Young, luxurious summer palpitated through the dusk, fanning the ardor in her heart.  She ran forward, drawn by its allurement; then, all at once, she stopped, her hand flying to her heart, her breath suspended in a little cry of surprise.  Blake had slipped unheard into the appartement, and was awaiting her on the balcony.

At her cry, he turned—­wheeled round toward her—­and his eyes scanned her surprised, betraying face.

“You are glad!” he cried, in sudden self-expression.  “You are glad to see me!” The words were hot as they were abrupt, they seared her with their swiftness and their conviction, they were as a raiding army before which all ramparts fell.  Mentally, morally, she felt herself sway until preconceived ideas drifted to and fro, weeds upon a tide.

“Yes,” she answered, scarcely aware of her own voice.  “I am glad.”

Where now were the subtle ways, the divers interlacing paths wherein Maxine was to pursue her chase, delivering her quarry into the hands of Max?  Where were the barbed and potent shafts whereby that capture was to be achieved?  All had vanished into the night; she stood before her intended victim unarmed, ungirt, and—­miracle of miracles—­undismayed!

She and Blake confronted each other.  Their lips were dumb, but their looks embraced.  Fate—­life—­was in the air, in the myriad voices of the night, the myriad pulses of their bodies, the myriad thoughts that wheeled and flashed within their brains.

This knowledge rushed in upon her swimming senses, upon eyes suddenly opened, ears suddenly made free of the music of the spheres; and her hand—­the hand that had first girded on her boy’s attire—­went out to Blake like that of any girl.

It was nature’s signal, stronger in its frailty than any attained art of woman; and he answered to it as man has ever answered—­ever will answer.

“Oh, my love!” he cried.  “My love!” And his arms went round her.

It is sacrilege to attempt analysis of birth or love or death.  Death and birth, the mysteries!  Love, the revelation!  Man, as he has existed through all time, had being in Blake’s embrace; woman, as she has been from the first, lived in Maxine’s leap of the heart, her leap of the spirit as the ecstasy of his touch thrilled her.  Here was no coldness; here was no sensuality.  Divinity manifested itself, no longer above, but within them.  The lights in the sky were divine, but so were the lights of the town.  Divinity fired their souls, merging each in each; but as truly it fired their clasping hands, their lips trembling to kiss.

Maxine—­removed by fabulous distances from Max, from the studio, from all accepted things—­breathed her wonderment in an unconscious appeal.

“Speak to me!”

And Blake, awed and enraptured, whispered his answer.

“There is nothing to say that you do not know.  I worship you.  I bent my knee and kissed the hem of your garment the first moment it brushed my path.  There is nothing to say that you do not know.  I have waited all my life for this.”