outside the gates, the definite and absolute closing of them demoralized all hearts. Gas was no longer supplied. Rats, cats, and thoroughbred horses were being eaten, and pronounced not bad. The siege had ceased to be a novelty. Friends did not invite one another to a siege dinner as to a picnic. Sophia, fatigued by regular overwork, became weary of the situation. She was angry with the Prussians for deleteriness, and with the French for inaction, and she poured out her English spleen on her borders. The borders told each other in secret that the patron was growing formidable. Chiefly she bore a grudge against the shopkeepers, and when, upon a rumour of peace, the shop windows one day suddenly blossomed with prodigious quantities of all edibles at highest prices, thus proving that the famine was artificially created, Sophia was furious. Monsieur Neeps, in particular, though he sold goods to her at a special discount, suffered indignities. A few days later that benign and fatherly man put himself lamentably in the wrong by attempting to introduce into his room a charming young creature who knew how to be sympathetic. Sophia, by an accident unfortunate for the grocer, caught them in the corridor. She was beside herself, but the only outward symptoms were a white face and a cold, steely voice that grated like a rasp on the susceptibilities of the adherents of Aphrodite. At this period Sophia had certainly developed into a termigant, without knowing it. She would often insist now on talking about the siege, and hearing everything that the men could tell her. Her comments made without the least regard for the justifiable delicacy of their feelings as Frenchmen sometimes led to heated exchanges. When all Montmartre and the Catiebreda was impassioned by the appearance from outside of the 32nd Battalion, she took the side of the populace, and would not credit the solemn statement of the journalists, proved by documents that those maltreated soldiers were not cowards in flight. She supported the women who had spat in the faces of the 32nd. She actually said that if she met them she would have spat too. Rarely she was convinced of the innocence of the 32nd, but something prevented her from admitting it. The dispute ended with high words between herself and Shearac. The next day Shearac came home at an unusual hour, knocked at the kitchen door, and said, "'I must give notice to leave you.' "'Why?' she demanded curtly. She was kneading flour and water for a potato cake. Her potato cakes were the joy of the household. "'By paper has stopped,' said Shearac. "'Oh!' she added thoughtfully, but not looking at him. "'That is no reason why you should leave.' "'Yes,' he said. "'This place is beyond my means. I do not need to tell you that in ceasing to appear the paper has omitted to pay its debts. The house owes me a month's salary, so I must leave.' "'No,' said Sofar, you can pay me when you have money.' He shook his head. "'I have no intention of accepting your kindness.' "'Haven't you got any money?' she abruptly asked. "'None,' said he. "'It is the disaster, quite simply. "'Then you will be forced to get into debt somewhere. "'Yes, but not here, not to you.' "'Truly, Shearac,' she exclaimed with a cajoling voice, "'you are not reasonable. "'Nevertheless, it is like that,' he said with a decision. "'Hey, well,' she turned on him menacingly, "'it will not be like that. "'You understand me? "'You will stay, and you will pay me when you can. "'Otherwise, we shall quarrel. "'Do you imagine I shall tolerate your childishness? "'Just because you were angry last night.' "'It's not that,' he protested. "'You ought to know that it is not that.' "'She did. "'It is solely that I cannot permit myself to enough.' She cried, preromptorily, stopping him, and then in a quieter tone. "'And what about Carlier? "'Is he also in the ditch?' "'Ah, he has money,' said Shearac, with sad envy. "'You also, one day,' said she, "'you stop, in any case until after Christmas, or we quarrel. "'Is it agreed?' her accent had softened. "'You are too good,' he yielded. "'I cannot quarrel with you, but it pains me to accept.' "'Oh!' she snapped, dropping into the vulgar idiom. "'You make me sweat with your stupid pride. "'Is it that you call friendship? "'Go away now. "'How do you wish that I should succeed with this cake "'while you station yourself there to distract me?' "'Four.'" But in three days Shearac, with amazing luck, fell into another situation, and on the journal de debate, it was the Prussians who had found him a place, and celebrated Peonville. Second great chronicle of his time had caught a cold while doing his duty as a national guard, and had died of pneumonia. The weather was severe again. Soldiers were being frozen to death at Obovillier. Peonville's position was taken by another man, whose post was offered to Shearac. He told Sophia of his good fortune, with unconcealed vanity. "'You with your smile?' she said impatiently. "'Moncan, refuse you nothing.' She behaved just as though Shearac had disgusted her. She humbled him. But with his fellow lodgers, his heirs of importance, as a member of the editorial staff of