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.
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!"