I wish to hear nothing from you, I hear too much--yes,
and see too much, too! 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.
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