lt herself actually in need of the physical support.
The two gendarmes moved about in noiseless obedience, their faces
expressionless as masks. They did not glance at Maxine, giving
themselves entirely to the task at which they had been set. But their
superior officer did not once take his eyes from the pure profile she
turned scornfully towards him. I knew why he watched her thus, and
thought of a foolish, child's game I used to play twenty years ago, at
little-boy-and-girl parties: the game of "Hide-the-Handkerchief." While
one searched for the treasure, those who knew where it was stood by,
saying: "Now you are warm. Now you are hot--boiling hot. Now you are
cool again. Now you are ice cold." It was as if we were five players at
this game, and Maxine de Renzie's white, deathly smiling face was
expected to proclaim against her will: "Now you are warm. Now you are
hot. Now you are ice cold."
There was a table in the middle of the room, with one or two volumes of
photographs and brightly-bound guide books of Paris upon it, as well as
my hat and gloves which I had tossed down as I came in. The gendarmes
picked up these things, examined them, laid them aside, peered under the
table; peeped behind the silk cushions on the sofa, opened the doors and
drawers of a bric-a-brac cabinet and a small writing desk, lifted the
corners of the rugs on the bare, polished floor; and finally, bowing
apologies to Maxine for disturbing her, took out the logs from the
fireplace where the fire was ready for lighting, and pried into the
vases on the mantel. Also they shook the silk and lace window curtains,
and moved the pictures on the walls. When all this had been done in
vain, the pair confessed with shrugs of the shoulders that they were at
a loss.
During the search, which had been conducted in silence, I had a curious
sensation, caused by my intense sympathy with Maxine's suffering. I felt
as if my heart were the pendulum of a clock which had been jarred until
it was uncertain whether to go on or stop. Once, when the gendarmes were
peering under the sofa, or behind the sofa cushions, a grey shadow round
Maxine's eyes made her beautiful face look like a death-mask in the
white electric light, which did not fail now, or spare her any cruelty
of revelation. She was smiling contemptuously still--always the same
smile--but her forehead appeared to have been sprinkled with diamond
dust.
I saw that dewy sparkle, and wondered, sickeningl
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