How he had counted upon the moment!  How he had loved and feared it in ardent, varying imagination!  And now, that it had at last arrived, how hopelessly his prearranged actions eluded him, how humanly his rehearsed sentences failed to marshal themselves for speech!  As he climbed up the plantation, dazzled by the sun, intoxicated by the budding summer, he felt the merest unsophisticated youth—­the merest novice, dumb and impotent under his own emotions.

Then, suddenly, all self-distrust—­even all self-consciousness—­was reft from him and he stood quite still, the blood burning his face, a strange sensation contracting his throat.

“At last!  After a hundred thousand years!”

The first impression that fled across his mind was the intense familiarity of Blake’s voice—­the delightful familiarity of Blake’s phrasing; the second, the brimming joy of regained companionship.

“Mon ami!  Cher ami!"

His hands went out and were caught in Blake’s; and all existence became a mirror to the blue, smiling sky.

No further word was said; Blake took possession of his arm in the old, accustomed fashion, and silently—­in that silence which makes speech seem poor—­they turned and began to pace up and down the gravelled path.

There was nothing beautiful in the plantation of the Sacre-Coeur; the shrubs, for all their valor of green, were slight things if one thought of forest trees, the grass was a mere pretence of grass.  But the human mind is a great magician, weaving glories from within, and neither Blake nor Max had will for anything but the moment set precisely as it was.

For the gift of the universe, Blake could not have told why the mere holding of the boy’s arm, the mere regulating of his pace to his, filled him with such satisfaction; nor, for the same magnificent bribe, could Max have explained the glow—­the all-sufficing sense of fulfilment, born of the physical contact.

For long they paced up and down, wrapped in their cloak of content; then some look, some movement brought the world back, and Blake paused.

“What a selfish brute I am!  What about the work?  Tell me, is it done?”

Max looked up, the sun discovering the little flecks of gold in his gray eyes; Max laughed from sheer happiness.

“Mon ami! But absolutely I had forgotten!  Figure it to yourself!  I came out of the house, hot and cold for my poor picture, and immediately we met—­” He laughed again. “Mon ami!  What a compliment to you!”

“It is done then—­the great work?”

“Yes; it is finished.”

“Then I must see it this minute—­this minute—­this very minute!”

The definiteness of the tone was like the clasp of the arm, and Max glowed anew.  By a swift, emotional effort, he conjured up the longings that had preyed upon him in his self-imposed solitude—­conjured them for the sheer joy of feeling them evaporate before reality.