o! Oh, don't flatter yourself I am like that fat dolt
of a Dupont, to be taken in by a pair of round eyes and innocent ways. I
know your sort, I know _you_, mam'selle, too well! Me, I am nobody's fool,
least of all yours, young woman. What goes on under my nose, I see; and if
you imagine otherwise you are a bigger simpleton that you take me for."

She snapped her fingers viciously in Sofia's crimsoned face, uttered a
contemptuous "_Zut_!" and waddled off, shaking her head and growling to
herself.

Sofia felt stunned. The offensive had been launched so swiftly, she was
conscious of having done so little to invite it, she had been taken
unprepared, thrown into confusion, her feeble objections silenced and
overwhelmed by that deluge of abuse, publicly disgraced....

Her face was burning, and tears started in her eyes; but she winked them
back, she would not let them fall. Conscious of the grins of the handful of
patrons, and the leers of the waiters, she steeled herself to suppress
every betrayal of the mortification in which her soul was writhing, she
made no sign but stared on stonily at the blackness of the night that
peered in at the open doors.

Then indignation came to her rescue, the flaming colour ebbed from her face
and left it unnaturally white, the mists before her eyes dissipated and
their look grew fixed and hard, even her lips took on a grim, unyielding
set. Beneath the desk her hands clenched into small fists. But she did not
move.

The sensation stirred up by the outbreak of Mama Therese subsided, the
domino players resumed their game, the old gentleman reading Le Rire turned
a page and read on with a knowing smile, lovers returned to their
low-voiced love-making, waiters yawned behind their hands, all was as it
had been save that, at their table (Sofia could see by the mirror, without
looking directly) Mama Therese and Papa Dupont seemed to have declared an
armistice and were gobbling down the rest of their meal in silence and
indecorous haste.

Presently they got up and sought their living quarters. To do this they had
to pass the caisse and through the green baize door. Mama Therese marched
ahead with forbidding frown and quivering chins, with the militant carriage
of misprized and affronted rectitude. To her, it was obvious, Sofia for the
time being did not exist. At her heels Papa Dupont shambled uneasily,
hanging the head of deep thoughtfulness, avoiding Sofia's gaze. It was his
part to pretend