Welcome from Francois Bigot to a dancing-woman!
I slipped off the cloak, looked at Jamond, who murmured once again,
'Courage,' and then I stepped out swiftly, and made for a low,
large dais at one side of the room. I was so nervous that I knew not
how I went. The faces and forms of the company were blurred before
me, and the lights shook and multiplied distractedly. The room
shone brilliantly, yet just under the great canopy, over the dais;
there were shadows, and they seemed to me, as I stepped under the
red velvet, a relief, a sort of hiding-place from innumerable
candles and hot unnatural eyes.
"Once there I was changed. I did not think of the applause that
greeted me, the murmurs of surprise, approbation, questioning,
rising round me. Suddenly, as I paused and faced them all,
nervousness passed out of me, and I saw nothing--nothing but a sort
of far-off picture. My mind was caught away into that world which I
had created for myself when I danced, and these rude gentlemen were
but visions. All sense of indignity passed from me. I was only a
woman fighting for a life and for her own and her another's
happiness.
"As I danced I did not know how time passed--only that I must
keep those men where they were till General Montcalm came.
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