Gerald slept.  Just as he was, he slept heavily.

This was what he had brought her to, then!  The horrors of the night, of the dawn, and of the morning!  Ineffable suffering and humiliation; anguish and torture that could never be forgotten!  And after a fatuous vigil of unguessed license, he had tottered back, an offensive beast, to sleep the day away in that filthy chamber!  He did not possess even enough spirit to play the role of roysterer to the end.  And she was bound to him; far, far from any other human aid; cut off irrevocably by her pride from those who perhaps would have protected her from his dangerous folly.  The deep conviction henceforward formed a permanent part of her general consciousness that he was simply an irresponsible and thoughtless fool!  He was without sense.  Such was her brilliant and godlike husband, the man who had given her the right to call herself a married woman!  He was a fool.  With all her ignorance of the world she could see that nobody but an arrant imbecile could have brought her to the present pass.  Her native sagacity revolted.  Gusts of feeling came over her in which she could have thrashed him into the realization of his responsibilities.

Sticking out of the breast-pocket of his soiled coat was the packet which he had received on the previous day.  If he had not already lost it, he could only thank his luck.  She took it.  There were English bank-notes in it for two hundred pounds, a letter from a banker, and other papers.  With precautions against noise she tore the envelope and the letter and papers into small pieces, and then looked about for a place to hide them.  A cupboard suggested itself.  She got on a chair, and pushed the fragments out of sight on the topmost shelf, where they may well be to this day.  She finished dressing, and then sewed the notes into the lining of her skirt.  She had no silly, delicate notions about stealing.  She obscurely felt that, in the care of a man like Gerald, she might find herself in the most monstrous, the most impossible dilemmas.  Those notes, safe and secret in her skirt, gave her confidence, reassured her against the perils of the future, and endowed her with independence.  The act was characteristic of her enterprise and of her fundamental prudence.  It approached the heroic.  And her conscience hotly defended its righteousness.

She decided that when he discovered his loss, she would merely deny all knowledge of the envelope, for he had not spoken a word to her about it.  He never mentioned the details of money; he had a fortune.  However, the necessity for this untruth did not occur.  He made no reference whatever to his loss.  The fact was, he thought he had been careless enough to let the envelope be filched from him during the excesses of the night.

All day till evening Sophia sat on a dirty chair, without food, while Gerald slept.  She kept repeating to herself, in amazed resentment:  “A hundred francs for this room!  A hundred francs!  And he hadn’t the pluck to tell me!” She could not have expressed her contempt.