Georgette recovers and is sent into the country. Lucy is sorry. The child had been company, and the house, though full of noise, does not replace her. Lucy tries each teacher as a friend. One is honest, narrow, coarse, and selfish. The second is a Parisienne, Zélie St Pierre, polished on the surface and empty under it, always in debt for dress, scent, sweets, and food, and once so careless with a bad novel that Lucy's anger drives her off. She hates Lucy after that. The third teacher loves money for itself and shows Lucy a secret hoard of about fifteen guineas in five-franc pieces, which she talks of as a bird talks of its eggs. Madame Beck knows Zélie has no principles. She keeps her because a cold presence can freeze an unruly class into order, and parents do not look further than a decent manner. Through the ripe summer the school lives in the garden. Classes and meals move under the berceau. Freedom edges toward licence, because Madame's fête is coming, and Zélie runs it. A subscription for a handsome present is levied while Madame is supposed to know nothing. In her own room she says the children should keep their francs, then, pressed, asks for silver spoons and forks. The result is a case of plate worth three hundred francs. The day itself will hold the presentation, a collation, a play, a dance, and supper.
The play is the hard part. Monsieur Paul drills the girls, hears them pipe back his trumpet of a voice, calls them dolls of snow and ice, tears up the tragedy he has been teaching, and brings a short comic piece they can actually get into their heads. The day before the fête the rooms are cleared and dressed. Lucy spends it in the garden, glad of the quiet, and exchanges only two sentences all day. On the morning itself the pupils' gala uniform is white muslin and a blue sash. Lucy will not put on a transparent white dress. She has hunted the shops for a thin crape the colour of dun mist on a moor in bloom, purple-grey, with no flower and no jewel to relieve it. Madame Beck, nearly as quiet except for bracelet and brooch, judges her decent. Dressed hours early, Lucy takes a book into the empty first class. Monsieur Paul finds her there and will not hear excuses. Louise Vanderkelkov has been declared ill. The piece will fail unless Lucy takes a part. Her answer, he says, will fix his estimate of her forever. She listens. He will not be refused. She is carried to a solitary attic and locked in, and he takes the key.
The attic is hot, dim, and ugly. A russet curtain hides winter cloaks, and rumour says the garden nun has been seen to issue from them. Lucy does not believe that. She does believe the large rat that glides out. She learns the role in a fury, acting it to the vermin, stuffing its emptiness with scorn. The bell and the wheels tell her the house is already gay, and she is still shut up, fasting. When he returns he sweeps her down to the kitchen and orders food, laughing that he is no Bluebeard who starves women in garrets. In the green-room the performers stare. They had not expected the Englishwoman in a vaudeville. Ginevra, pretty in her costume, turns round eyes on her and is delighted by the surprise. Lucy will not be dressed by the room. She keeps her own clothes, adds a small paletôt that belongs to a pupil's brother, loosens her hair, brushes it to one side, and takes hat and gloves. Monsieur Paul tells her to imagine herself still in the garret, acting to the rats. The curtain rises. At first she is cold. Then she sees the doctor in the sincere lover of the piece, puts that history into the wooing of Ginevra, and plays to outdo him. Ginevra seconds her. Between them they change the spirit of the role while keeping its words. Monsieur Paul says it may be finer than the model and it is not right. The next day Lucy is glad she obliged him and tried her strength once, and she resolves not to be drawn into such a performance again. A relish for acting has shown itself. She will not feed it.
The fête, as a show, succeeds past any other directress's. The doctor is allowed to walk the classes until the ball begins. Then Madame Beck laughs, calls him a wolf in sheep's clothing, and pens him with the men in the carré. Ginevra, tired of dancing, finds Lucy and whispers that Isidore and Alfred de Hamal are both there. Lucy lets herself be led. She flatters the colonel's small hands and his curls until Ginevra glows, then demands Isidore. Ginevra is ashamed of his whiskers. She points. It is the doctor. Lucy could shake her. The colonel is a doll beside him, and Ginevra will not have the name John. In the walk afterwards Lucy tells the doctor what she has only just understood: that the Isidore of Ginevra's talk is he, and that Ginevra is the girl this house has been aiming billets at. He asks how she speaks of him. Lucy is severe, more severe than she shows him, and she cuts the girl's confidences short. He sighs over the lovely innocent. Lucy changes the theme and praises de Hamal's nose, his chin, his sublime bearing, until the doctor calls the colonel an unutterable puppy, a gambling jackanapes he could lift by the waistband. She calls that severe, in the same mocking voice, and then hears herself. She had not expected, waking that morning, to play a gay lover and then rally this man on his illusions. His eye is melancholy in the window light. She tells him to hope, if Ginevra has one spark of worth. The look she gets back is surprise, and she thinks disapprobation. They part. She goes in chilled. Midnight strikes, the guests leave, the lamps fade, and the pensionnat goes dark. Lucy is in bed and not asleep. A day of that much excitement does not let her sleep.
