"Please do not talk in that way," said Sophia.
"I have money, and I can pay for everything, and I shall pay for everything."
She was annoyed because she was sure that Madame Foucault was only making a pretence of delicacy, and that in any case her delicacy was preposterous.
Sophia had remarked this on the two previous occasions when she had mentioned the subject of bills.
Madame Foucault would not treat her as an ordinary lodger, now that the illness was past.
She wanted, as it were, to complete brilliantly what she had begun, and to live in Sophia's memory as a unique figure of lavish philanthropy.
This was a sentiment, a luxury that she desired to offer herself: the thought that she had played providence to a respectable married lady in distress; she frequently hinted at Sophia's misfortunes and helplessness.
But she could not afford the luxury.
She gazed at it as a poor woman gazes at costly stuffs through the glass of a shop-window.
The truth was, she wanted the luxury for nothing.
For a double reason Sophia was exasperated: by Madame Foucault's absurd desire, and by a natural objection to the role of a subject for philanthropy.
She would not admit that Madame Foucault's devotion as a nurse entitled her to the satisfaction of being a philanthropist when there was no necessity for philanthropy.
"How long have I been here?" asked Sophia.
"I don't know." murmured Madame Foucault.
"Eight weeks--or is it nine?"
"Suppose we say nine," said Sophia.
"Very well," agreed Madame Foucault, apparently reluctant.
"Now, how much must I pay you per week?"
"I don't want anything--I don't want anything!
You are a friend of Chirac's.
You---"
"Not at all!" Sophia interrupted, tapping her foot and biting her lip.
"Naturally I must pay."
Madame Foucault wept quietly.
"Shall I pay you seventy-five francs a week?" said Sophia, anxious to end the matter.
"It is too much!" Madame Foucault protested, insincerely.
"What?
For all you have done for me?"
"I speak not of that," Madame Foucault modestly replied.
If the devotion was not to be paid for, then seventy-five francs a week was assuredly too much, as during more than half the time Sophia had had almost no food.
Madame Foucault was therefore within the truth when she again protested, at sight of the bank- notes which Sophia brought from her trunk:
"I am sure that it is too much."
"Not at all!" Sophia repeated.
"Nine weeks at seventy-five.
That makes six hundred and seventy-five.
Here are seven hundreds."
"I have no change," said Madame Foucault.
"I have nothing."
"That will pay for the hire of the bath," said Sophia.
She laid the notes on the pillow.
Madame Foucault looked at them gluttonously, as any other person would have done in her place. She did not touch them.
After an instant she burst into wild tears.
"But why do you cry?" Sophia asked, softened.
"I--I don't know!" spluttered Madame Foucault.
"You are so beautiful.
I am so content that we saved you."
Her great wet eyes rested on Sophia.
It was sentimentality.
Sophia ruthlessly set it down as sentimentality.
But she was touched.