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 this confessed love poured in upon her soul.  She saw the halo about the head of the little singer, she appreciated the sublime giving of herself that cried in the music of the song.  It was no mere sentiment on the lips of this fair child, it was the proclamation of a tremendous fact.

She leaned back against the wall, lips set, hands clasped.  She clung to the rock of her theories like a drowning man, and like the drowning man she realized the imminence of the inundation that threatened her.

The music swelled, and now it was not Jacqueline alone who sang; M. Cartel’s voice rose, completing, perfecting the higher feminine notes, blending with them as the music of wind or running water might harmonize with the singing of a bird.  It was not art but nature that was at work in the words: 

’Nous sommes tous les amants, fideles a leur serment!  Ah, le divin
roman!

* * * * *

Nous sommes toutes les ames que brule le sainte flamme du desire! 
Ah, la parole ideale dont s’enivre mon corps tout entier! 
Dis encore ta chanson de delice!  Ta chanson victorieuse, ta chanson
de printemps!’