he passed into the familiar room, each object
appealed to him in its appointed place--in its just and proper value.
The quaint odd articles of furniture that he and Max had chosen in
company! The pictures that he had hung upon the white walls at Max's
bidding! The Russian _samovar_, the books, the open cigarette-box, each
of which spoke and breathed of Max!

Every object came to him clearly in the quiet light of the lamp upon the
bureau; it seemed like the setting of a play, where the atmosphere had
been carefully created, the details definitely woven into a perfect
chain.

He stood, looking upon the silent room, wondering what would
happen--convinced that something must happen; and at last, with the same
quietness--the same intense naturalness, perfect as extreme art--a
slight sound came from the balcony and a woman stepped into the subdued
light.

She stepped into the quiet lamplight and paused; and Blake's first
subconscious feeling was that, miraculously, the empty room had taken on
life and meaning--that this sudden, gracious presence filled and
possessed it absolutely and by right divine.

She seemed very tall as she stood looking down into the room, her rich
hair crowning her head, her young figure clothed in white and wrapped in
a cloak of soft mysterious gray that fell from her shoulders simply, yet
with the dignity of a royal mantle.

She stood for a full minute, looking at him, almost it seemed sharing
his own uncertainty; then, with a little gesture that irresistibly
conjured Max, she stepped into the room--and into his life.

"Monsieur," she said, very softly, "I am the sister of Max; you are his
friend. It is surely meant that we know each other!"

CHAPTER XXVII

It was a perfect moment; one of those rare and delicate spaces of time
in which Fate's fingers seem to strike a chord at once poignant and
satisfying, faint and far-reaching. The lamp-lit room, the open window
and, beyond, the balcony veiled in the obscurity of the night! It was a
fair setting for romance; and romance, young, beautiful, gracious as in
the fairy-tale, had emerged from it into Blake's life. A smile, a
word--and an atmosphere had been created! The things of the past were
obscured, and the things of the present made omnipotent.

"What a brother this is of mine!" Maxine smiled again with a little
quiver of humor that set her eyes alight. "Is it not like him to invite
me to criticise my portrait, and leave me to rece