She went towards the door.

“I wished only—­” he stammered.

“I do not wish to know what you wished,” she said.

Afterwards she wondered how much of the incident had been overheard.  The other breakfasts she left outside the respective doors; and in future Niepce’s also.

The charwoman never came again.  She had caught smallpox and she died of it, thus losing a good situation.  Strange to say, Sophia did not replace her; the temptation to save her wages and food was too strong.  She could not, however, stand waiting for hours at the door of the official baker and the official butcher, one of a long line of frozen women, for the daily rations of bread and tri-weekly rations of meat.  She employed the concierge’s boy, at two sous an hour, to do this.  Sometimes he would come in with his hands so blue and cold that he could scarcely hold the precious cards which gave the right to the rations and which cost Chirac an hour or two of waiting at the mayoral offices each week.  Sophia might have fed her flock without resorting to the official rations, but she would not sacrifice the economy which they represented.  She demanded thick clothes for the concierge’s boy, and received boots from Chirac, gloves from Carlier, and a great overcoat from Niepce.  The weather increased in severity, and provisions in price.  One day she sold to the wife of a chemist who lived on the first floor, for a hundred and ten francs, a ham for which she had paid less than thirty francs.  She was conscious of a thrill of joy in receiving a beautiful banknote and a gold coin in exchange for a mere ham.  By this time her total cash resources had grown to nearly five thousand francs.  It was astounding.  And the reserves in the cellar were still considerable, and the sack of flour that encumbered the kitchen was still more than half full.  The death of the faithful charwoman, when she heard of it, produced but little effect on Sophia, who was so overworked and so completely absorbed in her own affairs that she had no nervous energy to spare for sentimental regrets.  The charwoman, by whose side she had regularly passed many hours in the kitchen, so that she knew every crease in her face and fold of her dress, vanished out of Sophia’s memory.

Sophia cleaned and arranged two of the bedrooms in the morning, and two in the afternoon.  She had stayed in hotels where fifteen bedrooms were in charge of a single chambermaid, and she thought it would be hard if she could not manage four in the intervals of cooking and other work!  This she said to herself by way of excuse for not engaging another charwoman.  One afternoon she was rubbing the brass knobs of the numerous doors in M. Niepce’s room, when the grocer unexpectedly came in.

She glanced at him sharply.  There was a self-conscious look in his eye.  He had entered the flat noiselessly.  She remembered having told him, in response to a question, that she now did his room in the afternoon.  Why should he have left his shop?  He hung up his hat behind the door, with the meticulous care of an old man.  Then he took off his overcoat and rubbed his hands.