"Oh, Ned has his uses. They say Fanny Arnold.... But what do you suppose the Darcy girl...."
Their voices dropped lower, and Joan heard no more....
She felt for the moment absolutely numb. She was like a person who has been shot, without having time to ascertain where. All the pride in her gathered to meet this blow without flinching. People must not suspect--they must not suspect.
She went on chatting, laughing, jesting.... He had gone away for good! Without a word to her, he had gone away. He had known last night that he was going, and that he would not come back. She, Joan Darcy, had been jilted. She, too proud to live on a stranger's bounty, had offered herself, unasked, to a man who did not want her!...
Somebody begged her to sing, and brought a guitar. Hers was a slight voice, uncultivated, but with something about it, as about Joan, that attracted attention. People listened to her. She had that curious _élan_, that sense of being borne on some outside power, that comes to certain natures from the response of an audience.
Joan touched heights that evening. To some brains, suffering is an incomparable stimulant. Even Betty, with the remembrance of certain wild orgies at school, when quiet Joan Darcy had amazed nuns and girls alike by a sudden transfiguration, had never gaged to the full her friend's possibilities. She sang for them daringly whatever came into her head, negro catches, rollicking Irish lilts, wicked little songs of the streets and alleys. Under Betty's urgings, she exhibited a talent for mimicry which had occasionally reduced the good Sisters almost to apoplexy.
She showed them her father during a political campaign, addressing his constituency under the handicap of a cold in the head. One could see the Major's urbane periods, his mellifluous hand, his tossing topknot--She showed them the Mother Superior, called in to quell a dormitory riot, endeavoring while dodging pillows to maintain proper religious "detachment from place." As an encore she gave them Eduard Desmond, conducting a sunset _à deux_, with assistance from the poets--a bit of recklessness that brought shouts of joy from the audience, and produced in Mrs. Rossiter's mocking eye something like respect.