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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Max, by Katherine Cecil Thurston
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Max
+
+Author: Katherine Cecil Thurston
+
+Release Date: November 15, 2004 [EBook #14054]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAX ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, John Hagerson, Stephanie Fleck and the PG
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "I HAVE WAITED ALL MY LIFE FOR THIS"]
+
+MAX
+
+A NOVEL
+
+BY
+KATHERINE CECIL THURSTON
+
+AUTHOR OF
+"THE MASQUERADER"
+"THE GAMBLER" ETC.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+FRANK CRAIG
+
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+MCMX
+
+
+Published September, 1910.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+
+"I HAVE WAITED ALL MY LIFE FOR THIS"
+
+STANDING AGAIN IN THE OUTER COURT OF A HOUSE IN PETERSBURG
+
+TWO SOULS, DRAWN TOGETHER, TOUCHED IN A FIRST SUBTLE FUSION
+
+"WHY, BOY, THIS IS CLEVER--CLEVER--CLEVER!"
+
+THE IMPRESSION OF A MYSTERY FLOWED BACK UPON HIM
+
+"LOOK! THIS IS WHAT I SHALL DO. THIS!"
+
+THE COMPLETE SEMBLANCE OF THE WOMAN
+
+"_C'EST LA VIE! L'ETERNELLE, LA TOUTE-PUISSANTE VIE!_"
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+
+MAX
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+A night journey is essentially a thing of possibilities. To those who
+count it as mere transit, mere linking of experiences, it is, of course,
+a commonplace; but to the imaginative, who by gift divine see a picture
+in every cloud, a story behind every shadow, it suggests
+romance--romance in the very making.
+
+Such a vessel of inspiration was the powerful north express as it
+thundered over the sleeping plains of Germany and France on its night
+journey from Cologne to Paris. A thing of possibilities indeed, with its
+varying human freight--stolid Teutons, hard-headed Scandinavians, Slavs
+whom expediency or caprice had forced to descend upon Paris across the
+sea of ice. It was the month of January, and an unlikely and unlovely
+night for long and arduous travel. There were few pleasure-passengers on
+the express, and if one could have looked through the carriage windows,
+blurred with damp mist, one would have seen upon almost every face the
+look--resigned or resolute--of those who fare forth by necessity rather
+than by choice. In the sleeping-cars all the berths were occupied, but
+here and them throughout the length of the train an occasional traveller
+slept on the seat of his carriage, wrapped in coats and rugs, while in
+the dining-saloon a couple of sleepy waiters lurched to and fro in
+attendance upon a party of three men whose energy precluded the thought
+of wasting even the night hours and who were playing cards at one of the
+small tables. Up and down the whole overheated, swaying train there was
+the suggestion of mystery, of contrast and effect, and the twinkling
+eyes of the electric lamps seemed to wink from behind their drawn hoods
+as though they, worldly wise and watchful, saw the individuality--the
+inevitable story--behind the drowsy units who sat or lay or lounged
+unguarded beneath them.
+
+In one carriage, the fifth or sixth from the thundering engine, these
+lights winked and even laughed one to the other each time the train
+lurched over the points, and the dark, shrouding hoods quivered,
+allowing a glimpse at the occupant of the compartment.
+
+It was the figure of a boy upon which the twinkling lamp-eyes
+flickered--a boy who had as yet scarce passed the barrier of manhood,
+for the skin of the face was clean and smooth, and the limbs, seen
+vaguely under a rough overcoat, had the freedom and supple grace that
+belongs to early youth.
+
+He was sleeping, this solitary traveller--one hand under his head, the
+other instinctively guarding something that lay deep and snug in the
+pocket of his overcoat. His attitude was relaxed, but not entirely
+abandoned to the solace of repose; even in his sleep a something of
+self-consciousness seemed to cling to him--a need for caution that lay
+near to the surface of his drowsing senses--for once or twice he
+started, once or twice his straight, dark eyebrows twitched into a
+frown, once or twice his fingers tightened nervously upon their
+treasure. He was subconsciously aware that, deserted though the
+compartment was, it yet exhaled an alien suggestion, embodied in the
+rugs, the coats, the hand-baggage of the card-playing travellers, which
+was heaped upon the seat opposite.
+
+But, despite this physical uneasiness, he was dreaming as the train tore
+along through the damp, peaceful country--dreaming with that odd
+confusion of time and scene that follows upon keen excitement, stress of
+feeling or stress of circumstance.
+
+As he dreamed, he was standing again in the outer court of a house in
+Petersburg--a house to which he was debtor for one night's shelter; it
+was early morning and deadly cold. The whole picture was sharp as a cut
+crystal--the triple court-yard, the stone pavement, the gray well, and
+frozen pile of firewood. He saw, recognized, lost it, and knew himself
+to be skimming down the Nevskiy Prospekt and across the Winter Palace
+Square, where the great angel towers upon its rose-granite monument.
+Forward, forward he was carried, along the bank of the frozen Neva and
+over the Troitskiy bridge, the powdered snow stinging his face like
+pinpoints as it flew up from the nails in his little horse's shoes. Then
+followed a magnifying of the picture--massed buildings rising from the
+snow--buildings gold and turquoise-domed, that, even as they
+materialized, lost splendor and merged into the unpretentious frontage
+of the Finland station.
+
+The scroll of the dream unwound; the dreamer moved, easing his position,
+shaking back a lock of dark hair that had fallen across his forehead. He
+was no longer rocking to the power of the north express; he was standing
+on the platform at the end of a little train that puffed out of the
+Finland station--a primitive, miniature train, white with frost and
+powdered with the ashes of its wood fuel. The vision came and passed a
+sketch, not a picture--a suggestion of straight tracks, wide snow
+plains, and the blue, misty blur of fir woods. Then a shifting, a
+juggling of effects! Åbo, the Finnish port, painted itself upon his
+imagination, and he was embarked upon the lonely sledge-drive, to the
+harbor. He started in his sleep, shivered and sighed at that remembered
+drive. The train passed over new points, the hoods of the lamps swayed,
+the lights blinked and winked, and his mind swung onward in response to
+the physical jar.
+
+Åbo was obliterated. He was on board a ship--a ship ploughing her way
+through the ice-fields as she neared Stockholm; salt sea air flicked his
+nostrils, he heard the broken ice tearing the keel like a million files,
+he was sensible of the crucial sensation--the tremendous quiver--as the
+vessel slipped from her bondage into the cradle of the sea, a sentient
+thing welcoming her own element!
+
+The heart of the dreamer leaped to that strange sensation. He drew a
+long, sharp breath, and sat up, suddenly awake. It was over and done
+with--the coldness, the rigor, the region of ice bonds! The fingers of
+the future beckoned to him; the promises of the future lapped his ears
+as the waves had lapped the ship's sides.
+
+He looked about him, at first excitedly, then confusedly, then a little
+shamedfacedly, for we are always involuntarily shamed at being tricked
+by our emotions into a false conception. Drawing his hand from his
+coat-pocket, he stretched himself with an assumption of ease, as though
+he saw and recognized the twinkle in the electric lamps and
+spontaneously rose to its demands.
+
+The train was flying forward at unabated speed. Outside, the raw January
+air was clinging in a film to the carriage window; inside, the dim light
+and overheated air made an artificial atmosphere, enervating or
+stimulating according to the traveller's gifts. To this solitary voyager
+stimulation was obviously the effect produced, for, try as he might
+to cheat the inquisitive lamps, interest in every detail of his
+surroundings was portrayed in his face, in the poise of his head, the
+quickness of his glance as he gazed round the compartment, verifying the
+impression that he was alone.
+
+[Illustration: STANDING AGAIN IN THE OUTER COURT OF A HOUSE IN
+PETERSBURG]
+
+Yes, he was absolutely alone! Everything was as it had been when he
+settled himself to sleep on the departure of the three strangers. There,
+on the opposite seat, were their rugs, their fur-lined coats, their
+illustrated papers--all the impedimenta of prosperous travellers; and
+there, on the rack above them, was his own modest hand-bag without
+initials or label--a common little bag that might have belonged to some
+poor Russian clerk or held the possessions of some needy Polish student.
+The owner's glance scanned and appraised it, then by suggestion fell to
+the plain rough overcoat that covered him from his neck to the tops of
+his high boots, and whose replica was to be seen any day in the meaner
+streets of Petersburg or Moscow. Like the bag, it was a little strange,
+a little incongruous in its comfortable surroundings--a little savoring
+of mystery.
+
+The traveller's pulses quickened, his being lifted to the moment, for in
+his soul was the spark of adventure, in his eyes the adventurous
+look--fearless, observant, questioning. In composition, in expression
+and essence, this boy was that free and fascinating creature, the born
+adventurer--high of courage, prodigal of emotion, capturer of the
+world's loot.
+
+The spirit within him shone out in the moment of solitude; he passed his
+hands down the front, of his coat, revelling in its coarse texture; he
+rose to his feet, turned to the sheet of gray, misted glass, and,
+letting down the window, leaned out into the night.
+
+The scene was vague and ghostly, but to eyes accustomed to northern
+whiteness it was full of suggestion, full of secrecy; to nostrils
+accustomed to keen, rarefied air there was something poignant and
+delicious in the scent of turned earth, the savor of vegetation. He
+could see little or nothing as the train rocked and the landscape tore
+past, but the atmosphere spoke to him as it speaks to blind men,
+penetrating his consciousness. Here were open spaces, tracts of country
+fructifying for the spring to come. A land of promise--of growth--of
+fulfilment!
+
+He closed his eyes, living in the suggestion, and his spirit sped
+forward with the onrush of the train. Somewhere beyond the darkness lay
+the land of his desires! Somewhere behind the veil shone the lights of
+Paris! With a quick, exulting excitement he laughed; but even as the
+laugh was caught and scattered to the winds by the thunder of the
+engine, his bearing changed, the excitement dropped from him, a mask of
+immobility fell upon his face, and he wheeled round from the window. The
+card-playing travellers had opened the door of the carriage.
+
+From his shadowy corner the boy eyed them; and they, alert from their
+game, slightly dazed by the darkness of the carriage, peered back at
+him, frankly curious. When they had left the compartment he had been a
+huddled figure demanding no attention; now he was awake and an
+individual, and human nature prompted interest.
+
+Each in turn looked at him, and at each new glance his coldness of
+demeanor deepened; until, as the eldest of the party came down the
+carriage and appropriated the seat beside him, he turned away, pulling
+up the window with resentful haste.
+
+"Don't do that!" said the third man, pausing in the doorway and speaking
+in French easily and pleasantly. "Don't do that--if you want the air!"
+
+The boy started and looked round.
+
+"I thank you! But I do not need the air!"
+
+The man smiled acquiescence, but as he stepped into the carriage he took
+a sharp look at the boy's clothes--the common Russian clothes--and a
+slightly questioning, slightly satirical expression crossed his face. He
+was a man who knew his world the globe over, and in his bearing lurked
+the toleration, the kindly scepticism that such knowledge breeds.
+
+"As you please!" he said, settling himself comfortably in the corner by
+the door, while the elder of his companions--a tall, spare
+American--crossed his long legs and lighted a thin black cigar, and the
+younger--a spruce young Englishman wearing an eye-glass and a small
+mustache--wrapped himself in his rugs, took a clean pocket-handkerchief
+from his dressing-case, and opened a large bundle of illustrated
+papers--French, German, and English.
+
+For a space the train rocked on. No one attempted to speak, and the
+Russian boy continued to stand by the window, pretending to look through
+the blurred panes, in reality wondering how he could with least
+commotion pass down the carriage to his own vacated place.
+
+At last the man with the long cigar broke the silence in a slow, cool
+voice that betrayed his nationality.
+
+"We're well on time, Blake," he remarked, drawing out his watch.
+
+The youth by the window shot an involuntary, fleeting glance at the two
+younger men, to see which would answer to the name; and the student of
+human nature noted the fact that he understood English.
+
+"Oh, it's a good service!" he acquiesced, the tolerant look--half
+sceptical, half humorous--- passing again over his face.
+
+"I don't know! I think we could do with another few kilometres to the
+hour." The thin man studied his flat gold watch with the loving interest
+of one to whom time is a sacred thing.
+
+At this point the youngest of the three raised his head.
+
+"Marvellous sight you have, McCutcheon! Wish I could see by this light!"
+
+McCutcheon leaned forward, replacing his watch. "What! Can't you see
+your picture-books? Let's have the blinkers off!" He rose, his long,
+spidery figure stretching up like a grotesque shadow, but as his arm
+went out to the nearest of the shrouded lamps he was compelled to draw
+back against the seat of the carriage, and an exclamation of surprise
+escaped him.
+
+Without warning or apology the Russian boy had turned from the window,
+and stepping down the carriage, had tumbled into his former seat,
+hunching himself up with his face to the cushions and his back to his
+fellow-travellers.
+
+It was a sudden and an uncivil proceeding. The man called Blake smiled;
+the Englishman shrugged his shoulders; the American, with a movement of
+quiet determination, drew back the lamp hoods.
+
+In the flood of light the carriage lost its air of mystery, and Blake,
+who had a fancy for the mysterious, dropped back into his corner and
+took out his cigar-case with a little feeling of regret. In traversing
+the world's pathways, beaten or wild, he always made a point of seeing
+the story behind the circumstance; and, had he realized it, a common
+instinct bound him in a triangular link to the peering, winking lamps,
+and to the Russian boy lying unsociably wrapped in his heavy coat. All
+three had an eye for an adventure.
+
+But the lights were up, and the curtain down--it was a theatre between
+the acts; and presently the calculating voice of McCutcheon broke forth
+again, as he relapsed into his original attitude, coiling up his long
+limbs and nursing his cigar to a glow.
+
+"I can't get over that 'four jacks,'" he said. "To think I could have
+been funked into seeing Billy at fifty!"
+
+Blake laughed. "'Twas the eye-glass did it, Mac! A man shouldn't be
+allowed to play poker with an eye-glass; it's taking an undue
+advantage."
+
+McCutcheon smiled his dry smile and shot a quizzical glance at the neat
+young Englishman, who had become absorbed in one of his papers.
+
+"Solid face, Blake!" he agreed. "Nothing so fine as an eye-glass for
+sheer bluff. What would Billy be without one? Well, perhaps we won't
+say. But with it you have no use for doubt--he's a diplomat all the
+time."
+
+The young man named Billy showed no irritation. With the composure which
+he wore as a garment, he went on with his occupation.
+
+For a time McCutcheon bore this aloofness, then he opened a new attack.
+"What are you reading, my son? Makes a man sort of want his breakfast to
+see that hungry look in your eyes. Share the provender, won't you?"
+
+Billy looked up sedately.
+
+"You fellows think my life's a game," he said. "But I tell you it takes
+some doing to keep in touch with things."
+
+Blake laughed chaffingly. "And the illustrated weekly papers are an
+excellent substitute for Blue-books?"
+
+Billy remained undisturbed. "It's all very well to scoff, but one may
+get a side-light anywhere. In diplomacy nothing's too insignificant to
+notice."
+
+Again Blake laughed. "The principle on which it offers you a living?"
+
+"Oh, come," said Billy, "that's rather rough! You know very well what I
+mean. 'Tisn't always in the serious reports you get the color of a fact,
+just as the gossip of a dinner-table is often more enlightening than a
+cabinet council."
+
+"Apropos?"
+
+"I was thinking of this Petersburg affair."
+
+"What? The everlasting Duma business?" McCutcheon drew in a long breath
+of smoke.
+
+Billy looked superior, as befitted a man who dealt in subtler matters
+than mere politics. "Not at all," he said. "The disappearance of the
+Princess Davorska."
+
+Here Blake made a murmur of impatience. "Oh, Billy, don't!" he said.
+"It's so frightfully banal."
+
+McCutcheon took his cigar from his mouth. "The woman who disappeared on
+the eve of her marriage?"
+
+"Yes," broke in Blake, "disappeared on the eve of her marriage to elope
+with some poet or painter, and set society by the ears. Thoroughly
+modern and banal!"
+
+The young diplomat glanced up once more.
+
+"I don't think there's any suggestion of a lover."
+
+"Fact is more potent than suggestion, Billy. Of course there is a lover.
+Princesses don't disappear alone."
+
+"You're a Socialist, Ned." Billy's eyes returned to his paper. "Like all
+good Socialists, crammed to the neck with class bigotry. Nobody is such
+an individualist as the man who advocates equality!"
+
+Blake smiled. "That seems to sound all right," he said; "but it doesn't
+remove the lover."
+
+The good-humored scepticism at last forced a way to Billy's
+susceptibilities.
+
+"Look here," he said, crossly, "if hearing's not believing, perhaps
+seeing is! Look at these pictures; they're not particularly modern or
+banal."
+
+He held out his paper, but Blake shook his head.
+
+"No! No, Billy, not for me. If it was some little Rumanian gypsy who had
+run away from her tribe I'd take her to my heart and welcome. But a
+Princess Davorska--no!"
+
+At this point McCutcheon stretched out his long arm and took the paper
+from Billy's hand. "Let's have a squint!" he said. "Lover or no lover,
+she must be a bit wide awake." And, curling himself up again, he began
+to read from the paper, in a monotonous murmuring voice: "'_The
+Princess, as well as being a woman of artistic accomplishments, is an
+ardent sportswoman, having in her early girlhood hunted and shot with
+keen zest on her father's estates. The above picture shows her at the
+age of seventeen, carrying a gun_.' By the Lord, she is wide awake!" he
+added, by way of comment. "She is wide awake carrying that gun, but I'd
+lay my money on the second picture. Say, Billy, she looks a queen in her
+court finery!"
+
+But here real disgust crossed Blake's face. "Oh, that'll do, Mac! Give
+us peace about the woman. I'm sick to death of all such nonsense. We're
+due in a couple of hours. I think I'll try for forty winks." He threw
+away his cigar and tucked his rug about him.
+
+McCutcheon glanced at him, and, seeing that he was in earnest, handed
+the paper back to Billy.
+
+"Thanks, Mac!" Blake murmured. "Sorry if I was a bear! Don't switch off
+the light, it won't bother me." He nodded, smiled, drew his rug closer
+about his knees, and settled himself to sleep with the ease of the
+accustomed traveller.
+
+For close upon an hour complete silence reigned in the heated carriage.
+Blake slept silently and peacefully; Billy went methodically through his
+papers, dropping them one by one at his feet as he finished with them;
+McCutcheon smoked, gazing into space with the blank expression of the
+strenuous man who has learned to utilize his momentary respites; while,
+stretched along the cushions of the carriage, his face hidden, his eyes
+wide open and attentive, lay the young Russian, his fingers tentatively
+caressing the treasure in the pocket of his coat.
+
+But at last the spell was broken. The diplomatic Englishman dropped his
+last paper, and McCutcheon stretched himself and looked once more at his
+watch.
+
+"Paris in an hour, Billy! Didn't those loafers in the dining-car promise
+us coffee somewhat about this time?"
+
+Billy looked up, unruffled of mind and body as in the first moment of
+the journey. "I believe they did," he said. "Tell you what! You jog
+their memories, while I go and wash. What about calling Ned?"
+
+At sound of his own name, Blake's eyes opened. His waking was
+characteristic of him. It was no slow recovery of the senses; he was
+asleep and then awake--fully, easily awake, with a complete
+consciousness of his position--a complete, assured grasp of time and
+place.
+
+"We're getting on, eh?" he said. "I suppose you're going to tub before
+those fat Belgians in the sleeping-car, Billy? If you are, keep a second
+place for me, like a good boy. There's nothing more fiendishly
+triumphant than taking a bath in the basin while the rest of the train
+is rattling the door-handle. Don't forget! Second place!" Then he turned
+to the American. "What about the coffee, Mac? I expect those poor devils
+of waiters have slept your order off."
+
+"I was just about to negotiate that coffee transaction." McCutcheon
+stood up. "You come too, my son! A little exercise will give you an
+appetite." He paused to stretch his long, lean body, and incidentally
+his glance fell upon their travelling companion, and he indicated the
+recumbent figure with a jerk of the head.
+
+"Say, Ned, ought we to wake our unsociable friend?" Blake cast one quick
+glance at the huddled form, then he answered, tersely: "Let him alone!
+He's not asleep--and, anyway, he understands English."
+
+At which McCutcheon made a comprehending grimace, and the two left the
+carriage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For many minutes the young Russian did not move; then, when positive
+certainty of his solitude had grown into his mind, he lifted himself on
+one elbow and looked cautiously about him.
+
+A change had passed over his face in the last hour--an interesting
+change. The smooth cheek that the night air had cooled to paleness was
+now flushed, and there was a spark of anger in the bright eyes.
+Unquestionably this boy had a temper and a spirit of his own, and both
+had been aroused. There was a certain arrogance, a certain contempt in
+his glance now as it swept the inoffensive coats and rugs of the
+departed travellers, a certain antagonism as he sat up, tossed back the
+lock of hair that had again fallen across his forehead, and turned his
+eyes to the heap of papers lying upon the carriage floor.
+
+For long he gazed upon these papers, as though they exercised a magnetic
+influence, and at last, with a swift impulse, extremely characteristic,
+he stretched out his arm and drew forth the lowest of the heap.
+
+He regained his former position with a quick, lithe movement of the
+body, and in an instant he was poring over the paper, the pages turning
+with incredible speed under the eagerness of his touch. At last he
+reached the page he sought, the page that had offered ground for
+discussion to the three voyagers an hour earlier.
+
+His eyes flashed, his fingers tightened, his dark head was bent lower
+over the paper. Two pictures confronted him. The first was of a woman in
+Russian court dress, who wore her jewels and her splendor of apparel
+with an air of pride and careless supremacy that had in it something
+magnificent, something semi-barbaric. The boy looked at this curious and
+arresting picture, but only for a moment; by some affinity, some subtle
+attraction, his eyes turned instantly to the second portrait--the girl
+carrying the gun--and as if in answer to some secret sympathy, some
+silent comprehension, the frown upon his brows relaxed and his lips
+parted.
+
+It was still the woman of the jewels and the splendid apparel, but it
+was a woman infinitely free, infinitely unhampered. The plain,
+serviceable clothes fitted the slight figure as though they had been
+long worn and loved; the hair was closely coiled, so that the young face
+looked out upon the world frank and unadorned as a boy's. Here, as in
+the first picture, the eyes looked forth with a curious, proud
+directness; but beneath the directness was a glint of humor, a flash of
+daring absent in the other face; the mouth smiled, seeming to anticipate
+life's secrets, the ungloved hand held the gun with a touch peculiarly
+caressing, peculiarly firm.
+
+The traveller looked, looked again, and then, with a deliberation odd in
+so slight a circumstance, folded the paper, rose, and stepped to the
+window of the carriage.
+
+The night mist beat in, still raw and cold, but somewhere behind the
+darkness was the stirring, the vague presage of the day to come. He
+leaned out, fingers close about the paper, lips and nostrils breathing
+in the suggestive, vaporous air. For a moment he stood, steadying
+himself to the motion of the train, palpitating to his secret thoughts;
+then, with a little theatricality all for his own edification, he opened
+his fingers and, freeing the paper, watched it swirl away, hang for a
+second like a moth against the lighted window, and vanish into the
+night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+'Journeys end in lovers' meeting.' The phrase conjures a picture. The
+court-yard of some inn, glowing ripe in the tints of the setting
+sun--open doors--an ancient coach disgorging its passengers! This--or,
+perhaps, some quay alive with sound and movement--cries of command in
+varying tongues--crowded gangways--rigging massed against the sky--all
+the paraphernalia of romance and travel. But the real journey--the
+journey of adventure itself--is frequently another matter: often gray,
+often loverless, often demanding from the secret soul of the adventurer
+spirit and inspiration, lest the blood turn cold in sick dismay, and the
+brain cloud under its weight of nostalgia.
+
+Paris in the dawn of a wet day is a sorry sight; the Gare du Nord in the
+hours of early morning is a place of infinite gloom. As the north
+express thundered into its recesses, waking strange and hollow echoes,
+the long sweep of the platform brought a shudder to more than one tired
+mind. A string of sleepy porters--gray silhouettes against a gray
+background--was the only sign of life. Colors there were none, lovers
+there were none, Parisian joy of living there was not one vestige.
+
+Paris! The murmur crept through the train, stirring the weariest to
+mechanical action. Paris! Heads were thrust through the windows, wraps
+and hand-bags passed out to the shadowy, mysterious porters who received
+them in a silence born of the godless hour and the penetrating, chilling
+dampness of the atmosphere.
+
+In the carriage fifth or sixth from the engine the three
+fellow-travellers greeted the arrival in the orthodox way. The tall
+American stretched his long limbs and groaned wearily as he got his
+belongings together, while the dapper young Englishman thrust his head
+out of the window and withdrew it as rapidly.
+
+"Beastly morning!" he announced. "Paris on a wet day is like a woman
+with draggled skirts."
+
+"Get rid of our belongings first, Billy, make epigrams after!" The man
+called Blake pushed him quietly aside and, stepping to the window,
+dropped a leather bag into the hands of a porter.
+
+Of the three, his manner was the most indifferent, his temper the most
+unruffled; and of the three, he alone remembered the fourth occupant of
+the carriage, for, being relieved of his bag, he turned with his hand
+still upon the window, and his eyes sought the youthful figure drawn
+with lonely isolation into its corner.
+
+"Do you want a porter?" he asked.
+
+The question was unexpected. The boy started and sat straighter in his
+seat. For one moment he seemed to sway between two impulses, then, with
+a new determination, he looked straight at his questioner with his clear
+eyes.
+
+"No," he said, speaking slowly and with a grave deliberation, "I do not
+need a porter. I have no luggage--but this." He rose, as if to prove the
+truth of his declaration, and lifted his valise from the rack.
+
+It was a simple movement, simple as the question and answer that had
+preceded it, but it held interest for Blake. He could not have analyzed
+the impression, but something in the boy's air touched him, something in
+the young figure so plainly clad, so aloof, stood out with sharp appeal
+in the grayness and unreality of the dawn. A feeling that was neither
+curiosity nor pity, and yet savored of both, urged him to further
+speech. As his two companions, anxious to be free of the train, passed
+out into the corridor, he glanced once more at the slight figure, at the
+high Russian boots, the long overcoat, the fur cap drawn down over the
+dark hair.
+
+"Look here! you aren't alone in Paris?" he asked in the easy, impersonal
+way that spoke his nationality. "You have people--friends to meet you?"
+
+For an instant the look that had possessed the boy's face during the
+journey--the look of suspicion akin to fear--leaped up, but on the
+moment it was conquered. The well-poised head was thrown back, and again
+the eyes met Blake's in a deliberate gaze.
+
+"Why do you ask, monsieur?"
+
+The words were clipped, the tone proud and a little cold.
+
+Another man might have hesitated to reply truthfully, but Blake was an
+Irishman and used to self-expression.
+
+"I ask," he said, simply, "because you are so young."
+
+A new expression--a new daring--swept the boy's mobile face. A spirit of
+raillery gleamed in his eyes, and he smiled for the first time.
+
+"How old, monsieur?"
+
+The question, the smile touched Blake anew. He laughed involuntarily
+with a sudden sense of friendliness.
+
+"Sixteen?--seventeen?"
+
+The boy, still smiling, shook his head.
+
+"Guess again, monsieur."
+
+Blake's interest flashed out. Here, in the gray station, in this damp
+hour of dawn, he had touched something magnetic--some force that drew
+and held him. A quality intangible and indescribable seemed to emanate
+from this unknown boy, some strange radiance of vitality that flooded
+his surroundings as with sunshine.
+
+"Eighteen, then!" He laughed once more, with a curious sense of
+pleasure.
+
+But from the corridor outside a slow voice was borne back on the damp,
+close air, forbidding further parley.
+
+"Blake! I say, Blake! For the Lord's sake, get a move on!"
+
+The spell was broken, the moment of companionship passed. Blake drifted
+toward the carriage door, the boy following.
+
+Outside in the corridor they were sucked into the stream of departing
+passengers--that odd medley of men and women, unadorned, jaded,
+careless, that a night train disgorges. Slowly, step by step, the
+procession made its way, each unit that composed it glancing
+involuntarily into the empty carriages that he passed--the carriages
+that, in their dimmed light, their airlessness, their _débris_ of
+papers, seemed to be a reflection of his own exhausted condition; then a
+gust of chilly air told of the outer world, and one by one the
+travellers slid through the narrow doorway, each instinctively pausing
+to brace himself against the biting cold before stepping down upon the
+platform.
+
+At last it was Blake's turn. He, too, paused; then he, too, took the
+final plunge, shivered, glanced at where McCutcheon and the Englishman
+were talking to their porters, then turned to watch the Russian boy
+swing himself lithely down from the high step of the train.
+
+All about him was the consciousness of the awakening crowd, conveyed by
+the jostling of elbows, the deepening hum of voices.
+
+"Look here!" he said again, in response to his original impulse. "You
+have somebody to meet you?"
+
+The boy glanced up, a secret emotion burning in his eyes. "No,
+monsieur."
+
+"You are quite alone?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"And why are you here--to play or to work?"
