brought
the color to her face as swiftly as if she had been taken in some guilty
act.

Blake saw the expression, and interpreted it wrongly.

"You are displeased, princess? I am a bad companion to-night?" He spoke
impulsively, with an anxiety in his voice that spurred her to a desire
to comfort him.

"When people are sympathetic, monsieur, they are companions, whether
good or bad. Is it not so?"

He moved a little nearer to her; neither was aware of the movement.

"Do you find me sympathetic?"

"Indeed, yes!" Her luminous glance rested on him thoughtfully.

"But you scarcely know me."

"Monsieur, I do know you."

"Through the boy, perhaps--" He spoke with a touch of impatience, but
she stopped him with upraised hand.

"You are angry with Max, therefore you must be silent! Anger does not
make for true judgment."

"Ah, that's unfair!" He laughed. "'Tis Max who is angry with me! You
know I came here to-night with open arms--to find him flown! Still, I
am willing to keep them open, and give the kiss of peace whenever he
relents--to please you."

"Ah, no, monsieur! To please him. To please him."

"Indeed, no! To please you--and no one else. If I followed my own
devices, I'd wait till he comes back, and box his ears. He'd very well
deserve it."

Maxine laughed; then, swift as a breeze or a racing cloud, her mood
changed.

"Monsieur, you care for Max?"

"What a question! I love Max. He's a star in my darkness--or was, until
the sun shone."

He paused, fearful of where his impulses had led him; but Maxine was all
sweetness, all seriousness.

"Am I, then, the sun, monsieur?"

In any other woman the words must have seemed a lure; but here was a
fairness, a frankness and dignity that lifted the question to another
and higher plane. Blake, comprehending, answered simply with the truth.

"Yes, you are the sun; and all my life I have been a sun-worshipper."

She made no comment; she accepted the words, waiting for the flow of
speech that she knew was close at hand--the speech, probably irrelevant,
certainly delightful, that he invariably poured forth at such a moment.

"Princess, do you know my country?"

She shook her head, smiling a little.

"Ah, then you don't understand my worship! In Ireland, nature condemns
us to a long, black, wet winter and a long, gray, wet spring, so that
the heart of a man is nearly drowned in his body, and he grows to
believe that his country is nothing but a neutral-tint