Blake stared. "I don't understand."
"Yet I speak your own tongue! I say 'I am not sufficient to you?' I have given you my friendship—my heart and my mind, but I am not sufficient to you? Something more is required—something else—something different!"
"Something more? Something different?"
"Yes! In this world it is always the outward seeming! I may have as much personality as my sister Maxine; I may be as interesting, but you do not inquire. Why? Why? Because I am a boy—she a woman!"
Blake, uncertain how to answer this cataract of words, took refuge in banter.
"Don't be fantastical!" he said. "We are not holding a debate on sex. If we are to be normal, we must declare that man and woman don't compare!"
"Now you are gambling with words! I desire facts. It is a fact that until to-day I was enough—friend enough—companion enough—"
"My child!"
But Max rushed on, lashing himself to rage.
"I was enough; but now you desire more. And why? Why? Not because you discern more in the new personality, but because it appeals to you as the personality of a woman. There is nothing deeper—nothing more in the affair—no other reason, as you yourself would say, upon God's earth!" He ended abruptly; his arms fell to his sides; his voice held in it a sound perilously like a sob.