Max nodded seriously.  “You have.  She has made me realize.”

“Ah!  That was like her!” It was Blake’s turn to walk to the window; and the boy, watching him eagerly, was unable to place the constraint that suddenly tinged his voice, suddenly veiled his manner.

“Ned,” he was urged to say, “tell me!  Has she brought us nearer together—­my sister Maxine?”

Blake hesitated; for even your Irishman, brimming to confide, is reticent when he stands before his holy of holies.

“Ned, tell me!”

The tone was enticing.  Blake turned from the window, strode back across the room, cast an affectionate arm about the boy’s shoulder.

“She is a worker of miracles—­your sister Maxine!”

The words were warm, the clasp was warm; Max’s inspiration gushed up, a fountain of faith.

“She understands you?  She shows you ’the higher things’?”

“By God, she does!”

“Then you shall see her once more!” The ideal was predominant; zeal and youth, the white-hot gifts, were lavished at Blake’s feet.  “Come to the studio to-night, and I shall leave you in her company willingly, gladly, with all my heart.  Ned!  Say you will come!”

And Blake, dreaming his own dream, pressed the boy’s shoulder and laughed, and answered with the jest that covers so many things.

“Will I come?  Will a man turn back from the gate of heaven when Saint Peter uses his key?”

CHAPTER XXXII

Perfect self-deception can be a rare, almost a precious thing, ranking with all absurd, delightful faiths from the child’s sweet certainty of fairydom to the enthusiast’s belief in the potency of his own star.

Maxine, in her little white bedroom, arraying herself for Blake, was wrapped in a cloud of illusion, translated to a sphere above the common earth by this magic blindness.  Never again while life lasted was she to stand as she stood to-night, eyes searching her mirror with perfect steadfast sincerity, lips parted in breathless joy of confidence.  Never again!  But for the moment the illusion was complete.  She saw the triumphing soul of Max glimmer through her own fair body, saw the boy’s faith carried like a banner in her woman’s hands.

Her dressing was a tremulous affair, tinged with a fine excitement.  Again she clothed herself in the soft white dress, the long gray cloak of former meetings; but, banishing the willing Jacqueline, she coiled her hair with her own hands and last, most significant touch, pinned a white rose at her breast.

It was the night of nights!  No need to assure herself of the fact; the knowledge sang in her blood, burned in her cheeks.  The night of nights!  When Maxine would receive the soul of Blake and place it, mystic and sacramental, in the keeping of Max!

The folly of the affair, the naivety of it, made for tears as well as smiles; and Maxine, glowing to the eternal, aspiring flame, looked her last into the little mirror that had so carefully preserved its secrets, and passed across the hall to the salon, where the night stretched beckoning, velvet fingers through the open window.