lame of excitement sprang into his eyes and,
drawing the candles closer, he peered into the mirror.

There are moments when a retrospective impression is overwhelming--when
a scent, a sight, a sound can quicken things dead--things buried out of
mind.

Max looked and, looking, lost himself. The boy with his bravery of
ignorance, his frankly arrogant egoism was effaced as might be the
writing from a slate, and in his place was a sexless creature, rarely
beautiful, with parted, tremulous lips and wide eyes in which subtle,
crowding thoughts struggled for expression.

He looked, he lost himself, and losing, heard nothing of a sound, faint
and undefined, that stole from the region of the outer door--nothing of
a light step in the little hall outside his room. Leaning closer to the
mirror, still gazing absorbed, he began to twist the short waves of his
own hair more closely into the strands that resembled them so nearly in
texture and hue.

It was then, quietly--with the appalling quietude that can appertain to
a fateful action--that the handle of the bedroom door clicked, the door
itself opened, and the little Jacqueline--more child than ever in the
throes of a swift amazement--stood revealed, a lighted candle in one
hand, in the other a china mug.

At sound of the entry, Max had wheeled round, his hands still
automatically holding up the strands of hair; at the vision that
confronted him, a look of rage flashed over his face--the violent,
unrestrained rage of the creature taken unawares.

At the look the little Jacqueline quailed, her lips opened and drooped,
her right hand was lowered, until the candlestick hung at a perilous
angle and the wax began to drip upon the floor.

"Oh!" she cried, "and I thought to find the room empty! _Pardon!
Pardon!_ Oh, _pardon, mons--madame!_"

CHAPTER XXI

It was spoken--the one word, so brief, so significant; and Jacqueline
stood hesitating, pleading, equally ready to rush forward or to fly.

At last Max spoke.

"Why do you call me that?"

The tone in which the question was put was extremely low, the gray eyes
were steady almost to coldness, the strong, slight fingers began
mechanically to fold up the hair, strand upon strand.

Jacqueline's candle swayed, until a stream of the melted wax guttered to
the floor.

"Because--"

"Yes?"

"Because--oh, because--because--I have always known!"

Then indeed a silence fell. Jacqueline, too petrified to embellish
her st