"Boy!"
"I shock you? You have not travelled that road! You have not seen the morass at the bottom! You have not seen the creature you loved stripped of every garment that you wove—as has my sister Maxine! You do well to be shocked. You have not been left with a scar upon your heart; you have not viewed the last black picture of all—the picture of your beloved as a dead thing—dead over some affair of passion so sordid that even horror turns to disgust. You do well to be shocked!"
"Dead?" repeated Blake, caught by the sound of the word. "He died, then?"
"He killed himself." Max laughed harshly. "Killed himself when all the wrong was done!"
"And your sister? Your sister? Where did she go—what did she do?"
"What does a woman do when she is thrown up like wreckage after the storm?"
"She does as her temperament directs. I think your sister would go back to nature—to the great and simple things."
With a tense swiftness the boy turned from his fixed contemplation of the sky, his glance flashing upon Blake.
"One must be naked and whole to go back to nature! One fears nature when one is wreckage from the storm!"
"Then she turned to art?"