And all the while, beyond the threshold, life in the street was flowing by, a restless stream, and the voice of it was a siren call to her hungry heart, whispering of freedom, laughing low of love, roaring robustly of brave adventures.
And she sat there with folded hands, mutinous yet impotent, afraid, a useless thing with sullen eyes ... wasted ...
As was her custom, between six and seven, before the busy hours of the evening, she had her dinner fetched to a table near by.
Somebody had left a copy of a morning paper on the wall-seat. Sofia glanced through it without much interest. None the less, when she had finished, she took the sheet back to the caisse with her and intermittently, as occasion offered, read snatches of it quite openly, so bored that she didn’t care if Mama Thérèse did catch her at this forbidden practice; a good row would be almost welcome ... anything to break the monotony....
When she had digested without edification every item of news, she devoured the advertisements of the shops, then turned to the Agony Column, which she had saved up for a savoury.
She read the appeal of the widow of the English army officer who wanted some kind-hearted and soft-headed person to finance her in setting up an establishment for “paying guests.”
She read the card of the young gentleman of good family but impoverished means who admitted that he had every grace and talent heart could desire and who, in frantic effort to escape going to work for his living, threw himself bodily upon the generosity of an unknown, and as yet non-existent, benefactor, hinting darkly at suicide if nothing came of this last attempt to get himself luxuriously maintained in indolence.
She read the advertisements of money-lenders who yearned to advance fabulous sums to the nobility and gentry on their simple notes of hand.
She read the thinly disguised professional cards of lonely ladies whose unhappy lot could be mitigated only by congenial male companionship.
She read the ingenuous matrimonial bids.