+
+The question was unwarrantable, but an Irishman can dispense with
+warranty in a manner unknown to other men. It had ever been Blake's way
+to ask what he desired to know.
+
+This time no offence showed itself in the boy's face.
+
+"In part to work, in part to play, monsieur," he answered, gravely; "in
+part to learn life."
+
+The reply was strange to Blake's ears--strange in its grave sincerity,
+stranger still in its quiet fearlessness.
+
+"But you are such a child!" he cried, impulsively. "You--"
+
+Imperceptibly the slight figure stiffened, the proud look flashed again
+into the eyes.
+
+"Many thanks, monsieur, but I am older than you think--and very
+independent. I have the honor monsieur, to wish you good-bye."
+
+The tone was absolutely courteous, but it was final. He bowed with easy
+foreign grace, raised his fur cap, and, turning, swung down the platform
+and out of sight.
+
+Blake stood watching him--watching until the high head, the straight
+shoulders, the lithe, swinging body were but a memory; then he turned
+with a start, as a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and the pleasant,
+prosaic voice of the young Englishman assailed his ears.
+
+"My dear chap, what in the world are you doing? Not day-dreaming with
+the mercury at thirty?"
+
+"Foolish--but I was!" Blake answered, calmly. "I was watching that young
+Russian stalk away into the unknown, and I was wondering--"
+
+"What?"
+
+He smiled a little cynically. "I was wondering, Billy, what type of
+individual and what particular process fate will choose to let him break
+himself upon."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most splendid moment of an adventure is not always the moment of
+fulfilment, not even the moment of conception, but the moment of first
+accomplishment, when the adventurer deliberately sets his face toward
+the new road, knowing that his boats are burned.
+
+Nothing could have been less inspiring than the dreary Gare du Nord,
+nothing less inviting than the glimpse of Paris to be caught through its
+open doorways; but had the whole world laughed him a welcome, the young
+Russian's step could not have been more elastic, his courage higher, his
+heart more ready to pulse to the quick march of his thoughts, as he
+strode down the gray platform and out into the open.
+
+In the open he paused to study his surroundings. As yet the full tale of
+passengers had not emerged, and only an occasional wayfarer, devoid of
+baggage as himself, had fared forth into the gloom. Outside, the
+artificial light of the station ceased to do battle with nature, and
+only an occasional street lamp gave challenge to the gloomy dawn. The
+damp mist that all night had enshrouded Paris still clung about the
+streets like ragged grave-clothes, and at the edge of the pavement half
+a dozen _fiacres_ were ranged in a melancholy line, the wretched horses
+dozing as they stood, the drivers huddled into their fur capes and
+numbed by the clinging cold. Everywhere was darkness and chill and the
+listless misery of a winter dawn, when vitality is at its lowest ebb and
+the passions of man are sunk in lethargy.
+
+Only a creature infinitely young could have held firm in face of such
+dejection, only eyes as alert and wakeful as those of this wayfaring boy
+could possibly have looked undaunted at the shabby streets with their
+flaunting travesty of joy exhibited in the dripping awnings of the
+deserted _cafés_, that offered _Bière, Billard_, and yet again _Bière_
+to an impassive world.
+
+But the eyes were wakeful, the soul of the adventurer was infinitely
+young. He looked at it all with a certain steadfastness that seemed to
+say, "Yes, I see you! You are hideous, slatternly, unfriendly; but
+through all the disguise I recognize you. Through the mask I trace the
+features--subtle, alluring, fascinating. You are Paris! Paris!"
+
+The idea quickened action as a draught of wine might quicken thought;
+his hand involuntarily tightened upon his valise, his body braced itself
+afresh, and, as if resigning himself finally to chance, that deity loved
+of all true adventurers, he stepped from the pavement into the greasy
+roadway.
+
+Seeing him move, a loafer, crouching in the shadow of the station, slunk
+reluctantly into the open and offered to procure him a _fiacre_; but the
+boy's shake of the head was determined, and, crossing the road, he
+turned to the left, gazing up with eager interest at the many hotels
+that rub shoulders in that uninteresting region.
+
+One after the other he reviewed and rejected them, moving onward with
+the excitement that is born of absolute uncertainty. Onward he went,
+without pause, until the pavement was intersected by a side-street, and
+peering up through the misty light he read the legend, "rue de
+Dunkerque."
+
+Rue de Dunkerque! It conveyed nothing to his mind. But was he not
+seeking the unknown? Again his head went up, again his shoulders
+stiffened, and, smiling to himself at some secret thought, he swung
+round the corner and plunged into the unexplored.
+
+Half way down the rue de Dunkerque stands the Hôtel Railleux. It is a
+tall and narrow house, somewhat dirty and entirely undistinguished;
+there is nothing to recommend it save perhaps an air of privacy, a
+certain insignificance that wedges it between the surrounding buildings
+in a manner tempting to one anxious to avoid his fellows.
+
+This quality it was that caught the boy's attention. He paused and
+studied the Hôtel Railleux with an attention that he had denied to the
+large and common hostelries that front the station. He looked at it long
+and meditatively, then very slowly and thoughtfully he walked to the end
+of the street. At the end of the street he turned, his mind made up,
+and, hurrying back, went straight into the hall of the hotel as though
+thirsting to pledge himself irrevocably to his decision.
+
+It is impossible for the sensible individual to see romance in this
+entry into a third-rate Parisian hotel--to see daring or to see
+danger--but the boy's heart was beating fast as the glass door swung
+behind him, and his tongue was dry as he stepped into the little office
+on the right of the poor hall.
+
+Here in the office the story of the streets was repeated. A dingy
+gas-jet shed a faint light, as though reluctantly awake; behind a small
+partition, half counter, half desk, a wan and sleepy--looking man was
+cowering over a stove. As the boy entered he looked up uncertainly, then
+he rose and smiled, for your Parisian is exhausted indeed when he fails
+to conjure up a smile.
+
+"Good-day, monsieur!"
+
+The words were a travesty in view of the miserable dawn, but the boy
+took heart. There was greeting in the tone. He moistened his lips, which
+felt dry as his tongue in his momentary nervousness, then he stepped
+closer to the counter.
+
+"Good-day, monsieur! I require a bedroom."
+
+"A bedroom? But certainly, monsieur!" The shrewd though tired eyes of
+the man passed over his visitor's clothes and the valise in his hand.
+"We can give you a most excellent room at"--he raised his eyebrows in
+tactful hesitation--"at five francs?"
+
+The boy's eyes opened in genuine, instant surprise. "For so little?" he
+exclaimed. Then, covered with confusion, he reddened furiously and
+stammered, "For--for so much, I mean?"
+
+The man in the office was all smooth, politeness, anxious to cover a
+foreigner's slip of speech. 'But certainly, no! If five francs was more
+than monsieur cared to pay, then for three francs there was a most
+charming, a most agreeable room on the fifth floor. True, it did not
+look upon the street, but then perhaps monsieur preferred quiet. If
+monsieur would give himself the trouble of mounting--'
+
+Monsieur, still confused by his own mistake, and nervously anxious to
+insist upon his position, repeated again that five francs was out of the
+question, and that, without giving himself the trouble of mounting, he
+would then and there decide upon the agreeable and quiet room at three
+francs.
+
+'But certainly! It was understood!' The guardian of the office, now
+fully awake and aroused to interest in this princely transaction,
+disappeared from behind the counter into the back regions of the hotel,
+and could be heard calling "Jean! Jean!" in a high, insistent tone.
+
+After some moments of silence he returned, followed by a large and
+amiable individual in a dirty blue blouse, who had apparently but lately
+arisen from sleep.
+
+'Now if monsieur would intrust his baggage to the valet--'
+
+The guardian of the office took a key from a nail in the wall. Jean
+stepped forward, pleased and self-conscious, and took the valise from
+the boy's hand. Then all three smiled and bowed.
+
+It was one of those foolish little comedies--utterly unnecessary,
+curiously pleasant--that occur twenty times a day in Parisian life.
+Involuntarily the adventurer's heart warmed to the pallid clerk and to
+the dirty hotel porter. He had arrived here without luggage, shabby,
+unrecommended, yet no princely compatriot of his own could have been
+made more sensible of welcome. He stepped out of the office and followed
+his guide, conscious that, if only for an instant, Paris had lifted her
+mask and smiled--the radiant, anticipated smile.
+
+There is no such unnecessary luxury as a lift in the Hôtel Railleux. At
+the back of the hall the spiral staircase begins its steep ascent,
+mounting to unimagined heights.
+
+Jean, breathing audibly, led the way, pausing at every landing to assure
+monsieur that the ascent was nothing--a mere nothing, and that before
+another thought could pass through monsieur's mind the fifth floor would
+be reached. The boy followed, climbing and ever climbing, until the
+meagre hand-rail appeared to lengthen into dream-like coils, and the
+threadbare, drab-hued carpet, with its vivid red border, to assume the
+proportions of some confusing scroll.
+
+But at length the end was reached, and Jean, beaming and triumphant,
+announced their goal.
+
+'This way! If monsieur would have the goodness to take two steps in this
+direction!' He dived into a long, dark corridor, illuminated by a single
+flickering gas-jet, twin brother to that which lighted the office below;
+and, still eager, still breathing loudly, he ushered the guest toward
+what in his humble soul he believed to be the luxurious, the impressive
+bedroom supplied by the Hôtel Railleux at three francs a night.
+
+The boy looked about him as he passed down the dim corridor. Apparently
+he and Jean alone were awake in this gloomy maze of closed doors and
+sleeping passages. One sign of humanity--and one alone--came to his
+senses with a suggestion of sordid drama. On the floor, at the closed
+door of one of the rooms, stood a battered black tray on which reposed
+an empty champagne bottle and two soiled glasses.
+
+Life! His quick imagination conjured a picture--conjured and shrank from
+it. He turned away with a sense of sharp disgust and almost ran down the
+corridor to where Jean was fitting a key into the door of his
+prospective bedroom.
+
+"The room, monsieur!" Jean's voice was full of pride. He had lived for
+ten years in the Hôtel Railleux, working as six men and six women
+together would not have worked in the fashionable quarter, and he had
+never been shaken in his belief that Paris held no more inviting
+hostelry.
+
+The boy obediently stepped forward into the tiny apartment, in which a
+big wooden bedstead loomed out of all proportion. His movements were
+hasty, as though he desired to escape from some impression; his voice,
+when he spoke, was vague.
+
+"Very nice! Very nice!" he said. "And--and what is the view?"
+
+"The view? Oh, but monsieur will like the view!" Jean stepped to the
+window, drew back the heavy cretonne curtains, and threw open the long
+window, admitting a breath of chilling cold. "The court-yard! See,
+monsieur! The court-yard!"
+
+The boy came forward into the biting air and gazed down into the
+well-like depths of gloom, at the bottom of which could be discerned a
+small flagged court, ornamented by a couple of dwarfed and frost-bitten
+trees in painted tubs.
+
+Jean, watchful of the visitor's face, broke forth anew with
+inexhaustible tact.
+
+'It was a fine view--monsieur would admit that! But, naturally, it was
+not the street! Now No. 107, across the corridor--at five francs--?'
+
+Monsieur was aroused. "No! No! certainly not. The view was of no
+consequence. The bed looked all right."
+
+'The bed!' Here Jean spoke with deep feeling. 'There was no better bed
+in Paris. Had he not himself put clean sheets on it that day?' He turned
+from the window, and with the hand of an expert displayed the beauties
+of the sparse blankets, the cotton sheets, and the mountainous double
+mattress.
+
+'But monsieur was anxious to retire? Doubtless monsieur would sleep
+until _déjeuner_? A most excellent _déjeuner_ was served in the
+_salle-à-manger_ on the second floor.'
+
+The words flowed forth in a stream--agreeable, monotonous, reminiscent
+of the far-away province that had long ago bred this good creature.
+Suddenly the exhaustion of the long journey, the sleep so long denied
+rose about the traveller like a misty vapor. He longed for solitude; he
+pined for rest.
+
+"I am satisfied with everything," he said, abruptly. "Leave me. I have
+not been in bed for two nights."
+
+A flood of sympathy overspread Jean's face: he threw up his hands. "Poor
+boy! Poor boy! What a terrible thing!" With a touch as light as a
+woman's his work-worn fingers smoothed the pillow invitingly, and,
+tiptoeing to the door, he disappeared in tactful and silent
+comprehension of the situation.
+
+Vaguely the boy was conscious of his departure. A great lassitude was
+falling upon him, making him value the isolation of his three-franc room
+with a deep gratitude, turning his gaze toward the unpromising bed with
+an indescribable longing. Mechanically, as the door closed, he threw
+off his heavy overcoat, kicked off his high boots, discarded his coat
+and trousers, and, without waiting to search in his bag for another
+garment, stepped into bed and curled himself up in the flannel shirt he
+had worn all day.
+
+The bed was uncomfortable with that extraordinary discomfort of the
+old-fashioned French bed, that feels as though it were padded with
+cotton wool of indescribable heaviness. The sheets were coarse, the
+multitudinous clothes were weighty without being warm, but no prince on
+his bed of roses ever rested with more luxury of repose than did this
+young adventurer as, drawing the blankets to his chin, he stretched his
+limbs with the slow, delicious enjoyment born of long travel.
+
+Jean had drawn the cretonne curtains, but through their chinks streaks
+of bluish, shadowy light presaged the coming day. From his lair the boy
+looked out at these ghostly fingers of the morning, then his eyes
+travelled round the dark room until at last they rested upon his clothes
+lying, as he had thrown them, on the floor. He looked at them--the
+boots, the coat and trousers, the heavy overcoat--and suddenly some
+imperative thought banished sleep from his eyes. He sat up in bed; he
+shivered as the cold air nipped his shoulder; then, unhesitatingly, he
+slipped from between the sheets and slid out upon the floor.
+
+The room was small; the clothes lay within an arm's length. He shivered
+again, stooped, and, picking up the overcoat, dived his hand into the
+deep pocket, and drew forth the packet that he had guarded so
+tenaciously in the train.
+
+For a moment he stood looking at it in the blue light of the dawn--a
+thick brown packet, seven or eight inches long, tied with string and
+sealed. Once or twice he looked at it, seemingly lost in reflection;
+once or twice he turned it about in his hand as if to make certain it
+was intact; then, with a deep sigh indicative of satisfaction, he
+stepped back into bed, slipped the packet under his pillow and, with his
+fingers faithfully enlaced in the string, fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+It was eleven o'clock when the boy woke. All the excitement of the past
+days had culminated in the great exhaustion of the night before.
+
+He had slept as a child might sleep--dreamlessly, happily, unthinkingly.
+In that silent hour Nature had drawn him into her wide embrace, lulling
+him with a mother's gentleness; and now, in the moment of waking, it
+seemed that again the same beneficent agency was dispensing love and
+favor, for he opened his eyes upon a changed world. A magician's wand
+had been waved over the city during his hours of sleep; the mist and
+oppression of the night had disappeared with the darkness. Paris was
+under the dominion of the frost.
+
+Instinctively, even before his eyelids lifted, the northern soul within
+him apprised him of this change. He inhaled the crisp coldness of the
+air with a vague familiarity; he opened his eyes slowly and stared about
+the unknown room in an instant of hesitating doubt; then, with a great
+leap of the spirit, he recognized his position. Last night--the days and
+nights that had preceded it--flooded his consciousness, and in a moment
+he was out of bed and pulling back the drab-hued curtains that hid the
+window.
+
+Having freed the daylight, he leaned out, peering greedily down into the
+well-like court, where even the stunted trees in their painted tubs were
+coated white with rime; then, with another impulse, as quickly
+conceived, as quickly executed, he drew back into the room, fired with
+the desire to be out and about in this newly created world.
+
+By day, the details of the room stood out with a prominence that had
+been denied them in the dim candle-light of the night before, and he
+realized now, what had escaped him then, that there was neither
+dressing-table, wardrobe, nor chest of drawers, that the entire space of
+the small apartment was filled by the clumsy bed, a folding wash-stand,
+and two ponderous arm-chairs covered in shabby red velvet. These, with a
+dingy gold-framed mirror hanging above the tiny corner fireplace, and a
+gilt clock under a glass shade, formed the comforts purchasable for
+three francs.
+
+He studied it all solemnly and attentively, not omitting the gray
+wall-paper of melancholy design, and content that he had acquitted
+himself dutifully toward his surroundings, he unpacked his valise, and
+proceeded to dress for the day's happenings.
+
+The contents of the valise were not imposing--a change of linen, a soft
+felt hat, a pair of shoes, and a well-worn blue serge suit. The boy
+looked at each article as he drew it forth with a quaint attentiveness
+quite disproportionate to either its appearance or its value. But the
+process seemed to please him, and he lingered over it, ceasing almost
+reluctantly to appraise his belongings, and beginning to dress.
+
+This morning he discarded the high Russian boots and the fur cap of
+yesterday, and arrayed himself instead, and with much precision, in the
+serge suit. Worn as this suit was, it evidently retained a pristine
+value in its owner's eyes, for no sooner had he fastened the last button
+of the coat than he looked instinctively for the mirror in which to
+study the effect.
+
+The mirror unfortunately was high and, crane his neck as he might, he
+could see nothing beyond the waves of his short, dark hair and his
+eager, questioning eyes. But the effect must be observed, and, with an
+anxiety in seeming contrast to his nature, he pulled one of the massive
+velvet chairs to the fireplace and, mounting upon it, surveyed himself
+at every angle with deep intentness. At last, satisfied, he jumped to
+the ground, and taking the brown-paper packet from the hiding-place
+where it had reposed all night, bestowed it again in the pocket of his
+overcoat and, picking up the felt hat, left the room.
+
+The corridor, despite the advent of the day, was still dark, save where
+an occasional door stood ajar and a shaft of sun from the outer world
+shot across the drab carpet; but Jean had been over the floor with his
+broom while the hotel slept, and the battered tray with its suggestion
+of sordid festivity had been removed. Even here the electric air of the
+morning had made entry, and, yielding to its seduction, the boy gave
+rein to his eagerness as he hurried forward to the head of the stairs
+and laid his hand upon the meagre banister.
+
+From the hall below the white light of the day ascended with subtle
+invitation, while outside the world hummed with possibilities. He began
+the descent, light as a Mercury, his feet scarcely touching the steps
+that last night had offered so toilsome a progress, and on the third
+floor he encountered Jean, bearing another tray laden with plates and
+covered dishes.
+
+At sight of the young face, the good creature's smile broke forth
+irresistibly.
+
+'Ah, but monsieur had slept!' The little eyes ran over the face and
+figure of the guest with visible pleasure.
+
+The boy laughed--the full, light-hearted laugh that belongs to the
+beginning of things.
+
+"Yes, I have slept; and now, you may believe, I have an appetite!"
+
+Jean echoed the laugh with a spontaneity that held no disrespect. He
+lingered, drawn, as the Irishman in the train had been drawn, by
+something original, something vital, in the youthful personality.
+
+'His faith! But monsieur had the spirit as well as the appetite!'
+
+"Ah, the spirit!" For a fleeting second the boy's eyes looked away
+beyond Jean--untidy, attentive, comprehending--beyond the neutral-tinted
+walls and the shabby carpet of the Hôtel Railleux, seeing in vision the
+things that were to come. Then, with his swift impulsiveness, he flung
+his dream from him. What mattered the future? What mattered the past? He
+was here in the present--in the moment; and the moment, great or small,
+demanded living.
+
+"Never mind the spirit, Jean! Let us consider the flesh! Where is the
+_salle-à-manger_?"
+
+'The _salle-à-manger_ was on the second floor.'
+
+'The second floor? But of course! Had not Jean mentioned that fact last
+night?' With a nod and a smile, he was away down the intervening steps
+and at the door of the eating-room before Jean could balance his tray
+for his renewed ascent.
+
+The room that the boy entered was in keeping with the rest of the
+house--old-fashioned and in ill-repair. The floor was devoid of
+covering, the ceiling low, the only furniture a dozen small tables
+meagrely set out for _déjeuner_. On the moment of his entry eleven of
+these tables were unoccupied, but at the twelfth an eager young waiter
+attended upon a stout provincial Frenchwoman who was partaking heartily
+of a pungently smelling stew.
+
+On the opening of the door the waiter glanced round in strained
+anticipation, and the lady of the stew looked up and bowed a greeting to
+the new-comer.
+
+It struck the boy as curious--this welcome from a total stranger, but
+it woke anew the pleasant warmth, the agreeable sense of friendliness.
+With the tingling sensation of doing a daring deed, he glanced round the
+empty room, scanned the two long windows on which the cold, bright sun
+played laughingly, and through which the rattle and hum of the rue de
+Dunkerque penetrated like an exhilarating accompaniment, then, he walked
+straight to the table of the lady, smiled and, in his own turn, bowed.
+
+'Would madame permit him to sit at her table? It was sad to be alone
+upon so fine a morning.'
+
+A woman of any other nationality might have looked at him askance; but
+madame was French. She was fifty years of age, she was fat, she was
+ugly--but she was French. The sense of a pleasant encounter--the
+appreciation of romance was in her blood. She smiled at the debonair boy
+with as agreeable a self-consciousness as though she had been a young
+girl.
+
+'But certainly, if monsieur desired. The pleasure was for her.'
+
+Again an interchange of bows and smiles, sympathetically repeated by the
+interested young waiter. Then the boy, laying his hat and coat aside,
+seated himself at the table and entered upon the business of the hour,
+while madame became tactfully absorbed in her odoriferous stew.
+
+'What did monsieur desire?' The waiter stood anxiously attentive, his
+head inclining gravely to one side, his dirty napkin swinging from his
+left hand.
+
+The boy glanced up.
+
+'What could the Hôtel Railleux offer?'
+
+The waiter met his eye steadfastly. 'Anything that monsieur cared to
+order.'
+
+The boy encountered the steadfast look, and a little gleam of humor shot
+into his eyes.
+
+'Well, then, to begin with, should they say _Sole Waleska_?'
+
+The waiter's glance wavered, he threw the weight of his body from one
+foot to the other. Involuntarily madame looked up.
+
+The boy buried himself behind an expression of profound seriousness.
+
+"Yes! _Sole Waleska_! Or, perhaps, _Coulibiac à la Russe!"_
+
+The waiter's mouth opened in a desperate resolve to meet the worst.
+Madame's eyes discreetly sought her plate.
+
+The boy threw back his head and laughed aloud at his own small jest.
+"Bring me two eggs _en cocotte_," he substituted, and laughed again in
+sheer pleasure at the waiter's sudden smile, his sudden restoration to
+dignity, as he hurried away to put a seal upon an order that permitted
+the hotel to retain its self-respect.
+
+Again madame looked up. 'Monsieur was fond of his little pleasantry!
+This waiter was a good boy, but slow. They did not keep a sufficiency of
+servants at the Hôtel Railleux. But doubtless monsieur had noticed
+that?'
+
+The boy met her inquisitive glance with disarming frankness, but his
+words when he answered gave little information.
+
+'No. He had not as yet had time to notice anything.'
+
+'But of course! Monsieur was a new arrival? He had come--when was it--?'
+Madame appeared to search her memory.
+
+'Yesterday.'
+
+'But of course. Yesterday! And what a day it had been! What weather for
+a long journey! It had been a long journey, had it not?'
+
+The boy looked vague. 'Oh, it had been of a sufficient length!'
+
+Madame toyed with the remnants of her stew. 'It had, perhaps, been a
+journey from England? Monsieur was not French, although he had so
+charming a fluency in the language?' Her eyes, her whole provincial,
+inquisitive face begged for information, but the boy was firm.
+
+'We are each of the country God has given us!' he informed her. Then he
+added with convincing certainty that madame was without doubt
+_Parisienne_.
+
+Madame bridled at the soothing little falsehood.
+
+'Alas! nothing so interesting. She was of the provinces.'
+
+'Provincial! Impossible!'
+
+At once the ice was broken; at once they were on the footing of friends,
+and madame's soul poured forth its secret vanities.
+
+'Monsieur was too kind. No, she was provincial--though, of a truth,
+Paris was so well known to her that she might almost claim to be
+_Parisienne_.'
+
+The boy's interest was undiminished. 'Might he venture to ask if it was
+pleasure alone that had brought madame to the capital--or had
+business--?' He left the sentence discreetly unfinished.
+
+Madame pushed her empty plate away and took a toothpick from the table.
+
+'How observant was monsieur!' She eyed the bright young face with
+growing approval. 'Yes, business, alas, was the pivot of her visit! This
+terrible business--exacting so much, giving so little in return!' She
+heaved a weighty sigh, then her fat face melted into smiles. 'But after
+all, what would you?' She shrugged her ample shoulders, and the
+toothpick came into full play.
+
+'What would you, indeed?' The boy began to feel a little disconcerted
+under her glance of slow approval, and a swift sense of relief passed
+through him as the door opened and the waiter reappeared, carrying the
+two eggs.
+
+'What would you, indeed? One must live!' Madame, disregarding the
+waiter, continued to study the boyish face--the curious dark-gray eyes,
+in which the morning sun was discovering little flecks of gold. 'And
+every year conditions were becoming harder, as monsieur doubtless knew.'
+
+Monsieur nodded his head sagely, and began to eat his eggs with keen
+zest.
+
+Madame looked slowly round at the waiter and ordered coffee, then her
+glance returned to the boy.
+
+'How good, how refreshing it was to see him eat! How easy to comprehend
+that he was young!' She sighed again, this time more softly. 'Youth was
+a marvellous thing--and Paris was the city of the young! Was monsieur
+making a long stay at the Hôtel Railleux?'
+
+The waiter again appeared and placed the coffee upon the table.
+Monsieur, suddenly and unaccountably uneasy, finished his eggs hastily
+and pushed his plate aside.
+
+'Did monsieur desire coffee?' Madame leaned forward. 'If so, it would be
+but the matter of a moment to procure a second cup; and, as her
+coffee-pot was quite full--' She raised the lid coquettishly, and again
+her eyes lingered upon the short dark hair and the straight brows above
+the gray eyes.
+
+The waiter with ready tact departed in search of the second cup; madame
+replaced the lid of the coffee-pot.
+
+'Now that they were alone, would it be an unpardonable liberty to ask
+how old monsieur really was?'
+
+Monsieur blushed.
+
+'How old would madame suppose?'
+
+Madame laughed. 'Oh, it was difficult to say! One might imagine from
+those bright eyes that monsieur had nineteen years; but, again, it was
+impossible to suppose that a razor had ever touched that soft cheek.'
+There was another little laugh, lower this time and more subtle in tone;
+and madame, with a movement wonderfully swift considering her years and
+her proportions, leaned across the table and touched the boy's face.
+
+The effect was instant. A tide of color rushed into his cheeks, he rose
+with an alacrity that was comic.
+
+'He--he was much older than madame supposed!'
+
+Madame laughed delightedly. 'How charming! How ingenuous! He positively
+must sit down again. It was assured that they would become friends!
+Where was that waiter? Where was that second coffee-cup?'
+
+But monsieur remained standing.
+
+Madame's eyes, now alive with interest, literally danced to her
+thoughts.
+
+'Come! Come! They must not allow the coffee to become cold!'
+
+But monsieur picked up his hat and coat.
+
+'What! He was not going? Oh, it was impossible! He could not be so
+unkind!' Her face expressed dismay.
+
+But her only answer was a stiff little bow, and a second later the door
+had closed and the boy was running down the stairs of the hotel as
+though some enemy were in hot pursuit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The mind of the boy was very full as he passed out of the hotel, so full
+that he scarcely noticed the whip of cold air that stung his face or the
+white mantle that lay upon the streets, wrapping in a silver sheath all
+that was sordid, all that was dirty and unpicturesque in that corner of
+Paris. The human note had been touched in that moment in the
+_salle-à-manger,_ and his ears still tingled to its sound. Alarm,
+disgust, and a strange exultant satisfaction warred within him in a
+manner to be comprehended by his own soul alone.
+
+As he stepped out into the rue de Dunkerque he scarcely questioned in
+what direction his feet should carry him. North, south, east, or west
+were equal on that first day. Everywhere was promise--everywhere a call.
+Nonchalantly and without intention he turned to the left and found
+himself once more in face of the Gare du Nord.
+
+It is a good thing to rejoice in spite of the world; it is an infinitely
+better thing to rejoice in company with it. With solitude and freedom,
+the alarm, the disgust receded, and as he went forward the exultation
+grew, until once again his mercurial spirits lifted him as upon wings.
+
+The majority of passers-by at this morning hour were workers--work-girls
+out upon their errands, business men going to or from the _cafés_; but
+here and there was to be seen an artist, consciously indifferent to
+appearances; here and there an artisan, unconsciously picturesque in his
+coarse working-clothes; here and there a well-dressed woman, sunning
+herself in the cold, bright air like a bird of gay plumage. It was the
+world in miniature, and it stirred and piqued his interest. A wish to
+stop one of these people, and to pour forth his longings, his hopes, his
+dreams, surged within him in a glow of fellowship and, smiling to
+himself at the pleasant wildness of the thought, he made his way through
+the wider spaces of the Place Lafayette and the Square Montholon into
+the long, busy rue Lafayette.
