“I tell them at the restaurant where you gone,” said Chirac, bare-headed under the long colonnade of the street.  “If your husband is there, I tell him.  Till to-morrow ...!”

His manners were more wonderful than any that Sophia had ever imagined.  He might have been in the dark Tuileries on the opposite side of the street, saluting an empress, instead of taking leave of a raw little girl, who was still too disturbed even to thank him.

She fled candle in hand up the wide, many-cornered stairs; Gerald might be already in the bedroom, ... drunk!  There was a chance.  But the gilt-fringed bedroom was empty.  She sat down at the velvet-covered table amid the shadows cast by the candle that wavered in the draught from the open window.  And she set her teeth and a cold fury possessed her in the hot and languorous night.  Gerald was an imbecile.  That he should have allowed himself to get tipsy was bad enough, but that he should have exposed her to the horrible situation from which Chirac had extricated her, was unspeakably disgraceful.  He was an imbecile.  He had no common sense.  With all his captivating charm, he could not be relied upon not to make himself and her ridiculous, tragically ridiculous.  Compare him with Mr. Chirac!  She leaned despairingly on the table.  She would not undress.  She would not move.  She had to realize her position; she had to see it.

Folly!  Folly!  Fancy a commercial traveller throwing a compromising piece of paper to the daughter of his customer in the shop itself:  that was the incredible folly with which their relations had begun!  And his mad gesture at the pit-shaft!  And his scheme for bringing her to Paris unmarried!  And then to-night!  Monstrous folly!  Alone in the bedroom she was a wise and a disillusioned woman, wiser than any of those dolls in the restaurant.

And had she not gone to Gerald, as it were, over the dead body of her father, through lies and lies and again lies?  That was how she phrased it to herself. ...  Over the dead body of her father!  How could such a venture succeed?  How could she ever have hoped that it would succeed?  In that moment she saw her acts with the terrible vision of a Hebrew prophet.

She thought of the Square and of her life there with her mother and Sophia.  Never would her pride allow her to return to that life, not even if the worst happened to her that could happen.  She was one of those who are prepared to pay without grumbling for what they have had.

There was a sound outside.  She noticed that the dawn had begun.  The door opened and disclosed Gerald.

They exchanged a searching glance, and Gerald shut the door.  Gerald infected the air, but she perceived at once that he was sobered.  His lip was bleeding.

“Mr. Chirac brought me home,” she said.

“So it seems,” said Gerald, curtly.  “I asked you to wait for me.  Didn’t I say I should come back?”

He was adopting the injured magisterial tone of the man who is ridiculously trying to conceal from himself and others that he has recently behaved like an ass.