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!  Yes, a charwoman!  More soon or more late.  Well, that is life.  What would you?  One exists always.”  Then in a different tone:  “I demand your pardon, madame, for talking like this.  I ought to have shame.”

And Sophia felt that in listening she also ought to be ashamed.  But she was not ashamed.  Everything seemed very natural, and even ordinary.  And, moreover, Sophia was full of the sense of her superiority over the woman on the bed.  Four years ago, in the Restaurant Sylvain, the ingenuous and ignorant Sophia had shyly sat in awe of the resplendent courtesan, with her haughty stare, her large, easy gestures, and her imperturbable contempt for the man who was paying.  And now Sophia knew that she, Sophia, knew all that was to be known about human nature.  She had not merely youth, beauty, and virtue, but knowledge—­knowledge enough to reconcile her to her own misery.  She had a vigorous, clear mind, and a clean conscience.  She could look any one in the face, and judge every one too as a woman of the world.  Whereas this obscene wreck on the bed had nothing whatever left.  She had not merely lost her effulgent beauty, she had become repulsive.  She could never have had any commonsense, nor any force of character.  Her haughtiness in the day of glory was simply fatuous, based on stupidity.  She had passed the years in idleness, trailing about all day in stuffy rooms, and emerging at night to impress nincompoops; continually meaning to do things which she never did, continually surprised at the lateness of the hour, continually occupied with the most foolish trifles.  And here she was at over forty writhing about on the bare floor because a boy of twenty-five (who must be a worthless idiot) had abandoned her after a scene of ridiculous shoutings and stampings.  She was dependent on the caprices of a young scamp, the last donkey to turn from her with loathing!  Sophia thought:  “Goodness!  If I had been in her place I shouldn’t have been like that.  I should have been rich.  I should have saved like a miser.  I wouldn’t have been dependent on anybody at that age.  If I couldn’t have made a better courtesan than this pitiable woman, I would have drowned myself.”

In the harsh vanity of her conscious capableness and young strength she thought thus, half forgetting her own follies, and half excusing them on the ground of inexperience.