No! No! Nothing. It was only--"

"What?"

Again Max laughed nervously, but his fingers tightened.

"Only this--I have wanted to hear you say that I am your friend--your
boy, Max--as I was yesterday and the day before and the day before. Say
it! Say it!" His eyes besought Blake's.

"What! Tell you you are yourself?"

He nodded quickly and seriously.

The other looked into his face, and for some unaccountable reason his
amusement died away.

"What a child it is!" he said kindly; and, putting his hands upon the
boy's shoulders, he shook him gently. "Who has been putting notions into
your head? Whoever it is, just refer him to me; I'll deal with him."

It was Max's turn to laugh. "Ah, but I am better now! I am quite all
right now! It was only for the moment!" He made a little sound, half
shy, half relieved. "It was, I suppose, as you expected; I tired myself
with carrying up these things, and then I still more tired myself with
trying to block in my picture, and then--"

"Yes, then?"

"No more--nothing."

"I'm sceptical of that."

Max glanced up. "Well, to you I always say the truth. The girl
Jacqueline came in and chattered to me, and--"

"Oh, ho!"

"Do not say that! I cannot bear it."

"Nonsense! I'm only teasing you! Though why a little girl with hair like
spun silk and skin like ivory--"

"Ah! You admire her, then?"

"I do vastly--in the abstract."

"And what does that mean--in the abstract?"

"Oh, I don't know! I suppose it means that if I were a painter I might
use her as a model, or if I were a poet I might string a verse to her;
but being an ordinary man, it means--well, it means that I don't feel
drawn to kiss her. Do you see?"

"I see." Max grew thoughtful; he disengaged the hands still lying
lightly on his shoulders and walked back to his easel.

"You don't a bit! But it doesn't matter! What is it you're doing?"

Max, idle before his canvas, did not reply.

"_Mon ami?_" he said, irrelevantly.

"What?"

"Tell me the sort of woman you want to kiss."

Blake looked round in surprise.

"Well, to begin with, I used the word symbolically. I'm a queer beggar,
you know; the kiss means a good deal to me. To me, it's the key to the
idealistic as well as the materialistic--the toll at the gateway. I
never kiss the light woman."

"No?" Max's voice was very low, his hands hung by his sides, the look in
his half-veiled eyes was strange. "Then what is she like--the woman you
would kiss?"