“My faith, but it is beautiful!  Beautiful!  And what a pity!”

“A pity—?”

“That no man may see it!” For an instant Jacqueline buried her face in the silky mass; then, like a little bright bird, looked up again.  “A man would go mad for this!”

“For a thing like that?  Absurd!”

“Yet a thing like that can demolish Monsieur Max, and leave in his place—­”

“What?”

“How shall I say?  His sister?” She looked up anew, disarming in her naive candor:  and a swift temptation assailed her listener—­the temptation that at times assails the strongest—­the temptation to unburden the mind.

“Jacqueline,” Max cried, impetuously, “you speak a great truth when you say that!  We have all of us the two natures—­the brother and the sister!  Not one of us is quite woman—­not one of us is all man!”

The thought sped from him, winged and potent; and Jacqueline, wise in her child’s wisdom, offered no comment, put forward no opinion.

“It is a war,” Max cried again, “a relentless, eternal war; for one nature must conquer, and one must fail.  There cannot be two rulers in the same city.”

“No,” Jacqueline murmured, discreetly, “that is most true.”

“It is.  Most true.”

“Why, then, was madame adorning herself with her beautiful hair when I had the unhappiness to enter?  Has not madame already waged her war—­and conquered?”

The eyes were full of innocent question, the soft lips perfectly grave.

Max paused to frame the falsehood that should fit the occasion; but, like a flood-tide, the frankness, the courage of the boy nature rose up, and the truth broke forth.

“I thought until to-night, Jacqueline, that the battle was won; but to-night, while I supped with M. Blake, a little play was played out before me—­a little human play, where real people played real parts, where the woman clung to her womanhood, as you cling to yours, and the man to his manhood, as does M. Cartel; where the stage effects were smiles and glances and eyes and hair—­”

Jacqueline nodded, but said not a word.

“And as I watched, the thought came to me—­the mad thought, that I had, perhaps, lost something—­that I had, perhaps, put something from me.  Oh, it was a possession!  A possession of some evil spirit!”

Max sprang from the chair, and began to pace up and down the shadowed room, while the little Jacqueline, sitting back upon her heels in a stillness almost Oriental, watched, evolving some thought of her own.

“And so madame desired to strangle the evil spirit with her beautiful hair?”

The hurried steps ceased.

“I wished to see the woman in me—­and to dismiss her!”

“And was she easily dismissed?”

The new question seemed curiously pregnant.  Max heard it, and in swift response came back again to the dressing-table, took the hair from Jacqueline’s hands and began again to intertwist it with the boyish locks.