Max, faint and pale, caught at his arm.
"Ned! Ned! I am here. I am your friend. I love you."
Blake, in all his whirl of passion, paused.
"You!" he said, and no long eloquence could have accentuated the blank amazement, the searing irony of the word.
But Max closed all his senses.
"Ned! Ned! Look at the truth of life! There is in me everything but one thing."
"Then, by God, that one thing is everything! It's the woman and the man that rule this world. The woman and the man—the soul and the body! All other things are dust and chaff."
"You feel that now. But time—time balances. We will be happy yet. We will relive the old days—"
Blake turned, wrenching away his arm. "The old days? Do you imagine Paris can hold me now she is gone?"
"Ned!"