run over a little song, which she was to--sing between the acts and in
which she could see no meaning whatever. This little song, which, to
most of the ladies present, seemed simply idiotic, made the men in the
audience cry "Oh!" as if half-shocked, and then "Encore! Encore!" in a
sort of frenzy. It was a so-called pastoral effusion, in which Colinette
rhymed with herbette, and in which the false innocence of the eighteenth
century was a cloak for much indelicate allusion.

"I never," said Jacqueline in self-defense, before she began the song,
"sang anything so stupid. And that is saying much when one thinks of all
the nonsensical words that people set to music! It's a marvel how any
one can like this stuff. Do tell me what there is in it?" she added,
turning to Gerard, who was charmed by her ignorance.

Standing beside the grand piano, with her arms waving as she sang,
repeating, by the expression of her eyes, the question she had asked
and to which she had received no answer, she was singing the verses she
considered nonsense with as much point as if she had understood them,
thanks to the hints given her by Madame Strahlberg, who was playing her
accompaniment, when the entrance of a servant, who pronounced her name
aloud, made a sudden interruption. "Mademoiselle de Nailles is wanted at
home at once. Modeste has come for her."

Madame d'Avrigny went out to say to the old servant: "She can not
possibly go home with you! It is only half an hour since she came. The
rehearsal is just beginning."

But something Modeste said in answer made her give a little cry, full of
consternation. She came quickly back, and going up to Jacqueline:

"My dear," she said, "you must go home at once--there is bad news, your
father is ill."

"Ill?"

The solemnity of Madame d'Avrigny's voice, the pity in her expression,
the affection with which she spoke and above all her total indifference
to the fate of her rehearsal, frightened Jacqueline. She rushed away,
not waiting to say good-by, leaving behind her a general murmur of "Poor
thing!" while Madame d'Avrigny, recovering from her first shock, was
already beginning to wonder--her instincts as an impresario coming
once more to the front--whether the leading part might not be taken by
Isabelle Ray. She would have to send out two hundred cards, at least,
and put off her play for another fortnight. What a pity! It seemed as if
misfortunes always happened just so as to interfere with pleasu