y as the little Jacqueline, her arm naively round the
shoulder of M. Cartel, her head thrown back, began to sing the first
lines of the duet in _Louise_:

'Depuis le jour ou je me suis donnee, toute fleurie semble ma
destinee.
Je crois rever sous un ciel de feerie, l'ame encore grisee de
ton premier baiser!'

And M. Cartel, lifting his head, broke in with the single electric cry
of Julian the lover:

'Louise!'

Then, as if answering to the personal note, Jacqueline melted into
Louise's sweet admission of absolute surrender:

'Quelle belle vie!
Ah, je suis heureuse! trop heureuse ... et je tremble delicieusement,
Au souvenir charmant du premier jour d'amour!'

The effect was instant. The youth by the piano smiled radiantly and
nodded in vehement approval; the young Italian puffed fiercely at his
cigarette; a flash of light crossed Lize's gaze, causing it to
concentrate.

Jacqueline had no extraordinary voice, but music was native to her, and
she sang as birds sing, with a true light sweetness exquisite to the
ear:

'Souvenir charmant du premier jour d'amour!'

The declaration came to the listeners with a pure sincerity, it abounded
in simplicity, in youthfulness, in conviction. A quiver ran through
Maxine, her numbed senses vibrated. By an acute intuition she realized
the composer's meaning; more, she appreciated the thrill called up in
the soul of M. Cartel. Her ears were strained to catch each note, each
phrase, with an intentness that astonished her; it suddenly appeared
that out of all the world, one thing alone was of significance--the
close following of this song, the apprehending of its purpose.

'Souvenir charmant du premier jour d'amour!'

The first night with Blake upon the balcony sprang back to memory, and
with it the wonder, the delight, the illimitable sense of kinship with
the universe. Again the spiritual sense lived in her, not warring with
the physical, but justifying, completing it. She sat upright
against the wall, suddenly fearful of this overwhelming mental
disturbance--fighting the cloud of memory almost as one fights a bodily
faintness.

The music grew in meaning; she heard Julian's ardent question:

'Tu ne regrette rien?'

and Louise's triumphant answer:

'Rien!'

The words, simply human, divinely just, assailed her ears, and by light
of the intuition--the superconsciousness that was dominating her--the
whole truth of