Despite her genuine gratitude to Madame Foucault for astounding care during her illness, Sophia did not like her landlady, and the present scene made her coldly wrathful.  She saw the probability of having another’s troubles piled on the top of her own.  She did not, in her mind, actively object, because she felt that she could not be more hopelessly miserable than she was; but she passively resented the imposition.  Her reason told her that she ought to sympathize with this ageing, ugly, disagreeable, undignified woman; but her heart was reluctant; her heart did not want to know anything at all about Madame Foucault, nor to enter in any way into her private life.

“I have not a single friend now,” stammered Madame Foucault.

“Oh, yes, you have,” said Sophia, cheerfully.  “You have Madame Laurence.”

“Laurence—­that is not a friend.  You know what I mean.”

“And me!  I am your friend!” said Sophia, in obedience to her conscience.

“You are very kind,” replied Madame Foucault, from the pillow.  “But you know what I mean.”

The fact was that Sophia did know what she meant.  The terms of their intercourse had been suddenly changed.  There was no pretentious ceremony now, but the sincerity that disaster brings.  The vast structure of make-believe, which between them they had gradually built, had crumbled to nothing.

“I never treated badly any man in my life,” whimpered Madame Foucault.  “I have always been a—­good girl.  There is not a man who can say I have not been a good girl.  Never was I a girl like the rest.  And every one has said so.  Ah! when I tell you that once I had a hotel in the Avenue de la Reine Hortense.  Four horses ...  I have sold a horse to Madame Musard. ...  You know Madame Musard. ...  But one cannot make economies.  Impossible to make economies!  Ah!  In ’fifty-six I was spending a hundred thousand francs a year.  That cannot last.  Always I have said to myself:  ’That cannot last.’  Always I had the intention. ...  But what would you?  I installed myself here, and borrowed money to pay for the furniture.  There did not remain to me one jewel.  The men are poltroons, all!  I could let three bedrooms for three hundred and fifty francs a month, and with serving meals and so on I could live.”

“Then that,” Sophia interrupted, pointing to her own bedroom across the corridor, “is your room?”

“Yes,” said Madame Foucault.  “I put you in it because at the moment all these were let.  They are so no longer.  Only one—­ Laurence—­and she does not pay me always.  What would you?  Tenants —­that does not find itself at the present hour. ...  I have nothing, and I owe.  And he quits me.  He chooses this moment to quit me!  And why?  For nothing.  For nothing.  That is not for his money that I regret him.  No, no!  You know, at his age—­he is twenty-five—­and with a woman like me—­one is not generous!  No.  I loved him.  And then a man is a moral support, always.  I loved him.  It is at my age, mine, that one knows how to love.  Beauty goes always, but not the temperament!  Ah, that—­No! ...  I loved him.  I love him.”