+
+Here, in the rue Lafayette, the gloomy aspects of the district he had
+made his own dropped behind him, and a wealth of bustle and gayety
+greeted and fascinated him. Here the sun seemed fuller, the traffic was
+more dense, and the shops offered visions to please every sense. Wine
+shops were here, curio shops, shops all golden and tempting with cheeses
+and butter, and hat shops that foretold the spring in a glitter of blues
+and greens. He passed on, jostling the crowd good-humoredly, being
+jostled in the same spirit, hugging his freedom with a silent joy.
+
+Down the rue Halévy he went and on into the Place de l'Opéra; but here
+he slackened his pace, and something of his _insouciance_ dropped from
+him. The wide space filled with its cosmopolitan crowd, the opera-house
+itself, so aloof in its dark splendor, spoke to him of another
+Paris--the Paris that might be Vienna, Petersburg, London, for all it
+has to say of individual life. His mood changed; he paused and looked
+back over his shoulder in the direction from whence he had come. But the
+hesitation was fleeting; a quick courage followed on the doubt. The
+adventurer must take life in every aspect--must face all questions, all
+moments! He turned up the collar of his coat, as though preparing to
+face a chillier region, and went forward boldly as before.
+
+One or two narrow streets brought him out upon the Place de Rivoli,
+where Joan of Arc sat astride her golden horse, and where great heaps of
+flowers were stacked at the street corners--mimosa, lilac, violets. He
+halted irresistibly to glance at these flowers breathing of the south,
+and to glance at the shining statue. Then he crossed the rue de Rivoli
+and, passing through the garden of the Tuileries, emerged upon the Place
+de la Concorde.
+
+On the Place de la Concorde the cool, clean hand of the morning had
+drawn its most striking picture; here, in the great, unsheltered spaces,
+the frost had fallen heavily, softening and beautifying to an
+inconceivable degree. The suggestion of modernity that ordinarily hangs
+over the place was veiled, and the subtle hints of history stole forth,
+binding the imagination. It needed but a touch to materialize the dream
+as the boy crossed the white roadway, shadowed by the white statuary,
+and with an odd appropriateness the touch was given.
+
+One moment his mind was a sea of shifting visions, the next it was
+caught and held by an inevitably thrilling sound--the sound of feet
+tramping to a martial tune. The touch had been given: the vague visions
+of tradition and history crystallized into a picture, and his heart
+leaped to the pulsing, steady tramp, to the clash of fife and drum
+ringing out upon the fine cold air.
+
+All humanity is drawn by the sight of soldiers. There is a primitive
+exhilaration in the idea of marching men that will last while the
+nations live. Stung by the same impulse that affected every man and
+woman in the Place de la Concorde, the boy paused--his head up, his
+pulses quickened, his eyes and ears strained toward the sound.
+
+It was a regiment of infantry marching down the Cours la Reine and
+defiling out upon the Place de la Concorde toward the rue de Rivoli. By
+a common impulse he paused, and by an equally common desire to be close
+to the object of interest, he ran forward to where a little crowd had
+gathered in the soldiers' route.
+
+The French soldier is not individually interesting, and this body of men
+looked insignificant enough upon close inspection. Yet it was a
+regiment; it stirred the fancy; and the boy gazed with keen interest at
+the small figures in the ill-fitting uniforms and at the faces, many as
+young as his own, that denied past him in confusing numbers. On and on
+the regiment wound, a coiling line of dull red and bluish-gray against
+the frosty background, the feet tramping steadily, the fifes and drums
+beating out with an incessant clamor.
+
+Then, without warning, a new interest touched the knot of watchers, a
+thrill passed from one member of the crowd to another, and hats were
+raised. The colors were being borne by: Frenchmen were saluting their
+flag.
+
+The knowledge sprang to the boy's mind with the swiftness and poignancy
+of an inspiration. This body of men might be insignificant, but it
+represented the army of France--a thing of infinite tradition, of
+infinite romance. The blood mounted to his face, his heart beat faster,
+and with a strange, half-shy sense of participating in some fine moment,
+his hand went up to his hat.
+
+Unconsciously he made a picture as he stood there, his dark hair stirred
+by the light, early air, his young face beautiful in its sudden
+enthusiasm; and to one pair of eyes in the little crowd it seemed better
+worth watching than the passing soldiers.
+
+The owner of these eyes had been observant of him from the moment that
+he had run forward, drawn by the rattle of the drums; and now, as if in
+acceptance of an anticipated opportunity, he forced a way through the
+knot of people and, pausing behind the boy, addressed him in an easy,
+familiar voice, as one friend might address another.
+
+"Isn't it odd," he said, "to look at those insignificant creatures, and
+to think that the soldiers of France have kissed the women and thrashed
+the men the world over?"
+
+Had a gun been discharged close to his car the boy could not have
+started more violently. Fear leaped into his eyes, he wheeled round;
+then a sharp, nervous laugh of relief escaped him.
+
+"How you frightened me!" he exclaimed. "Oh, how you frightened me!" Then
+he laughed again.
+
+His travelling companion of the night before smiled down on him from his
+superior height, and the boy noted for the first time that this smile
+had a peculiarly attractive way of communicating itself from the
+clean-shaven lips to the grayish-green eyes of the stranger, banishing
+the slightly satirical look that marked his face in repose.
+
+"Well?" The Irishman was still studying him.
+
+"Well? We're all on the knees of the gods, you see! 'Twas written that
+we were to meet; you can't avoid me."
+
+The flag had been carried past; the boy replaced his hat, glad of a
+moment in which to collect his thoughts. What must he do? The question
+beat in his brain. Wisdom whispered avoidance of this stranger. To-day
+was the first day; was it wise to bring into it anything from yesterday?
+No, it was not wise--reason upheld wisdom. He pulled his hat into place,
+his lips came together in an obstinate line, and he raised his eyes.
+
+The sun was dancing on a silvery world, from the rue de Rivoli the fifes
+and drums still rattled out their march, close beside him the Irishman
+was looking at him with his pleasant smile.
+
+Suddenly, as a daring horseman might give rein to a young horse,
+rejoicing in the risk, the boy discarded wisdom and its whispering curb;
+his nature leaped forth in sudden comradeship, and impulsively he held
+out his hand.
+
+"Monsieur, forgive me!" he said. "The gods know best!"
+
+He said the words in English, perfectly, easily, with that faintest of
+all foreign intonations--the intonation that clings to the Russian
+voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+So the step was taken, and two souls, drawn together from different
+countries, different races, touched in a first subtle fusion. With an
+ease kindled by the fine and stinging air, stimulated by the crisp
+summons of the flutes and the martial rattle of the drums, they bridged
+the thousand preliminaries that usually hedge a friendship, and arrived
+in a moment of intuition at that consciousness of fellowship that is the
+most divine of human gifts.
+
+As though the affair had been prearranged through countless ages, they
+turned by one accord and forced a way through the crowd that still
+encompassed them. Across the Place de la Concorde they went, past the
+white statues, past the open space through which the soldiers were still
+defiling like a dark stream in a snowbound country. Each was drawn
+instinctively toward the Cours la Reine--the point from whence the
+stream was pouring, the point where the crowd of loiterers was sparsest,
+where the bare and frosted trees caught the sun in a million dancing
+facets. Reaching it, the boy looked up into the stranger's face with his
+fascinating look of question and interest.
+
+"Monsieur, tell me something! How did you know me again? And why did you
+speak to me?"
+
+The question was grave, with the charming gravity that was wont to cross
+his gayety as shadows chase each other across a sunlit pool. His lips
+were parted naïvely, his curious slate-gray eyes demanded the truth.
+
+[Illustration: TWO SOULS, DRAWN TOGETHER, TOUCHED IN A FIRST SUBTLE
+FUSION]
+
+The Irishman recognized the demand, and answered it.
+
+"Now that you put it to me," he said, thoughtfully, "I'm not sure that I
+can tell you. There's something about you--" His thoughtfulness
+deepened, and he studied the boy through narrowed eyes. "It isn't that
+you're odd in any way."
+
+The boy reddened.
+
+"It isn't that you're odd," he insisted, "but somehow you're such a slip
+of a boy--" His voice grew meditative and he recurred to his native
+trick of phrasing, as he always did when interested or moved.
+
+"But why did you speak to me? I'm not interesting."
+
+"Oh yes, you are!"
+
+"How am I interesting?" There was a flash in the gray eyes that revealed
+new flecks of gold.
+
+The Irishman hesitated.
+
+"Well, I can't explain it," he said, slowly, "unless I tell you that you
+throw a sort of spell--and that sounds absurd. You see, I've knocked
+about the world a bit, east and west, but at the back of everything I'm
+an Irishman; I have a fondness for the curious and the poetical and the
+mysterious, and somehow you seemed to me last night to be mystery
+itself, with your silence and your intentness." He dropped his voice to
+the meditative key, unconsciously enjoying its soft, half-melancholy
+cadences, and as he spoke the boy felt some chord in his own personality
+vibrate to the mind that had asked for no introduction, demanded no
+credentials, that had decreed their friendship and materialized it.
+
+"No," the Irishman mused on, "there's no explaining it. You were mystery
+itself, and you fired my imagination, because I happen to come from a
+country of dreams. We Irish are born dreamers; sometimes we never wake
+up at all, and then we're counted failures. But, I tell you what, when
+all's said and done, we see what other men don't see. For instance,
+what do you think my two friends saw in you last night?"
+
+The boy shook his head, and there was a tremor of nervousness about his
+mouth.
+
+"They saw something dangerous--something to be avoided. Yet Mac is a
+millionaire several times over, and Billy is distinctly a diplomatist
+with a future."
+
+The boy forced a smile; he was beginning to shrink from the pleasant
+scrutiny, to wish that the vaporous fog of last night might dim the
+searching light of the morning.
+
+"What did they see?" he asked.
+
+The Irishman looked at him humorously. "I hardly like to tell it to
+you," he said, "but they marked you for an anarchist. An anarchist, for
+all the world! As if any anarchist alive would travel first-class in
+third-class clothes! You see, I'm blunt."
+
+The boy, studying him, half in fear, half in doubt, laughed suddenly in
+quick relief and amusement.
+
+"An anarchist! How droll!"
+
+"Wasn't it? I told them so. I also told them--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"My own beliefs."
+
+"And your beliefs?"
+
+"No! No! You won't draw me! But I'll tell you this much, for I've told
+it before. I knew you were no common creature of intrigue; I accepted
+you as mystery personified."
+
+"And now you would solve me?" In his returning confidence the boy's eyes
+danced.
+
+"God forbid!" The vehemence of the reply was comic, and the Irishman
+himself laughed as the words escaped him. "Oh no!" he added, soberly.
+"Keep your mask! I don't want to tear it from you. Later on, perhaps,
+I'll take a peep behind; but I can accept mysteries and miracles--I was
+born into the Roman Catholic Church."
+
+"And I into the Greek."
+
+"Ah! My first peep!"
+
+"And what do you see?"
+
+"Do you know, I see a queer thing. I see a boy who has thought. You have
+thought. Don't deny it!"
+
+"On religion?"
+
+"On religion--and other things; you acknowledge it in one look."
+
+The boy laughed, like a child who has been caught at some forbidden
+game.
+
+"Perhaps it was your imagination."
+
+"Perhaps! But, look here, we can't stand all day discoursing in the
+Cours la Reine! Where shall we wander--left or right?" He nodded first
+in the direction of the river, then toward the large building that faced
+them on the right, from the roof of which an array of small flags
+fluttered an invitation.
+
+The boy's eyes followed his movement. "Pictures!" he exclaimed. "I
+didn't know there was an exhibition open."
+
+"Live and learn! Come along!"
+
+Together they stepped into the roadway, where the frosty surface was
+scarred by the soldiers' feet, and together they reached the doorway of
+the large building and read the legend, "_Soctiété Peintres et
+Sculpteurs Français_."
+
+The Irishman read the words with the faintly humorous, faintly sceptical
+glance that he seemed to bestow upon the world at large.
+
+"Remember I'm throwing out no bait, but I expect 'twill be value for a
+couple of francs."
+
+They entered the bare hall and, mounting a cold and rigid staircase,
+found themselves confronted by a turnstile.
+
+The Irishman was in the act of laying a two-franc piece in the hand of
+the custodian when the boy plucked him by the sleeve and, turning, he
+saw the curious eyes full of a sudden anxiety.
+
+"Monsieur, pardon me! You know Paris well?"
+
+"I live here for five months out of the twelve."
+
+"Then you can tell me if--if this exhibition will be well attended. I
+want with all my heart to see the pictures, but I--I dislike
+crowds--fashionable crowds." His voice was agitated; it was as if he had
+suddenly awakened from his pleasant dream of Bohemian comradeship to a
+remembrance of the Paris that lay about him.
+
+The Irishman expressed no surprise: his only reply was to move nearer to
+the guardian of the turnstile.
+
+"Monsieur," he said in French, "have the goodness to inform me how many
+persons have passed through the turnstile this morning?"
+
+The man looked at him without interest, though with some surprise. 'Not
+many of the world were to be seen at such an hour,' he informed him.
+'So far, he had admitted two gentlemen--artists, and three
+ladies--American.'
+
+The Irishman waved his hand toward the turnstile.
+
+"In with you! The world forgetting, by the world forgot!"
+
+His ease of manner was contagious. Whatever misgivings had assailed the
+boy were banished with this reassurance, and his confidence flowed back
+as the custodian took the two-franc piece and the turnstile clicked
+twice, making them free of the long, bare galleries that opened in front
+of them.
+
+Inured as he was to cold, he shivered as they passed into the first of
+these long rooms, and involuntarily buried his chin in the collar of his
+coat. The chill of the place was vaultlike; the cold, gray light that
+penetrated it held nothing of the sun's comfort, while the small, black
+stove set in the middle of the room was a mere travesty of warmth.
+
+"God bless my soul!" began the Irishman, "this is art for art's sake--"
+
+But there he stopped, for his companion, with the impetuosity of his
+temperament, had suddenly caught sight of a picture that interested him,
+and had darted across the room, leaving him to his own reflections.
+
+The boy was standing perfectly still, entirely engrossed, when he came
+silently up behind him, and paused to look over his shoulder. They were
+alone in the vast and chilly room save for one attendant who dozed over
+some knitting in a corner near the door. Away into the distance
+stretched the other rooms, bound one to the other like links in a chain.
+From the third of these came the penetrating voices of the American
+ladies, descanting unhesitatingly upon the pictures; while in the second
+the two artists could be seen flitting from one canvas to another with a
+restless, nervous activity.
+
+These facts came subconsciously to the Irishman, for his eyes and his
+thoughts were for the boy and the subject of the boy's interest--a
+picture curiously repulsive, yet curiously binding in its realism of
+conception. It was a large canvas that formed one of a group of five or
+six studies by a particular artist. The details of the picture scarcely
+held the mind, for the imagination of the beholder was instantly caught
+and enchained by the central figure--the figure of a great ape, painted
+with cruel and extraordinary truth. The animal was squatting upon the
+ground, devouring a luscious fruit; its small and greedy eyes were
+alight with gluttony; in its unbridled appetite, its hairy fingers
+crushed the fruit against its sharp teeth, while the juice dripped from
+its mouth.
+
+The intimate, undisguised portrayal of greed shocked the
+susceptibilities, but it was the hideous human attributes patent in the
+brute that disgusted the imagination. With a terrible cunning of mind
+and brush the artist had laid bare a vice that civilization cloaks.
+
+For two or three minutes the boy stood immovable, then he looked back
+over his shoulder, and the man behind him was surprised at the
+expression that had overspread his face, the sombre light that glowed in
+his eyes. In a moment the adventurer was lost, another being had come
+uppermost--a strange, unexpected being.
+
+"What do you think of this picture?"
+
+The Irishman did not answer for a moment, then his eyes returned to the
+canvas and his tongue was loosed.
+
+"If you want to know," he said, "I think it's the most damnable thing
+I've ever seen. When the Gallic mind runs to morbidity there's nothing
+to touch it for filth."
+
+"Why filth?"
+
+"Why filth? My dear boy, look at this--and this!" He pointed to the
+other pictures, each a study of monkey life, each a travesty of some
+human passion.
+
+The boy obeyed, conscientiously and slowly, then once more his eyes
+challenged his companion's.
+
+"I say again, why filth?"
+
+"Because there is enough of the beast in every man without advertising
+it."
+
+"You admit that there is something of the beast in every man?"
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"Then why fear to see it?" The boy's face was pale, his eyes still
+challenged.
+
+The other made a gesture of impatience. "It isn't a question of fear;
+it is a question of--well, of taste."
+
+"Taste!" The boy tossed the word to scorn.
+
+"What would you substitute?"
+
+"Truth." There was a tremor in his voice, a veil seemed to fall upon his
+youth, arresting its carelessness, sobering its vitality.
+
+The Irishman raised his brows. "Truth, eh?"
+
+"Yes. It is only possible to live when we know life truly, see it and
+value it truly."
+
+"There may be perverted truth."
+
+"You say that because this truth we speak of displeases you; yet this is
+no more a perversion of the truth than"--he glanced round the
+walls--"than that, for example; yet you would approve of that."
+
+He waved his hand toward another painting, a delicate and charming
+conception of a half-clothed woman, a picture in which the flesh-tints,
+the drapery, the lights all harmonized with exquisite art.
+
+"You would approve of that because it pleases your eye and soothes your
+senses, yet you know that all womankind is not slim and graciou--that
+all life is not lived in boudoirs."
+
+"Neither is man all beast."
+
+"Ah, that is it! If we are to be students of human nature we must not be
+swayed in one direction or the other; and that is the difficulty--to be
+dispassionate. Sometimes it is--very difficult!"
+
+It came with a charm indescribable, this sudden admission of weakness,
+accompanied by a deprecating, pleading glance, and the Irishman was
+filled with a sudden sense of having recovered something personal and
+precious.
+
+"What are you?" he cried. "It's my turn to seek the truth now. What are
+you, you incomprehensible being?"
+
+The boy laughed, the old careless, light-hearted laugh of the creature
+infinitely free.
+
+"Do not ask! Do not ask!" he said. "A riddle is only interesting while
+it is unsolved."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+With the laugh the personal moment passed. Henceforward it was the
+technique of the pictures, the individualism of the artists that claimed
+the boy's attention, and in this new field he proved himself yet another
+being--a creature of quick perception and curiously mature judgment,
+appreciative and observant, critical and generous.
+
+In warm and interested discussion they made the tour of the rooms, and
+when they emerged again into the frosty morning air and were greeted by
+the dazzle of the sun, each was conscious of a deeper understanding. A
+new expression of interest and something of respect was visible in the
+Irishman's face as he looked down on the puzzling, elusive being whom he
+had picked up from the skirts of chance as he might have filched a jewel
+or a coin.
+
+"Look here, boy!" he said, "we mustn't say good-bye just yet. Come
+across the river, and let's find some little place where we can get a
+seat and a cup of coffee."
+
+The boy's only answer was to turn obediently, as the other slipped his
+hand through his arm, and to allow himself to be guided back across the
+Cours la Reine and over the Pont Alexandre III.
+
+The bridge looked almost as impressive as the Place de la Concorde under
+its white garment, and his glance ranged from the high columns, topped
+by the winged horses, to the thronging bronze lamps, while the sense of
+breath and freedom fitted with his secret thoughts.
+
+Leaving the river behind them, they made their way onward across the
+Esplanade des Invalides, through the serried lines of trees, stark and
+formal against the January sky, to the rue Fabert. Here, in the rue
+Fabert, lay that note of contrast that is bound into the very atmosphere
+of Paris--the note that touches the imagination to so acute an interest.
+Here shabby, broken-down shops rubbed shoulders with fine old entries,
+entries that savored of other times in the hint of roomy court-yard and
+green garden to be caught behind their gateways; here were creameries
+that conjured the country to the eager senses, and laundries that
+exhaled a very aroma of work in the hot steam that poured through their
+windows and in the babble of voices that arose from the women who stood
+side by side, iron in hand, bending over the long, spotless tables piled
+with linen.
+
+It was a touch of Parisian life, small in itself, but subtle and
+suggestive as the premonition of spring awakened by the twittering of
+the sparrows in the tall, leafless trees, and the throbbing song of a
+caged canary that floated down from a window above a shop. It was
+suggestive of that Parisian life that is as restless as the sea, as
+uncontrollable, as possessed of hidden currents.
+
+Involuntarily the boy paused and glanced up at the bird in its cage--the
+bird that, regardless of the garden of greenstuffs pushed through its
+bars, was pouring forth its heart to the pale sun in a frenzy of
+worship.
+
+"How strange that is!" he said. "If I were a bird and saw the great sky,
+knowing myself imprisoned, I should beat my life out against my cage."
+
+The Irishman looked down upon him. "I wonder!" he said, slowly.
+
+The quick, gray eyes flashed up to his. "You doubt it?"
+
+"I don't know! 'On my soul, I don't know!"
+
+"Would you not beat your life out against a cage?"
+
+"I wonder that too! I'd like to think I would, but--"
+
+"You imagine you would hesitate? You think you would shrink?"
+
+"I don't know! Human nature is so damnably patient. Come along! here's
+the place we're looking for." He drew the boy across the road to the
+doorway of a little _café_, over the door of which hung the somewhat
+pretentious sign Maison Gustav.
+
+The Maison Gustav was scarcely a more appetizing place than the Hôtel
+Railleux. One-half of its interior was partitioned off and filled with
+long tables, at which, earlier in the day, workmen were served with
+_déjeuner_, while the other and smaller portion, reserved for more
+fastidious guests, was fitted with a counter, ranged with fruit and
+cakes, and with half a dozen round marble-topped tables, provided with
+chairs.
+
+This more refined portion of the _café_ was empty of customers as the
+two entered. With the ease and decision of an _habitué_, the Irishman
+chose the table nearest to the counter, and presently a woman appeared
+from some inner region, and, approaching her customers, eyed them with
+that mixture of shrewd observation and polite welcome that belongs to
+the Frenchwoman who follows the ways of commerce.
+
+"Good-day, messieurs!" She inclined her head to one side like a plump
+and speculative bird, and her hands began mechanically to smooth her
+black alpaca apron.
+
+"Good-day, madame!" The Irishman rose and took off his hat with a
+flourish that was essentially flattering.
+
+The bright little eyes of the _Parisienne_ sparkled, and her round face
+relaxed into the inevitable smile.
+
+'What could she have the pleasure of offering monsieur? It was late, but
+she had an excellent _ragoût_, now a little cold, perhaps, but capable
+in an instant--'
+
+The stranger put up his hand. "Madame, we could not think of giving you
+the trouble--"
+
+"Monsieur, a pleasure--"
+
+"No, madame, it is past the hour of _déjeuner_. All we need is your
+charming hospitality and two cups of coffee."
+
+'Coffee! But certainly! While monsieur was saying the word it would be
+made and served.'
+
+Madame hurried off, and in silence the Irishman took out his
+cigarette-case and offered it to the boy. Bare and even cold as the
+_café_ was, there was a certain sense of shelter in the closed glass
+door, in the blue film of cigarette smoke that presently began to mount
+upward toward the ceiling, and in the pleasant smell of coffee borne to
+them from unseen regions mingling with the shrill, cheerful tones of
+their hostess's voice.
+
+"A wonderful place, Paris, when all's said and done!" murmured the
+Irishman, drawing in a long, luxurious breath of smoke. "How an English
+restaurant-keeper would stare you out of countenance if you demanded a
+modest cup of coffee when he had luncheon for you to eat! But here,
+bless you, they acknowledge the rights of man. If you want coffee,
+coffee you must have--and that with the best grace in the world, lest
+your self-esteem be hurt! They're like my people at home: consideration
+for the individual is the first thing. It means nothing, a Saxon will
+tell you, and probably he's quite right; but I'd sooner have a
+pleasant-spoken sinner any day than a disagreeable saint. Ah, here comes
+madame!" The last words he added in French, and the boy watched him in
+amused wonder as he jumped to his feet and, meeting their hostess at the
+kitchen door, insisted upon taking the tray from her hands.
+
+Laughing, excited, and flattered, the little woman followed him to the
+table.
+
+'It was really too much! Monsieur was too kind!'
+
+'On the contrary! It was not meant that woman should wait upon man!
+Madame had accomplished her share in making this most excellent coffee!'
+
+He sniffed at the steaming pot with the air of a connoisseur.
+
+Madame laughed again, this time self-consciously. 'Well, her coffee had
+been spoken of before now! Monsieur, her husband, who was quite a
+_gourmet_--'
+
+'Always declared there was no such coffee in all Paris! Was not that
+so?'
+
+Madame's laugh was now a gurgle of delight. 'How clever of monsieur!
+Yes, it was what he said.'
+
+'Of course it was! And now, how was this good husband? And how was life
+treating them both?' He put the questions with deep solicitude as he
+poured out the coffee, and madame, standing by the table and smoothing
+her apron, grew serious, and before she was aware was pouring forth the
+grievance that at the moment was darkening her existence--the
+disappointment that had befallen the Maison Gustav when her
+father-in-law, a market gardener near Issy, who had a nice little sum of
+money laid by, had married again at the age of sixty-four.
+
+'Could monsieur conceive anything more grotesque? An old man of
+sixty-four marrying a young woman of twenty! Of course there would be a
+child!' Her shoulders went up, her hands went out in expressive gesture.
+'And her little Léon would be cheated of his grandfather's money by this
+creature who--'
+
+At this juncture the sound of a kettle boiling over brought the story to
+an abrupt end, and madame flew off, leaving her guests to a not
+unwelcome solitude.
+
+As her black skirt whisked round the corner of the door the boy looked
+at his companion.
+
+"You come here often," he said.
+
+The other laughed. "I've never set foot in the place before. It's a way
+we Irish have of putting our fingers into other people's pies! Some call
+it intrusion"--he glanced quizzically at the boy--"but these good
+creatures understand it. They're more human than the Saxon or the--"
+Again a glint of humor crossed his face, as he paused on his unfinished
+sentence.
+
+The boy reddened and impulsively leaned across the table.
+
+"You have taught me something, monsieur," he said, shyly, "and I have
+much to learn."
+
+The other returned the glance seriously, intently. "What is it I have
+taught you?"
+
+"That in the smaller ways of life it is not possible to stand quite
+alone."
+
+The Irishman laid down his cigarette. With native quickness of
+comprehension, the spirit of banter dropped from him, his mood merged
+into the boy's mood.
+
+"No," he said, "we are not meant to stand quite alone, and when two of
+us are flung up against each other as we have been flung, by a wave of
+circumstance, you may take it that the gods control the currents. In our
+case I would say, 'Let's bow to the inevitable! Let's be friends!'" He
+put out his hand and took the boy's strong, slim fingers in his grasp.
+
+"I don't want your secret," he added, with a quickening interest, "but I
+want to know one thing. Tell me what you are seeking here in Paris? Is
+it pleasure, or money, or what?"
+
+He watched the boy's mobile face as he put his question: he saw it swept
+by emotion, transfigured as if by some inner light; then the hand in his
+trembled a little, and the gray eyes with their flecks of gold were
+lifted to his own, giving insight into the hidden soul.
+
+"I want more than pleasure, monsieur--more than money," he said. "I want
+first life--and then fame."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It trembled and hung upon the air--that brief word "fame"--as it has so
+often hung and trembled in the streets and in the _cafés_ of Paris,
+winged with the exuberance of youth, the faith in his mystic star that
+abides in the heart of the artist. In that moment of confession the
+individuality of the boy was submerged in his ambition; he belonged to
+no country, to no sex. He was inspiration made manifest--the flame
+fanned into being by the winds of the universe, blown as those winds
+listed.
+
+The Irishman looked into his burning face, and a curious unnamable
+feeling thrilled him--a sense of enthusiasm, of profound sadness, of
+poignant envy.
+
+"You're not only seeking the greatest thing in the world," he said,
+slowly, "but the cruellest. Failure may be cruel, but success is
+crueller still. The gods are usurers, you know; they lend to mortals,
+but they exact a desperate interest."
+
+The boy's hand, still lying unconsciously in his, trembled again.
+
+"I know that; but it does not frighten me."
+
+"A challenge? Take care! The gods are always listening."
+
+"I know that. I am not afraid."
+
+"So be it, then! I'll watch the duel. But what road do you
+follow--music? literature? Art of some sort, of course; you are artist
+all over."
+
+Again the fire leaped to the boy's eyes. He snatched his hand away in
+quick excitement.
+
+"Look! I will show you!"
+
+With the swiftness of lightning he whipped a pencil from his pocket,
+pushed aside his coffee-cup, and began to draw upon the marble-topped
+table as though his life depended upon his speed.
+
+For ten minutes he worked feverishly, his face intensely earnest, his
+head bent over his task, a lock of dark hair drooping across his
+forehead; then he looked up, throwing himself back in his chair and
+gazing up at his companion with the egotistical triumph--the intense,
+childish satisfaction of the artist in the first flush of accomplished
+work.
+
+"Look! Look, now, at this!"
+
+The Irishman laughed sympathetically; the artist, as belonging to a race
+apart, was known by him and liked, but he rose and came round the table
+with a certain scepticism. Life had taught him that temperament and
+output are different things.
