“Oh, I beg pardon!” he said, and swaggeringly counted out five sovereigns on to a chest of drawers.

She rushed at them.  “Do you think I’ll take your odious money?” she snarled, gathering the coins in her gloved hand.

Her first impulse was to throw them in his face; but she paused and then flung them into a corner of the room.

“Pick them up!” she commanded him.

“No, thanks,” he said briefly; and left, shutting the door.

Only a very little while, and they had been lovers, exuding tenderness with every gesture, like a perfume!  Only a very little while, and she had been deciding to telegraph condescendingly to her mother that she was ‘all right’!  And now the dream was utterly dissolved.  And the voice of that hard commonsense which spake to her in her wildest moods grew loud in asserting that the enterprise could never have come to any good, that it was from its inception an impossible enterprise, unredeemed by the slightest justification.  An enormous folly!  Yes, an elopement; but not like a real elopement; always unreal!  She had always known that it was only an imitation of an elopement, and must end in some awful disappointment.  She had never truly wanted to run away; but something within her had pricked her forward in spite of her protests.  The strict notions of her elderly relatives were right after all.  It was she who had been wrong.  And it was she who would have to pay.

“I’ve been a wicked girl,” she said to herself grimly, in the midst of her ruin.

She faced the fact.  But she would not repent; at any rate she would never sit on that stool.  She would not exchange the remains of her pride for the means of escape from the worst misery that life could offer.  On that point she knew herself.  And she set to work to repair and renew her pride.

Whatever happened she would not return to the Five Towns.  She could not, because she had stolen money from her Aunt Harriet.  As much as she had thrown back at Gerald, she had filched from her aunt, but in the form of a note.  A prudent, mysterious instinct had moved her to take this precaution.  And she was glad.  She would never have been able to dart that sneer at Gerald about money if she had really needed money.  So she rejoiced in her crime; though, since Aunt Harriet would assuredly discover the loss at once, the crime eternally prevented her from going back to her family.  Never, never would she look at her mother with the eyes of a thief!

(In truth Aunt Harriet did discover the loss, and very creditably said naught about it to anybody.  The knowledge of it would have twisted the knife in the maternal heart.)

Sophia was also glad that she had refused to proceed to Paris.  The recollection of her firmness in refusing flattered her vanity as a girl convinced that she could take care of herself.  To go to Paris unmarried would have been an inconceivable madness.  The mere thought of the enormity did outrage to her moral susceptibilities.  No, Gerald had most perfectly mistaken her for another sort of girl; as, for instance, a shop-assistant or a barmaid!