He was carried away, and she loved him for his enthusiasm.
"You care for your country?" she said, very softly.
"Yes—in an odd way! When wonder or joy or ambition comes to me, I always have a craving to walk those roads and watch the sea and whisper my secrets to the salt earth, but I never gratify the desire; it belongs to the many incongruities of an incongruous nature. But I think if great happiness came to me, I should go back, if only for a day; or if—" He paused. "—If I were to break my heart over anything, I believe I'd creep back, like a child to its mother. We're odd creatures—we Irish!"
"I understand you," said Maxine. "You have the soul."
He looked down into the rue Müller, and a queer smile touched his lips.
"A questionable blessing one is apt to say, princess—in one's bad moments!"
"But only in one's bad moments!" Her tone was warm; her words came from her swiftly, after the manner of Max—the manner that Blake loved.
"You are quite right!" he said, "and I despise myself instantly I have uttered such a cynicism. The capacity to feel is worth all the pain it brings. If one had but a single moment of realization, one should die content. That is the essential—to have known the highest."
Once again Maxine had the sense of lifting a tangible veil, of gaining a glimpse of the hidden personality—not the half-sceptical, pleasant, friendly Blake of the boy's acquaintance, but Blake the dreamer, the idealist who sought some grail of infinite holiness figured in his own imagination, zealously guarded from the scoffer and the worldling. A swift desire pulsed in her to share the knowledge of this quest—to see the face of the knight illumined for his adventure—to touch the buckles of his armor.
"Monsieur," she whispered, "if you were to die to-night, would you die satisfied?"