+
+He leaned over the boy's chair; then suddenly he laid his hand on his
+shoulder and gripped it, his own face lighting up.
+
+"Why, boy!" he cried. "This is clever--clever--clever! I'm a Dutchman,
+if this isn't the real thing! Why on earth didn't you tell me you could
+do it?"
+
+The boy laughed in sheer delight and, bending over the table, added a
+lingering touch or two to his work--a rough expressive sketch of himself
+standing back from an easel, a palette in his left hand, a brush in his
+right, his hair unkempt, his whole attitude comically suggestive of an
+artist in a moment of delirious oblivion. It was the curt, abrupt
+expression of a mood, but there was cleverness, distinction, humor in
+every line.
+
+"Boy, this is fine! Fine! That duel will be fought, take my word for
+it. But, look here, we must toast this first attempt! Madame! Madame!"
+He literally shouted the words, and madame came flying out.
+
+"Madame, have you a liqueur brandy--very old? I have discovered that
+this is a _fête_ day."
+
+"But certainly, monsieur! A _cognac_ of the finest excellence."
+
+"Out with it, then! And bring two glasses--no, bring three glasses! You
+must drink a toast with us!"
+
+Madame bustled off, laughing and excited, and again the Irishman gripped
+the boy's shoulder.
+
+"You've taken me in!" he cried. "Absolutely and entirely taken me in! I
+thought you a slip of a boy with a head full of notions, and what do I
+find but that it's a little genius I've got! A genius, upon my word! And
+here comes the blessed liquor!"
+
+His whole-hearted enthusiasm was like fire, it leaped from one to the
+other of his companions. As madame came back, gasping in her haste, he
+ran to meet her, and, seizing the brandy and the glasses, drew her with
+him to the table.
+
+"Madame, you are a Frenchwoman--therefore an artist. Tell me what you
+think of this!"
+
+In his excitement he spoke in English, but madame understood his actions
+if not his words. Full of curiosity she bent over the boy's shoulder,
+peered into the sketch, then threw up her hands in genuine admiration.
+
+'Ah, but he was an artist, was monsieur! A true artist! It was
+delicious--ravishing!' She turned from one of her customers to the
+other. 'If monsieur would but put his name to this picture she would
+never again have the table washed; and in time to come, when he had made
+his big success--'
+
+"Good, madame! Good! When he has made his big success he will come back
+here and laugh and cry over this, and say, 'God be with the youth of
+us!' as we say in my old country. Come, boy, put your name to it!"
+
+[Illustration: "WHY, BOY, THIS IS CLEVER--CLEVER--CLEVER!"]
+
+The boy glanced up at him. His face was aglow, there were tears of
+emotion in his eyes.
+
+"I can say nothing," he cried, "but that I--I have never been so happy
+in my life." And, bending over his sketch, he wrote across the
+marble-topped table a single word--the word 'Max.'
+
+The Frenchwoman bent over his shoulder. "Max!" she murmured. "A pretty
+name!"
+
+The Irishman looked as well. "Max! So that's what they call you? Max!
+Well, let's drink to it!" He filled the three glasses and raised his
+own.
+
+"To the name of Max!" he said. "May it be known from here to the back of
+God's speed!" He swallowed the brandy and laid down his glass.
+
+"To M. Max!" The Frenchwoman smiled. "A great future, monsieur!" She
+sipped and bowed.
+
+Of the three, the boy alone sat motionless. His heart felt strangely
+full, the tears in his eyes were dangerously near to falling.
+
+"Come, Max! Up with your glass!"
+
+"Monsieur, I--I beg you to excuse me! My heart is very full of your
+kindness."
+
+"Nonsense, boy! Drink!"
+
+The boy laughed with a catch in his breath, then he drank a little with
+nervous haste, coughing as he laid his glass down. The _cognac_ of the
+Maison Gustav was of a fiery nature.
+
+The Irishman laughed. "Ah, another peep behind the mask! You may be an
+artist, young man--- you may have advanced ideas--but, for all that,
+you're only out of the nursery! It's for me to make a man of you, I see.
+Come, madame, the _addition_, if you please! We must be going."
+
+For a moment madame was lost in calculation, then she decorously
+mentioned the amount of their debt.
+
+The Irishman paid with the manner of a prince, and, slipping his arm
+again through the boy's, moved to the door; there he looked back.
+
+"Good-day, madame! Many thanks for your charming hospitality! Give my
+respects to monsieur, your husband--and kiss the little Léon for me!"
+
+They passed out into the rue Fabert, into the fresh and frosty air, and
+involuntarily the boy's arm pressed his.
+
+"How am I to thank you?" he murmured. "It is too much--this kindness to
+a stranger."
+
+The Irishman paused and looked at him. "Thanks be damned!--and stranger
+be damned!" he said with sudden vehemence. "Aren't we citizens of a free
+world? Must I know a man for years before I can call him my friend? And
+must every one I've known since childhood be my friend? I tell you I saw
+you and I liked you--that was all, and 'twas enough."
+
+Max looked at him with a certain grave simplicity. "Forgive me!" he
+said.
+
+Instantly the other's annoyance was dispelled. "Forgive! Nonsense! Tell
+me your plans, that's all I want."
+
+"My plans are very easy to explain. I shall rent a studio here in
+Paris--and there I shall work."
+
+"As a student?"
+
+"No, I have had my years of study; I am older than you think." He took
+no notice of the other's raised eyebrows. "I want to paint a picture--a
+great picture. I am seeking the idea."
+
+"Good! Good! Then we'll make that our basis--the search for the idea.
+The search for the great idea!"
+
+Max thrilled. 'The search for the idea! How splendid! Where must it
+begin? Not in fashionable Paris! Oh, not in fashionable Paris!'
+
+"Fashionable Paris!" The Irishman laughed in loud disdain. "Oh no! For
+us it must be the highways and the byways, eh?"
+
+Max freed his arm. "Ah yes! that is what I want--that is what I want.
+The highways and the byways. It is necessary that I am very solitary
+here in Paris. Quite unknown, you understand?--quite unnoticed."
+
+"The mystery? I understand. And now, tell me, shall it be the highways
+or the byways--Montmartre or the Quartier Latin?"
+
+Max smiled decisively. "Montmartre."
+
+"You know Montmartre?"
+
+"No."
+
+The Irishman laughed again. "Good!" he cried. "You're a fine adventurer!
+You have the right spirit! Always know your own mind, whatever else
+you're ignorant about! But I ought to tell you that Montmartre swarms
+with your needy fellow-countrymen."
+
+The boy looked up. "My needy fellow-countrymen will not harm me--or know
+me."
+
+"Good again! Then the coast is clear! I only thought to warn you."
+
+"I appreciate the thought." For an instant the old reserve touched the
+voice.
+
+"Now, Max! Now! Now!" The other turned to him, caught his arm again, and
+swung him out into the Esplanade des Invalides. "You're not to be doing
+that, you know! You're not! You're not! I see through you like a pane of
+glass. Sometimes you forget yourself and get natural, like you did in
+the _café_ this time back; then, all of a sudden, some imp of suspicion
+shakes his tail at you and says, 'Look here, young man, put that
+Irishman in his place! Keep him at a respectable arm's length!' Now,
+isn't that gospel truth?"
+
+The boy laughed, vanquished. "Monsieur," he said, naïvely, "I will not
+do it again."
+
+"That's right! You see, I'm not interesting or picturesque enough to
+suspect. When all's said and done, I'm just a poor devil of an Irishman
+with enough imagination to prevent his doing any particular harm in this
+world, and enough money to prevent his doing any special good. My name
+is Edward Fitzgerald Blake, and I have an old barracks of a castle in
+County Clare. I have five aunts, seven uncles, and twenty-four first
+cousins, every one of whom thinks me a lost soul; but I have neither
+sister nor brother, wife nor child to help or hinder me. There now! I
+have gone to confession, and you must give me absolution and an easy
+penance!"
+
+Max laughed. "Thank you, monsieur!"
+
+"Not 'monsieur,' for goodness' sake! Plain Ned, if you don't mind."
+
+"Ned?" The slight uncertainty, coupled with the foreign intonation, lent
+a charm to the name.
+
+"That's it! But I never heard it sound half so well before. Personally,
+it always struck me as being rather like its owner--of no particular
+significance. But I must be coming down to earth again, I have an
+appointment with our friend McCutcheon at three o'clock." He drew out
+his watch. "Oh, by the powers and dominations, I have only two minutes
+to keep it in! How the time has raced! I say, there's an auto-taxi
+looming on the horizon, over by the Invalides; I must catch it if I can.
+Come, boy! Put your best foot foremost!"
+
+Laughing and running like a couple of school-boys, they zigzagged
+through the labyrinth of formal trees, and secured the cab as it was
+wheeling toward the _quais_.
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Blake. "And now, what next? Can I give you a lift?"
+His foot was on the step of the cab, his fingers on the handle of the
+door, his face, flushed from his run and from the cold, looked
+pleasantly young. The boy's heart went out to him in a glow of
+comradeship.
+
+"No, I will remain here. But I--I want to see you soon again. May I?"
+
+"May you? Say the word! To-morrow? To-night?" The cab was snorting
+impatience; Blake opened the door and stepped inside.
+
+The boy colored. "To-night?"
+
+"Right! To-night it shall be! To-night we'll scale the heights." He held
+out his hand.
+
+Max took it smilingly. "You have not asked me where I live."
+
+"Never thought of it! Where is it?"
+
+"The Hôtel Railleux, in the rue de Dunkerque."
+
+"Not a very festive locality! But sufficient for the day, eh? Well, I'll
+be outside the door of the Hôtel Railleux at nine o'clock."
+
+"At nine o'clock. I shall be awaiting you."
+
+"Right again! Good-bye! It's been a good morning."
+
+Max smiled, a smile that seemed to have caught something of the sun's
+brightness, something of the promise of spring trembling in the pale
+sky.
+
+"It has been a good morning. I shall never forget it."
+
+Blake laughed. "Don't say that, boy! We'll oust it with many a better."
+
+He released the boy's hand and gave the address to the chauffeur. There
+was a moment's pause, a rasp and wrench of machinery, and the willing
+little cab flew off toward the nearest bridge.
+
+Max stood watching it, obsessed by a strange sensation. This morning he
+had been utterly alone; this morning the fair, cold face of Paris had
+been immobile and speculative. Now a miracle had come to pass; the
+coldness had been swept aside and the beauty, the warm, palpitating
+humanity had shone into his eyes, dazzling him--fascinating him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Nine o'clock found Max waiting in the rue de Dunkerque. Paris,
+consummate actress that she is, was already arraying herself for the
+nightly appeal to her audience of pleasure-seekers. Like a dancer in her
+dressing-room, she but awaited the signal to step forth into the glamour
+of the footlights; the rouge was on her lips, the stars shone in her
+hair, the jewelled slippers caressed her light feet. Even here, in the
+colorless region of the Gare du Nord, the perfumed breath of the
+courtesan city crept like the fumes of wine; the insidious sense of
+nocturnal energy swept the brain, as the traffic jingled by and the
+crowds upon the footpaths thronged into the _cafés_ and overflowed into
+the roadway.
+
+To the boy, walking slowly up and down, with eager eyes that sought the
+one face among the many, the scene came as a joyous revelation that
+called inevitably to his youth and his vitality. He made no pretence of
+analyzing his sensations: he was stirred, intoxicated by the movement,
+the lights, the naturalness and artificiality that walked hand-in-hand
+in so strange a fellowship. A new excitement, unlike the excitement of
+the morning, was at work within him; his blood danced, his brain
+answered to every fleeting picture. He was in that subtlest of all moods
+when the mind swings out upon the human tide, comprehending its every
+ripple with a deep intuition that seems like a retrospective knowledge.
+He had never until this moment stood alone in a Paris street at night;
+he had never before rubbed shoulders with a Parisian night crowd; but
+the inspiration was there--the exaltation--that made him one with this
+restless throng of men and women whose antecedents were unknown to him,
+whose future was veiled to his gaze.
+
+The sensation culminated when, out of the crowd, a hand was laid upon
+his shoulder and a familiar voice rose above the babble of sound.
+
+"Well, and are we girded for the heights?"
+
+It came at the right moment, it lilted absolutely with his thoughts--the
+soft, pleasant tones, the easy friendliness that seemed to accept all
+things as they came. His instant answer was to smile into the Irishman's
+face and to press the arm that had been slipped through his.
+
+"It's too early for anything very characteristic, but there are always
+impressions to be got."
+
+Again the boy replied by a pressure of the arm, and together he and
+Blake began to walk. The strange pleasure of yielding himself to this
+man's will filtered through Max's being again, as it had done that
+morning, painting the world in rosy tints. The situation was anomalous,
+but he ignored the anomaly. His boats were burned; the great ice-bound
+sea protected him from the past; he was here in Paris, in the first
+moments of a fascinating present, under the guardianship of this comrade
+whose face he had never seen until yesterday, whose very name was still
+unfamiliar to his ears. It was anomalous, but it held happiness; and
+who, equipped with youth and health, starting out upon life's road,
+stops to question happiness? He was the adventuring prince in the
+fairy-tale: every step was taken upon enchanted ground.
+
+Nothing gave him cause for quarrel as they made their way onward. Even
+the Boulevard de Magenta, with its prosaic tram-lines, its large, cheap
+shops, its common _brasseries_ and spanning railway bridge, seemed a
+place of promise; and as they passed on, ever mounting toward
+Montmartre, his brain quickened to new joy, new curiosity in every
+flaunting advertisement, every cobble-stone in the long steep way of the
+Boulevard Barbés, the rue de la Nature, and the rue de Clignancourt,
+until at length they emerged into the rue André de Sarte--that narrow
+street, quaint indeed in its dark old houses and its small, mysterious
+wine shops that savor of Italy or Spain.
+
+They paused, at the corner of the rue André de Sarte, by the doorway of
+an old, overcrowded curio shop--the curio shop that in time to come was
+destined to become so familiar a landmark to them both, to stand
+sentinel at the gateway of so many emotions.
+
+The lights, the shadows, the effects were all uncertain in this strange
+and fascinating neighborhood. High above them, white against the winter
+sky, glimmered the domes of the Sacré-Coeur, looking down in symbolic
+silence upon the restless city; to the left stretched the rue Ronsard,
+with its deserted market and lonely pavement; to the right, the Escalier
+de Sainte-Marie, picturesque as its name, wound its precipitous way
+apparently to the very stars, while at their feet, creeping upward to
+the threshold of the church, was the plantation of rocks, trees, and
+holly bushes that in the mysterious darkness seemed aquiver with a
+thousand whispered secrets. There was deep contrast here to the
+excitement, the vivacity of the boulevards; it seemed as if some shadow
+from the white domes above had given sanctuary to the spirit of the
+place--the familiar spirit of the time-stained houses, the stone steps
+worn by many feet, the dark, naked trees.
+
+The boy's hand again pressed his companion's arm.
+
+"What are those steps?" He pointed to the right.
+
+"The Escalier de Sainte-Marie; they lead up to the rue Müller, and, if
+you desire it, to the Sacré-Coeur itself. Shall we climb?"
+
+"But yes! Certainly!" The boy's voice was tense and eager. He hurried
+forward, drawing his companion with him, and side by side they began the
+mounting of the stone steps--those steps, flanked by the row of houses,
+that rise one above the other, as if emulous to attain the skies.
+
+Up they went, their ears attentive to the conflicting sounds that
+drifted forth from the doorways, their nostrils assailed by the faintly
+pungent scent of the shrubs in the plantation. Higher and higher they
+climbed, sensible with each step of a greater isolation, of a rarer,
+clearer air. Above them, in one of the higher houses in the rue Müller,
+some one was playing a fiddle, and the piercing sweet sounds came
+through the night like a human voice, adding the poignancy, the passion
+and pathos of human things to the aloofness and unreality of the scene.
+
+The boy was the first to catch this lonely music, and as though it
+called to him in some curious way, he suddenly freed his arm from
+Blake's and ran forward up the steps.
+
+When Blake overtook him he had passed up the rue Müller, and was leaning
+over the wooden paling that fronts the Sacré-Coeur, his elbows resting
+upon it, his face between his hands, his eyes held by the glitter of
+Paris lying below him.
+
+Blake came quietly up behind him. "I thought you had given me the slip."
+
+He turned. Again the light of inspiration, the curious illumination was
+apparent in his face.
+
+"This is most wonderful!" he said. "Most wonderful! It is here that I
+shall live. Here--here--with Paris at my feet."
+
+Blake laughed--laughed good-humoredly at the finality, the artless
+arrogance of the tone.
+
+"It may not be so easy to find a dwelling in the shadow of the
+Sacré-Coeur."
+
+Max looked at him with calm, grave eyes. "I do not consider
+difficulties, monsieur. It is here that I shall live. My mind is made
+up."
+
+"But this is not the artists' quarter. You may seek your inspiration in
+Montmartre, but you must have your studio across the river."
+
+"Why must I? What compels me?"
+
+The Irishman shrugged his shoulders. "Nothing compels you, but it is the
+thing to do. You can live here, certainly, if you want to--there is no
+law to forbid it--and you can find a studio on the Boulevard de Clichy;
+but the other is the thing to do."
+
+The boy smiled his young wise smile. "Monsieur, there is only one thing
+to do--the thing one wants to do, the thing the heart compels. If I am
+to know Paris I will know her from here--study her, love her from here.
+This place is one of miracle. One might know life here, living in the
+skies. Listen! That musician knows it!" He thrust out his hand
+impulsively and caught Blake's in a pressure full of nervous tension,
+full of magnetism. "What is it he plays? Tell me! Tell me!"
+
+His touch, his excitement fired Blake's Celtic blood, banishing his mood
+of criticism.
+
+"The man is playing scraps from _Louise_--Charpentier's _Louise_."
+
+"I have never heard _Louise_."
+
+"What! And you a student of Paris? Why, it's Charpentier's hymn to
+Montmartre. Listen, now!" His voice quickened. "He's playing a bit out
+of the night scene. He's playing the declaration of the _Noctambule_:
+
+    "Je suis le Plaisir de Paris!
+      Je vais vers les Amantes--que le Désir tourmente!
+    Je vais, cherchant les coeurs qu'oubli a le bonheur.
+      Là-bas glanant le Rire, ici semant l'Envie,
+    Prêchant partout le droit de tous à la folie;
+      Je suis le Procureur de la grande Cité!
+    Ton humble serviteur--ou ton maître!"
+
+He murmured the words below his breath, pausing as the music deepened
+with the passion of the player and the sinister song poured into the
+night.
+
+Then came a break, a pause, and the music flowed forth again, but
+curiously altered, curiously softened in character.
+
+Max's fingers tightened. "Ah, but listen now, my friend!"
+
+Blake turned to him in quick appreciation. "Good! Good! You are an
+artist! That's Louise singing in the third act, on the day she is to be
+Muse of Montmartre. It is up here in the little house her lover has
+provided for her; it is twilight, and she is in the garden, looking down
+upon all this"--he waved his hand comprehensively--"it is her
+moment--the triumph and climax of love. Try to think what she is
+saying!" He paused, and they stood breathless and enchained, while the
+violin trembled under the hand of its master, vibrant and penetrating.
+
+"What is it she says?" Max whispered the words.
+
+Blake's reply was to murmur the burden of the song in the same hushed
+way as he had spoken the song of the _Noctambule_.
+
+    "Depuis le jour où je me suis donnée, toute fleurie semble ma
+        destinée.
+    Je crois rêver sous un ciel de féerie, l'âme encore grisée de ton
+        premier baiser!"
+
+But, abruptly--abruptly as a light might be extinguished--the music
+ceased, and Max released Blake's hand.
+
+"It is all most wonderful," he said; "but the words of that song--they
+do not quite please me."
+
+"Why? Have you never sung that '_l'âme encore grisée de ton premier
+baiser_!'"
+
+Then, as if half ashamed of the emotional moment, he gave a little
+laugh, satirical and yet sad.
+
+"Was there never a little dancer," he added, "never a little model in
+all these years--and you so very ancient?"
+
+The boy ignored the jest.
+
+"I am not a believer in love," he said, evasively.
+
+"Not a believer in love! Well, upon my soul, the world is getting very
+old! You look like a child from school, and you talk like some quaint
+little book I might have picked up on the _quais_. What does it all
+mean?"
+
+At the perplexity of the tone Max laughed. "Very little, _mon ami_! I am
+no philosopher; but about this love, I have thought a little, and have
+gained to a conclusion. It is like this! Light love is desire of
+pleasure; great love is fear of being alone."
+
+"Then you hold that man should be alone?"
+
+"Why not?" Max shrugged his shoulders. "We come into the world alone; we
+go out of it alone."
+
+"A cold philosophy!"
+
+"A true one, I think. If more lives were based upon it we would have
+more achievement and less emotion."
+
+The Irishman's enthusiasm caught sudden fire.
+
+"And who wants less emotion? Isn't emotion the salt of life? Why, where
+would a poor devil of a wanderer like myself be, if he hadn't the dream
+in the back of his head that the right woman was waiting for him
+somewhere?"
+
+Max watched him seriously.
+
+"Then you have never loved?"
+
+"Never loved? God save us! I have been in and out of love ever since I
+was seventeen. But, bless your heart, that has nothing to do with the
+right woman!"
+
+Max's intent eyes flashed. "And you think the right woman will be
+content to take you--after all that?"
+
+Blake came a step nearer, leaning over the parapet, his shoulder
+touching his companion's.
+
+"Boy," he said, in a changed tone, "listen to me. It's a big subject,
+this subject of love and liking--too big for me to riddle out, perhaps.
+But this I know, the world was made as it is, and neither you nor I can
+change it; no, nor ten thousand cleverer than we! It's all a mystery,
+and the queerest bit of mystery in it is that a man may go down into the
+depths and rub shoulders with the worst, and yet keep the soul of him
+clean for the one woman."
+
+"Don't you think there are men who can do without either the depths or
+the one woman?"
+
+"There are abnormalities, of course."
+
+Max waived the words. "I am serious. I ask you if you do not believe
+that there are certain people to whom these things you speak of are poor
+things--people who believe that they are sufficient unto themselves?"
+
+The other's mouth twisted into a sarcastic smile.
+
+"Show me the man who is sufficient unto himself!"
+
+Swiftly--as swiftly as he had whipped the pencil from his pocket in the
+_café_ that morning--Max stepped back, his head up, his hand resting
+lightly on the wooden parapet.
+
+"Monsieur! You see him!"
+
+Blake's expression changed to keen surprise; he turned sharply and
+peered into the boy's face.
+
+"You?" he said, incredulously. "You, a slip of a boy, to ignore the
+softer side of life and set yourself up against Nature? Take that
+fairy-tale elsewhere!"
+
+Max laughed. "Very well, my friend, wait and see!"
+
+"And do you know how long I give you to defy the world, the flesh, and
+the devil? A full-blooded young animal like you!"
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Three months--not a day more."
+
+"Three months!" Max laughed, and, as had happened before, his mood
+altered with the laugh. The moment of artistic exaltation passed; again
+he was the boy--the adventurer, brimming with spirits, thirsting to
+break a lance with life. "Three months! Very well! Wait and see! And, in
+the mean time, Paris is awake, is she not?"
+
+Blake looked at the laughing face, the bright eyes, and shook his head.
+
+"I believe you're a cluricaun, come all the way from the bogs of Clare!
+Come here, and take my arm again, or you'll be vanishing into that
+plantation!"
+
+It is unlikely that Max understood all the other's phrases, but he
+understood the lenient, bantering tone that had in it a touch of
+something bordering upon affection, and with a gracious eagerness he
+stepped forward and slipped his hand through the proffered arm.
+
+"Where are you going to take me?" All the lightness, all the arrogance
+had melted from his voice, his tone was almost as soft, almost as
+submissive as a woman's.
+
+Blake looked down upon him. "I hardly know--after that philosophy of
+yours! I thought of taking you to a little Montmartre _cabaret_, where
+many a poet wrote his first verses and many an artist sang his first
+song--a dingy place, but a place with atmosphere."
+
+Max clung to his arm, the light flashing into his eyes. "Oh, my friend,
+that is the place! That is the place! Let us go--let us run, lest we
+miss a moment!"
+
+"Good! Then hey for the Boulevard de Clichy and the quest of the great
+idea!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The ascent of the heights had been exciting, the descent held a sense of
+satisfaction. At a more sober pace, with a finer, less exuberant sense
+of comradeship, the two passed down the hundred-odd steps of the
+Escalier de Sainte-Marie, taking an occasional peep into some dark and
+silent corner, halting here and there to glance into the dimly lighted
+hallway of some mysterious house. On the upward way they had been all
+anticipation; now, with appetites appeased, they toyed with their
+sensations like diners with their dessert.
+
+"Who are the people living in these houses?" The boy put the question in
+a whisper, as if fearful of disturbing the strange silence, the close
+secrecy that hung about them.
+
+"The people who live here? God knows! Probably you would find a
+_blanchisseuse_ on the ground floor, and on the fourth a poet or perhaps
+a musician, like our fiddler of _Louise_. This is the real Bohemia, you
+know--not the conscious Bohemia, but the true one, that is lawless
+simply because it knows no laws."
+
+They had come to the end of the steps and were once again traversing the
+dim rue André de Sarte, the boy's eyes and ears awake to every
+impression.
+
+"Yes," he said in slow and meditative answer. "Yes, I think I
+understand. It must be wonderful to be born unfettered."
+
+"I don't know about wonderful; it's a profoundly interesting condition.
+You get that blending of egoism and originality--daring and
+scepticism--that may produce the artist or may produce the criminal."
+
+"But you believe that the creature of temperament--of egoism and
+originality--may spring up in a lawful atmosphere as well as in a
+lawless one?" The question came softly. Max had ceased to look about
+him, ceased to observe the streets that grew more crowded, more brightly
+lighted as they made their downward way.
+
+Blake smiled. "The tares among the wheat, eh?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh, of course I admit the tares among the wheat; but such growths are
+mostly unsatisfactory. Forced fruit is never precisely the same as wild
+fruit."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because, my boy, there is a self-consciousness about all forced things,
+and the hallmark of the Bohemian is an absolute ingenuousness."
+
+"But to return to your example. Suppose the tare among the wheat had
+always recognized itself--had always craved to be a tare with other
+tares--until at length its roots spread and spread and passed beyond the
+boundary of the wheat-field! Why should it not flourish and lift its
+head among the weeds?"
+
+"Because, boy, it would have its traditions. It might live forever among
+the weeds, it might flourish and reign over them, but it would have a
+reminiscence unknown to them--the knowledge of the years in which it
+strove to mold itself to the likeness of the wheat before rebellion woke
+within it. I know! I know! I know Bohemia--love Bohemia--but at best I
+am only a naturalized Bohemian. I can live on a crust with these good
+creatures, or I can send my gold flying with theirs, but I'm hanged if,
+for instance, I can sin in quite the delicious, child-like,
+whole-hearted way that is their prerogative! I have done most of the
+things that they have done, but their disarming candor, their simple joy
+in their exploits, is something debarred to me. It isn't for nothing, I
+tell you, that I have countless God-fearing generations behind me!"
+
+He spoke jestingly, but his glance, when it met the eager impetuosity of
+the boy's, was quiet and observant.
+
+"I disagree with you!" Max cried, suddenly. "I disagree with you wholly!
+Individuality has nothing to do with environment--nothing to do with
+ancestry."
+
+"Ah, that's not logical! Humanity is only a chain of which we are the
+last links forged. I have had my own delusions, when I sent the ideal to
+the right-about and made realism my god, but as time has gone on my
+theories have gone back on me, and tradition has come into its own,
+until now I see the skeleton in every beautiful body, and the heart of
+me craves something behind even the bones--the soul of the creature."
+
+"But that is different, because your desire and your theory have been
+the common desire and theory--the things that burn themselves out. My
+theory is not of the body, it is of the mind. I only contend that in all
+the greater concerns of life I am a being perfectly competent to stand
+alone."
+
+"My dear boy, by the mercy of God all the ideas of youth are reversible!
+My fire has been extinguished; your ice will hold until the sun is in
+the zenith, and not one moment longer."
+
+"I deny it! I deny it!"
+
+He spoke with a fine defiance. He paused, the more convincingly to
+express himself; but even as he paused, his eyes and his mind were
+suddenly opened to a fresh impression, were lured from the moment of
+gravity, caught and held by the lights and crowds into which they had
+abruptly emerged--lights and crowds through which the pervading sense
+of a pleasure-chase stole like a scent borne on a breeze.
+
+"Where are we?" he said, sharply. "What place is this?"
+
+"The Boulevard de Clichy. Come, boy! Discussions are over. The curtain
+is up; the play is on!" Without apology, Blake caught his shoulder and
+swung him out into the roadway, as he had swung him across the Esplanade
+des Invalides that morning. "Come! I'm going to insist upon a new
+medicine; my first prescription was not the right one. You're too
+theoretical to-night for a place of traditions. We'll shelve our little
+_cabaret_ till some hour when genius burns, and instead I'll plunge you
+straight into common frivolity, as though you were some Cockney tourist
+getting his week-end's worth! Have you ever heard of the Bal Tabarin?"
