In a smiling dream she passed through it, on into the studio where no light was, save the light from a shred of crescent moon that had lately climbed into the sky.  It had a curious effect—­this bare, white room with its gaunt easel, upon which the portrait still stood, and to superstitious eyes, it might well have suggested a ghost-chamber, peopled by dead thoughts, dead impressions:  but Maxine was in no morbid mood, happiness ran too high—­too red and warm—­to permit of shadows disputing its high place.

Smiling, smiling, she passed from the studio to the bedroom.  The room that had witnessed her first weakness; the room that had brought her strength.  How infinitely wise had been the conduct of that night!  How irrevocably fate had created doubt and dispersed it by inspiration.  If she had not twisted her hair about her head—­if the little Jacqueline had not entered at the critical moment—­if, for that matter, M. Cartel and his friend had not talked late and partaken of bouillon—­

She laughed; she wandered round the room, touching, appraising the little familiar trifles associated with that past hour; at last she sat down before her mirror, and there Jacqueline found her ten minutes later, when curiosity could no longer be withheld and she came creeping across the landing for news of the night’s doings.

Maxine heard her enter; heard her search the salon and then the studio; finally called to her.

“Jacqueline!”

“Madame!”

The door opened, and Maxine looked round, the smile still upon her lips.

“No soup for me to-night, Jacqueline?  Not even tea?”

Jacqueline caught the happy lightness of the tone, and silently nodded her blonde head as she tiptoed into the room.

“Ah, madame has had a banquet of the mind!  Madame has no need of my poor food.”

Maxine picked up a comb and arranged the tendrils of hair that curled about her temples.

“Jacqueline,” she said, after a silence, “what do you consider the highest thing?”

The question might have been astonishing, but her visitor did not betray surprise by even the quiver of an eyelash.

“Love, madame,” she said.

And Maxine did not flash round upon her in one of her swift rages, did not even draw her brows together into their frowning line.  She merely gazed into the mirror, as if weighing the statement judicially.

“All people do not hold that opinion,” she said, at last.

Jacqueline shrugged her shoulders in the exercise of an infinite patience.  “No, madame?”

“No.  M. Blake talked to-night of ‘the highest thing,’ and he did not mean love.”

“No, madame?” Jacqueline was very guileless.

But guileless as her tone was—­nay, by reason of its guilelessness—­it touched Maxine in some shadowy corner of her woman’s consciousness; and spurred by a subtle, disquieting suggestion, she turned in her chair, and fixed her serious gray eyes upon her visitor.