"Jacqueline," she said, after a silence, "what do you consider the highest thing?"
The question might have been astonishing, but her visitor did not betray surprise by even the quiver of an eyelash.
"Love, madame," she said.
And Maxine did not flash round upon her in one of her swift rages, did not even draw her brows together into their frowning line. She merely gazed into the mirror, as if weighing the statement judicially.
"All people do not hold that opinion," she said, at last.
Jacqueline shrugged her shoulders in the exercise of an infinite patience. "No, madame?"
"No. M. Blake talked to-night of 'the highest thing,' and he did not mean love."
"No, madame?" Jacqueline was very guileless.
But guileless as her tone was—nay, by reason of its guilelessness—it touched Maxine in some shadowy corner of her woman's consciousness; and spurred by a subtle, disquieting suggestion, she turned in her chair, and fixed her serious gray eyes upon her visitor.
"What are your thoughts, Jacqueline?"