She began to dance, holding her tattered skirts about her, swaying back and forth in the dim, close air. She had danced this way so many times before at Les Vignes, up and down the veranda and through the tall rows of white lilies along the south terrace. She tried to think of these happy times as she danced in and out of the arched doorways and about the big table in the center of the hall. Applause greeted her as she stopped, and also a harsh voice from the anteroom door.
“Have the brat clear out, and keep some sort of quiet about here while the section’s in session,” said the voice from the doorway, and then its owner disappeared.
For a moment her heart stood still, but after a laugh or two, the small crowd that had stood watching her disappeared, Vivi’s friend among them. At the first moment that she felt that she was unobserved, she crept through the back of the entrance hall into a corridor beyond it, paused, listened, then crept stealthily up the narrow winding stairs.
She knew the room. One time when they had been staying with her great-aunt for several weeks, she had spent an afternoon there with Proté, dear Proté!
She stood in the shadow close against the wall, looking down the corridor. All was quiet. She put the key in the lock and tried it. It gave easily and she stepped inside, then shrank back against the door, putting her hand over her mouth to smother the little cry of surprise that had almost escaped her. She had thought to find maman, and in her place there was a thin, wispy-haired woman in a snuff-colored cape and close-fitting drab bonnet, with a greasy face and half-shut eyes. It was maman! As she stood there by the door Marie Josephine remembered something Great-aunt Hortense had said: “There never was any one like your mother, Marie, for play-acting. Ah, you children can’t believe it, but it’s true. The queen has begged her to join them at Versailles! She could do her beloved Molière characters best of all.”
“Come, you’re sure you were not watched, little girl?” maman was saying.
Marie Josephine nodded.
“Then come at once—the back stairs—you know the garden door? I’ve never been that way myself. Quick, child!”
The voice was the same!
“You’d best talk like a woman of the people, citizeness, otherwise you are splendid in your disguise!” Marie Josephine clasped her hands together suddenly, looking up for a second into maman’s eyes.