+
+"Never. And I would much--- much rather--"
+
+"No, you wouldn't! I have spoken. Come along!"
+
+Before Max could resist he was swept across the wide roadway, round a
+corner, and through what looked to him like the entrance to a theatre.
+
+There were many people gathered about this entrance: men in evening
+dress, men in shabby, insignificant clothes, women in varying types of
+costume. Max would have lingered to study the little crowd, but Blake
+looked upon his hesitancy with distrust, and still retaining the grip
+upon his shoulder, half led, half pushed him through a short passage
+straight into the dancing-hall, where on the instant his ears were
+assailed by a flood of joyous sound in the form of a rhythmic, swinging
+waltz--his eyes blinked before the flood of light to which the Parisian
+pins his faith for public pleasures--and his nostrils were assailed by a
+penetrating smell of scent and smoke. Dazed and a little frightened he
+drew back against a wall, overwhelmed by the atmosphere. Superficially
+there was little astonishing in the Bal Tabarin; but to the uninitiated
+being with wide eyes it seemed in very truth the gay world, with its
+stirring music, its walls flaunting their mirrors and their paintings,
+its galleries with their palms and railed-in boxes, and beneath--subtly
+suggestive adjunct--- the bars, with their countless bottles of
+champagne, bottles of every conceivable size built up in serried rows as
+though Venus would raise an altar to Bacchus.
+
+Leaning back against the wall, Max surveyed the scene, fascinated and
+confused. A thousand questions rose to his lips, but not one found
+utterance. Again and yet again his bright glance ranged from the gay red
+of the bandsmen's coats to the lines of spectators sitting at the little
+tables under the galleries, returning inevitably and persistently to the
+pivot of the scene--a space of pale-colored, waxed floor in the centre
+of the hall, where innumerable couples whirled or glided to the tune of
+the waltz.
+
+He had seen many a ball in progress, but never had he seen dancing as he
+saw it here, where grace rubbed shoulders with absolute _gaucherie_, and
+wild hilarity mingled unashamed with a curious seriousness--one had
+almost said iciness--of demeanor. The women, who formed the definite
+interest of the picture, were for the most part young, with a youth that
+lent slimness and suppleness to the figure and permeated through the
+freely used paint and powder like some unpurchasable essence. Among this
+crowd of women some were fair, some brown, a few red-haired, but the
+vast majority belonged to the type that was to become familiar to Max as
+the true _Montmartroise_--the girl possessed of the dead white face, the
+red, sensual lips, the imperfectly chiselled nose, attractive in its
+very imperfection, and the eyes--black, brown, or gray--that see in a
+single glance to the bottom of a man's soul. Richness of apparel was
+not conspicuous among them, but all wore their clothes with the sense of
+fitness that possesses the _Parisienne_. Each head was held at the angle
+that best displayed the well-dressed hair and cleverly trimmed hat; each
+light skirt was held waist-high with a dexterity that allowed the
+elaborate petticoat to sweep out from the neat ankles in a whirl of
+lace.
+
+Some of these girls danced with pleasure-seeking young Englishmen or
+Americans in conventional evening dress, others with little clerks in
+ill-fitting clothes and bowler hats, while many chose each other for
+partners, and glided over the waxed floor in a perfection of motion
+difficult to excel.
+
+Leaning back against the wall, he watched the picture, gaining courage
+with familiarity, and unconsciously a little gasp of regret parted his
+lips as the waltz crashed to a finish and the dancers moved in a body
+toward the tables and the bars. Then for the first time he remembered
+Blake, and, looking round, saw his green eyes fixed upon him in a
+quizzical, satirical glance.
+
+"Well, the devil has a pleasant way with him, there's no denying it!
+Come and find a seat! The next will be one of the special dances--a
+_can-can_ or a Spanish dance. I'd like you to see it."
+
+"Who will dance it?"
+
+"Who? Oh, probably, if it's the _can-can,_ half a dozen of the
+best-looking of those girls with the elaborate _lingerie_. They're paid
+to dance here. They're part of the show."
+
+"I see!" Max was interested, but his voice did not sound very certain.
+"And the others?" he added. "That fair girl, for example, sitting at the
+table with the hideous, untidy little man in the brown suit?"
+
+Blake's eyes sought out the couple. "What! The two smiling into each
+other's eyes? Those, my boy, are true citizens of the true Bohemia. She
+is probably a little dressmaker's assistant, whose whole available
+capital is sunk in that Pierrot hat and those pretty shoes; and
+he--well, he might be anything with that queer, clever head! But he's
+probably a poet, in the guise of a journalist, picking up a few francs
+when he can and where he can. A precarious existence, but lived in
+Elysium! Wish I were twenty--and unanalytical! Come along! It's to be a
+Spanish dance. You mustn't miss it!"
+
+They made their way forward, pushing toward the open space, upon which a
+shaft of limelight had been thrown, the better to display the faces and
+figures of eight Spanish women who, dressed in their national costume,
+stood preening themselves like vain birds, tossing their heads and
+showing their white teeth in sudden smiles of recognition to their
+friends among the audience. While Max's interested eyes were travelling
+from one face to another, the signal was given, and with an electric
+spontaneity the dance began. It was a wonderful dance--a dance of
+sensuous contortion crossed and arrested at every moment by the fierce
+flash of pride, the swift gesture of contempt indicative of the land
+that had conceived it--a dance that would diminish to the merest sway of
+the body accompanied by the slow, hypnotic enticement of half-closed
+eyes, and then, as a fan might shut or open, leap back in an instant to
+a barbaric frenzy of motion in which loosened hair and flaming draperies
+carried the beholder's senses upon a tide of intoxication.
+
+Max was conscious of quickened heart-beats and flushed cheeks as the
+dancers paused and the high, shrill call that indicated an encore
+pierced through the smoke-laden air; and without question he turned and
+followed Blake to one of the many tables standing in the shadow of the
+galleries.
+
+The table was packed tightly between other tables, and in the moment of
+intoxication he had no glance to spare for his neighbors. Even Blake's
+voice when it came to him sounded far away and impersonal.
+
+"Sit down, boy! What will you drink?"
+
+"What you drink, _mon ami_, I will drink."
+
+He sat down and, with a new exuberance, threw himself back in his seat.
+It was a moment of bravado that reckoned not at all with circumstance;
+his gesture was imperiously reckless, the space about him was crowded to
+suffocation; by a natural sequence of events his head came into sharp
+contact with the waving plumes of a hat at the table behind him.
+
+With volubility and dispatch the owner of the hat expressed her opinion
+of his awkwardness; one or two people near them laughed, and, flushing a
+desperate red, he turned, raised his hat, and offered an apology.
+
+The possessor of the feathers was a woman of thirty who looked ten years
+older than her age; her face was unhealthily pale even beneath its mask
+of powder, and her eyes were curiously lifeless, but her clothes were
+costly and her figure fine, if a trifle robust. At sound of the boy's
+voice she turned. Her movement was slow and deliberate; her gaze, in
+which a dull resentment smouldered, passed over his confused, flushed
+face, and rested upon Blake's; then a light, if light it might be
+called, glimmered in her eyes, and her immobile face relaxed into a
+smile.
+
+"'_Allo, mon cher_! But I thought you had dropped out of life!"
+
+The boy, with a startled movement, turned his eyes on Blake; but Blake
+was smiling at the woman with the same pleasant smile--half humorous,
+half satirical--that he had bestowed dispassionately upon the young
+Englishman in the train the night before, and upon the little _café_
+proprietress of the rue Fabert--the smile that all his life had been a
+passport to the world's byways.
+
+"What! you, Lize!" he was saying easily, and with only the faintest
+shadow of surprise. "Well, if I have been dead, I am now resurrected!
+Let's toast old times, since you are alone. _Garçon! Garçon!_"
+
+Out of the crowd a waiter answered his call. Wine was brought,
+three glasses were brought and filled, while Max watched the
+performance--watched the ease and naturalness of it with absorbed
+wonder.
+
+"Lize," said Blake, as the waiter disappeared, "my friend who dared to
+interfere with that marvellous hat is called Max. Won't you smile upon
+him?"
+
+Max blushed again, he could not have told why, and the lady smiled--a
+vague, detached smile.
+
+"A pretty boy!" she said. "He ought to have been a woman." Then,
+sensible of having discharged her duty, she turned again to Blake.
+
+"And the world, _mon cher_? It has been kind to you?"
+
+Blake laughed and drank some of his wine. "Oh, I can't complain! If it
+isn't quite the same world that it was, the fault's in me. I'm getting
+old, Lize! Eight-and-thirty come next March!"
+
+A palpable chill touched the woman; she shivered, then laughed a little
+hysterically, and finished her wine.
+
+"Ssh! Ssh! Don't say such things!"
+
+Blake refilled her glass. "I was jesting. A man is as old as he feels; a
+woman--" He lifted his own glass and smiled into her eyes with a certain
+kindliness of understanding. "Come, Lize! The old times aren't so far
+behind us! 'Twas only yesterday that Jacques Aujet painted you as the
+Bacchante in his 'Masque of Folly.' Do you remember how angry you were
+when he used to kiss you, and the grape juice used to run into your
+hair and down your neck? Why, 'twas hardly yesterday!"
+
+The woman looked down, and for a moment a shadow seemed to rest upon
+her--a something tangible and even fearful, that lent to her mask-like
+face a momentary humanity.
+
+"_Mon ami_," she said, in a toneless voice, "do you remember that
+Jacques is ten years dead?"
+
+Then suddenly, as if fleeing from her own fear, she looked up again,
+surfeiting her senses with the crowds, the lights, the smoke and scent
+and crashing music.
+
+"But what folly!" she cried. "Life goes on! The same round, is it not
+so? Life and love and jealousy! Come, little monsieur, what have you to
+say?"
+
+She turned to Max, sitting silent and attentive; but even as she turned,
+there was a flutter of interest among the tables behind her, and a young
+girl ran up, laying her hand upon her arm.
+
+"Lize!" she said, with a little gasp. "Lize! He is here--and I am
+afraid."
+
+Max looked up. It was the girl he had pointed out to Blake as sitting at
+the table with the ugly, clever-looking man; and his eyes opened wide in
+fresh surprise, fresh interest as he studied the details of her
+appearance. She was of that most attractive type, the fair _Parisienne_;
+her complexion was of wax-like paleness, her blonde hair broke into
+little waves and tendrils under her Pierrot hat, while her eyes, clear
+and blue, proclaimed her extreme youth. As she stood now, clinging to
+the elder woman's arm, her mind showed itself in an utter naturalness,
+an utter disregard of the fact that she was observed. Max remembered
+Blake's words--"These are true citizens of the true Bohemia."
+
+But the woman Lize had turned at her cry, and laid a plump, jewelled
+hand over her slim, nervous fingers.
+
+"Jacqueline! My child, what is wrong?"
+
+"He is here! And Lucien is here! And I am afraid!"
+
+The words were vague, but the elder woman asked for no explanation.
+
+"Does Lucien know?"
+
+The girl shook her head.
+
+"And this beast--where is he?"
+
+The girl, silent from emotional excitement, nodded toward the opposite
+bar, and a light flickered up into Lize's eyes as she scanned the crowd
+divided from them by the space of waxed floor, from which the Spanish
+dancers had just retreated.
+
+Max raised his glass and drank some of his champagne. His first dread of
+the place was gripping him again--exciting him, confusing him. All about
+him, like the scent-laden atmosphere itself, moved the crowd--the girls
+of Montmartre and their cavaliers. Everywhere was that sense of
+conscious enjoyment--that grasping of the mere moment that the Parisian
+has reduced to a science. It enveloped him like a veil--the artless
+artificiality of Paris! Everywhere fans emblazoned with the words Bal
+Tabarin fluttered like butterflies, everywhere cigar smoke mingled with
+the essences from the women's clothes, but beneath it all lurked a
+something unanalyzed, dimly understood, that chained his imagination. It
+hung about him; it crouched behind the women's expectant eyes; then
+suddenly it sprang forth like an ugly beast into a perfumed garden.
+
+It came in a moment: a little scuffle at the bar opposite, as a heavy,
+fair-bearded man disengaged himself from the crowd about him, a little
+flutter of interest as he made an unsteady way across the waxed floor, a
+little smothered scream from the girl as he lurched up to the table and
+paused, gazing at her with angry, bloodshot eyes.
+
+For a second of silence the two looked at each other--the girl with a
+frightened, fascinated gaze, the man with the slow insolence that drink
+induces. At last, muttering some words in a guttural tongue unknown to
+the boy, he swayed forward and laid a heavy red hand upon her shoulder.
+
+The gesture was brutal, masterful, expressive. A sense of mental
+sickness seized upon Max; while the woman Lize suddenly braced herself,
+changing from the inert, half-hypnotized creature of a moment before
+into a being of fury.
+
+"_Sapristi_!" she cried aloud. "A pretty lover to come wooing!" And she
+added a phrase that had never found place in Max's vocabulary, and at
+which the surrounding people laughed.
+
+The words and the laugh were tow to the fire of the man's rage. He freed
+the girl's arm and struck the table with a resounding violence that made
+the glasses dance.
+
+It was the signal for a scene. In a second people at the neighboring
+tables rose to their feet, chairs were overturned, a torrent of words
+poured forth from both actors and spectators, while through everything
+and above everything the band poured forth an intoxicating waltz.
+
+Max, forgetful of himself, stood with wide eyes and white, absorbed
+face. He saw the climax of the scene--saw the bearded man lean across
+the table and seize the girl by the waist--saw, to his breathless
+amazement, the woman Lize suddenly grasp the champagne bottle and fling
+it full into his face; then, abruptly, out of the maze of sensations, he
+felt some one grip him by the shoulder and march him straight through
+the crowd, into the vestibule, on into the open air.
+
+Outside, in the glare of the lights, in the cold fresh air of the
+street, he turned, white and shaking, upon Blake.
+
+"Why did you do it?" he demanded. "I think you were a coward! I would
+not have run away!"
+
+Blake laughed, though his own voice was a little uneven, his own face
+looked a little pale. "There are some battle-fields, boy, where
+discretion is obviously the better part of valor! I'm sorry I brought
+you here, though they generally manage to avoid this sort of thing."
+
+Max still looked indignant.
+
+"But she was a friend of yours!"
+
+"A friend! My God!"
+
+"But she called you her friend!"
+
+"Friendship is a much-defaced coin that poverty-stricken humanity will
+always pass! Our friendship, boy, consists in the fact that she once
+loved and was loved by a man I knew. Poor Lize! She had a bit too much
+heart for the game she played. And the heart is there still, for all the
+paint and powder and morphine she fights the world with! Poor Lize!"
+
+Max's eyes were still wide, but the anger had died down.
+
+"And the girl?" he questioned. "The girl, and the brute, and the man
+with the clever head? What have they all to do with each other and with
+her?"
+
+Blake's lips parted to reply, but closed again.
+
+"Never mind, boy!" he said, gently. "Come along back to your hotel;
+you've seen enough life for one night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+With a new day began a new epoch. On the morning following the night, of
+first adventure Max woke in his odd, mountainous bed at the Hôtel
+Railleux kindling to fresh and definite sensations. In a manner
+miraculously swift, miraculously smooth and subtle, he had discovered a
+niche in this strange city, and had elected to fit himself to it. A
+knowledge of present, a pledge of future interests seemed to permeate
+the atmosphere, and he rose and dressed with the grave deliberation of
+the being who sees his way clear before him.
+
+It was nine o'clock when he entered the _salle-à-manger_, and one sharp
+glance brought the satisfying conviction that it was deserted save for
+the presence of the assiduous young waiter, who came hurrying forward as
+though no span of hours and incidents separated yesterday's meal from
+to-day's.
+
+His attentive attitude was unrelaxed, his smile was as deferential as
+before, but this morning he found a less responsive guest. Max was
+filled with a quiet assurance that debarred familiarity; Max, in fine,
+was bound upon a quest, and the submissive young waiter, the bare
+eating-room, Paris itself, formed but the setting and background in his
+arrogant young mind to the greatness of the mission.
+
+The thought--the small seed of thought that was responsible for the idea
+had been sown last night, as he leaned over the parapet fronting the
+Sacré-Coeur, looking down upon the city with its tangle of lights; and
+later, in the hours of darkness, when he had tossed on his heavy bed,
+too excited to lure sleep, it had fructified with strange rapidity,
+growing and blossoming with morning into definite resolve.
+
+He drank his coffee and ate his roll in happy preoccupation, and, having
+finished his meal, left the room and went quietly down the stairs and
+through the glass door of the hotel.
+
+The frost still held; Paris still smiled; and, buttoning up his coat, he
+paused for a moment on the doorstep to turn his face to the copper-red
+sun and breathe in the crisp, invigorating air; then, with a quaintly
+decisive manner that seemed to set sentiment aside, he walked to the
+edge of the footpath and hailed a passing _fiacre_.
+
+"To the church of the Sacré-Coeur," he commanded.
+
+The _cocher_ received the order with a grumble, looked from his
+unreliable horse to the frosty roadway, and was about to shake his head
+in definite negation when Max cajoled him with a more ingratiating
+voice.
+
+"The rue Ronsard, then? Will you take me to the corner of the rue
+Ronsard?"
+
+The man grumbled again, and shrugged his shoulders until his ears
+disappeared in the shaggy depths of his fur cape; but, when all hope
+seemed fled, he laconically murmured the one word "_Bon!_" whipped up
+his horse, and started off with a fine disregard of whether his fare had
+taken his seat or been left behind upon the footpath.
+
+To those who know Montmartre only as an abode of night--a place of light
+and laughter and folly--Montmartre in the day, Montmartre at half-past
+nine in the morning, comes as a revelation. The whole picture is as a
+coin reversed. The theatres, the music-halls, the _cabarets_ all lie
+with closed eyes, innocently sleeping; the population of
+pleasure-seekers and pleasure-mongers has disappeared as completely as
+if some magician had waved his wand, and in its place the streets teem
+with the worker--the early, industrious shopkeeper and the householder
+bent upon a profitable morning's marketing. Max, gazing from the
+_fiacre_ with attentive eyes, followed the varying scenes, while his
+horse wound a careful and laborious way up the cobble-paved streets, and
+noted with an artist's eye the black, hurrying figures of the men,
+cloaked and hooded against the cold, and the black, homely figures of
+the women, silhouetted against the sharp greens and yellows of the laden
+vegetable stalls at which they chattered and bargained.
+
+It was all noisy, interesting, alive; and us he watched the pleasant,
+changing pictures, his courage strengthened, his belief in his own star
+mounted higher; the decision of last night stood out, as so few
+nocturnal decisions can stand out, unashamed and justified in the light
+of day.
+
+At the corner where the rue André de Sarte joins the rue Ronsard he
+dismissed his cab, and with a young inquisitiveness in all that
+concerned the quarter, paused to look into the old curio shop, no longer
+closed as on the previous night, but open and inviting in its dingy
+suggestion of mysteries unsolved.
+
+Now--at this moment of recording the boy's doings--the curio shop no
+longer exists at the corner of the rue André de Sarte; it has faded into
+the unknown with its coppers and brasses, its silver and tinsel, its
+woollen and silk stuffs; but on that January morning of his first coming
+it still held place, its musty perfumes still conjured dreams, its open
+doorway, festooned with antique objects, still offered tempting glimpses
+into the long and dim interior, where an old Jew, presiding genius of
+the place, lurked like a spider in the innermost circle of his web.
+
+Max lingered, drawn into self-forgetfulness by the blending of faded
+hues, the atmosphere of must and spices, the air of age indescribable
+that veiled the place. He loitered about the windows, peeped in at the
+doorway, would even have ventured across the threshold had not a
+ponderous figure, rising silently from a heap of cushions upon the floor
+of the inmost room, sent him hastening round the corner, guiltily
+conscious that it was new lamps and not old he was here to light.
+
+The interest of his mission flowed back, sharpened by the momentary
+break, and it was with very swift steps that he ran up the Escalier de
+Sainte-Marie to the rue Müller; there, in the rue Müller, he paused, his
+back to the green plantation, his face to the row of houses rising one
+above the other, each with its open doorway, each with its front of
+brick and plaster, its iron balcony from which hung the inevitable array
+of blankets, rugs, and mattresses absorbing the morning air.
+
+To say that, in the mystic silence of the previous night and restless
+hours of the dawn, Max had vowed to himself that here in the rue Müller
+he would make a home, and to add that, coming in the light of day, he
+found a door open to him, sounds at the least fabulous; yet, as he stood
+there--eager, alert, with face lifted expectantly, and bright gaze
+winging to right and left--fable was made fact: the legend '_Appartement
+à louer_' caught his glance like a pronouncement of fate.
+
+It sounds fabulous, it sounds preposterous, and yet it obtains, to be
+accounted for only by the fact that in this curious world there are
+certain beings to whom it is given to say of all things with naïve
+faith, not 'I shall seek,' but 'I shall find.'
+
+Max had never doubted that, if courage were high enough to undertake the
+quest, absolute success awaited him. He read the legend again,
+'_Appartement à louer 5ième étage. Gaz: l'eau,'_ and without hesitation
+crossed the rue Müller and passed through the open door.
+
+The difference was vast between his nervous entry thirty-six hours ago
+into the Hôtel Railleux and the boldness of his step now. The difference
+between secret night and candid morning lay in the two proceedings--the
+difference between self-distrust and self-confidence. Then he had been a
+creature newly created, looking upon himself and all the world with a
+sensitive distrust; now he was an individual accepted of others, assured
+of himself, already beginning to move and have his being in happy
+self-forgetfulness.
+
+He stepped into the hallway of the strange house and paused to look
+about him, his only emotion a keen interest that kept every nerve alert.
+The hallway round which he looked displayed no original features: it was
+a lofty, rather narrow space, the walls of which--painted to resemble
+marble--were defaced by time, by the passing of many skirts and the
+rubbing of many shoulders. In the rear was a second door, composed of
+glass, and beyond it the suggestion of a staircase of polished oak that
+sprang upward from the dingy floor in a surprising beauty of panelled
+dado and fine old banister.
+
+Max's eyes rested upon this staircase: in renewed excitement he hurried
+down the hall and, regardless of the consequence, beat a quick tattoo
+with his knuckles upon the glass door.
+
+Silence greeted his imperative summons, and as he waited, listening
+intently, he became aware of the monotonous hum of a sewing-machine
+coming through a closed door upon his left.
+
+The knowledge of a human presence emboldened him; again he knocked, this
+time more sharply, more persistently. Again inattention; then, as he
+lifted his hand for the third time, the hum of the machine ceased
+abruptly, the door opened, and he turned to confront a small woman with
+wispy hair and untidy clothes, whose bodice was adorned with
+innumerable pins, and at whose side hung a pair of scissors large as
+shears.
+
+"Monsieur?" Her manner was curt--the manner of one who has been
+disturbed at some engrossing occupation.
+
+Max felt rebuffed; he raised his hat and bowed with as close an
+imitation as he could summon of Blake's ingratiating friendliness.
+
+"Madame, you have an _appartement_ to let?"
+
+"True, monsieur! An _appartement_ on the fifth floor--gas and water."
+There was pride in the last words, if a grudging pride.
+
+"Precisely! And it is a good _appartement_?"
+
+"No better in Montmartre."
+
+"A sufficiency of light?"
+
+'Light?' The woman smiled in scorn. 'Was it not open to the skies--with
+those two windows in front, and that balcony?'
+
+Max's excitement kindled.
+
+"Madame, I must see this _appartement_! May I mount now--at once?"
+
+But the matter was no such light one. Madame shook her head. 'Ah, that
+was not possible!'
+
+'Why not?'
+
+'Ah, well, there was the _concierge_! The _concierge_ was out.'
+
+'But the _concierge_ would return?'
+
+'Oh yes! It was true he would return!'
+
+The little woman cast a wistful eye on the door of her own room.
+
+'At what hour?'
+
+'Ah! That was a question!'
+
+'This morning?'
+
+'Possibly!'
+
+'This afternoon?'
+
+'Possibly!'
+
+'But not for a certainty?'
+
+'Nothing was entirely certain.'
+
+Anger broke through Max's disappointment. Without a word he turned on
+his heel and strode down the hall with the air of an offended prince.
+
+The woman watched him with an expressionless face until he reached the
+door, then something--perhaps his youth, perhaps his brave carriage,
+perhaps his defiant disappointment--moved her.
+
+"Monsieur!" she called.
+
+He stopped.
+
+"Monsieur, if it is absolutely necessary that you see the
+_appartement_--"
+
+"It is. Absolutely necessary." Max ran back.
+
+"Then, monsieur, I will conduct you up-stairs."
+
+The suggestion was greedily seized upon. This _appartement_ on the fifth
+floor had grown in value with each moment of denial.
+
+"Thank you, madame, a thousand times!"
+
+"Shall we mount?"
+
+"On the moment, if you will."
+
+Through the glass door they went, and up the stairs, mounting higher and
+ever higher in an unbroken silence. Half way up each flight of stairs
+there was a window through which the light fell upon the bare oak steps,
+proving them to be spotless and polished as the floor of a convent. It
+was an unexpected quality, this rigid cleanliness, and the boy
+acknowledged it with a mute and deep satisfaction.
+
+Upon each landing were two doors--closed doors that sturdily guarded
+whatever of secrecy might lie behind, and at each of these silent
+portals Max glanced with that intent and searching look that one bestows
+upon objects that promise to become intertwined with one's daily life.
+At last the ascent was made, the goal reached, and he paused on the last
+step of the stairs to survey the coveted fifth floor.
+
+It was as bare, as scrupulously clean as were the other landings; but
+his quick glance noted that while the door upon the left was plain and
+unadorned as the others he had passed, that upon the right bore a small
+brass plate engraved with the name 'L. Salas.'
+
+This, then, was his possible neighbor! He scanned the name attentively.
+
+"This is the fifth floor, madame?"
+
+"The fifth floor, monsieur!" Without ceremony the little woman went
+forward and, to his astonishment, rapped sharply upon the door with the
+brass plate.
+
+Max started. "Madame! The _appartement_ is not occupied?"
+
+The only reply that came to him was the opening of the door by an inch
+or two and the hissing whisper of a conversation of which he caught no
+word. Then the lady of the scissors looked round upon him, and the door
+closed.
+
+"One moment, monsieur, while madame throws on a garment!"
+
+A sudden loss of nerve, a sudden desire for flight seized upon Max. He
+had mounted the stairs anticipating the viewing of empty rooms, and now
+he was confronted with a furnished and inhabited _appartement_, and
+commanded to wait 'while madame threw on a garment'! A hundred
+speculations crowded to his mind. Into what _milieu_ was he about to be
+hurled? What sordid morning scene was he about to witness? In a strange
+confusion of ideas, the white face of the woman Lize sprang to his
+imagination, coupled with the memory of the empty champagne bottle and
+the battered tray of the first night at the Hôtel Railleux. A deadly
+sensitiveness oppressed him; he turned sharply to his guide.
+
+"Madame! Madame! It is an altogether unreasonable hour to intrude--"
+
+The reopening of the door on the right checked him, and a gentle voice
+broke across his words:
+
+"Now, madame, if you will!"
+
+He turned, his heart still beating quickly, and a sudden shame at his
+own thoughts--a sudden relief so strong as almost to be painful--surged
+through him.
+
+The open door revealed a woman of forty-five, perhaps of fifty, clothed
+in a meagre black skirt and a plain linen wrapper of exquisite
+cleanliness. It was this cleanliness that struck the note of her
+personality--that fitted her as a garment, accentuating the quiet
+austerity of her thin figure, the streaks of gray in her brown hair, the
+pale face marked with suffering and sympathy and repression.
+
+With an instinctive deference the boy bared his head.
+
+"Madame," he stammered, "I apologize profoundly for my intrusion at such
+an hour."
+
+"Do not apologize, monsieur. Enter, if you will!" She drew back, smiling
+a little, and making him welcome by a simple gesture. "We are anxious, I
+assure you, to find a tenant for the _appartement_; my husband's health
+is not what it was, and we find it necessary to move into the country."
+
+He followed her into a tiny hall; and with her fingers on the handle of
+an inner door, she looked at him again in her gentle, self-possessed
+way.
+
+"You will excuse my husband, monsieur! He is an invalid and cannot rise
+from his chair."
+
+She opened the inner door, and Max found himself in a bedroom, plain in
+furniture and without adornment, but possessing a large window, the full
+light from which was falling with pathetic vividness on the shrunken
+figure and wan, expressionless face of a very old man who sat huddled in
+a shabby leathern arm-chair. This arm-chair had been drawn to the
+window to catch the wintry sun, and pathos unspeakable lay in the
+contrasts of the picture--the eternal youth in the cold, dancing
+beams--the waste, the frailty of human things in the inert figure, the
+dim eyes, the folded, twitching hands.
+
+The old man looked up as the little party entered, and his eyes sought
+his wife's with a mute, appealing glance; then, with a slight confusion,
+he turned to Max, and his shaking hand went up instinctively to the old
+black skullcap that covered his head.
