Next day she went to her friend and poured out her woes. Mme. Forestier went to a closet with a glass door, took out a large jewel box, brought it back, opened it, and said to Mme. Loisel, "Here, take your choice, my dear." She looked at some bracelets, then at a pearl necklace, and then at a Venetian cross curiously wrought of gold and precious stones. She tried on the ornaments before the mirror, hesitated, was loath to take them off and return them. She kept inquiring, "Have you any more?" "Certainly, look for yourself. I don't know what you want." Suddenly Mathilde discovered, in a black satin box, a magnificent necklace of diamonds, and her heart began to beat with excitement. With trembling hands she took the necklace and fastened it round her neck outside her dress, becoming lost in admiration of herself as she looked in the glass. Tremulous with fear lest she be refused, she asked, "Will you lend me this--only this?" "Yes, of course I will." Mathilde fell upon her friend's neck, kissed her passionately, and rushed off with her treasure. The day of the ball arrived. Mme. Loisel was a great success. She was prettier than them all, lovely, gracious, smiling, and wild with delight. All the men looked at her, inquired her name, tried to be introduced; all the officials of the Ministry wanted a waltz--even the minister himself noticed her. She danced with abandon, with ecstacy, intoxicated with joy, forgetting everything in the triumph of her beauty, in the radiance of her success, in a kind of mirage of bliss made up of all this worship, this adulation, of all these stirring impulses, and of that realization of perfect surrender, so sweet to the soul of woman. She left about four in the morning. Since midnight her husband had been sleeping in a little deserted anteroom with three other men whose wives were enjoying themselves. He threw over her shoulders the wraps he had brought, ordinary, everyday garments, contrasting sorrily with her elegant ball dress. She felt this, and wanted to get away so as not to be seen by the other women, who were putting on costly furs. Loisel detained her: "Wait a little; you will catch cold outside; I will go and call a cab." But she would not listen to him, and hurried downstairs. When they reached the street they could not find a carriage, and they began to look for one, shouting to the cabmen who were passing by. They went down toward the river in desperation, shivering with cold. At last they found on the quays one of those antiquated, all-night broughams, which, in Paris, wait till after dark before venturing to display their dilapidation. It took them to their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and once more, wearily, they climbed the stairs.