It was only a momentary rebellion against the ease with which this protest was done. Perhaps had it not been for the fascination of habit, then some more adequate words would have been written. His letter had come. Empty and futile she had done her task, answered as she must do; “As we all must do!” she would have thought, with an exclamation mark after it. She sealed up her letter and addressed it.
In the drawer where she was putting Sorbert’s latest letter away were some old ones. A letter of the year before she took out and read. With its two sentences it was more cruel and had more meaning than the one she had just received: “Put off that little Darmstadt woman. Let’s be alone.”
It was a note she had received on the eve of an expedition to a village near Paris. She had promised to take a girl down with them, to show her the place, its hotel and other possibilities—she had stayed there once or twice herself. The Darmstadt girl had not been taken. Sorbert and she had spent the night at an inn on the outskirts of the forest. They had come back in the train next day without speaking, having quarrelled somehow or other in the inn. Chagrin and regret for him struck her a series of sharp blows. She started crying again suddenly, quickly, and vehemently as though surprised by some thought.
The whole morning her work worried her, dusting and arranging. She experienced a revolt against her ceaseless orderliness, a very grave thing in such an exemplary prisoner. At four o’clock in the afternoon, as often happened, she was still dawdling about in her dressing-gown and had not yet had lunch.
The femme de ménage came at about eight in the morning, doing Clara’s rooms first. Bertha was in the habit of discussing politics with Madame Vannier. Sorbert too was discussed.
“Mademoiselle est triste?” this good woman said, noticing her dejection. “C’est encore Monsieur Sorbert qui vous a fait du chagrin?”
“Oui madame, c’est un Sâlot!” Bertha replied, half crying.
“Oh, il ne faut pas dire ça, mademoiselle. Comment, il est un Sâlot?” Madame Vannier worked silently with soft quiet thud of felt slippers. She appeared to regard work as not without dignity. Bertha was playing at life. She admired and liked her as an emblem of Fortune; she respected herself as an emblem of Misfortune. Madame Vannier was given the letter to post at two.