This knowledge rushed in upon her swimming senses, upon eyes suddenly opened, ears suddenly made free of the music of the spheres; and her hand--the hand that had first girded on her boy's attire--went out to Blake like that of any girl.
It was nature's signal, stronger in its frailty than any attained art of woman; and he answered to it as man has ever answered--ever will answer.
"Oh, my love!" he cried. "My love!" And his arms went round her.
It is sacrilege to attempt analysis of birth or love or death. Death and birth, the mysteries! Love, the revelation! Man, as he has existed through all time, had being in Blake's embrace; woman, as she has been from the first, lived in Maxine's leap of the heart, her leap of the spirit as the ecstasy of his touch thrilled her. Here was no coldness; here was no sensuality. Divinity manifested itself, no longer above, but within them. The lights in the sky were divine, but so were the lights of the town. Divinity fired their souls, merging each in each; but as truly it fired their clasping hands, their lips trembling to kiss.
Maxine--removed by fabulous distances from Max, from the studio, from all accepted things--breathed her wonderment in an unconscious appeal.
And Blake, awed and enraptured, whispered his answer.
"There is nothing to say that you do not know. I worship you. I bent my knee and kissed the hem of your garment the first moment it brushed my path. There is nothing to say that you do not know. I have waited all my life for this."
"All my life. But love is not reckoned by time. One dreams--and one wakes."
"You dreamed--" She closed her eyes, her ears drank in the cadences of his voice.
"Always! As a child, I dreamed over my play; as a boy, I dreamed over my books--and as a man, over my loves. I was never in love with woman--always in love with love."
"I am awake--I have come into my inheritance! My love! My love!" It was an instant of intense sensation. She could feel the beating of his heart; his fingers and hers were interlaced. "Maxine! Open your eyes! Look at me!"
Obediently--any woman to any man--she opened them and met his gaze.
She stood rigid, her eyes wide, her nostrils dilated--a creature swaying upon the verge of an abyss, contemplating a plunge into space.