She laughed; she wandered round the room, touching, appraising the little familiar trifles associated with that past hour; at last she sat down before her mirror, and there Jacqueline found her ten minutes later, when curiosity could no longer be withheld and she came creeping across the landing for news of the night's doings.
Maxine heard her enter; heard her search the _salon_ and then the studio; finally called to her.
The door opened, and Maxine looked round, the smile still upon her lips.
"No soup for me to-night, Jacqueline? Not even tea?"
Jacqueline caught the happy lightness of the tone, and silently nodded her blonde head as she tiptoed into the room.
"Ah, madame has had a banquet of the mind! Madame has no need of my poor food."
Maxine picked up a comb and arranged the tendrils of hair that curled about her temples.
"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.
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.
But Maxine was set to her point. "Answer my question," she insisted. "I wish to know. I am, above all things, practical."
It was to Jacqueline's credit that she did not smile, that she simply murmured: "Who doubts it, madame?"
"Yes; I am, above all things, practical. In this affair of the woman, I know exactly where I stand."
The girl made no comment; but even to Maxine's own ears, her declaration left a little suggestion of over-vehemence vibrating in the air; and startled by this suggestion, she did the least wise, the most human thing possible, she accentuated it.