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Updated: June 3, 2025
The night was close about them; Paris was below, gilding the rose of human love; the church domes were above, tending whitely toward the stars. Maxine moved nearer to him, her heart beating fast, her whole radiant being dispensing fragrance. "Monsieur, if I am your lady, pay me homage!" The enchantment was delicate and perfect; her voice wove a spell, her slight, strong fingers trembled in his.
Then I skirted round to the front of the house, walking stealthily on the soft grass, and would have made a noiseless dash for the gate had I not seen a stream of light flowing out through the open front door across the lawn. I checked myself just in time to draw back without being seen by a woman and a tall man moving slowly down the path. They were Maxine and, no doubt, du Laurier.
Again he held her to him, his whole life seeming to flow out upon his thoughts and to envelop her, then his arms relaxed and very soberly he took, first one of her hands, and then the other, kissing each in turn. "Maxine!" "Ned!" The word faltered on her lips. "That's right!" he whispered. "I only wanted you to say my name. Good-bye now! Don't fret for me!
He had been prepared for the change evident in Berselius's face and manner, for Maxine had told him in a few words of the accident and loss of memory, and as he took his seat by the bedside he was about to put some questions relative to the injury, when Berselius forestalled him. Berselius knew something about medicine.
For an instant Max scanned the dark plantation with knitted brows; then he looked over his shoulder with a peculiar smile. "We are twins, mon cher!" he said, taking secret joy in the elaboration of his lie. "My mother was a Frenchwoman, by name Maxine, and when she died at our birth, my father in his grief bestowed the name upon us both the boy and the girl Max and Maxine!"
Pausing, Maxine caught the deep, humorous tones of M. Cartel himself, broken first by an unknown voice, quick, tense, typically Parisian, then by the light laugh of Jacqueline. In her cruel perfection of triumph, she had no need to fear these voices these little evidences of sociability. They could not hurt her, for was she not impervious to pain?
Neither Max nor Maxine had any place in her conceptions. She saw Lize, broken but justified, because she had given when life asked of her; she saw the little Jacqueline, with the halo of candle-light turning her blonde hair to gold; in a distant dream she saw the frail, steadfast Madame Salas, and in a near, poignant vision she saw Blake, and her soul melted within her.
"You'd better not say such silly things to Uncle Eric," she said, staring at the pattern of the cornice. "Aren't those funny, gargoyley faces up there? I never noticed them before. But oh about Mr. Dundas and Maxine de Renzie I don't think, really, that he troubles himself much about her any more, for the other day I I happened to ask what she was playing in Paris now, and he didn't know.
Why did I choose Lucien, who is nothing to look upon who is an artist and penniless?" She ran across to Maxine; she caught her by the shoulders. "Oh, madame! How beautiful you are and how blind! You bandage your eyes, and you tighten the knot. Oh, my God, if I could but open it for you!" "And reduce me to kisses and folly and tears?" "One may drift into heaven on a kiss!"
Emptiness there: but I left the door open, and the electricity switched on. They might change their minds, or be more subtle than they wished to seem. Maxine threw herself on the sofa, gathering up the necklace from the cushion where it had fallen, and lifting it in both hands pressed the glittering mass against her lips and cheeks.
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