ere of their first meeting--the boy hedged
behind his pride, the man calmly breaking a way through that hedge.

Max shrugged. "The word is final. It explains itself."

With a conciliatory, affectionate movement, Blake's hand slipped from
his shoulder to his arm. "Don't be absurd, boy," he said, gently.
"Nothing on God's earth is impossible. 'Impossibility' is a word coined
by weak people behind which to shelter. Why may I not know your sister?"

Max drew away his arm, not ostentatiously, but with definite purpose.

"Can you not understand without explanation--you, who comprehend so
well?"

"Frankly, I cannot."

"My sister is in Paris secretly. She would think it very ill of me to
discuss her affairs--"

Blake looked quickly into the cold face. "I wonder if she would, boy?"
he said. "I think I'll go and see!" With perfect seriousness he stepped
back into the studio, struck a match, lighted a candle and walked
deliberately to the easel, while Max, upon the balcony, held his breath
in astonishment.

For long he stood before the portrait; then at last he spoke, and his
words were as unexpected as his action had been.

"She loves you, boy?" he asked.

"Loves me? Oh, of course!" Max was startled into the reply.

"Then 'twill be all right!" With a touch of finality he blew out his
candle and came back to the balcony. "It will be all right, or I'm no
judge of human nature! That woman could be as proud as Lucifer where she
disliked or despised, but she'd be all toleration, all generosity where
her love was touched. Tell her I'm your friend and, believe me, she'll
ask no other passport to her favor."

Max, standing in the darkness--eager of glance, quick of thought,
acutely attentive to every tone of Blake's voice--suddenly became
cognizant of his demon of jealousy, felt its subtle stirring in his
heart, its swift spring from heart to throat. A wave of blood surged to
his face and receded, leaving him pale and trembling, but with the
intense self-possession sometimes born of such moments, he stepped into
the studio and relighted the candle Blake had blown out.

"Why are you so anxious to know my sister?" His voice was measured--it
gave no suggestion either of pleasure or of pain.

Blake, unsuspicious, eager for his own affairs, followed him into the
room.

"I can't define the desire," he said; "I feel that I'd find something
wonderful behind that face; I feel that"--he paused and laughed a
little--"that somehow