Physical action became imperative; he walked unsteadily across the room, pulled the serge curtains across the window, abruptly shutting out both stars and roofs, and turning to the dressing-table, groped for matches and struck a light.

Four candles stood in an old silver candelabra; he touched them with the match-flame, they flickered, spat, rose to a steady glow.  In the new light the room looked warmer, more in touch with human things and, moving with the inevitableness of a pendulum, his mind swung to a definite desire.

Impulse seized him; questions, doubts, fears were submerged; trembling to a loosed emotion, he ran across the room and bent over his narrow bed.

He was alone now; alone in the absolutely primal sense of the word, when the individual ceases to act even to himself.  The instinct he had denied was dominating him, and he was yielding with a sense of intoxication.

With hands that shook in excitement, he raised the mattress and, searching beneath, drew forth an object—­a flat packet, bound and sealed—­the packet, in fine, that had lain so deep and snug in the pocket of his overcoat on the night of his entry into Paris.

His hand—­his whole body—­was trembling as he brought it to light and walked back to the dressing-table.

There, he pulled forward a chair and sat down before the mirror.  For a full minute he sat, as if enchained, then at length—­in obedience to the force that was dominating him—­his fingers crept under the string, there came to the ear a faint, sharp crackle, and the seals broke.

The seals broke, a gasp slipped from between his parted lips, and in his hands lay the symbol of all the imaginings, all the pretty mockery wherewith he purported to cheat nature.

It lay in his hands—­a simple thing, potent as simple things ever are.  No rare jewel, no state paper, merely the long, thick strands of a woman’s hair.

The paper fell away, and he lifted it shakingly to the light.  Stiff-coiled from its long imprisonment, it unwound slowly, allowing the candle-light to filch strange hues from its dark length—­glints of bronze, tinges of copper-color that gleamed elusively from the one end, where it had been roughly clipped from the head, to the other, where it still curled and twisted into little tendrils like a living thing.

A woman’s hair!  A weapon old as time—­as light, as destructible, as possessed of subtle powers as woman herself.  Strand upon strand, he drew it out, following the glints of light with dazed, questioning eyes.

A woman’s hair!  A woman’s hair, woven to blind men’s eyes!

Max leaned forward, quivering to a new impulse, and, raising the heavy coils, twisted them swiftly about his head.  With the action, the blood rushed into his cheeks, a flame of excitement sprang into his eyes and, drawing the candles closer, he peered into the mirror.

There are moments when a retrospective impression is overwhelming—­when a scent, a sight, a sound can quicken things dead—­things buried out of mind.