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.
Jacqueline raised herself from her crouching position, the more easily to gratify her curiosity.
"It is extraordinary—the change!" she murmured. "Extraordinary! Madame, let us complete it! Let us remove that ugly coat!" Excitedly, and without permission, she began to free Max of the boy's coat, while Max yielded with a certain passive excitement. "And, now, what can we find to substitute? Ah!" She gave a cry of delight and ran to the bed, over the foot of which was thrown a faded gold scarf—a strip of rich fabric such as artists delight in, for which Max had bargained only the day before in the rue André de Sarte.