“Upon my word!  Well, upon my word!  There’s an extravagant young devil!  Why, in the name of God, would you destroy your canvas like that?”

“Why?  Because, my friend, I am I!  I do not work again upon a thing that I have marred!” His voice shook, trembling between excited laughter and tears.

Blake looked at him.  “Bless my soul, if he isn’t crying!  Come here to me!  You’re a baby!”

But Max turned on him, so furious that the hot anger in his eyes scorched the tears that hung there.

“A baby?  This much a baby, that I love my work so truly that I have set it upon an altar and made it my religion!  And when I find, as to-day, that it fails me I am damned—­my soul is lost!”

“And why does it fail you—­to-day?”

“I do not know!”

“Is that the truth?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Are you perfectly sure?  Are you perfectly sure that ’tisn’t I—­my presence here—?”

“You?” Max withered him with a scorn meant for himself as well.  “You rate yourself high, my friend, and you imagine my work a very trivial thing!”

“Nonsense!  Plenty of artists must have solitude.”

“Plenty of fools!  An artist is engrossed in his art so perfectly that when he stands before his canvas no world exists but the world of his imagination.  Do you suppose me to be affected because you sit somewhere in the background, smoking over the fire?  Oh, no!  I trust I have more capacity to concentrate!”

He shrugged his shoulders to the ears; he raised his eyebrows in the very elaboration of indifference.

Blake, hot as he in pride or anger, caught sudden fire.

“Upon my soul, you’re damned complimentary!  I think, if you have no objection, I’ll be wishing you good-day!” He picked up his hat, and strode to the door.

[Illustration:  “LOOK!  THIS IS WHAT I SHALL DO.  THIS!”]

The action was so abrupt, the offence so real, that it sobered Max.  With a sudden collapse of pride, he wheeled round.

“Ned!  Oh, Ned!”

But the banging of the outer door was his only answer; and he drew back, his face fallen to a sudden blankness of expression, his hand going out as if for support to the tattered canvas.

Minutes passed—­how many or how few he made no attempt to reckon—­then a tap fell on the door and his blood leaped, leaped and dropped back to a sick pulsation of disappointment, as the door opened and Jacqueline’s fair head appeared.

For an instant a fierce resentment at this new intrusion fired him, then the absorbing need for human sympathy welled up, drowning all else.

“Mademoiselle,” he cried out, “I am the most unhappy person in all the world; I have tried to make a picture and failed, and I have quarrelled with my best friend!”

Jacqueline nodded sagely.  “That, M. Max, is my excuse for intruding.  Of the picture, of course, I know nothing”—­she shrugged expressively—­“but of the quarrel I understand all—­having passed M. Blake upon the stairs!”