+
+"He wishes to greet you, monsieur, but he has not the strength." The
+woman's voice dropped to tenderness, and she stooped and arranged the
+rug about the shrunken knees. "If you will come this way, I will show
+you the _salon_."
+
+She moved quietly forward, opening a second door.
+
+"You see, monsieur, it is all very convenient. In summer you can throw
+the windows open and pass from one room to the other by way of the
+balcony."
+
+She moved from the bedroom into the _salon_ as she spoke, Max and the
+lady of the pins following.
+
+"See, monsieur! It is quite a good room."
+
+Max, still subdued by the vision of age, went forward silently, but as
+he entered this second room irrepressible surprise possessed him. Here
+was an atmosphere he had not anticipated. A soft, if faded, carpet
+covered the floor; a fine old buffet stood against the wall; antique
+carved chairs were drawn up to a massive table that had obviously known
+more spacious surroundings; while upon the walls, from floor to ceiling,
+were pictures--pictures of all sizes, pictures obviously from the same
+hand, on the heavy gold frames of which the name 'L. Salas' stood out
+conspicuously in proof of former publicity.
+
+"Madame!" He turned to the sad-faced woman, the enthusiasm of a
+fellow-craftsman instantly kindled. "Madame! You are an artist? This is
+your work?"
+
+The woman caught the sympathy, caught the fire of interest, and a faint
+flush warmed her cheek.
+
+"Alas, no, monsieur! I am not artistic. It is my husband who is the
+creator of these." She waved her hand proudly toward the walls. "My
+husband is an artist."
+
+"A renowned artist!"
+
+It was the woman of the pins and scissors who spoke, surprising Max, not
+by the sudden sound of her voice, but by her sudden warmth of feeling.
+Again Blake's words came back--'These are the true citizens of the true
+Bohemia!'--and he looked curiously from one to the other of the women,
+so utterly apart in station, in education, in ideals, yet bound by a
+common respect for art.
+
+"It is my loss," he said, quietly, "that I did not, until to-day, know
+of M. Salas."
+
+"But no, monsieur! What would you know of twenty years ago? It is true
+that then my husband had a reputation; but, alas, time moves
+quickly--and the world is for the young!"
+
+She smiled again, gently and patiently, and a sudden desire seized Max
+to lift and kiss one of her thin, work-worn hands. The whole pitiful
+story of a vogue outlived, of a generation pushed aside, breathed in the
+silence of these fifth-floor rooms.
+
+"They must be a great pride to you, madame--these pictures."
+
+"These, monsieur--and the fact that he is still with me. We can dispense
+with anything save the being we love--is it not so? But I must not
+detain you, talking of myself! The other rooms are still to see! This,
+monsieur, is our second bedroom! And this the kitchen!"
+
+Max, following her obediently, took one peep into what was evidently
+her own bedroom--a tiny apartment of rigid simplicity, in which a narrow
+bed, with a large black crucifix hanging above it, seemed the only
+furniture, and passed on into the kitchen, a room scarce larger than a
+cupboard, in which a gas-stove and a water-tap promised future utility.
+
+"See, monsieur! Everything is very convenient. All things are close at
+hand for cooking, and the light is good. And now, perhaps, you would
+wish to pass back into the _salon_ and step out upon the balcony?"
+
+Still silent, still preoccupied, he assented, and they passed into the
+room so eloquent of past hours and dwindled fortunes.
+
+"See, monsieur! The view is wonderful! Not to-day, perhaps, for the
+frost blurs the distances; but in the spring--a little later in the
+year--"
+
+Crossing the room, she opened the long French window and stepped out
+upon the narrow iron balcony.
+
+Max followed, and, moving to her side, stood gazing down upon the city
+of his dreams. For long he stood absorbed in thought, then he turned and
+looked frankly into her face.
+
+"Madame," he said, softly, "it is a place of miracle. It is here that I
+shall live."
+
+She smiled. She had served an apprenticeship in the reading of the
+artist's heart--the child's heart.
+
+"Yes, monsieur? You will live here?"
+
+"As soon, madame, as it suits you to vacate the _appartement_."
+
+Again she smiled, gently, indulgently. "And may I ask, monsieur, whether
+you have ascertained the figure of the rent?"
+
+"No, madame."
+
+"And is not that--pardon me!--a little improvident?"
+
+Max laughed. "Probably, madame! But if it demanded my last franc I
+would give that last franc with an open heart, so greatly do I desire
+the place."
+
+The quiet eyes of the woman softened to a gentle comprehension.
+
+"You are an artist, monsieur."
+
+The color leaped into the boy's face, his eyes flashed with triumph.
+
+"Madame, how did you guess?"
+
+"It is no guessing, monsieur. You tell me with every word."
+
+"Ah, madame, I thank you!" With a charming, swift grace he bent and
+caught her hand. "And, madame"--he hesitated naïvely and colored again.
+"Madame, I would like to say that when my home is here it will be my
+care never to desecrate the atmosphere you have created." He bent still
+lower, the sun caressing his crisp, dark hair, and very lightly his lips
+touched her fingers.
+
+"_Adieu_, madame!"
+
+"_Adieu_, monsieur!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+It seemed to Max, as the door closed behind him and he found himself
+upon the bare landing, that he had dreamed and was awake again; for in
+truth the _ménage_ into which he had been permitted to peep seemed more
+the fabric of a dream than part of the new, inconsequent life he had
+elected to make his own. A curious halo of the ideal--of things set
+above the corroding touch of time or fortune--surrounded the old man
+forgotten of his world, and the patient wife, content in her one frail
+possession.
+
+He felt without comprehending that here was some precious essence, some
+elixir of life, secret as it was priceless; and for an instant a shadow,
+a doubt, a question crossed his happy egoism. But the sharp, inquisitive
+voice of his guide brought him back to material things.
+
+"You like the _appartement_, monsieur?"
+
+He threw aside his disturbing thoughts.
+
+"Undoubtedly, madame!" he said, quickly. "It is here that I shall live."
+Without conscious intention he used the phrase that he had used to
+Blake--that he had used to Madame Salas.
+
+"You are quick of decision, monsieur?"
+
+"It is well, at least, to know one's own mind, madame! And now tell me
+who I shall have for my neighbor." As they moved toward the head of the
+stairs, he indicated the second door on the landing--the door innocent
+of name, bell, or knocker.
+
+"For neighbor, monsieur? Ah, I comprehend! That is the _appartement_ of
+M. Lucien Cartel, a musician; but his playing will not disturb you, for
+the walls are thick--and, in any case, he is a good musician."
+
+A conclusion, winged with excitement, formed itself in the mind of Max.
+
+"Madame!" he cried. "He plays the violin--this M. Cartel?"
+
+"Both violin and piano, monsieur. He has a great talent."
+
+"And, madame, he played last night? He played last night between the
+hours of ten and eleven?"
+
+"He plays constantly, monsieur, but of last night I am not sure. Last
+night was eventful for M. Cartel! Last night--But I speak too much!"
+
+She glanced at Max, obviously desiring the question that would unloose
+her tongue. But Max was not alert for gossip, he was listening instead
+to a faint sound, long drawn out and fine as a silver thread, that was
+slipping through the crevices of M. Cartel's door.
+
+"Ah, there he goes!" interjected the little woman. "Always at the music,
+whatever life brings!"
+
+"And I am right! It was he who played last night. How curious!"
+
+The woman glanced up, memory quickening her expression.
+
+"But, yes, monsieur, you are perfectly correct," she said. "M. Cartel
+did play last night. I remember now. I was finishing the hem of a black
+dress for Madame Dévet, of the rue des Abesses, when my husband came in
+at eleven o'clock. He walked in, leaving the door open--the door I came
+through this morning at your knock--and he stood there, blowing upon his
+fingers, for it was cold. 'Our good Cartel is in love, Marthe!' he said,
+laughing. 'He is making music like a bird in spring!' And then,
+monsieur, the next thing was a great rush of feet down the stairs, and
+who should come flying into the hallway but M. Cartel himself. He paused
+for an instant, seeing our door open, and he, too, was laughing. 'What a
+fellow that Charpentier is!' he cried to my husband. 'His _Louise_ has
+kept me until I am all but late for my _rendezvous_!' And he ran out
+through the hall, singing as he went. That was all I saw of M. Cartel
+until two o'clock this morning, when some one knocked upon our door--"
+
+But she was permitted to go no further. The silvery notes of the violin
+had dwindled into silence, and Max abruptly remembered that he had an
+appointment with Blake on the Boulevard des Italiens.
+
+"You are very good, madame, but it is necessary that I go! When can I
+see the _concierge_?"
+
+"The _concierge_, monsieur, is my husband. He will be here for a
+certainty at one o'clock."
+
+"Good, madame! At one o'clock I shall return."
+
+He smiled, nodded, and ran down the first flight of stairs; but by the
+window at the half-landing he stopped and looked back.
+
+"Madame, tell me something! What is the rent of the _appartement_?"
+
+"The rent? Two hundred and sixty francs the year."
+
+"Two hundred and sixty francs the year!" His voice was perfectly
+expressionless. Then, apparently without reason, he laughed aloud and
+ran down-stairs.
+
+The woman looked after him, half inquisitively, half in bewilderment;
+then to herself, in the solitude of the landing, she shook her head.
+
+"An artist, for a certainty!" she said, aloud, and, turning, she
+retraced her steps and knocked with her knuckles on the door of M.
+Lucien Cartel.
+
+Meanwhile, Max finished his descent of the stairs, his feet gliding
+with pleasant ease down the polished oak steps, his hand slipping
+smoothly down the polished banister. Already the joy of the free life
+was singing in his veins, already in spirit he was an inmate of this
+house of many histories. He darted across the hall, picturing in
+imagination the last night's haste of M. Cartel of the violin. What
+would he be like, this M. Cartel, when he came to know him in the flesh?
+Fat and short and negligent of his figure? or lean and pathetic, as
+though dinner was not a certainty on every day of the seven? He laughed
+a little to himself light-heartedly, and gained the street door with
+unnecessary, heedless speed--gained it on the moment that another
+pedestrian, moving swiftly as himself, entered, bringing him to a sharp
+consciousness of the moment.
+
+Incomer and outgoer each drew back a step, each laughed, each tendered
+an apology.
+
+"_Pardon_, monsieur!"
+
+"_Pardon_, mademoiselle!"
+
+Then simultaneously a flash of recognition leaped into both faces.
+
+"Why," cried the girl, "it is the little friend of the friend of Lize!
+How droll to meet like this!"
+
+Her candor of speech was disarming; reticence fled before her smile,
+before her artless friendliness.
+
+"What a strange chance!" said Max. "What brings you to the rue Müller,
+mademoiselle?"
+
+She smiled, and in her smile there was a little touch of pride--an
+indefinite pride that glowed about her slender, youthful person like an
+aura.
+
+"Monsieur, I live in this house--now."
+
+"Now?" Sudden curiosity fired him.
+
+"Ah, you do not comprehend! Last night was sad, monsieur; to-day--" She
+stopped.
+
+"To-day, mademoiselle?"
+
+For a second the clear, childish blue of her eyes flashed like a glimpse
+of spring skies.
+
+"It is too difficult, monsieur--the explanation. It is as I say. Last
+night was dark; to-day the sun shines!" She laughed, displaying the
+dazzling whiteness of her teeth. "And you, monsieur?" she added, gayly.
+"You also live here in the rue Müller? Yes? No?" She bent her head
+prettily, first to one side, then to the other, as she put her
+questions.
+
+"I hope to live here, mademoiselle."
+
+"Ah! Then I wish you, too, the sunshine, monsieur! Good-day!"
+
+"Good-day, mademoiselle!"
+
+It was over--the little encounter; she moved into the dark hallway as
+light, as joyous, as inconsequent as a bird. And Max passed out into the
+sharp, crisp air, sensible that the troubling memories of the Bal
+Tarbarin had in some strange manner been effaced--that inadvertently he
+had touched some source whence the waters of life bubbled in eternal,
+crystal freshness.
+
+In the rue Ronsard he found a disengaged cab, and in ten minutes he was
+wheeling down into the heart of Paris. It was nearing the hour of
+_déjeuner_, the boulevards were already filling, and the cold, crisp air
+seemed to vibrate to the bustle of hurrying human creatures seriously
+absorbed in the thought of food.
+
+He smiled to himself at this humorously grave homage offered up so
+untiringly, so zealously to the appetite, as he made his way between the
+long line of tables at the restaurant where he had appointed to meet
+Blake. Like all else that appertains to the Frenchman, its very
+frankness disarmed criticism or disgust. He looked at the beaming faces,
+smiling up from the wide-spread napkins in perfect accord with life, and
+again, involuntarily, he smiled. It was essentially a good world,
+whatever the pessimists might say!
+
+From a side-table he heard his name called, and with an added glow of
+pleasure, he turned, saw Blake, and made his way through the closely
+ranged chairs and the throng of hurrying waiters.
+
+"Well, boy! Dissipation suits you, it seems! You're looking well. Just
+out of bed, I suppose?"
+
+Max laughed. Words were brimming to his lips, until he knew not how to
+speak.
+
+"And now, what 'll you eat? I waited to order until you came."
+
+"I do not know that I can eat."
+
+"God bless my soul, why not? Sit down!"
+
+Max laughed again, dropped obediently into a chair, rested his arms on
+the table, and looked full at Blake.
+
+"May I speak?"
+
+"From now till Doomsday! _Garçon_!"
+
+But Max laid an impulsive hand upon his arm.
+
+"Wait! Do not order for one moment! I must tell you!" He gave a little
+gasp of excitement. "I have seen an _appartement_ in the rue Müller--an
+_appartement_ with a charming _salon_ opening upon a balcony, a nice
+little bedroom, another room with an excellent painting light, a kitchen
+with water and gas, all--all for what do you imagine?"
+
+"What in God's name are you raving about?" Blake laid down the _menu_
+just handed to him.
+
+Max paid not the slightest heed.
+
+"All for two hundred and sixty francs the year! Figure it to yourself!
+Two hundred and sixty francs the year! What one would pay in a couple of
+days for a suite of hotel rooms! I am mad since I have seen the
+place--quite mad!" He laughed again so excitedly that the people at the
+neighboring table stared.
+
+"I can subscribe to that!" said Blake, satirically.
+
+"Listen! Listen! You have not heard; you have not understood. I have
+found an _appartement_ in the rue Müller, at Montmartre--the
+_appartement_ I had set my heart upon, the place where I can live and
+paint and make my success!"
+
+Blake stared at him in silence.
+
+"Yes! Yes!" Max insisted. "And it is all quite settled. And you are
+coming back with me to-day at one o'clock to interview the _concierge_!"
+
+Blake threw himself back in his chair. "I'm hanged if I am!"
+
+Yesterday the boy would have drawn back upon the instant, armored in his
+pride, but to-day his reply was to look direct into Blake's face with
+fascinating audacity.
+
+"Then you will leave me to contend alone against who can say what
+villain--what _apache_?"
+
+"It strikes me you are qualified to deal with any _apache_."
+
+"You are angry!"
+
+"Angry! I should think not!"
+
+"Oh yes, you are!" Max's eyes shone, his lips curled into smiles.
+
+"And why should I be angry? Because your silly little wings have begun
+to sprout? I'm not such a fool, my boy! I knew well enough you'd soon be
+flying alone."
+
+Max clapped his hands. "Oh yes, you are! You are angry--angry--angry!
+You are angry because I found my way to Montmartre without you, and made
+a little discovery all by myself! Is it not like a--" He stopped,
+laughed, reddened as though he had made some slip, and then on the
+instant altered his whole expression to one of appeal and contrition.
+
+"_Mon ami_!"
+
+Blake's reply was to pick up the _menu_ and turn to the attending
+waiter.
+
+"Monsieur Ned!"
+
+Blake glanced at him reluctantly, caught the softened look, and laughed.
+
+"You're a young scamp--and I suppose I'm a cross-grained devil! But if I
+was angry, where's the wonder? A man doesn't pick up a quaint little
+book on the _quais_, and look to have it turning its own leaves!"
+
+"But now? Now it is all forgiven? You will not cast away your little
+book because--because the wind came and fluttered the pages?"
+
+Once again Max spoke softly, with the softness that broke so alluringly
+across the reckless independence of look and gesture.
+
+A sudden consciousness of this fascination--a sudden annoyance with
+himself that he should yield to it--touched Blake.
+
+"I can't go with you to Montmartre," he said, abruptly. "It's
+McCutcheon's last day in Paris, and I promised to give him the
+afternoon."
+
+"Who? The long, spider man who disliked me?"
+
+"A spider who weaves big webs, I can tell you! You ought to be more
+respectful to your elders."
+
+"And I ought to have a studio across the river? Oh, Monsieur Ned, order
+some food, for the love of God! I am perishing of hunger."
+
+Blake ordered the _déjeuner_, and talked a great deal upon indifferent
+subjects while they ate; but each felt jarred, each felt disappointed,
+though neither could exactly have said why. At last, with a certain
+relief, they finished their coffee and made a way between the long lines
+of tables to the door.
+
+There they halted for a moment in mutual hesitation, and at last the boy
+held out his hand.
+
+"And now I must wish you good-bye! Shall I see you any more?"
+
+Blake seemed lost in thought; he took no notice of the proffered hand.
+
+"Are you going to drive or walk?" He put the question after a
+considerable pause.
+
+"I thought to drive, because--"
+
+Without permitting him to complete the sentence Blake crossed the
+footpath and hailed a passing cab.
+
+"Come on! In you get!"
+
+Max obeyed uncertainly, and as he took his seat a sudden fear of loss
+crushed him--life became blank, the brightness of the sun was eclipsed.
+
+"Monsieur Ned!" he called. "Monsieur Ned! I shall see you again?"
+
+Blake was speaking to the _cocher_. 'Rue Ronsard!' he heard him say.
+'The corner of the rue André de Sarte!'
+
+He leaned out of the window.
+
+"Monsieur Ned! Monsieur Ned! I shall see you again? This is not
+good-bye?"
+
+Blake turned; he laid his hand on the door of the cab and suddenly
+smiled his attractive, humorous smile.
+
+"Little fool!" he said. "Didn't you know I was coming with you?"
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+From a distinctly precarious perch--one foot on the back of a chair, the
+other on an oak chest--Blake surveyed the unfurnished _salon_ of the
+fifth-floor _appartement_. His coat was off, in one dusty hand he held a
+hammer, in the other a picture, while from between his lips protruded a
+brass-headed nail.
+
+"If I drive the nail here, boy, will you be satisfied? Upon my word,
+it's the last place I'll try!" He spoke with what dignity and
+distinctness he could command, but the effect was lost upon Max, who,
+also dusty, also bearing upon his person the evidences of manual labor,
+was crouching over a wood fire, intent upon the contents of a brass
+coffee-pot.
+
+"Max! Do you hear me?"
+
+"No, I do not hear. Take the nail from your mouth."
+
+"Take it for me! I haven't a hand."
+
+Max left the coffee-pot with some reluctance, crossed the room, and with
+the seriousness known only to the enthusiastic amateur in
+house-furnishing, removed the nail from Blake's mouth.
+
+"It is a shame! You will spoil your nice teeth."
+
+"What is a tooth or two in such a cause! Have you a handkerchief?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then, for the love of God, wipe my forehead for me!"
+
+Still without a smile, Max produced a handkerchief that had obviously
+played the _rôle_ of duster at an earlier hour and, passing it over
+Blake's face, removed the dew of heat, leaving in its place a long black
+streak.
+
+"Thanks! I'm cooler now--though probably dirtier!"
+
+"Dirtier! On the contrary, _mon ami_! You have the most artistic scar of
+dust that makes you as interesting as a German officer! Oh!" His voice
+rose to a cry of sharp distress, and he ran back to the fire. "Oh, my
+coffee! My beautiful coffee! Oh, Ned, it has over boiled!"
+
+Blake eyed the havoc from his coign of vantage with a philosophy tinged
+with triumph.
+
+"Didn't I tell you that coffee-pot was a fraud the very first day old
+Bluebeard tried to palm it off on us! You will never distinguish between
+beauty and utility."
+
+"Beauty is utility!" Max, in deep distress, was using the much-taxed
+handkerchief to wipe the spilt coffee from the hearth.
+
+"Should be, my boy, but isn't! I say, give me that business to see to!"
+Regardless of the picture still dangling from his hand, he jumped to the
+ground and strode through a litter of papers, straw, and packing-cases.
+
+"Give me that rag!" He took the sopping handkerchief and flung it into a
+distant corner. "A wisp of this straw is much more useful--less
+beautiful, I admit!"
+
+Max glanced up with wide eyes, extremely wistful and youthful in
+expression. "I do not believe I care about either the use or the
+beauty," he said, plaintively. "I only care that I am hungry and that my
+coffee is lost."
+
+"Hungry, boy? Why, bless my soul, you must be starving! What time is it
+at all?" Blake pulled out his watch. "Eleven! And we've been at this
+hard since eight! Hungry! I should think you are. Look here! You just
+sit down!" He pushed aside the many objects that encumbered the floor,
+and began impatiently to strip the packing from a leather arm-chair.
+
+Max laughed a little.
+
+"But, _mon cher_, I prefer the ground--this nice warm little corner
+close to the fire. One day I think I shall have two cushions, like your
+Bluebeard of the curio shop, and sit all day long with my legs crossed,
+imagining myself a Turk. Like this!" He drew back against the wall,
+curling himself up with supple agility, and smiled into his companion's
+eyes.
+
+Blake looked down, half amused, half concerned.
+
+"Poor little _gamin_! Tired and dirty and hungry. Just you wait!"
+Nodding decisively, he crossed the room, opened the door softly, and
+disappeared.
+
+Left to himself, Max drew farther back into his warm corner and clasped
+his hands about his knees. Max was enjoying himself. The fact was patent
+in the lazy ease of his pose, in the smile that hovered about his lips,
+in the slow, pleased glance that travelled round and round the bare room
+and the furniture still standing ghostly in its packing. It was still
+the joyful beginning of things: the clean white paper upon the walls
+spoke of first hours as audibly as the bunch of jonquils peeping from a
+dark corner spoke of spring. It was still the beginning of things--the
+salt before the sweet, the ineffable, priceless moment when life seems
+malleable and to be bent to the heart's desire.
+
+One month had passed since his first visit to this fifth floor; one
+month since he had entered Paris, armored in his hopes; one month since
+Blake had crossed his path.
+
+The smile upon his lips deepened, then wavered to seriousness, and his
+gaze turned from the white wall to the fire, where the flames from the
+logs spurted copper and blue.
+
+One month. A dream--or a lifetime?
+
+Gazing into the fire, questioning his own fancy, he could scarce decide
+which; a dream in the quick moving of events--the swift viewing of new
+scenes; a lifetime in alteration of outlook and environment--the
+severing and knitting of bonds.
+
+The happy seriousness was still enfolding him, his eyes were still
+intent upon the fire, when Blake entered, triumphant, carrying a
+coffee-pot, and followed by a demure girl with blonde hair and delicate
+pale skin.
+
+"Monsieur is served!"
+
+Max, startled out of his reverie, jumped to his feet.
+
+"What is this? Oh, but you should not! You should not!"
+
+"And why not, in the name of God? If you insist upon having antique
+brass coffee-pots, your neighbors must expect to suffer, eh,
+Jacqueline?"
+
+The little Jacqueline laughed, shaking her fair head. "Ah, well,
+monsieur, it is an art--the keeping of an establishment--and must be
+learned like any other!"
+
+"And you think we ought to go to school?"
+
+"I did not say that!" She laid down the loaf of bread, the butter, and
+the milk-jug that she was carrying, and took the coffee from Blake's
+hands with an air of pretty gravity. "And now, monsieur, where are the
+cups?"
+
+Blake turned to Max. "Cups?" he said in English. "I know we bought
+something quite unique in the matter of cups, but where the deuce we put
+them--For the love of God and the honor of the family, boy, tell me
+where they are!"
+
+Max's eyes were shining. "They are in the chest, _mon cher_. We put them
+there for safety as we went out last night."
+
+"Good! Give me the key."
+
+"The key, _mon ami_, I have left at the Hôtel Railleux!"
+
+Consternation spread over Blake's face, then he burst out laughing and
+turned to Jacqueline, relapsing into French.
+
+"Monsieur Max would have you to know, mademoiselle, that he possesses an
+altogether unusual and superior set of Oriental china, which he bought
+from a certain villanous Jew at the corner of the rue André de Sarte;
+that for safety he has locked that china into the artistic and musty
+dower-chest standing against the wall; and that for greater safety he
+has forgotten the key in an antique hotel near the Gare du Nord!"
+
+He laughed again; Max laughed; the little Jacqueline laughed, and ran to
+the door.
+
+"Oh, _la! la_! What a pair of children!" She flitted out of the room,
+returning with two cups, which she set beside the coffee and the milk.
+
+"And now, messieurs, it is possible you can arrange for yourselves!" She
+shot a bright, quizzical look from one to the other. "I know you would
+wish me to stay and measure out the milk and sugar, and it would flatter
+me to do so, but, unhappily, I have a dish of some importance upon my
+own fire, and it is necessary that one is domestic when one is only a
+woman--is it not so, Monsieur Max?" She wrinkled her pretty face into a
+grimace of mischief, and nodded as if some idea infinitely amusing,
+infinitely profound lurked at the back of her blonde head.
+
+"Good-day, Monsieur Edouard. Good-day, Monsieur Max!"
+
+"Strange little creature!" said Blake, as the door closed upon her.
+"Frail as a butterfly, with one capacity to prevent her taking wing!"
+
+"And that capacity--what is it?" Max had returned to his former
+position, and was pouring out the coffee as he crouched comfortably by
+the fire.
+
+"The capacity, boy, for the _grande passion_. Odd that it should exist
+in so light a vessel, but these are the secrets of Nature! There are
+moments, you know, when this little Jacqueline isn't laughing at
+life--rare, I admit, but still existent--and then you see that the
+corners of her mouth can droop. She may live to find existence void, but
+she'll never live to find it shallow. Thanks, boy!" He took his cup of
+coffee, and, walking to the table, cut a slice of bread, which he
+carried back to the fire. "Now, don't say a word! I'm going to make you
+the finest bit of toast you ever saw in your life!"
+
+Max, preserving the required silence, watched him make the toast,
+carefully balancing the bread on the tip of a knife, carefully browning,
+carefully buttering it.
+
+"Now! Taste that, and tell me if there wasn't a great _chef_ lost in
+me!"
+
+He carried the toast back to the fire and watched Max eat the first
+morsel.
+
+"Nice?"
+
+"Delicious!"
+
+"Ah! Then it's all fair sailing! I'll cut myself a bit of bread and sit
+down on my heels like you. There's something in that Turkish idea, after
+all! But, as I was saying"--he buttered his bread and dropped into
+position beside the boy--"as I was saying awhile ago, that child next
+door, with all her innocent air and her blue eyes, has climbed the
+slippery stairs and reached the seventh heaven. And not only reached it
+herself, mind you, but dragged that ungainly Cartel with her by the tip
+of her tiny finger! Wonderful! Wonderful! Enviable fate!"
+
+Max's eyes laughed. "M. Cartel's?"
+
+"M. Cartel's. Oh, boy, that seventh heaven! Those slippery steps!"
+
+"And the tip of a tiny finger?" Max was jesting; but Blake, lost in his
+own musings, did not perceive it.
+
+"For Cartel--yes!" he said. "For me, no! I think I'd like the whole
+hand."
+
+Here Max picked up a tongs and stirred the logs until they blazed.
+
+"Absurd!" he said. "The tip of a finger or the whole of a hand, it is
+all the same! It is a mistake, this love! That old story of the Garden
+and the Serpent is as true as truth. Man and Woman were content to live
+and adorn the world until one day they espied the stupid red Apple--and
+straightway they must eat! Look even at this Cartel! He is an artist; he
+might make the world listen to his music. But, no! He sees a little
+butterfly, as you call her--all blonde and blue--and down falls his
+ambition, and up go his eyes to the sky, and henceforth he is content to
+fiddle to himself and to the stars! Oh, my patience leaves me!" Again he
+struck the logs, and a golden shower of sparks flew up the chimney.
+
+"I don't know!" said Blake, placidly. "I'm not so sure that he isn't
+getting the best of it, when all's said and done!"
+
+Max reddened. "You make me angry with this 'I do not know!' and 'I am
+not so sure!' The matter is like day. You cannot submerge your
+personality and yet retain it."
+
+"I don't know! I'd submerge mine to-morrow if I could find an _alter
+ego_!"
+
+"Then, _mon cher_, you are a fool!"
+
+Blake drank his coffee meditatively. "Some say the fools are happier
+than the wise men! I remember a poor fool of a boy at home in Clare who
+used to say that he danced every night with the fairies on the rath, and
+I often thought he was happier than the people who listened to him out
+of pity, and shook their heads and laughed behind his back!"
+
+Max looked up, and as he looked the anger died out of his eyes.
+
+"Ned, _mon cher_, you are very patient with me!"
+
+Blake turned. "What do you mean?"
+
+"What I say--that you are patient. Why is it?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I'm fond of you, I suppose."
+
+"I am, then, a good comrade?"
