Sophia wanted to go round the flat and destroy every crimson lampshade in it.  She wanted to shake Madame Foucault into self-respect and sagacity.  Moral reprehension, though present in her mind, was only faint.  Certainly she felt the immense gulf between the honest woman and the wanton, but she did not feel it as she would have expected to feel it.  “What a fool you have been!” she thought; not:  “What a sinner!” With her precocious cynicism, which was somewhat unsuited to the lovely northern youthfulness of that face, she said to herself that the whole situation and their relative attitudes would have been different if only Madame Foucault had had the wit to amass a fortune, as (according to Gerald) some of her rivals had succeeded in doing.

And all the time she was thinking, in another part of her mind:  “I ought not to be here.  It’s no use arguing.  I ought not to be here.  Chirac did the only thing for me there was to do.  But I must go now.”

Madame Foucault continued to recite her woes, chiefly financial, in a weak voice damp with tears; she also continued to apologize for mentioning herself.  She had finished sobbing, and lay looking at the wall, away from Sophia, who stood irresolute near the bed, ashamed for her companion’s weakness and incapacity.

“You must not forget,” said Sophia, irritated by the unrelieved darkness of the picture drawn by Madame Foucault, “that at least I owe you a considerable sum, and that I am only waiting for you to tell me how much it is.  I have asked you twice already, I think.”

“Oh, you are still suffering!” said Madame Foucault.

“I am quite well enough to pay my debts,” said Sophia.

“I do not like to accept money from you,” said Madame Foucault.

“But why not?”

“You will have the doctor to pay.”

“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.