It was Max’s turn to laugh.  “Ah, but I am better now!  I am quite all right now!  It was only for the moment!” He made a little sound, half shy, half relieved.  “It was, I suppose, as you expected; I tired myself with carrying up these things, and then I still more tired myself with trying to block in my picture, and then—­”

“Yes, then?”

“No more—­nothing.”

“I’m sceptical of that.”

Max glanced up.  “Well, to you I always say the truth.  The girl Jacqueline came in and chattered to me, and—­”

“Oh, ho!”

“Do not say that!  I cannot bear it.”

“Nonsense!  I’m only teasing you!  Though why a little girl with hair like spun silk and skin like ivory—­”

“Ah!  You admire her, then?”

“I do vastly—­in the abstract.”

“And what does that mean—­in the abstract?”

“Oh, I don’t know!  I suppose it means that if I were a painter I might use her as a model, or if I were a poet I might string a verse to her; but being an ordinary man, it means—­well, it means that I don’t feel drawn to kiss her.  Do you see?”

“I see.”  Max grew thoughtful; he disengaged the hands still lying lightly on his shoulders and walked back to his easel.

“You don’t a bit!  But it doesn’t matter!  What is it you’re doing?”

Max, idle before his canvas, did not reply.

“Mon ami?” he said, irrelevantly.

“What?”

“Tell me the sort of woman you want to kiss.”

Blake looked round in surprise.

“Well, to begin with, I used the word symbolically.  I’m a queer beggar, you know; the kiss means a good deal to me.  To me, it’s the key to the idealistic as well as the materialistic—­the toll at the gateway.  I never kiss the light woman.”

“No?” Max’s voice was very low, his hands hung by his sides, the look in his half-veiled eyes was strange.  “Then what is she like—­the woman you would kiss?”

“Oh, she has no bodily form.  One does not say ‘her hair shall be black’ or ‘her hair shall be red’ any more than one makes an image of God.  She dwells in the mysterious.  Even when the time comes and she steps into reality, mystery will still cling to her.  There must always be the wonder—­the miracle.”  He spoke softly, as he always spoke when sentiment entrapped him.  His native turn of thought found vent at these odd times and made him infinitely interesting.  The slight satire that was ordinarily wont to twist his smile was smoothed away, and a certain sadness stole into its place; his green eyes lost their keenness of observation and looked into a space obscure to others.  In these rare moments he was essentially of his race and of his country.

“No,” he added, as if to himself, “a man does not say ’her hair shall be red’ or ’her hair shall be black’!”

“It is very curious—­very strange—­a dream like that!” Max’s voice was a mere whisper.