'If, after all, I have talent?' she thought, her heart seeming to beat up to her throat.
'Give us something from Esther,' said her visitor; 'that is the one play permissible to young girls.'
Damaris smiled, as if at the name of a dear friend. Those verses, which generation after generation of children have spoken since the young disciples of the early years of St. Cyr first wept over the perils of the Jewish heroine, were amongst those which most touched her heart and pleased her imagination. Unknown to herself, she had something of the sense of loneliness of an exile, of an alien, on this little island, which yet she loved so well.
'Voyons, voyons!' said Nadine impatiently, not accustomed to, or tolerant of, being made to wait. 'Do not be afraid. I will tell you frankly whether you have any artistic aptitude, or whether you had better stay and gather oranges and never open a poem all your life. These gentlemen will flatter you, but I shall not. Voyons!'
She spoke imperatively, and with the imperial air of her most resolute will. Damaris grew very pale, even to her lips, but she did not dare refuse to obey. She opened her mouth once, twice, with a deep-drawn, fluttering, frightened breath; then she began to recite, with tremulous voice, the
Notre ennemi cruel devant vous se déclare:
C'est lui, c'est le ministre infidèle et barbare
Qui, d'un zèle trompeur à vos yeux revêtu,
Contre notre innocence arma votre vertu.
Et quel autre, grand Dieu! qu'un Scythe impitoyable