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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!"