Max looked and, looking, lost himself.  The boy with his bravery of ignorance, his frankly arrogant egoism was effaced as might be the writing from a slate, and in his place was a sexless creature, rarely beautiful, with parted, tremulous lips and wide eyes in which subtle, crowding thoughts struggled for expression.

He looked, he lost himself, and losing, heard nothing of a sound, faint and undefined, that stole from the region of the outer door—­nothing of a light step in the little hall outside his room.  Leaning closer to the mirror, still gazing absorbed, he began to twist the short waves of his own hair more closely into the strands that resembled them so nearly in texture and hue.

It was then, quietly—­with the appalling quietude that can appertain to a fateful action—­that the handle of the bedroom door clicked, the door itself opened, and the little Jacqueline—­more child than ever in the throes of a swift amazement—­stood revealed, a lighted candle in one hand, in the other a china mug.

At sound of the entry, Max had wheeled round, his hands still automatically holding up the strands of hair; at the vision that confronted him, a look of rage flashed over his face—­the violent, unrestrained rage of the creature taken unawares.

At the look the little Jacqueline quailed, her lips opened and drooped, her right hand was lowered, until the candlestick hung at a perilous angle and the wax began to drip upon the floor.

“Oh!” she cried, “and I thought to find the room empty! Pardon!  Pardon! Oh, pardon, mons—­madame!”

CHAPTER XXI

It was spoken—­the one word, so brief, so significant; and Jacqueline stood hesitating, pleading, equally ready to rush forward or to fly.

At last Max spoke.

“Why do you call me that?”

The tone in which the question was put was extremely low, the gray eyes were steady almost to coldness, the strong, slight fingers began mechanically to fold up the hair, strand upon strand.

Jacqueline’s candle swayed, until a stream of the melted wax guttered to the floor.

“Because—­”

“Yes?”

“Because—­oh, because—­because—­I have always known!”

Then indeed a silence fell.  Jacqueline, too petrified to embellish her statement, let her voice trail off into silence; Max, folding—­mechanically folding—­the strands of hair, offered neither disclaimer nor acceptance.  With the force of the inevitable the confession had struck home, and deep within him was the strong soul’s respect for the inevitable.

“You have always known?” he said, slowly, when the silence had fulfilled itself.  “You have always known—­that I am a woman?”

It sounded abominably crude, abominably banal—­this tardy question, and never had Max felt less feminine than in the uttering of it.

The lips of Jacqueline quivered, her blue eyes brimmed with tears of distress.