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 receive his friend?”

She spoke, not in the English which Max invariably used, but in French; and the sound of her voice entangled Blake’s senses.  It seemed the boy’s voice at its lowest and tenderest, but touched with new inflections tantalizing as they were delightful.  Self-consciousness fled before it; he was at one with the sister as he had been at one with the brother on the crisp white morning when comradeship had been sealed to the marching of soldiers’ feet and the rattle of fife and drum.

“Princess,” he said, “I shall be as frank as Max himself would be!  The situation is overwhelming; do with me what you will!  If I intrude, dismiss me!  I know how fascinating solitude on this balcony can be.”

She smiled again, but gravely with a hint of the portrait’s mystery.

“Solitude is an excellent thing, monsieur, but to-night I think I need the solace of a fellow-being.  Will you not stay and keep me company?”

He looked at the smiling lips, the serious, searching eyes, and he spoke his thoughts impulsively.

“I shall be the most honored man in Paris!”

“That is well!  Then we will talk, and watch the stars.”

Here the naive imperiousness of the boy gleamed out, familiar and reassuring, and Maxine walked across the room, turning at the window to look back for Blake.

“He is not without appreciation—­this little brother of mine?” She put the question softly, tentatively, as she and Blake leaned over the balcony railing.

“He is an artist, princess.”