ght and
seemed possessed of a curious dignity. All the animation had left her
face, beneath the eyes were shadows, and in the eyes a tragic
sadness--the sadness that the soul creates for itself.

Blake rose also and, side by side, very quietly, they left the
restaurant. In the street outside, the cab that had assisted in the
day's adventures still waited their pleasure.

He handed her to her place and paused, his foot upon the step.

"And now, liege lady--where?"

She looked at him gravely and answered without a tremor, "To Max's
studio."

Surprise--if surprise touched him--showed not at all upon his face. He
gave the order quietly and explicitly, and took his place beside her.

Down the broad street of Versailles they wheeled, but both were too
preoccupied to see the lurking ghosts of a past _regime_ that lie so
palpably in the shadows, and presently Blake's hand found hers once
more.

"You are cold?"

She shook her head.

Through the cool night they drove, under the jewelled cloak of the sky,
rushing forward toward Paris as Max had once rushed in the mysterious
north express.

Blake did not speak or move again until the city was close about them;
then, with a gesture that startled her by its unexpectedness, he drew
from his hand the signet ring he always wore--a ring familiar to Max as
the stones of the rue Mueller--and slipped it over her third finger.

"Oh, Ned!" She started as the ring slipped into place, and her voice
trembled with fear and superstition.

He pressed her hand. "Don't refuse it! The ring is the emblem of the
eternal, and all my thoughts for you belong to eternity."

No more was said; they skimmed through the familiar ways until Maxine
could have cried aloud for grace, and at last they stopped at the corner
of the rue Andre de Sarte.

She stood aside as Blake dismissed the cab, she knew that had speech
been demanded of her then she could not have brought forth a word, so
parched were her lips, so impotent her tongue.

Her ordeal confronted her; no human power could eliminate it now. To her
was the disentangling of knotted threads, the sorting of the colors in
the scheme of things. She averted her face from Blake as they mounted
the Escalier de Sainte-Marie, and her hand clung for support to the iron
railing.

Familiar to the point of agony was the open doorway, the dark hall of
the house in the rue Mueller. Side by side they entered; side by side,
and in complete silence, they m