+
+"The best."
+
+"What is it you find in me?"
+
+"I don't know! You are you."
+
+"I amuse you?"
+
+"You do--and more."
+
+"More! In what way more?" Max drew nearer.
+
+"Oh, I don't know! You're as amusing and spirited and generous as any
+boy I've known, and yet you're different from any boy. You sometimes fit
+into my thoughts almost like a woman might!" He hesitated, and laughed
+at his own conceit.
+
+Max, with an odd little movement of haste, drew away again.
+
+"Do not say that, _mon ami_! Do not think it! I am your good comrade,
+that is all."
+
+"Of course you are! Sorry if I hurt your pride."
+
+"You did not. It was not that." With an inexplicable change of mood Max
+drew near again, and suddenly slipped his hand through Blake's arm.
+
+They laughed in unison at the return to amity, and then fell silent,
+looking into the fire, watching the blue spurt of the flames, the
+feathery curls of ash on the charred logs.
+
+"Ned! Make me one of your stories! Tell me what you are seeing in the
+fire!"
+
+Blake settled himself more comfortably.
+
+"Well, boy, I was just seeing a castle," he began in the accepted manner
+of the story-teller, and in his pleasant, soothing voice. "A great big
+castle on the summit of a mountain, with a golden flag fluttering in the
+sunset; and I think it must be the 'Castle of Heart's Desire,' because
+all up the craggy path that leads to it there are knights urging their
+horses--"
+
+"Good!" Max smiled with pleasure and pressed his arm. "Continue!
+Continue!"
+
+"Well, they're all sorts of knights, you know," Blake went on in the
+dreamy, singsong voice--"fair knights and red knights and black knights,
+every one of them in glittering armor, with long lances, and wonderful
+devices on their shields--"
+
+"Yes! Yes!"
+
+"--wonderful devices on their shields, and spurs of gold and
+silver, and waving plumes of many colors; and the flanks of their
+horses--cream-colored and chestnut and black--shine in the light."
+
+"Continue, _mon cher_! Continue! I can see them also!" Max, utterly
+absorbed, charming as a child, bent forward, staring into the heart of
+the fire.
+
+"Well, they mount and mount and mount, and sometimes the great horses
+refuse the craggy path and rear, and sometimes a knight is unseated and
+the others look back and laugh at his discomfiture and ride on until
+they themselves are proved unfit; and so, on and on, while the way gets
+steeper and more perilous, and the company smaller and still smaller,
+until the sun drops down behind the mountain and the gold flag flutters
+as gray as a moth, and in all the windows of the castle torches spring
+up to greet the knight who shall succeed."
+
+"And which is he--the knight who shall succeed?"
+
+"Don't you see him?"
+
+"No! Where is he? Where?"
+
+"Why, there--riding first, on the narrowest verge of the craggy path! A
+very young knight with dark hair and a proud carriage and gray eyes
+with flecks of gold in them."
+
+For an instant Max gazed seriously into the flames, then turned,
+blushing and laughing.
+
+"Ah! But you are laughing at me! What a shame! For a punishment you
+shall go straight back to work." He jumped up and handed Blake his
+discarded hammer.
+
+Blake looked reluctantly at the hammer, then looked back at the enticing
+flame of the logs.
+
+"Oh, very well! Have it your own way!" he said, getting slowly to his
+feet. "But if I were you, I'd like to have heard what awaited the knight
+in the tapestried chamber of the castle tower!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+To the zest of the amateur, Blake added knowledge of a practical kind in
+the arrangement of household gods, and long ere the February dusk had
+fallen, the fifth-floor _appartement_ had assumed a certain homeliness.
+True, much of the 'old iron,' as he termed the coppers and brasses for
+which Max had bartered in the rue André de Sarte, still encumbered the
+floor, and most of the windows cried aloud for covering; but the little
+_salon_ was habitable, and in the bedroom once occupied by Madame Salas
+a bed and a dressing-table stood forth, fresh and enticing enough to
+suggest a lady's chamber, while over the high window white serge
+curtains shut out the cold.
+
+At seven o'clock, having torn the canvas wrappings from the last chair,
+the two workers paused in their labors by common consent and looked at
+each other by the uncertain light of half a dozen candles stuck into
+bowls and vases in various corners of the _salon_.
+
+"Boy," said Blake, breaking what had been a long silence, "I tell you
+what it is, you're done! Take a warm by the fire for a minute, while I
+tub under the kitchen tap, then we'll fare forth for a meal and a breath
+of air!"
+
+Max, who had worked with fierce zeal if little knowledge, made no
+protest. His face was pale, and he moved with a certain slow weariness.
+
+"Here! Let's test the big chair!" Blake pulled forward the deep leathern
+arm-chair, that had been purchased second-hand in the rue de la Nature,
+and set it in front of the blazing logs. Without a word, Max sank into
+it.
+
+"Comfortable?"
+
+"Very comfortable." The voice was a little thin.
+
+The other looked down upon him. "You're done, you know! Literally done!
+Why didn't you give in sooner?"
+
+"Because I was not tired--and I am not tired."
+
+"Not tired! And your face is as white as a sheet! I don't believe you're
+fit to go out for food."
+
+"How absurd! You talk as though I were a child!" Max lifted himself
+petulantly on one elbow, but his head drooped and the remonstrance died
+away before it was finished.
+
+"I talk as if you were a child, do I? Then I talk uncommon good sense!
+Well, I'm off to wash."
+
+"There is some soap in my bedroom." The voice seemed to come from a
+great distance, the elbow slipped from the arm of the chair, the dark
+head drooped still more, and as the door shut upon Blake, the eyelids
+closed mechanically.
+
+Blake's washing was a protracted affair, for the day had been long and
+the toil strenuous; but at last he returned, face and hands clean, hair
+smooth, and clothes reduced to order.
+
+"Sorry for being so long," he began, as he walked into the room; but
+there he stopped, his eyebrows went up, and his face assumed a curious
+look, half amused, half tender.
+
+"Poor child!" he said below his breath, and tiptoeing across the room,
+he paused by the arm-chair, in the depths of which Max's slight figure
+was curled up in the pleasant embrace of sleep.
+
+The fire had died down, the pool of candle-light was not brilliant,
+and in the soft, shadowed glow the boy made an attractive picture.
+
+[Illustration: THE IMPRESSION OF A MYSTERY FLOWED BACK UPON HIM]
+
+One hand lay carelessly on either arm of the chair; the head was thrown
+back, the black lashes of the closed eyes cast shadows on the smooth
+cheeks.
+
+Blake looked long and interestedly, and his earliest impression--the
+impression of a mystery--flowed back upon him strong as on the night of
+the long journey.
+
+The beauty and strength of the face called forth thought; and Max's own
+declaration, so often repeated, came back upon him with new meaning, 'I
+am older than you think!'
+
+For almost the first time the words carried weight. It was not that the
+features looked older; if anything they appeared younger in their deep
+repose. But the expression--the slight knitting of the dark brows, the
+set of the chin, the modelling of the full lips, usually so mobile and
+prone to laughter--suggested a hidden force, gave warranty of a depth, a
+strength irreconcilable with a boy's capacities.
+
+He looked--puzzled, attracted; then his glance dropped from the face to
+the pathetically tired limbs, and the sense of pity stirred anew,
+banishing question, causing the light of a pleasant inspiration to
+awaken in his eyes.
+
+Smiling to himself, he replenished the fire with exaggerated stealth;
+and, creeping out of the room, closed the door behind him.
+
+He was gone for over half an hour, and when he again entered, the fire
+had sprung into new life, and fresh flames--blue and sulphur and
+copper-colored--were dancing up the chimney, while the candles in their
+strange abiding-places had burned an inch or two lower. But his eyes
+were for Max, and for Max alone, and with the same intense stealth he
+crept across the room to the bare table and solemnly unburdened himself
+of a variety of parcels and a cheery-looking bottle done up in red
+tissue-paper.
+
+Max still slept, and, drawing a sigh of satisfaction, he proceeded with
+the task he had set himself--the task of providing supper after the
+manner of the genius in the fairy-tale.
+
+First plates were brought from the new-filled kitchen shelves; then
+knives were found, and forks; then the mysterious-looking parcels
+delivered up their contents--a cold roast chicken, all brown and golden
+as it had left the oven, cheese, butter, crisp rolls, and crisp red
+radishes, finally a little basket piled with fruit.
+
+It was a very simple meal, but Blake smiled to himself as he set out the
+dishes to the best advantage, placed the wine reverentially in the
+centre to crown the feast, and at last, still tiptoeing, came round to
+the back of Max's chair and laid his hands over the closed eyes.
+
+"Guess!" he said, as if to a child.
+
+Max gave a little cry, in which surprise and fear struggled for
+supremacy; then he sprang to his feet, shaking off the imprisoning
+hands.
+
+"What is it? Who is it?" Then he laughed shamefacedly, and, turning, saw
+the spread table.
+
+"Oh, _mon ami_!" His eyes opened wide, and he gazed from the food to
+Blake. "_Mon ami!_ You have done this for me while I was sleeping!"
+
+His gaze was eloquent even beyond his words, and Blake, finding no fit
+answer, began to move about the room, collecting the vases that held the
+candles and carrying them to the table.
+
+"_Mon ami!_"
+
+"Nonsense, boy! It's little enough I do, goodness knows!"
+
+"This is a great deal."
+
+"Nonsense! What is it? You were fagged and I was fresh! And now I
+suppose I must knock the head off this bottle, for we haven't a
+corkscrew. The Lord lend me a steady hand, for 'twould be a pity if I
+shook the wine!"
+
+He carried the bottle to the fireplace, and with considerable dexterity
+cracked the head and wiped the raw glass edges. "Now, boy, the glasses!
+Oh, but have we glasses, though?" His face fell in a manner that set Max
+laughing.
+
+"We have one glass--in my room."
+
+"Bravo! Fly for it!"
+
+Max laughed again--his sleep, his surprise, his gratitude equally
+routed; he flew, in literal obedience to the command, across the little
+hall and, groping his way to the dressing-table, searched about in the
+darkness for the tumbler.
+
+"Ned! A candle!"
+
+Blake brought the desired light, and together they discovered the
+coveted glass. Max seized upon it eagerly, but as he delivered it up a
+swift exclamation escaped him:
+
+"My God! How dirty I am! Regard my hands!"
+
+"What does it matter! You can wash after you've eaten."
+
+"Oh, but no! I pay more compliment to your feast."
+
+"Very well, then! We may hope to sup in an hour or so. I know you and
+the making of your toilet!"
+
+"Impertinent!" Max caught him by the arm and pushed him, laughing,
+toward the door. "Go back and complete the table. I will delay but
+four--three--two minutes in the making of myself clean."
+
+"But the table is complete--"
+
+"It is incomplete, _mon ami_; it is without flowers."
+
+Before Blake's objections could form into new words, he found himself
+in the little hallway with the bedroom door closed upon him, and, being
+a philosopher, he shook his head contentedly and walked back into the
+_salon_, where he obediently brought to light the bowl of jonquils that
+was still perfuming the air from its dark corner, and set it carefully
+between the wine and the fruit.
+
+Ten minutes and more slipped by, during which, still philosophical, he
+walked slowly round and round the table, straightening a candle here,
+altering a dish there, humming all the while in a not unmusical voice
+the song from _Louise_.
+
+He was dwelling fondly upon the line
+
+     "Depuis le jour où je me suis donnée"--
+
+when the door of the bedroom was flung open as by a gale, and at the
+door of the _salon_ appeared Max--his dark hair falling over his
+forehead, a comb in one hand, a brush in the other.
+
+"_Mon cher!_ a hundred--a thousand apologies for being so long! It is
+all the fault of my hair!"
+
+Blake looked at him across the candles. "Indeed I wouldn't bother about
+my hair, if I were you! A century of brushing wouldn't make it
+respectable."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Look at the length of it!"
+
+"Ah, but that pleases me!"
+
+Blake shook his head in mock seriousness. "These artists! These
+artists!" he murmured to himself.
+
+Max laughed, threw the comb and brush from him into some unseen corner
+of the hall, and ran across the _salon_.
+
+"You are very ill-mannered! I shall box your ears!"
+
+Blake threw himself into an attitude of defence. "I'd ask nothing
+better!" he cried. "Come on! Just come on!"
+
+Max, laughing and excited, took a step forward, then paused as at some
+arresting thought.
+
+"Afraid? Oh, _la, la_! Afraid?"
+
+"Afraid!" The boy tossed the word back scornfully, but his face flushed
+and he made no advance.
+
+"You'll have to, now, you know!"
+
+Max retreated.
+
+"Oh, no, you don't!" With a quick, gay laugh, touched with the fire of
+battle, Blake followed; but ere he could come to close quarters, the boy
+had dodged and, lithe and swift as a cat, was round the table.
+
+"No! No!" he cried, with a little gasp, a little sob of excitement that
+caught the breath. "No! No! I demand grace. A starving man, _mon ami_! A
+starving man! It is not fair."
+
+He knew his adversary. Blake's hands dropped to his sides, he yielded
+with a laugh.
+
+"Very well! Very well! Another time I'll see what you're made of. And
+now 'we'll exterminate the bread-stuffs,' as McCutcheon would say!"
+
+And laughing, jesting--content in the moment for the moment's sake--they
+sat down to their first serious meal in the little _salon_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The meal was over; the candles had burned low; in the quiet, warm room
+the sense of repose was dominant.
+
+Blake took out his cigarette-case and passed it across the table,
+watching Max with lazy interest as he chose a cigarette and lighted it
+at a candle-flame.
+
+"Happy?"
+
+"Absolutely!"
+
+He had wanted in a vague, subconscious way to see the flash of the white
+teeth, the quick, familiar lifting of the boy's glance, and now he
+smiled as a man secretly satisfied.
+
+"I know just exactly what you're feeling," he said, as Max threw himself
+back in his chair and inhaled a first deep breath of smoke. "You feel
+that that little white curl from the end of your cigarette is the last
+puff of smoke from the boats you have burned; and that, with your own
+four walls around you, you can snap your fingers at the world. I know!
+God, don't I know!"
+
+Max smiled slowly, watching the tip of his cigarette. "Yes, you know!
+That is the beautiful thing about you."
+
+The appreciation warmed Blake's soul as the good red wine had warmed his
+blood.
+
+"I believe I do--with you. I believe I could tell you precisely your
+thoughts at this present moment." With a pleasant, meditative action, he
+drew a cigar from his case.
+
+"Tell me!"
+
+"Well, first of all, there's the great contentment--the sense of a
+definite step. You're strong enough to like finality."
+
+"I hope I am. I think I am."
+
+"You are! Not a doubt of it! But what I mean is that you've left an old
+world for a new one; and no matter how exciting the voyaging through
+space may have been, you like to feel your feet on terra firma."
+
+Max leaned forward eagerly. "That is quite true! And I like it because
+now I can open my eyes, and say to myself, 'not to-morrow, but to-day I
+live.' I have put--how do you say in English?--my hand upon the plough."
+
+"Exactly! The plough--or the palette--it's all the same! You're set to
+it now."
+
+The boy's eyes flashed in the candle-light, and for an instant something
+of the fierce emotion that can lash the Russian calm, as a gale lashes
+the sea, troubled his young face.
+
+"You comprehend--absolutely! I have made my choice; I have come to it
+out of many situations. I would die now rather than I would fail."
+
+In his voice was a suppressed fervor akin to some harsh or cruel
+emotion; and to Blake, watching and listening, there floated the hot
+echo of stories in which Russians had acted strange parts with a
+resolve, a callousness incomprehensible to other races.
+
+"When you talk like that, boy, I could almost go back to that first
+night, and adopt McCutcheon's theory. You might feasibly be a
+revolutionary with those blazing eyes."
+
+Max laughed, coming back to the moment.
+
+"Only revolutionary in my own cause! I fight myself for myself. You take
+my meaning?"
+
+"Not in the very least! But I accept your statement; I like its brave
+ring. You are your own romance."
+
+"I am my own romance."
+
+"Let's drink to it, then! Your romance--whatever it may be!" He raised
+the half-empty tumbler, drank a little, and handed it across the table.
+
+Max laughed and drank as well. "My romance--whatever it may be!"
+
+"Whatever it may be! And now for that breath of air we promised
+ourselves! It's close on ten o'clock."
+
+So the meal ended; coats were found, candles blown out, and a last
+proprietary inspection of the _appartement_ made by the aid of matches.
+
+They ran down the long, smooth staircase, and, stepping into the quiet,
+starlit rue Müller, linked arms and began their descent upon Paris with
+as much ease, as nice a familiarity as though life for both of them had
+been passed in the shadow of the Sacré-Coeur.
+
+On the Boulevard de Clichy the usual confusion of lights and humanity
+greeted them like welcoming arms, and with the same agreeable
+nonchalance they yielded to the embrace.
+
+Conscious of no definite purpose, they turned to the right and began to
+breast the human tide with eyes carelessly critical of the thronging
+faces, ears heedlessly open to the many tangled sounds of street life.
+Outside the theatres, flaunting posters made pools of color; in the
+roadway, the network of traffic surged and intermingled; from amid the
+flat house fronts, at every few hundred yards, some _cabaret_ broke upon
+the sight in crude confusion of scenic painting and electric light;
+while dominating all--a monument to the power of tradition--the sails of
+the time-honored mill sprang red and glaring from a background of quiet
+sky.
+
+But the two, walking arm-in-arm, had no glance for revolving mill-sails
+or vivid advertisement, and presently Blake halted before a house that,
+but for a certain prosperity of stained-glass window and dark-green
+paint, would have seemed a common wine shop.
+
+"Max," he said, "do you remember the famous night when we went to the
+Bal Tabarin, and saw much wine spilled? It was here I was first going to
+bring you then."
+
+"Here?"
+
+"This very place! 'Tis one of the old artistic _cabarets_ of
+Paris--grown a bit too big for its shoes now, like the rest of
+Montmartre, but still retaining a flavor. What do you say to turning
+in?"
+
+"I say 'yes.'"
+
+"Come along, then! I hope 'twon't disappoint you! There's a good deal of
+rubbish here, but a scattering of grain among the chaff. Ah, messieurs!
+Good-evening!"
+
+This last was addressed with cordiality to a knot of men gathered inside
+the doorway of the _cabaret_, all of whom rose politely from their
+chairs at Blake's entry.
+
+Max, peering curiously through the tobacco smoke that veiled the place,
+received an impression of a room--rather, of a shop--possessed of
+tables, chairs, a small circular counter where glasses and bottles
+winked and gleamed, and of walls hung with a truly Parisian collection
+of impressionist studies and clever caricatures.
+
+"Monsieur is interested?"
+
+He turned, to meet the eyes of the host, a stout and affable Frenchman,
+who by right divine held first place among the little group of loungers;
+but before he could frame a reply, Blake answered for him.
+
+"He is an artist, M. Fruvier, and finds all life interesting."
+
+M. Fruvier bowed with much subtle comprehension.
+
+"Then possibly it will intrigue him to step inside, and hear our little
+concert. We are about to commence."
+
+Blake nodded in silent acquiescence; the knot of men bowed quickly and
+stiffly; and Max found himself being led across the bare, sawdust-strewn
+floor into an inner and larger room--a holy of holies--where the light
+was dimmer and the air more cool.
+
+Here, a scattered audience was assembled--a score or so of individuals,
+sober of dress, unenthusiastic of demeanor, sitting in twos and threes,
+sipping beer or liqueurs and waiting for the concert to begin.
+
+Max's eyes wandered over this collection of people while Blake sought
+for seats, but his glance and his interest passed on almost immediately
+to the walls, where, as in the outer room, pictures ranged from floor to
+ceiling.
+
+The seats were chosen; a white-aproned waiter claimed an order, and
+Blake gave one as if from habit.
+
+"And now, boy, a cigarette?"
+
+"If you please--a cigarette!" Max's voice had the quick note, his eyes
+the swift light that spoke excitement. "_Mon ami_, I like this place! I
+like it! And I wonder who painted that?" He indicated a picture that
+hung upon the wall beside them.
+
+"I don't know! Some chap who used to frequent the place in his unknown
+days. We can ask Fruvier."
+
+"It is clever."
+
+"It is."
+
+"It has imagination."
+
+They both looked at the picture--a study in black and white, showing an
+attic room, with a _pierrette_ seated disconsolate upon a bed, a
+_pierrot_ gazing through a window.
+
+"_Pierrot_ seeking the moon, eh?"
+
+Max nodded.
+
+"Yes. It has imagination--and also technique!"
+
+But their criticism was interrupted; a piano was opened at the farther
+end of the room by an individual affecting the unkempt hair and
+velveteen coat of past Bohemianism, who seated himself and ran his
+fingers over the keys as though he alone occupied the room.
+
+At this very informal signal, the curtain rose upon a ridiculously small
+stage, and an insignificant, nervous-looking man stepped toward the
+footlights at the same moment that M. Fruvier and his followers entered
+and seated themselves in a row, their backs to the wall.
+
+This appearance of the proprietor was the sole meed of interest offered
+to the singer, the audience continuing to smoke, to sip, even to peruse
+the evening papers with stoic indifference.
+
+The song began--a long and unamusing ditty, topical in its points. Here
+and there a smile showed that it did not pass unheard, and as the singer
+disappeared a faint _roulade_ of applause came from the back of the
+room.
+
+Max turned to his companion.
+
+"But I believed the Parisians to be all excitement! What an audience!
+Like the dead!"
+
+"They are excitable when something excites them."
+
+"Then they dislike this song?"
+
+"Oh no! 'Not bad!' they'd say if you asked them; but they're not here to
+be excited--they're not here to waste enthusiasm. Like ourselves, they
+have worked and have eaten, and are enjoying an hour's repose. The song
+is part of the hour--as inevitable as the _bock_ and the cigar, and you
+can't expect a smoker to wax eloquent over a familiar weed."
+
+"How strange! How interesting!" The boy looked round the scattered
+groups that formed to his young eyes another side-show in the vast
+theatre of life.
+
+No one heeded his interest. The women, young and elderly alike,
+conversed with their escorts and sipped their liqueurs with absorbed
+quiet; the men smoked and drank, talked or read aloud little paragraphs
+from their papers with whispering relish.
+
+Then again the piano tinkled, and the same singer appeared, to sing
+another song almost identical with the first; but now his nervousness
+was less, he won a laugh or two for his political innuendoes, and when
+he finished Max clapped his hands, and Blake laughingly followed suit.
+
+"He's a new man," he said; "this is probably his first night."
+
+"His first? Oh, poor creature! What a _début_! Clap your hands again!"
+
+"Poor creature indeed! He's delighted with himself. Many a better man
+has been driven from the stage after his first verse. Your Paris can be
+cruel."
+
+Their example had been tepidly followed, and the singer, beaming under
+the relaxed tension of his nerves, was smiling and bowing before
+entering upon the perils of a third song.
+
+"And what do they pay him?"
+
+"Oh, a couple of francs a song! The fees will grow with his success."
+
+Max gasped. "A couple of francs! Oh, my God!"
+
+"What do you expect? We're not in Eldorado."
+
+"But a couple of francs!"
+
+"Ssh! Don't talk anarchy. Here come the powers that be!"
+
+M. Fruvier was coming toward them, making his way between the seats with
+many bows, many apologetic smiles.
+
+"Well, messieurs, and what of our new one? Not a Vagot,
+perhaps"--mentioning a famous _comique_ whose star had risen in the
+firmament of the _cabaret_--"not a Vagot, perhaps, but not bad! Not
+bad?"
+
+"Not bad!" acquiesced Blake.
+
+"Very good!" added Max, pondering hotly upon the wage of the singer,
+and regarding M. Fruvier with doubtful glance.
+
+"No! No! Not bad!" reiterated that gentleman, as if viewing the
+performance from a wholly impersonal standpoint. "Not bad!" And, still
+bowing, still smiling, he wandered on to exchange opinions with his
+other patrons, while a new singer appeared, a man whose vast proportions
+and round red face looked truly absurd upon the tiny stage, but whose
+merry eye and instant friendly nod gained him a murmur of welcome.
+
+With the appearance of the new-comer a little stir of life was felt, and
+in obedience to some impulse of his own, Max took a sketch-book and a
+pencil from his pocket, and sat forward in his seat, with glance roving
+round and round the room, pencil poised above the paper.
+
+"I heard this fellow here twelve years ago," said Blake. "He and Vagot
+were young men then. Shows the odd lie of things in this world! There's
+Vagot making his thousands of francs a week next door at the Moulin
+Rouge, and this poor fat clown still where he was!"
+
+Max did not reply. His head was bent, his face flushed; he was sketching
+with a furious haste.
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+Still no reply. The song rolled on; and Blake, leaning back in his seat,
+smoking with leisurely enjoyment, felt for perhaps the first time in his
+life the sense of complete companionship--that subtle condition of mind
+so continuously craved, so rarely found, so instantly recognized.
+
+"Boy," he said at last, "let me come up sometimes when you're messing
+with your paints? I won't bother you."
+
+Max looked up and nodded--a mere flash of a look, but one that conveyed
+sufficient; and the two relapsed again into silence.
+
+At the end of an hour the boy raised his head, tossed a lock of hair out
+of his eyes, and closed his sketch-book.
+
+Blake met his eyes comprehendingly. "Will we go?"
+
+"Yes. But one more glance at this black-and-white!"
+
+He jumped up, unembarrassed, unconscious of self, and looked at the
+picture closely; then stepped back and looked at it from a little
+distance, eyes half closed, head critically upon one side.
+
+"Satisfied?" Blake rose more slowly.
+
+"Perfectly. It is clever--this! It has imagination!" He slipped his arm
+confidingly through Blake's, and together they made a way to the door.
+
+A new song began as they stepped into the outer room--the tinkle of the
+piano came thinly across the smoke-laden air. Blake paused and looked
+back.
+
+"Well, and what do you think of it? A trifle dull, perhaps, but still--"
+
+"Dull? But no! Never! I could work here. Others have worked here. It is
+in the atmosphere--- the desire to create."
+
+They passed into the street, Blake raising his hat to a stout lady,
+presumably Madame Fruvier, who sat wedged behind the counter, Max
+glancing greedily at the bold rough sketches, the brilliantly Parisian
+caricatures adorning the walls.
+
+"It is in the atmosphere! One breathes it!" he said again, as they
+walked down the cool, lighted boulevard. "I feel it to-night as I have
+not felt it before--the artist's Paris. _Mon ami_"--he raised a glowing
+face--"_mon ami_, tell me something! Do you think I shall succeed? Do
+you think I possess a spark of the great fire--a spark ever so tiny?"
+
+His earnestness was almost comical. He stopped and arraigned his
+companion, regardless of interested glances and passing smiles.
+
+"Ned, tell me! Tell me! Have you faith in me?"
+
+Blake looked into the feverishly bright eyes, and a swift conviction
+possessed him.
+
+"I know this, boy, whatever you do, you'll do it finely! More I cannot
+say."
+
+Max fell silent, and they proceeded on their way, each preoccupied with
+his own thoughts. At the turning to the heights Blake paused.
+
+"I'll say good-bye here! I have letters to write to-night; but I'll be
+up to-morrow to spirit you off to lunch. I won't come too early, for I
+know what you'll be doing all the morning."
+
+Max laughed, coming back out of his dream. "And what is it I shall be
+doing all the morning?"
+
+"Why, carting canvases and paint tubes, and God knows what, up those
+steps till your back is broken, and then settling down with your temper
+and your ambition at fever heat to begin the great picture at the most
+inopportune moment in the world! Think I don't know you?"
+
+Max laughed again, but more softly.
+
+"_Mon ami!_"
+
+"I'm right, eh? That sketch at the _cabaret_ is meant to grow?"
+
+Instantly Max was diffident. "Oh, I am not so sure! It is only an idea.
+It may not arrive at anything."
+
+"Let's have a look?"
+
+Max's hand went slowly toward his pocket. "I am not sure that I like it;
+it is not my theory of life. It's more of your theory--it is ironical."
+
+"Let's see!"
+
+The sketch-book came reluctantly to light, and as Max opened it, the two
+stepped close to a street lamp.
+
+"As I tell you, it is ironical. If it becomes a picture I shall give it
+this name--_The Failure_." He handed it to Blake, leaning close and
+peering over his shoulder in nervous anxiety.
+
+"Understand, it is but an idea! I have put no work into it."
+
+Blake held the book up to the light, his observant face grave and
+interested.
+
+"What a clever little beggar you are!" he said at length.
+
+Max glowed at the words, and instantly his tongue was loosed.
+
+"Ah, _mon cher_, but it is only a sketch! That atmosphere--that dim,
+smoky atmosphere--is so difficult with the pencil. The audience is, of
+course, but suggested; all that I really attempted was the singer--the
+failure with the merry eyes."
+
+"And well you've caught him too, by gad! One would think you had seen
+the antithesis--Vagot, the success, long and lean and yellow, the
+unhappiest-looking man you ever saw."
+
+"Ah, but you must not say that!" cried Max unexpectedly. "I told you it
+was not my theory. To me success is life, failure is death! This is but
+a reflected impression of yours--- an impression of irony!" He took the
+sketch-book from Blake's hands and closed it sharply; then, to ask
+pardon for his little outburst, he smiled.
