The terms of their intercourse had been suddenly changed.
There was no pretentious ceremony now, but the sincerity that disaster brings.
The vast structure of make-believe, which between them they had gradually built, had crumbled to nothing.
"I never treated badly any man in my life," whimpered Madame Foucault.
"I have always been a--good girl.
There is not a man who can say I have not been a good girl.
Never was I a girl like the rest.
And every one has said so.
Ah! when I tell you that once I had a hotel in the Avenue de la Reine Hortense. Four horses ... I have sold a horse to Madame Musard. ... You know Madame Musard. ... But one cannot make economies.
Impossible to make economies!
Ah!
In 'fifty-six I was spending a hundred thousand francs a year.
That cannot last.
Always I have said to myself:
'That cannot last.'
Always I had the intention. ... But what would you?
I installed myself here, and borrowed money to pay for the furniture.
There did not remain to me one jewel.
The men are poltroons, all!
I could let three bedrooms for three hundred and fifty francs a month, and with serving meals and so on I could live."
"Then that," Sophia interrupted, pointing to her own bedroom across the corridor, "is your room?"
"Yes," said Madame Foucault.
"I put you in it because at the moment all these were let.
They are so no longer.
Only one-- Laurence--and she does not pay me always.
What would you?
Tenants --that does not find itself at the present hour. ... I have nothing, and I owe.
And he quits me.
He chooses this moment to quit me!
And why?
For nothing.
For nothing.
That is not for his money that I regret him.
No, no!
You know, at his age--he is twenty-five--and with a woman like me--one is not generous!
No.
I loved him.
And then a man is a moral support, always.
I loved him.
It is at my age, mine, that one knows how to love.
Beauty goes always, but not the temperament!
Ah, that--No! ...
I loved him.
I love him."
Sophia's face tingled with a sudden emotion caused by the repetition of those last three words, whose spell no usage can mar.
But she said nothing.
"Do you know what I shall become?
There is nothing but that for me.
And I know of such, who are there already.
A charwoman!