"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?"