“Boy!” cried Blake.  “What a situation!”

“She drove, drove for hours, feeling nothing of the biting cold, seeing nothing of the imprisoning white world about her, goaded by one idea—­the terror of life—­the terror of giving herself again—­”

“She fled,” cried Blake, with sudden intuition.  “She never returned to Petersburg!” He had risen from his chair; he was supremely, profoundly interested.

“She never returned to her own house.  Three days after that wild drive she left Russia—­left Russia and came—­”

“To you!” cried Blake.  “What a superb situation!  She came back to you—­the companion of her youth—­to you, adventuring here in your own odd way!  Oh, boy, it’s great!”

“It is strange—­yes!” said Max, suddenly curbing himself.

“Strange?  It’s stupendous!” Blake caught him by the shoulder, wheeling him round, looking straight into his face.  “Boy!  You know what I’m going to ask?  You know what I’m wanting with all my heart and soul?”

The pressure of his hand was hard; he was the Blake of rare moments—­the Blake roused from nonchalant good-nature into urgency of purpose.  Max felt a doubt, a thin, wavering fear flutter across his mind.

“Mon cher,” he stammered, “I do not know.  How could I know?”

“It’s this, then!  With all my heart and soul I want to know this sister of yours.”

CHAPTER XXIV

It came sharply, as the crash of a breaking vessel might come to the ear—­this ring of reality in Blake’s voice!  Abruptly, unpleasantly, Max came back to the world and the consequences of his act.

Impressions and instincts spring to the artist mind; in a moment he was armored for self-preservation—­so straitly armored that every sentiment, even the vague-stirring jealousy of himself that had been given sudden birth, was overridden and cast into the dark.

With the old hauteur, the old touch of imperiousness, he returned Blake’s glance.

“Mon ami,” he said, gravely, “what you desire is impossible.”

Only a moment had intervened between Blake’s declaration and his reply, but it seemed to him that the universe had reeled and steadied again in that brief interval.

“And why impossible?”

Again it was the atmosphere 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?”