nature rose up,
and the truth broke forth.

"I thought until to-night, Jacqueline, that the battle was won; but
to-night, while I supped with M. Blake, a little play was played out
before me--a little human play, where real people played real parts,
where the woman clung to her womanhood, as you cling to yours, and the
man to his manhood, as does M. Cartel; where the stage effects were
smiles and glances and eyes and hair--"

Jacqueline nodded, but said not a word.

"And as I watched, the thought came to me--the mad thought, that I had,
perhaps, lost something--that I had, perhaps, put something from me. Oh,
it was a possession! A possession of some evil spirit!"

Max sprang from the chair, and began to pace up and down the shadowed
room, while the little Jacqueline, sitting back upon her heels in a
stillness almost Oriental, watched, evolving some thought of her own.

"And so madame desired to strangle the evil spirit with her beautiful
hair?"

The hurried steps ceased.

"I wished to see the woman in me--and to dismiss her!"

"And was she easily dismissed?"

The new question seemed curiously pregnant. Max heard it, and in swift
response came back again to the dressing-table, took the hair from
Jacqueline's hands and began again to intertwist it with the boyish
locks.

Jacqueline raised herself from her crouching position, the more easily
to gratify her curiosity.

"It is extraordinary--the change!" she murmured. "Extraordinary! Madame,
let us complete it! Let us remove that ugly coat!" Excitedly, and
without permission, she began to free Max of the boy's coat, while Max
yielded with a certain passive excitement. "And, now, what can we find
to substitute? Ah!" She gave a cry of delight and ran to the bed, over
the foot of which was thrown a faded gold scarf--a strip of rich fabric
such as artists delight in, for which Max had bargained only the day
before in the rue Andre de Sarte.

"Now the tie! And the ugly collar!" She ran back, the scarf floating
from her arm; and Max, still passive, still held mute by conflicting
sensations, suffered the light fingers to unloose the wide black tie, to
remove the collar, to open a button or two of the shirt.

"And now the hair!" With lightning-like dexterity, Jacqueline drew a
handful of hairpins from her own head, reduced her short blonde curls to
confusion, and in a moment had brushed the thick waves of Max's clipped
hair upward and secured them into a firm found