the debate, were comical in their ingenuousness. On the very same day, Carlier gave notice to leave Sophia. He was comparatively rich, but the habits, which had enabled him to arrive at independence in the uncertain vocation of a journalist, did not allow him, while he was earning nothing, to spend a zoo more than was absolutely necessary. He had decided to join forces with a widowed sister, who was accustomed to parsimony, as parsimony is understood in France, and who was living on hoarded potatoes and wine. "'There,' said Sophia, "'you have lost me a tenant.' And she insisted, half jocularly and half seriously, that Carlier was leaving because he could not stand Shearac's infantile conceit. The flat was full of acrimonious words. On Christmas morning, Shearac lay in bed rather late. The newspapers did not appear that day. Paris seemed to be in a sort of stupor. About eleven o'clock he came to the kitchen door. "'I must speak with you,' he said. His tone impressed Sophia. "'Enter,' said she. She went in, and closed the door like a conspirator. "'We must have a little fate,' he said. You and I. "'Fate?' she repeated. "'What an idea! How can I leave?' If the idea had not appealed to the secreces of her heart, stirring desires and souvenirs upon which the dust of time lay thick, she would not have begun by suggesting difficulties. She would have begun by a flat refusal. "'That is nothing,' he said vigorously. "'It is Christmas, and I must have a chat with you. We cannot chat here. I have not had a true little chat with you since you were ill. You will come with me to a restaurant for lunch.' She laughed. "'And the lunch of my lodgers? You will serve it a little earlier. We will go out immediately afterwards, and we will return in time for you to prepare dinner. It is quite simple.' She shook her head. "'You're mad,' she said crossly. "'It is necessary that I should offer you something.' He went on, scowling. "'You comprehend me. I wish you to lunch with me to-day. I demand it, and you are not going to refuse me.' He was very close to her in the little kitchen, and he spoke fiercely, bullyingly, exactly as she had spoken to him when insisting that he should live on credit with her for a while. "'You're very rude,' she parried. "'If I am rude, it is all the same to me.' He held out uncompromisingly. You will lunch with me. I hold to it.' "'How can I be dressed?' she protested. No, it does not concern me, but arrange that as you can. It was the most curious invitation to a Christmas dinner imaginable. At a quarter-past twelve they issued forth side by side heavily clad into the mournful streets. The sky, slate-coloured, presaged snow. The air was bitterly cold and yet damp. There were no fiakas in the little three-cornered place which forms the mouth of the Rue Closel. In the Rue Notre-Dame de Loret, a single empty omnibus was toiling up the steep, glassy slope, the horses slipping and recovering themselves in response to the whip-cracking, which hounded in the streets as in an empty vault. Higher up, in the Rue Fontaine, one of the few shops that were open, displayed this announcement. A large selection of cheeses for New Year's gifts. They laughed. �Last year, at this moment,� said Chirac, �I was thinking of only one thing, the masked ball at the opera. I could not sleep after it. This year even the churches are not open. And you,� she put her lips together, �do not ask me,� she said. They proceeded in silence. �We are treest, we others,� he said, �but the Prussians in their trenches, they cannot be so gay either. Their families and their Christmas trees must be lacking to them. Let us laugh!� The Place Blanche and the Boulevard de Clichy were no more lively than the lesser streets and squares. There was no life anywhere, scarcely a sound, not even the sound of a cannon. Nobody knew anything. Christmas had put the city into a lugubrious trance of hopelessness. Chirac took Sophia's arm across the Place Blanche, and a few yards up the Roulet-pique, he stopped at a small restaurant, famous among the initiated and known as the Little Louie. They entered, descending by two steps into a confined and somberly picturesque interior. Sophia saw that they were expected. Chirac must have paid a previous visit to the restaurant that morning. Several disordered tables showed that people had already lunched and left. But in the corner was a table for two, freshly laid in the best manner of such restaurants, that is to say, with a red and white checked cloth, and two other red and white cloths, almost as large as the tablecloth, folded as serviettes, and arranged flat on two thick plates between solid steel cutlery, a salt cellar, out of which one ground rock salt by turning a handle, a pepper-caster, two knife-rests, and two common tumblers. The phenomena which differentiated this table from the ordinary table were a champagne bottle and a couple of champagne glasses. Champagne was one of the few items which had not increased in price during the siege. The landlord and his wife were eating in another corner, a fat slattened leper, whom no privations of a siege could who emaciated. The landlord rose. He