ou with such a difference--"

He stopped as swiftly as he had begun, and in the silence Max quailed
under his glance. Out of the unknown, fear assailed him; it seemed that
under this mastering scrutiny his mask must drop from him, his very
garments be rent. In sudden panic his thought skimmed possibilities like
a circling bird and lighted upon the first-found point of safety.

"She is my sister," he said, in a voice that shook a little. "She is my
sister--Maxine."

Blake's eyes still held his.

"But you never said you had a sister."

Max seized upon his bravado, flinging it round him as a garment.

"_Mon ami_," he cried, "we are not all as confiding as you! Besides, it
is not given to us all to possess five aunts, seven uncles, and
twenty-four first cousins! If I have but one sister, may I not guard her
as a secret?"

He spoke fast; his eyes flashed with the old light, half pleading, half
impertinent, his chin was lifted with the old defiant tilt. The effect
was gained. Blake's severity fell from him, and with a quick gesture of
affection he caught him by the shoulder.

"I'm well reproved!" he said. "Well reproved! 'Twas quite the right way
of telling me to mind my own affairs. And if she were _my_ sister--" He
turned again to the picture, but as his eyes met the mirrored eyes with
their profound, inscrutable look, his words broke off unaccountably.

"Yes, _mon ami_? If she were your sister--?" Max, with eager, stealthy
glance, was following his expressions.

But he did not answer; he stood lost in contemplation, speculating, he
knew not why, upon the question in the mirrored face.

CHAPTER XXIII

The studio was in darkness; the old leathern arm-chair was drawn close
to the window, and from its capacious depths Blake looked down upon the
lights of Paris, while Max, leaning over the balcony, looked upward at
the pale May stars clustering like jewelled flowers in the garden of the
sky.

They had finished dinner--a dinner cooked by Blake in the little kitchen
beyond the hall, and empty coffee-cups testified to a meal enjoyed to
its legitimate end. The sense of solitude--of an intimate hour--lay upon
the scene as intangibly and as definitely as did the darkness; but Max,
watching the pageant of the stars, resting his light body against the
iron railing, was filled with a mental restlessness, the nervous
reaction of the day's triumph. More than once he glanced at Blake, a
little gleam of uncertainty f