She was nauseating Sophia.

“Please rise,” said Sophia, her hands fidgeting undecidedly.

“I shall repay you, surely!” Madame Foucault asseverated.  “I swear!”

“Does she take me for a fool?” thought Sophia, “with her oaths!”

“No!” said Sophia.  “I won’t lend you the money.  But I tell you what I will do.  I will buy the furniture at that price; and I will promise to re-sell it to you as soon as you can pay me.  Like that, you can be tranquil.  But I have very little money.  I must have a guarantee.  The furniture must be mine till you pay me.”

“You are an angel of charity!” cried Madame Foucault, embracing Sophia’s skirts.  “I will do whatever you wish.  Ah!  You Englishwomen are astonishing.”

Sophia was not an angel of charity.  What she had promised to do involved sacrifice and anxiety without the prospect of reward.  But it was not charity.  It was part of the price Sophia paid for the exercise of her logical faculty; she paid it unwillingly.  ’I did what I could for you!’ Sophia would have died sooner than remind any one of a benefit conferred, and Madame Foucault had committed precisely that enormity.  The appeal was inexcusable to a fine mind; but it was effective.

The men were behind the door, listening.  Sophia paid out of her stock of notes.  Needless to say, the total was more and not less than a thousand francs.  Madame Foucault grew rapidly confidential with the man.  Without consulting Sophia, she asked the bailiff to draw up a receipt transferring the ownership of all the furniture to Sophia; and the bailiff, struck into obligingness by glimpses of Sophia’s beauty, consented to do so.  There was much conferring upon forms of words, and flourishing of pens between thick, vile fingers, and scattering of ink.

Before the men left Madame Foucault uncorked a bottle of wine for them, and helped them to drink it.  Throughout the evening she was insupportably deferential to Sophia, who was driven to bed.  Madame Foucault contentedly went up to the sixth floor to occupy the servant’s bedroom.  She was glad to get so far away from the sulphur, of which a few faint fumes had penetrated into the corridor.

The next morning, after a stifling night of bad dreams, Sophia was too ill to get up.  She looked round at the furniture in the little room, and she imagined the furniture in the other rooms, and dismally thought:  “All this furniture is mine.  She will never pay me!  I am saddled with it.”

It was cheaply bought, but she probably could not sell it for even what she had paid.  Still, the sense of ownership was reassuring.