I will stay as I am.
At any rate I know what I am in for, as things are!"
And she would reflect upon her hopeful financial situation, and the approaching prospect of a constantly sufficient income.
And a little thrill of impatience against the interminable and gigantic foolishness of the siege would take her.
But her self-consciousness in presence of Chirac did not abate.
As she lay in bed she awaited accustomed sounds which should have connoted Chirac's definite retirement for the night.
Her ear, however, caught no sound whatever from his room.
Then she imagined that there was a smell of burning in the flat.
She sat up, and sniffed anxiously, of a sudden wideawake and apprehensive.
And then she was sure that the smell of burning was not in her imagination.
The bedroom was in perfect darkness.
Feverishly she searched with her right hand for the matches on the night-table, and knocked candlestick and matches to the floor.
She seized her dressing-gown, which was spread over the bed, and put it on, aiming for the door. Her feet were bare. She discovered the door.
In the passage she could discern nothing at first, and then she made out a thin line of light, which indicated the bottom of Chirac's door.
The smell of burning was strong and unmistakable.
She went towards the faint light, fumbled for the door-handle with her palm, and opened.
It did not occur to her to call out and ask what was the matter.
The house was not on fire; but it might have been.
She had left on the table at the foot of Chirac's bed a small cooking-lamp, and a saucepan of bouillon.
All that Chirac had to do was to ignite the lamp and put the saucepan on it.
He had ignited the lamp, having previously raised the double wicks, and had then dropped into the chair by the table just as he was, and sunk forward and gone to sleep with his head lying sideways on the table.
He had not put the saucepan on the lamp; he had not lowered the wicks, and the flames, capped with thick black smoke, were waving slowly to and fro within a few inches of his loose hair.
His hat had rolled along the floor; he was wearing his great overcoat and one woollen glove; the other glove had lodged on his slanting knee.
A candle was also burning.
Sophia hastened forward, as it were surreptitiously, and with a forward-reaching movement turned down the wicks of the lamp; black specks were falling on the table; happily the saucepan was covered, or the bouillon would have been ruined.
Chirac made a heart-rending spectacle, and Sophia was aware of deep and painful emotion in seeing him thus.
He must have been utterly exhausted and broken by loss of sleep.
He was a man incapable of regular hours, incapable of treating his body with decency.
Though going to bed at three o'clock, he had continued to rise at his usual hour.
He looked like one dead; but more sad, more wistful.
Outside in the street a fog reigned, and his thin draggled beard was jewelled with the moisture of it.
His attitude had the unconsidered and violent prostration of an overspent dog.
The beaten animal in him was expressed in every detail of that posture. It showed even in his white, drawn eyelids, and in the falling of a finger.
All his face was very sad.
It appealed for mercy as the undefended face of sleep always appeals; it was so helpless, so exposed, so simple.
It recalled Sophia to a sense of the inner mysteries of life, reminding her somehow that humanity walks ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses.
She did not physically shudder; but her soul shuddered.
She mechanically placed the saucepan on the lamp, and the noise awakened Chirac.
He groaned.
At first he did not perceive her.
When he saw that some one was looking down at him, he did not immediately realize who this some one was.
He rubbed his eyes with his fists, exactly like a baby, and sat up, and the chair cracked.
"What then?" he demanded.
"Oh, madame, I ask pardon.
What?"
"You have nearly destroyed the house," she said.
"I smelt fire, and I came in.
I was just in time. There is no danger now.
But please be careful."
She made as if to move towards the door.