Jacqueline was twisting the buckle of her belt in nervous perturbation.
"Answer me! It was since that morning?"
"No! Yes! Oh, it was before that morning. Oh, madame—monsieur!" She wrung her hands in a confusion of misery. "Oh, do not torture me! I cannot tell you how it was—or when. I cannot explain. You know how these things come—from here!" She lightly touched the place where she imagined her heart to be.
Max, sitting quiet, made no betrayal of the agony of apprehension at work within.
"And how many others have had this—instinct? M. Cartel? M. Blake?"
So surprising, so grotesque seemed the questions, that self-confidence rushed suddenly in upon Jacqueline. She threw back her head and laughed—laughed until her old inconsequent self was restored to power.
"Lucien! Monsieur Édouard! Oh, la, la! How droll!"
"Then they do not know?"
"Know? Are they not men? And are men not children?"
The vast superiority—the wordly wisdom in the babyish face was at once so comical and so reassuring that irresistibly Max laughed too; and at the laugh, the little Jacqueline dropped to her knees beside the dressing-table and looked up, smiling, radiant.