“You think so?” Her voice warmed and vibrated; through the vague darkness he felt her eyes search his face.

“Undoubtedly.”

“Ah, you love him?” The voice dropped to a great gentleness—­a gentleness that touched him in a strange degree.

“It would be difficult to tell you what he has been to me,” he said.  “Our friendship has been a thing of great value.  Has he ever told you how we met?”

“He has told me!” Her tone was still low—­still curiously attractive.  “And he appreciates very highly, monsieur, the affection you have given him.”

She paused; and Blake, looking down upon Paris, was conscious of that pause as of something pregnant and miraculous.  It filled the moment, combining, with the soft texture of her garments and the faint scent from her hair, to weave a spell subtle as it was intangible.

“There is nothing to appreciate,” he made answer.  “I am merely a commonplace mortal who found in him something uncommon.  The appreciation is mine entirely—­the appreciation of the youth, the vitality he expresses.”

“Ah, but you do yourself an injustice!” She spoke impulsively and, as if alarmed at her own eagerness, broke off and began anew in a soberer voice.  “I mean, monsieur, that friendship is not a solitary affair.  Whatever you discerned in Max, Max must equally have discerned in you.”

“I wonder!” He turned his gaze from the lights of the city to the rustling trees of the plantation.  The hour was magical, the situation beyond belief.  Standing there upon the balcony, suspended as it were between heaven and earth, companioned by this wonderful, familiar, unfamiliar being, he seemed to see his own soul—­to see it from afar off and with a great lucidity.  “I wonder!” he said again; and the sadness, the discontent that stalked him in lonely moments touched him briefly, like the shadow of a travelling cloud.

“What do you wonder, monsieur?”

“The meaning of it all, princess!  Existence is such a chase.  I, perhaps, hunt friendship—­and find Max; I, perhaps, dream that I have found my goal, while to him I may be but a wayside inn—­a place to linger in and leave!  We both follow the chase, but who can say if we mark the same quarry?  It’s a puzzling world!”

“Monsieur, it is sometimes a glorious world!” So swift was her change of voice, so impulsive the gesture with which she turned to him, that the vividness of a suggested Max startled him.  She was infinitely like to Max—­Max when life intoxicated him, when he threw out both arms to embrace it.

“When you look like that, princess,” he cried, “I could forget everything—­I could take your hand, and show you all my heart, for you literally are the boy!”

There was another pause—­a pause fraught with poignant things.  Standing there, between heaven and earth, they were no longer creatures of conventionality, fettered by individual worlds.  They were two souls conscious of an affinity.