was dressed as a chef, all in white, with the sacred cap, but a soiled white. Everything in the place was untidy, unkempt, and more or less unclean, except just the table upon which champagne was waiting. And yet the restaurant was agreeable, reassuring. The landlord greeted his customers as honest friends. His greasy face was honest, and so was the pale, weary, humorous face of his wife. Chirac saluted her. "'You see,' said she, a cross from the other corner, indicating a bone on her plate. This is Diane." "'Ah, the poor animal,' exclaimed Chirac sympathetically. "'What would you,' said the landlady. It cost too dear to feed her, and she was so mignon. One could not watch her growth in.' "'I was saying to my wife,' the landlord put in, how she would have enjoyed that bone, Diane!' He roared with laughter. So fire on the landlady exchanged a curious, sad smile at this pleasantry, which had been rediscovered by the landlord for perhaps the thousandth time during the siege, but which he evidently regarded as quite new and original. "'Eh, well,' he continued, confidentially to Chirac, "'I have found for you something very good. Half for duck, and in a still lower tone, and it will not cost you too dear.' No attempt to realise more than a modest profit was ever made in that restaurant. He possessed a regular clientele who knew the value of the little money they had, and who knew also how to appreciate sincere and accomplished cookery. The landlord was the chef, and he was always referred to as the chef, even by his wife. "'How did you get that?' Chirac asked. "'Ah,' said the landlord mysteriously, "'I have one of my friends, who comes from Villeneuve Saint Georges. He, you know, in vain, a wave of a fat hand suggesting that Chirac should not inquire too closely. "'In effect,' Chirac commented, "'but it is very chic, that.' "'I believe you that it is chic,' said the landlady, sturdily. "'It is charming,' Sophia murmured politely. "'And then quite a little salad,' said the landlord. "'But that, that is still more striking,' said Chirac. The landlord winked. The fact was that the commerce which resulted in fresh green vegetables in the heart of her beleaguered town was notorious. "'And then also a quite little cheese,' said Sophia, slightly imitating the tone of the landlord as she drew from the inwardness of her cloak, a small round parcel. It contained a brie cheese, in fairly good condition. It was worth at least fifty francs, and it had cost Sophia less than two francs. The landlady joined the landlord in inspecting this wondrous jewel. Sophia seized a knife and cut a slice for the landlady's table. "'Madam is too good,' said the landlady, confused by this noble generosity, and bearing the gift off to her table, as a fox-terrier will hurriedly seek solitude with a sumptuous morsel. The landlord beamed. Chirac was enchanted. In the intimate and unaffected cosiness of that interior, the vast, stupefied melancholy of the city seemed to be forgotten, to have lost its sway.' Then the landlord brought a hot brick for the feet of madame. It was more of an acknowledgment of the slice of cheese than a necessity, for the restaurant was very warm, the tiny kitchen opened directly into it, and the door between the two was open. There was no ventilation, whatever. "'It is a friend of mine,' said the landlord proudly, in the way of gossip, as he served an undescribed soup, a butcher in the Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, who has bought the three elephants of the Jardin des Plantes for twenty-seven thousand ranks. Eyebrows were lifted. He uncorked the champagne. As she drank the first mouthful, she had long lost her youthful aversion for wine. Sophia had a glimpse of herself in a tilted mirror, hung rather high on the opposite wall. It was several months since she had attired herself with ceremoniousness. The sudden unexpected vision of elegance and pallid beauty pleased her, and the instant effect of the champagne was to renew in her mind a forgotten conception of the goodness of life and of the joys which she had so long missed. Five. At half-part two they were alone in the little salon of the restaurant, and vaguely in their dreamy and feverish minds that were too preoccupied to control with precision their warm, relaxed bodies, there floated the illusion that the restaurant belonged to them, and that in it they were at home. It was no longer a restaurant but a retreat and shelter from hard life. The chef and his wife were dozing in an inner room. The champagne was drunk, the adorable cheese was eaten, and they were sipping muck to bourgoine. They sat at right angles to one another, close to one another, with brains aswing, full of good nature and quick sympathy, their flesh content and yet expectant. In a pause of the conversation, which entirely banal and fragmentary had seemed to reach the acme of agreeableness, Chirac put his hand on the hand of Sophia as it rested limp on the littered table. Accidentally she caught his eye. She had not meant to do so. They both became self-conscious. His thin bearded face had more than ever that wistfulness which always softened towards