She was fed up with being fed up, she wanted to do something lunatic, she
wanted to kick and scream and drum on the floor with her heels.
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 Therese 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.
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