Up to that moment, Jacqueline’s deep mourning had kept the gentlemen present from addressing her, though she had been much stared at.  Although she did not wish to sing, for her heart was heavy as she thought of the troubles that awaited her the next day at the convent, she sang what was asked of her without resistance or pretension.  Then, for the first time, she experienced the pride of triumph.  Szmera, though he was furious at not being the sole lion of the evening, complimented her, bowing almost to the ground, with one hand on his heart; Madame Rochette assured her that she had a fortune in her throat whenever she chose to seek it; persons she had never seen and who did not know her name, pressed her hands fervently, saying that her singing was adorable.  All cried “Encore,” “Encore!” and, yielding to the pleasure of applause, she thought no more of the flight of time.  Dawn was peeping through the windows when the party broke up.

“What kind people!” thought the debutante, whom they had encouraged and applauded; “some perhaps are a little odd, but how much cordiality and warmth there is among them!  It is catching.  This is the sort of atmosphere in which talent should live.”

Being very much fatigued, she fell asleep upon the offered sofa, half-pleased, half-frightened, but with two prominent convictions:  one, that she was beginning to return to life; the other, that she stood on the edge of a precipice.  In her dreams old Rochette appeared to her, her face like that of an affable frog, her dress the dress of Pierrot, and she croaked out, in a variety of tones:  “The stage!  Why not?  Applauded every night—­it would be glorious!” Then she seemed in her dream to be falling, falling down from a great height, as one falls from fairyland into stern reality.  She opened her eyes:  it was noon.  Madame Odinska was waiting for her:  she intended herself to take her to the convent, and for that purpose had assumed the imposing air of a noble matron.

Alas! it was in vain!  Jacqueline, was made to understand that such an infraction of the rules could not be overlooked.  To pass the night without leave out of the convent, and not with her own family, was cause for expulsion.  Neither the prayers nor the anger of Madame Odinska had any power to change the sentence.  While the Mother Superior calmly pronounced her decree, she was taking the measure of this stout foreigner who appeared in behalf of Jacqueline, a woman overdressed, yet at the same time shabby, who had a far from well-bred or aristocratic air.  “Out of consideration for Madame de Talbrun,” she said, “the convent consents to keep Mademoiselle de Nailles a few days longer—­a few weeks perhaps, until she can find some other place to go.  That is all we can do for her.”

Jacqueline listened to this sentence as she might have watched a game of dice when her fate hung on the result, but she showed no emotion.  “Now,” she thought, “my fate has been decided; respectable people will have nothing more to do with me.  I will go with the others, who, perhaps, after all are not worse, and who most certainly are more amusing.”