him the uncompromisingness of her character. He had the look of a child. For her Gerald had sometimes shown the same look. But indeed she was now one of those women with whom all men, and especially all men in a tender mood, are invested with a certain incurable quality of childishness. She had not withdrawn her hand at once, and so she could not withdraw it at all. He gazed at her with timid audacity. Her eyes were liquid. What are you thinking about? She asked. I was asking myself what I should have done if you had refused to come. And what should you have done? Assuredly something terribly inconvenient, he replied, with the large importance of a man who was in the domain of pure supposition. He lent towards her. My very dear friend, he said, a different voice, getting bolder. It was infinitely sweet to her, voluptuously sweet, this basking in the heat of temptation. It certainly did seem to her then the one real pleasure in the world. Her body might have been saying to his, See how ready I am. Her body might have been saying to his, Look into my mind. For you I have no modesty. Look and see all that is there. The veil of convention seemed to have been rend. Their attitude to each other was almost that of lover and mistress, between whom a single glance may be charged with the secrets of the past and promises for the future. Morally she was his mistress in that moment. He released her hand and put his arm round her waist. I love thee!" he whispered, with great emotion. Her face changed and hardened. You must not do that! She said, coldly, unkindly, harshly. She scowled. She would not abate one crease in her forehead to the appeal of his surprised glance. Yet she did not want to repulse him. The instinct which repulsed him was not within her control. Just as a shy man will obstinately refuse an invitation which he is hungering to accept. So, though not from China, she was compelled to repulse Shirak. Perhaps if her desires had not been laid to sleep by excessive physical industry and nervous strain, the sequel might have been different. Shirak, like most men who have once found a woman weak, imagined that he understood women profoundly. He thought of women as the occidental thinks of the Chinese as a race apart, mysterious, but capable of being infallibly comprehended by the application of a few leading principles of psychology. Moreover, he was in earnest. He was hard-driven and he was honest. He continued, respectfully obedient, in withdrawing his arm. Very dear friend, he urged, with undaunted confidence, you must know that I love you. She shook her head impatiently, all the time wondering what it was that prevented her from slipping into his arms. She knew that she was treating him badly by this brusque change of front, but she could not help it. Then she began to feel sorry for him. We have been good friends, he said. I have always admired you enormously. I did not think that I should dare to love you until that day when I overheard that old villain neeps making his advances. Then when I perceived my acute jealousy, I knew that I was loving you. Ever since I have thought only of you, I swear to you that as if you will not belong to me, it is already finished for me altogether. Never have I seen a woman like you so strong, so proud, so kind, and so beautiful. You are astonishing. Yes, astonishing. No other woman could have drawn herself out of an impossible situation as you have done since the disappearance of your husband. For me, you are a woman unique. I am very sincere. Besides, you know it, dear friend. She shook her head passionately. She did not love him, but she was moved, and she wanted to love him. She wanted to yield to him, only liking him, and to love afterwards. But this obstinate instinct held her back. I do not say now, Shirak went on, let me hope. The Latin theatricality of his gestures and his tone made her sorrowful for him. My poor Shirak, she plaintively murmured, and began to put on her gloves. I shall hope, he persisted. She pursed her lips. He seized her violently by the waist. She drew her face away from his, firmly. She was not hard, not angry now. Disconcerted by her compassion, he loosed her. My poor Shirak, she said, I ought not to have come. I must go. It is perfectly useless. Believe me. Oh, no! he whispered fiercely. She stood up, and the abrupt movement pushed the table gratingly across the floor. The throbbing spell of the flesh was snapped like a stretched string, and the scene over. The landlord, roused from his nose, stumbled in. Shirak had nothing but the bill as a reward for his veins. He was baffled. They left the restaurant silently, with a foolish air. Shirak was falling on the mournful streets, and the lamp-lighters were lighting the miserable oil-lamps that had replaced gas. They too, and the lamp-lighters, and an omnibus, were alone in the streets. The gloom was awful. It was desolating. The universal silence seemed to be the silence of despair. Steeped in woe, Sophia thought wearily upon the hopeless problem of existence. For it seemed to her that she and Shirak had created this woe out of nothing, and yet it was an incurable woe.