tel? M. Blake?"

So surprising, so grotesque seemed the questions, that self-confidence
rushed suddenly in upon Jacqueline. She threw back her head and
laughed--laughed until her old inconsequent self was restored to power.

"Lucien! Monsieur Edouard! Oh, _la, la_! How droll!"

"Then they do not know?"

"Know? Are they not men? And are men not children?"

The vast superiority--the wordly wisdom in the babyish face was at once
so comical and so reassuring that irresistibly Max laughed too; and at
the laugh, the little Jacqueline dropped to her knees beside the
dressing-table and looked up, smiling, radiant.

"I am forgiven?"

"I suppose so!"

"Then grant me a favor--one favor! Permit me to touch the beautiful
hair!"

Without waiting for the permission, the eager little hands caught up the
coiled strands, and in a moment the candlelight was again chasing the
red tints and the bronze through the dark waves.

"My faith, but it is beautiful! Beautiful! And what a pity!"

"A pity--?"

"That no man may see it!" For an instant Jacqueline buried her face in
the silky mass; then, like a little bright bird, looked up again. "A man
would go mad for this!"

"For a thing like that? Absurd!"

"Yet a thing like that can demolish Monsieur Max, and leave in his
place--"

"What?"

"How shall I say? His sister?" She looked up anew, disarming in her
naive candor: and a swift temptation assailed her listener--the
temptation that at times assails the strongest--the temptation to
unburden the mind.

"Jacqueline," Max cried, impetuously, "you speak a great truth when you
say that! We have all of us the two natures--the brother and the sister!
Not one of us is quite woman--not one of us is all man!"

The thought sped from him, winged and potent; and Jacqueline, wise in
her child's wisdom, offered no comment, put forward no opinion.

"It is a war," Max cried again, "a relentless, eternal war; for one
nature must conquer, and one must fail. There cannot be two rulers in
the same city."

"No," Jacqueline murmured, discreetly, "that is most true."

"It is. Most true."

"Why, then, was madame adorning herself with her beautiful hair when I
had the unhappiness to enter? Has not madame already waged her war--and
conquered?"

The eyes were full of innocent question, the soft lips perfectly grave.

Max paused to frame the falsehood that should fit the occasion; but,
like a flood-tide, the frankness, the courage of the boy