in that way."

Max laughed and took a cigarette from his pocket. His nerves were
tingling, his blood racing to the thought of the precipice upon which he
stood. One false step and the fabric of his existence was imperilled!
The adventurer awoke in him alive and alert.

"She intrigues you, then--Maxine?"

"Marvellously--as the Sphinx intrigues me! To begin with, why the name?
You Max! She Maxine!"

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!" Very carefully he
lighted his cigarette. His whole nature was quivering to the dangers of
this masked confession--this dancing upon the edge of the precipice. "My
father was a man of ideas!" He carefully threw the match down into the
rue Mueller.

"Your father, I take it, was a personage of importance?" Blake was
momentarily sarcastic.

"A personage, yes," the boy admitted, "but that is not the point. The
point is that he was a man of ideas, who understood the body and the
soul. A man who trained a child in every outdoor sport until it was one
with nature, and then taught it to entrap nature and bend her to the
uses of art. He was very great--my father!"

"He is dead?"

"Yes; he is dead. He died the year before Maxine married."

"Ah, she married?" Absurd as it might seem, there was a fleeting shadow
of disappointment discernible in Blake's voice.

"Yes, she married. After my father's death she went to my aunt in
Petersburg, and there she forgot both nature and art--and me."

"And who was the man she married?"

Max shrugged his shoulders to the ears. "Does it serve any purpose to
relate? He was very charming, very accomplished; how was my sister, at
eighteen, to know that he was also very callous, very profligate, very
cruel? These things happen every day in every country!"

"Did she love him?" Blake was leaning forward in his chair; he had
forgotten to keep his cigar alight.

"Love him?" With a vehemence electric as it was unheralded, Max's voice
altered; with the passionate changefulness of the Russian, indifference
was swept aside, emotion gushed forth. "Love him? Yes, she loved
him--she, who was as proud as God! She loved him so t