ation.

"Now! Now, madame! Close your eyes! I am the magician!"

Max's eyes closed, and the illusion of dead hours rose again, more
vivid, more poignant than before. With the familiar sensation of deft
fingers at work upon the business of hairdressing, a thousand
recollections of countless nights and mornings--countless preparations
and wearinesses--countless anticipations and disgusts, born with the
placing of each hairpin, the coiling of the unfamiliar--familiar--weight
of hair.

"Now, madame! Is it not a picture?"

With the gesture and pride of an artist, Jacqueline cast the wide scarf
round Max's shoulders and stepped back.

Max's eyes opened, gazing straight into the mirror, and once again in
that night of contrasts, emotion rose paramount.

It was most truly a picture; not the earlier, puzzling sketch--the
anomalous mingling of sex--but the complete semblance of the woman--the
slim neck rising from the golden folds, the proud head, seeming smaller
under its coiled hair than it had ever appeared in the untidiness of its
boy's locks.

"And now, madame, tell me! Is the evil spirit one lightly to be
dismissed?"

All the woman in the little Jacqueline--the creature of eternal
tradition, eternal intrigue--was glorying in her handiwork, in the
consciousness of its potency.

But Max never answered; Max continued to stare into the glass.

"You will dismiss it, madame?"

Max still stared, a peculiar light of thought shining and wavering in
the gray eyes.

"Madame, you will dismiss it?"

Max turned slowly.

"I will do more, Jacqueline. I will destroy it utterly."

"Madame!"

"I have a great idea."

"Madame!"

"If a spirit--no matter how evil--could be materialized, it would cease
to affect the imagination. I shall materialize mine!"

"Madame!"

"Yes; I have arrived at a conclusion. I shall render my evil spirit
powerless by materializing it. But I must first have a promise from you;
you must promise me to keep my secret."

"Madame--madame!" Jacqueline stammered.

"You will promise?"

"Yes."

"And how am I to trust you?"

Jacqueline's blue eyes went round and round the room, in search of some
overwhelming proof of her fidelity; then swiftly they returned to Max's.

[Illustration: THE COMPLETE SEMBLANCE OF THE WOMAN]

"Not even to Lucien, madame, shall it be revealed!" And silently Max
nodded, realizing the greatness of the pledge.

* * * * *

Many hours