The door of her _appartement_ closed behind Maxine, and she turned,
swift as a coursed hare, to the door of M. Cartel.
No hesitation touched her; she needed sanctuary; sanctuary she must
have. She opened her neighbor's door, careless of what might lie behind,
bringing with her into the quiet rooms a breath of fierce disorder.
The living-room, with its piano and its homely chairs and table, was
lighted by a common lamp; and the little Jacqueline, the only occupant,
sat in the radius of the light, peacefully sewing at a blue muslin gown
that was to adorn a Sunday excursion into the country.
At the sound of the stormy entry she merely raised her head; but at
sight of her visitor, she was on her feet in an instant, the heap of
muslin flowing in a blue cascade from her lap to the floor.
"Madame!"
"Hide me!" cried Maxine.
"Madame!"
"Lock the outer door! And if M. Blake should knock--"
Jacqueline made no further comment. When a visitor's face is blanched
and her limbs tremble as did those of Maxine, the Jacquelines of this
world neither question nor hesitate. She went across the room without a
word, and the key clicked in the lock.
Maxine was standing in the middle of the room when Jacqueline returned;
her body was still quivering, her nostrils fluttering, her fingers
twisting and intertwisting in an excess of emotion; and at sight of the
familiar little figure, words broke from her with the fierceness of a
freed torrent.
"Jacqueline! You see before you a mad woman! A mad woman--and one filled
with the fear of her madness! They say the insane are mercifully
oblivious. It is untrue!" She almost cried the last words and, turning,
began a swift pacing of the room.
"Madame!" Jacqueline caught her breath at her own daring. "Madame, you
know at last, then, that he loves you?"
Maxine stopped and her burning eyes fixed themselves upon the girl. This
speech of Jacqueline's was a breach of all their former relations, but
her brain had no room for pride. She was grappling with vital facts.
"I know at last that he loves me?" she repeated, confusedly.
"That he loves you, madame; that, unknowingly, he has always loved you.
How else could he have treated Monsieur Max so sacredly--almost as he
might have treated his own child?"
But Maxine was not dealing in psychological subtleties.
"Love!" she cried out. "Love! All the world is in a conspiracy over this
love!"
"Because love is the only real thing, madame."
"Perhaps! But not the love of which you speak. The love of the soul, but
not the love of the body!"
"Madame, can one truly give the soul and refuse the body? Is not the
instinct of love to give all?"
The little Jacqueline spoke her truth with a frail confidence very
touching to behold. She was a child of the people, her sole weapons
against the world were a certain blonde beauty, a certain engaging
youthfulness; but she looked Maxine steadfastly in the eyes, meeting
the anger, the scorn, the fear compassed in her glance.
"I know the world, madame; it is not a pretty place. When I was sixteen
years old, I left my parents because it called to me--and in the
distance its voice was pleasant. I left my home; I had lovers." She
shrugged her shoulders with an extreme philosophy. "I tried
everything--except love. Then--I met Lucien!" Her philosophy merged
curiously to innocence, almost to the soft innocence of a child. "I ran
away again, madame; I fled to Lize." She paused. "Poor Lize! She has a
good heart! That was the night at the Bal Tabarin. That night Lucien
opened his arms, and I flung myself into them."
She spoke with perfect artlessness, ignorant of a world other than her
own, innocent of a moral code other than that which she followed.
Once again, as on the day she had first visited the _appartement_ and
made acquaintance with the old painter and his wife, dread of some
mysterious force filled Maxine. What marvellous power was this that
could smile secure at poverty and oblivion--that could cast a halo of
true emotion over a Bal Tabarin?
"It is not true!" she cried out, in answer to herself.
"Not true, madame? Why did I choose Lucien, who is nothing to look
upon--who is an artist and penniless?"
She ran across to Maxine; she caught her by the shoulders.
"Oh, madame! How beautiful you are--and how blind! You bandage your
eyes, and you tighten the knot. Oh, my God, if I could but open it for
you!"
"And reduce me to kisses and folly and tears?"
"One may drift into heaven on a kiss!" Jacqueline's voice was like some
precious metal, molten and warm.
"Or one may slip into hell! Do you think I have not known what it is to
kiss? It was from a kiss I fled to-night."
Her tone was fervent as it was reckless, and Jacqueline stood aghast.
The entire denial of love was comprehensible to her, if inexplicable;
but her mind refused this problem of realization and rejection.
"Madame--" she began, quickly, but she paused on the word, listening;
the sound of Max's door opening and closing came distinctly to the ear,
followed by a footstep descending the stairs. "Monsieur Édouard!" she
whispered, finger on lip.
Maxine, also, had heard, and a look of relief broke the tension of her
expression.
"He is gone. That is well!"
Something in her look, in her voice startled Jacqueline anew.
"Why do you speak like that, madame? Why do you look so cold?"
"I am sane again, Jacqueline."
"And Monsieur Édouard? Is he sane, I wonder? Is he cold? Oh, madame, he
loves you!"
"I am going to prove his love."
"But, madame! Oh, madame, love isn't a matter of proving; it is an
affair of giving--giving--giving with all the heart."
"Trust me, Jacqueline! I understand. Good-night!"
Jacqueline framed no word, but her eyes spoke many things.
"Say good-night, Jacqueline! Forget that you have entertained a mad
woman!"
"Good-night, madame!"
But the little Jacqueline, left alone, shook her head many times,
leaving her heap of blue muslin neglected upon the floor.
"Poor child!" she said softly to herself. "Poor child! Poor child!"