"Don't be a fool!" said Blake, harshly. "You know it's good. But who is it? That's what I'm asking you. Who is it?"
Heedless, unstrung—half laughing, half crying—Max ran across the room. "Oh, mon ami, how you terrified me—I thought you had condemned it!"
But Blake's eyes were for the picture; the portrait of a woman seated at a mirror—a portrait in which the delicate reflected face looked out from its shadowing hair with a curious questioning intentness, a fascinating challenge at once elusive and vital.
"Who is it?"
He spoke low and with a deliberate purpose; and at his tone recklessness seized upon Max.
"A woman, mon ami! Just a woman!" He stiffened his shoulders, threw up his head, like a child who would dare the universe.
"Yes, but what woman?" With amazing suddenness Blake swung round and fixed a searching glance upon him. "She's the living image of you—but you with such a difference—"
He stopped as swiftly as he had begun, and in the silence Max quailed under his glance. Out of the unknown, fear assailed him; it seemed that under this mastering scrutiny his mask must drop from him, his very garments be rent. In sudden panic his thought skimmed possibilities like a circling bird and lighted upon the first-found point of safety.
"She is my sister," he said, in a voice that shook a little. "She is my sister—Maxine."
Blake's eyes still held his.