+
+"_Mon cher_! Forgive me! Come to-morrow, and we will see if day has
+thrown new light."
+
+They shook hands.
+
+"All right--to-morrow! Good-night, boy--and good luck!"
+
+"Good-night!"
+
+Max stood to watch the tall figure disappear into the tangle of traffic,
+then with a light step, a light heart, a light sense of propitiated
+fate, he began the climb to his home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+That night the pencil-sketch obsessed the brain of Max. Tossing wakeful
+upon his bed, he saw the pageant of the future--touched the robe, all
+saffron and silver, of the goddess Inspiration--and, with the brushes
+and colors of imagination, gained to the gateway of fame.
+
+It was a wild night that spurred to action, and with the coming of the
+day, Blake's prophecy was fulfilled. Before the Montmartre shops were
+open, he was seeking the materials of his art; and long ere the sun was
+high, he was back in the room that had once been the bedroom of M.
+Salas, surrounded by the disarray of the inspired moment.
+
+The room was small but lofty, and a fine light made his work possible.
+The inevitable wood fire crackled on the hearth, but otherwise the
+atmosphere spoke rigidly of toil.
+
+Zeal, endeavor, ambition in its youngest, divinest form--these were the
+suggestions dormant in the strewn canvases, the tall easel, the bare
+walls; and none who were to know, or who had known, Max--none destined
+to kindle to the flame of his personality, ever viewed him in more
+characteristic guise than he appeared on that February morning clad in
+his painting smock, the lock of hair falling over his forehead, his
+hands trembling with excitement, as he executed the first bold line that
+meant the birth of his idea.
+
+So remarkable, so characteristic was the pose that chance, ever with an
+eye to effect, ordained it an observer, for scarcely had he lost himself
+in the work than the door of his studio opened with a Bohemian lack of
+ceremony, and his neighbor, Jacqueline--dressed in a blue print dress
+that matched her eyes--came smiling into the room.
+
+"Good-day, monsieur!"
+
+He glowered with complete unreserve.
+
+"You are displeased, monsieur; I intrude?"
+
+"You do, mademoiselle."
+
+The tone was uncompromising, but Jacqueline came on, softly moving
+nearer and nearer to the easel, looking from the canvas to Max and back
+again to the canvas in an amused, secret fashion comprehensible to
+herself alone.
+
+"You feel like my poor Lucien, when an interruption offers itself to his
+work; but, as I say, _ennui_ is the price of admiration! Is it not so,
+Monsieur Max?"
+
+She leaned her blonde head to one side, and looked at him with the naïve
+quality of meditation that so became her.
+
+"Do not permit me to disturb you, monsieur! Continue working."
+
+"Thank you, mademoiselle!" A flicker of irony was observable in the tone
+and, with exaggerated zeal, he returned to his task.
+
+The girl came softly behind him, looking over his shoulder.
+
+"What is the picture to be, monsieur?"
+
+"It is an idea caught last night in a _cabaret_. It would not interest
+you."
+
+"And why not?"
+
+Max shrugged his shoulders, and went on blocking in his picture.
+
+"Because it is a psychological study--a side-issue of existence.
+Nothing to do with the crude facts of life."
+
+"Oh!" Jacqueline drew in her breath softly. "I am only interested, then,
+in the crude facts? How do you arrive at that conclusion, monsieur?"
+
+"By observation, mademoiselle."
+
+"And what have you observed?"
+
+"It is difficult to say--in words. In a picture I would put it like
+this--a blue sky, a meadow of rank green grass, a stream full of
+forget-me-nots, and a girl bending over it, with eyes the color of the
+flowers. Conventionality would compel me to call it _Spring_ or
+_Youth_!" He spoke fast and he spoke contemptuously.
+
+She watched him, her head still characteristically drooping, the little
+wise smile hovering about her lips.
+
+"I comprehend!" she murmured to herself. "Monsieur is very worldly-wise.
+Monsieur has discovered that there is--how shall I say?--less atmosphere
+in a blue sky than in a gray one?"
+
+Max glanced round at her. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was
+being laughed at, but her clear azure eyes met his innocently, and her
+mouth was guiltless of smiles.
+
+"I have had a sufficiency of blue sky," he said, and returned to his
+work.
+
+"One is liable to think that, monsieur, until the rain falls!"
+
+"So you doubt the endurance of my philosophy?"
+
+She shrugged; she extended her pretty hands expressively.
+
+"Monsieur is young!"
+
+The words exasperated Max. Again it had arisen--the old argument. The
+anger smouldering in his heart since the girl's invasion flamed to
+speech.
+
+"I could wish that the world was less ready with that opinion,
+mademoiselle! It knows very little of what it says."
+
+"Possibly, monsieur! but you admit that--that you are scarcely aged."
+There was a quiver now about the pretty lips, a hint of a laugh in the
+eyes.
+
+"Mademoiselle,"--he wheeled round with unexpected vehemence,--"I should
+like you, to tell me exactly how old you think I am."
+
+"You mean it, monsieur?"
+
+"I mean it. Is it seventeen--or is it sixteen?" His voice was edged with
+irony.
+
+"It is neither, monsieur!" Jacqueline was very demure now, her eyes
+sought the floor. "Granted your full permission, monsieur, I would
+say--"
+
+"You would say--?"
+
+"I would say"--she flashed a daring look at him and instantly dropped
+her eyes again--"I would say that you have twenty-four, if not
+twenty-five years!"
+
+The confession came in a little rush of speech, and as it left her lips
+she moved toward the door, contemplating flight.
+
+An immense surprise clouded Max's mind, a surprise that brought the
+blood mantling to his face and sent his words forth with a stammering
+indecision.
+
+"Twenty-four--twenty-five! What gave you that idea?"
+
+"Oh, monsieur, it is simple! It came to me by observation!"
+
+Leaving Max still red, still confused, she slipped out of the room
+noiselessly as she had come, and as the door closed he heard the faint,
+exasperating sound of a light little laugh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+After Jacqueline had closed the door and the light laugh had died into
+silence, Max stood before his easel, hands inert, the flush still
+scorching his face. For the first time since the birth of the new life
+he had been made sensible of personal criticism--the criticism winged
+with fine ridicule, that leaves its victim strangely uncertain,
+curiously uneasy. The immemorial subtlety of woman had lurked in the
+girl's eyes as she cast her last penetrating glance at him. He felt now,
+as he stood alone, that his soul had been stripped and was naked to the
+bare walls and gaping canvas, and his start was one of purely unbalanced
+nerves when a knock fell upon the door, telling of a new intruder.
+
+He had all but cried out in protest when the door opened, but at sight
+of the invader the cry merged into an unstrung laugh of welcome.
+
+"Ned! You?"
+
+Blake walked into the room, talking as he came. "Well, upon my word!
+Wasn't I right? Here he is, easel and canvas and all--even the temper
+isn't wanting!"
+
+Max ran forward, caught and clung to his arm.
+
+"_Mon ami_! _Mon cher_! I have wanted you--wanted you."
+
+"Anything wrong?"
+
+"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?"
+
+"Oh, she has no bodily form. One does not say 'her hair shall be black'
+or 'her hair shall be red' any more than one makes an image of God. She
+dwells in the mysterious. Even when the time comes and she steps into
+reality, mystery will still cling to her. There must always be the
+wonder--the miracle." He spoke softly, as he always spoke when sentiment
+entrapped him. His native turn of thought found vent at these odd times
+and made him infinitely interesting. The slight satire that was
+ordinarily wont to twist his smile was smoothed away, and a certain
+sadness stole into its place; his green eyes lost their keenness of
+observation and looked into a space obscure to others. In these rare
+moments he was essentially of his race and of his country.
+
+"No," he added, as if to himself, "a man does not say 'her hair shall
+be red' or 'her hair shall be black'!"
+
+"It is very curious--very strange--a dream like that!" Max's voice was a
+mere whisper.
+
+"Without his dreams, man would be an animal."
+
+"And you, then, wait for this woman? In seriousness you wait, and
+believe that out of nothing she will come to you?"
+
+Blake turned away and walked slowly to the window, the sadness, the
+aloofness still visible in his face like the glow from a shrouded light.
+
+"That's the hardship of it, boy--the faith that it wants and the
+patience that it wants! Sometimes it takes the heart out of a man!
+There're days when I feel like a derelict; when I say to myself, 'Here I
+am, thirty-eight years old, unanchored, unharbored.' Oh, I know I'm
+young as the world counts age! I know that plenty of men and women like
+me, and that I pass the time of day to plenty as I go along! But all the
+same, if I died to-morrow there isn't one would break a heart over me.
+Not a solitary one."
+
+"Do not say that!"
+
+"It's true, all the same! Sometimes I say to myself, 'Wha a fool you
+are, Ned Blake! The Almighty gives reality to some and dreams to some,
+and who knows but your lot is to go down to your grave hugging empty
+hopes, like your forefathers before you!' It's terrible, sometimes, the
+way the heart goes out of a man!"
+
+"Ned! Ned! Do not say that!" Max's voice was strangely troubled,
+strangely unlike itself, so unlike and troubled that it wakened Blake to
+self-consciousness.
+
+"I'm talking rank nonsense! I'm a fool!"
+
+"You are not!" The boy ran across to him impulsively; then paused, mute
+and shy.
+
+"What is it, boy?"
+
+"Only that what you say is not the truth. If you were to die, there is
+one person who would--"
+
+Blake's face softened. He was surprised and touched.
+
+"What? You'd care?"
+
+Max nodded.
+
+"Thank you, boy! Thank you for that!"
+
+They stood silent for a moment, looking through the uncurtained window
+at the February breezes ruffling the holly bushes in the plantation,
+each unusually aware of the other's presence, each unusually
+self-conscious.
+
+"But if it comes to pass--your miracle--you will forget me? You will no
+longer have need of me, is that not so?"
+
+Max spoke softly, a disproportionate seriousness darkening his eyes,
+causing his voice to quiver.
+
+Blake turned to answer in the same vein, but something checked him--some
+embarrassment, some inexplicable doubt of himself.
+
+"Boy," he said, sharply, "we're running into deep waters. Don't you
+think we ought to steer for shore? I came to smoke, you know, and watch
+you at your work."
+
+The words acted as a charm. Max threw up his head and gave a little
+laugh, a trifle high, a shade hysterical.
+
+"But, of course! But, of course! I believe I, too, was falling into a
+dream; and the dream comes after, the work first, is it not so? The work
+first; the work always first. Place another log upon the fire and begin
+to smoke, and I swear to you that before the day is finished I will make
+you proud of me. I swear it to you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+There is impetus, if not necessarily inspiration in a goading thought,
+and Max returned to his interrupted task with a zeal almost in excess of
+his protestations. He worked with vigor--with an exuberant daring that
+seemed to suggest that the creation of his picture was rather the
+creation of a mental narcotic than the expression of an idea.
+
+He had given rein to sentiment in the moment with Blake, and now he was
+applying the curb, working incessantly--- never pausing to speak--never
+casting a glance at the corner where his companion was smoking and
+dreaming over the fire.
+
+To the casual observer it might have seemed a scene of ideal
+comradeship; yet in the minds of the comrades there lurked an
+uneasiness, an uncertainty not lightly to be placed--not easily to be
+clothed in words. A certain warmth was stirring in Blake's heart,
+coupled with a certain wonder at his sudden discovery of the depth of
+the boy's regard; while in the boy's own soul a tumult of feelings ran
+riot.
+
+Shame burned him that he should have confessed himself; amazement seared
+him that the confession had been there to make. A bewildering annoyance
+filled him--a first doubting of the ego he was cherishing with so fine a
+care.
+
+It is indeed a black moment when an egoist doubts himself; it is as if
+the god within the temple became self-conscious; more, it is as if the
+god rent down the veil before the shrine and showed himself a thing of
+clay to his astonished worshippers.
+
+The mind of Max was a complex study as he worked with his new-found
+vehemence, expressing or crushing a thought with each bold stroke. He
+prided himself upon his powers of self-analysis; and, being possessed as
+well of honesty and of a measure of common sense, the mental picture
+that confronted him was scarcely pleasant seeing. Doubt of himself--of
+his own omnipotence--- had assailed him; and, being young, being spoiled
+of the world, it found expression in bitter resentment.
+
+Having continued his onslaught upon the canvas until midday was close at
+hand, he suddenly astonished the unoffending Blake by flinging his
+charcoal from him to the furthest end of the room, where it broke rudely
+against the spotless wall-paper.
+
+"God bless my soul!" Blake turned, to see an angry figure striding to
+the window, his hair ruffled, his hands thrust deep into his trouser
+pockets.
+
+"What in God's name is the matter with you?"
+
+There was no answer and, being a wise man, he did not press the point.
+
+Presently, as he expected, the boyish figure wheeled round.
+
+"I cannot work. It is all bad! All wrong!"
+
+He rose slowly and began to walk toward the easel, but with a cry the
+boy ran forward and intercepted him.
+
+"No! No! No! It is bad, I tell you--you must not see. Look! This is what
+I shall do. This!" He turned and, swift as lightning, snapped up a
+knife, and before Blake could find a gesture or a word, ripped his
+canvas from end to end.
+
+"Upon my word! Well, upon my word! There's an extravagant young devil!
+Why, in the name of God, would you destroy your canvas like that?"
+
+"Why? Because, my friend, I am I! I do not work again upon a thing that
+I have marred!" His voice shook, trembling between excited laughter and
+tears.
+
+Blake looked at him. "Bless my soul, if he isn't crying! Come here to
+me! You're a baby!"
+
+But Max turned on him, so furious that the hot anger in his eyes
+scorched the tears that hung there.
+
+"A baby? This much a baby, that I love my work so truly that I have set
+it upon an altar and made it my religion! And when I find, as to-day,
+that it fails me I am damned--my soul is lost!"
+
+"And why does it fail you--to-day?"
+
+"I do not know!"
+
+"Is that the truth?"
+
+"Yes, it is."
+
+"Are you perfectly sure? Are you perfectly sure that 'tisn't I--my
+presence here--?"
+
+"You?" Max withered him with a scorn meant for himself as well. "You
+rate yourself high, my friend, and you imagine my work a very trivial
+thing!"
+
+"Nonsense! Plenty of artists must have solitude."
+
+"Plenty of fools! An artist is engrossed in his art so perfectly that
+when he stands before his canvas no world exists but the world of his
+imagination. Do you suppose me to be affected because you sit somewhere
+in the background, smoking over the fire? Oh, no! I trust I have more
+capacity to concentrate!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders to the ears; he raised his eyebrows in the
+very elaboration of indifference.
+
+Blake, hot as he in pride or anger, caught sudden fire.
+
+"Upon my soul, you're damned complimentary! I think, if you have no
+objection, I'll be wishing you good-day!" He picked up his hat, and
+strode to the door.
+
+[Illustration: "LOOK! THIS IS WHAT I SHALL DO. THIS!"]
+
+The action was so abrupt, the offence so real, that it sobered Max.
+With a sudden collapse of pride, he wheeled round.
+
+"Ned! Oh, Ned!"
+
+But the banging of the outer door was his only answer; and he drew back,
+his face fallen to a sudden blankness of expression, his hand going out
+as if for support to the tattered canvas.
+
+Minutes passed--how many or how few he made no attempt to reckon--then a
+tap fell on the door and his blood leaped, leaped and dropped back to a
+sick pulsation of disappointment, as the door opened and Jacqueline's
+fair head appeared.
+
+For an instant a fierce resentment at this new intrusion fired him, then
+the absorbing need for human sympathy welled up, drowning all else.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he cried out, "I am the most unhappy person in all the
+world; I have tried to make a picture and failed, and I have quarrelled
+with my best friend!"
+
+Jacqueline nodded sagely. "That, M. Max, is my excuse for intruding. Of
+the picture, of course, I know nothing"--she shrugged expressively--"but
+of the quarrel I understand all--having passed M. Blake upon the
+stairs!"
+
+At any other moment Max would have resented in swift and explicit terms
+this probing of his private concerns; but the soreness at his heart was
+too acute to permit of pride.
+
+"Then you are sorry for me, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur!"
+
+"Because of my spoiled picture?" Waywardness flickered up momentarily.
+
+"No, monsieur!"
+
+"Then why?"
+
+Jacqueline glanced up swiftly, then dropped her eyes.
+
+"Because, monsieur--being but a woman--I say to myself 'life is long,
+and other pictures may be painted; but with love--or friendship--'"
+
+"Mademoiselle, that is sufficient! You are charming--you are
+sympathetic--- but, like many others, you place too great a value upon
+those words 'love' and 'friendship.' It is like this! If I quarrel with
+my friend it is doubtless sad, but it only affects myself; if, on the
+contrary, I paint a bad picture I am making a blot upon a beautiful
+world!"
+
+"And what of the heart, monsieur? May there not be sad stains upon the
+heart--even if no eyes see them?"
+
+"Now, mademoiselle, you are talking sentiment!"
+
+"And you, monsieur, are materialistic?" For a second a flash of mischief
+showed in the blue eyes.
+
+Max stiffened his shoulders; made brave show to hide the detestable ache
+in his soul.
+
+"Yes, mademoiselle," he said. "I think, without pride, I may claim to
+see life wholly, without idealization."
+
+Quite unexpectedly Jacqueline clapped her hands and laughed, stepping
+close to him with an engaging air of mystery.
+
+"Then all is well! I have a physic for all your ills!"
+
+He looked distrustful.
+
+"A physic?"
+
+"This, monsieur--that you put aside the great sorrow of your picture,
+and the little sorrow of your friend--and step across and partake of
+_déjeuner_ with Lucien and me. A very special _déjeuner_, I assure you;
+no less than a _poulet bonne femme_, cooked with a care--"
+
+She threw out her hands in an ecstasy of expression, a portrayal of the
+artless greed that had more than once brought a smile to the boy's lips.
+But this time no amusement was called up; disgust rose strong within
+him and, accompanying it, a certainty that were Jacqueline's chicken to
+be laid before him, he must assuredly choke with the first morsel. One
+does not eat when one has failed in one's art--or quarrelled with one's
+best friend!
+
+"Mademoiselle," he said, unsteadily, "you are kind--and I am not without
+appreciation. But to-day I have no appetite--food does not call to me.
+Doubtless, there are days when M. Cartel cannot eat." He strove to force
+a laugh.
+
+Jacqueline looked humorously grave.
+
+"When Lucien cannot work, monsieur, he eats the more! It is only on the
+days when work flows from him that I am compelled to drag him to the
+table--those days or, perhaps, the days--" She stopped discreetly.
+
+"What days, mademoiselle?"
+
+For the gratification of a curiosity he condemned, Max put the question.
+
+"Oh, monsieur, when some little affair arises upon which he and I
+dispute--when some cloud, as it were, darkens the sun." She continued to
+look down demurely; then quickly she looked up again. "But I waste your
+time! And, besides, I have not finished what I would say."
+
+"Oh, mademoiselle, I beg--"
+
+"It is not of the _poulet_ that I would speak, monsieur! I understand
+that artists are not all alike; and that, whereas bad work gives Lucien
+an appetite, it gives you a disgust! Still, you are a philosopher, and
+will allow others to eat, even if you will not eat yourself."
+
+Max looked bewildered.
+
+"Good!" Jacqueline clapped her hands again softly. "I knew I would find
+success! I said I would find success!"
+
+"But, mademoiselle, I do not understand."
+
+"No, monsieur! Neither did M. Blake, when I met him upon the stairs,
+and told him of my _poulet_. He also, it seems, had lost his appetite.
+Your picture must have been truly bad!"
+
+She discreetly toyed with her belt during the accepted space of time in
+which a brain can conceive--a heart leap--to an overmastering joy; then
+she looked again at Max.
+
+"It is a little idea of my own, monsieur, that you and M. Édouard should
+make the acquaintance of my Lucien. M. Édouard already consents; I hope
+that you, monsieur--"
+
+For answer, Max caught her hand. From that moment he loved her--her
+prettiness, her mischief, her humanity.
+
+"Mademoiselle! I do not understand--and I do understand!"
+
+"But you will come, monsieur?"
+
+"I will eat your chicken, mademoiselle--even to the bones!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Comradeship in its broader sense is Bohemianism at its best;
+Bohemianism, not as it is imagined by the _dilettante_--a thing of
+picturesque penury and exotic vice--but a spontaneous intermingling of
+personalities, an understanding, a fraternity as purely a gift of the
+gods as love or beauty.
+
+It is true that the sense of regained happiness beat strong in the mind
+of Max when he followed Jacqueline into her unpicturesque living-room
+with its sparse, cheap furniture, its piano and its gas stove, and that
+the happiness budded and blossomed like a flower in the sun at the one
+swift glance exchanged with Blake; but even had these factors not been
+present, he must still have been sensible of the pretty touch of
+hospitality patent in the girl's manner the moment she crossed her own
+threshold, conscious of the friendly smile of M. Lucien Cartel, typical
+artist, typical Frenchman of the southern provinces--short, swarthy,
+alive from his coarse black hair to the square tips of his fingers. It
+was in the air--the sense of good-will--the desire for conviviality; and
+in the first greeting, the first hand-shake, the relations of the party
+were established.
+
+But the true note of this Bohemianism is not so much spontaneous
+friendship as a spontaneous capacity for the interchange of
+thought--that instant opening of mind to mind, when place becomes of
+slight, and time of no importance.
+
+Such an atmosphere was created by M. Lucien Cartel in his poor
+Montmartre _appartement_, and under its spell Max and Blake fell as
+surely, as luxuriously as they might have fallen under the spell of a
+summer day. It was not that M. Cartel was brilliant; his only capacity
+for brilliance lay in his strong, square hands; but he was a good fellow
+and possessed of a philosophy that at once challenged and interested.
+For Church and State he had a wide contempt, a scoffing raillery, a
+candid blasphemy that outraged orthodoxy: for humanity and for his art
+he owned an enthusiasm touching on the sublime. Upon every subject--the
+meanest and the most profound--he held an opinion and aired it with
+superb frankness and incredible fluency. So it was that, when the
+_poulet bonne femme_ had been picked to the bones and Jacqueline had
+retired to some sanctum whence the clatter of plates and the sound of
+running water told of domestic duties, the three pushed their chairs
+back from the table and fell to talk.
+
+Precisely how they talked, precisely what they talked of in that
+pleasant period subsequent to the meal is not to be related. They
+thrashed the paths of morality, science, religion until their contending
+voices filled the room and the tobacco smoke hung in clouds about them.
+They talked until the last drop of Jacqueline's coffee had been drained;
+they talked until Jacqueline herself came silently back into the room
+and seated herself by Cartel's side, slipping her hand into his with
+artless spontaneity.
+
+Morality, science, religion, and then, in natural sequence, art--music!
+The brain of M. Cartel tingled, his fingers twitched as the rival merits
+of composers--the varying schools of thought--were touched upon, warmed
+to, or torn by contending opinions. One end only was conceivable to that
+last discussion. The moment arrived when the brain of M. Cartel cried
+vehemently for expression, when his hand, imprisoned in the small
+fingers of Jacqueline, was no longer to be restrained, when he sprang
+from his chair and rushed to the piano, his coarse black hair an untidy
+mat, his ugly face alight with God's gift of inspiration.
+
+'What had he said? Was this, then, not magnificent--wonderful?'
+
+And, seating himself, he unloosed into the common room a beauty of sound
+more adorning than the rarest devices of the decorator's art--a mesh of
+delicate harmonies that snared the imaginations of his three listeners
+and sent them winging to the very borders of their varying realms.
+
+M. Lucien Cartel in every-day life and to the casual observer was a good
+fellow with a fund of enthusiasm and a ready tongue; M. Lucien Cartel to
+the woman he loved and in the enchanted world of his art was a mortal
+imbued warmly and surely with a spark of the divinity he derided. There
+is no niggardliness in Bohemia: it made him as happy to give of his
+music as it made his listeners to receive, with the consequence that
+time was dethroned and that four people sat entranced, claiming nothing
+from the world outside, more than content in the knowledge that the
+world had no eyes for the doings of a little room on the heights of
+Montmartre.
+
+From opera to opera M. Cartel wandered, now humming a passage under his
+breath in accompaniment to his playing, again raising his soft, southern
+voice in an abandonment of enthusiasm.
+
+It was following close upon some such enthusiastic moment that Max rose,
+crossed the room, and taking a violin and bow from where they lay upon a
+wooden bench against the wall, carried them silently to the piano.
+
+As silently M. Cartel received them and, lifting the violin, tucked it
+under his chin and raised the bow.
+
+There is no need to detail the magic that followed upon that simple
+action. The world--even his own Paris--has never heard of M. Lucien
+Cartel, and cares not to know of the pieces that he played, the degree
+of his technique, the truth of his interpretation; but when at last the
+hand that held the violin dropped to his side and, lifting his right
+arm, he wiped his damp forehead with the sleeve of his coat, the faces
+of his audience were pale as the faces of those who have looked upon
+hidden places, and in the eyes of the little Jacqueline there were
+tears.
+
+A moment of silence; then M. Cartel laid down his violin and laughed.
+The laugh broke the spell: Jacqueline, with a childish cry of
+excitement, flew across the room and, throwing her arms about his neck,
+kissed him with unashamed fervor; Blake and Max pressed round the piano,
+and in an instant the room was humming again to the sound of voices, and
+some one made the astounding discovery that it was five o'clock.
+
+This was Blake's opportunity--the opportunity loved beyond all others of
+the Irishman, when it is permissible to offer hospitality. The idea came
+to him as an inspiration, and was seized upon as such. Eager as a boy,
+he laid one hand on Max's shoulder, the other on that of M. Cartel.
+
+'He had a suggestion to make! One that admitted of no refusal! M. Cartel
+had entertained them regally; he must suffer them to make some poor
+return. There was a certain little _café_ where the _chef_ knew his
+business and the wine really was wine--' He looked from one face to
+another for approval, and perhaps it was but natural that his eyes
+should rest last and longest on the face of Max.
+
+So it was arranged. A dinner is a question readily dealt with in the
+quarter of Montmartre, and soon the four--laughing, talking,
+arguing--were hurrying down the many steps of the Escalier de
+Sainte-Marie, bent upon the enjoyment of the hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+They dined with a full measure of satisfaction; for with his invitation
+to a feast, your Parisian accepts an obligation to bring forth his best
+in gayety, in conversation, in good-will; and it might well have
+happened that Blake, spending ten times as much money upon guests of his
+own world, might have lacked the glow, the sense of success, that filled
+him in the giving of this dinner to an unknown musician and a little
+blonde-haired _Montmartroise_.
+
+They dined; and then, because the winds were still wintry and coffee
+could not yet be sipped outside _café_ doors, they betook themselves to
+the little theatre of the 'Trianon Lyrique' on the Boulevard
+Rochechouart, where for an infinitesimal sum the _bourgeoisie_ may sit
+in the stalls and hear light opera conscientiously sung.
+
+As it was a gala evening, Blake reserved a box, and the little
+Jacqueline sat in the place of honor, neat and dainty to the point of
+perfection, with a small black jacket fitting closely to her figure, and
+a bunch of violets, costing ten centimes, pinned coquettishly into her
+lace _jabot_. They sat through the performance in a happy mood of
+toleration, applauding whenever applause might be bestowed, generously
+silent when anything tempted adverse criticism; and between the acts
+they smoked and drank liqueurs in company with the good Montmartre
+shopkeepers--the soldiers--the young clerks and the young girls who
+formed the crowd in the lounge.
+
+But all things end; the curtain fell on the last act of _Les Cloches de
+Corneville_, and not without a pleasant, passing sigh, the four left the
+theatre.
+
+The boulevard teemed with life as they made their way into the open; a
+certain intoxication seemed blown along the thoroughfare on the light
+spring wind; a restless energy tingled in the blood.
+
+On the steps of the little theatre, Blake looked back at his party.
+
+'The night was young! What would they say to supper?'
+
+Jacqueline's eyes sparkled, but she looked at M. Cartel, and regretfully
+M. Cartel shook his head.
+
+'Alas! He was expecting a friend--a composer, to call upon him before
+midnight.'
+
+Jacqueline betrayed no disappointment; with a charming air she echoed
+the regret, the shake of the head, and slipped a confiding hand through
+M. Cartel's arm.
+
+Then followed the leave-taking--the thanks and disclaimers--the promises
+of future meetings--and at last the lovers moved out into the crowd--M.
+Cartel, cheery and brisk, humming the tunes of '_Les Cloches_,' the
+little Jacqueline clinging to his arm, smiling up into his ugly face.
+
+Max watched them for a moment with a deep intentness, then wheeled round
+swiftly and caught Blake's arm.
+
+"Ned! Take me somewhere! I would forget myself!"
+
+"What troubles you, boy? Not the thought of the picture?"
+
+"No! A something of no consequence. Do not question me. Be kind to me,
+and take me where I can see life and forget myself."
+
+"Where will I take you?"
+
+"To some place of gayety--where no one thinks."
+
+"Very well! We'll go over and have supper at the Rat Mort. You won't be
+over-troubled with thought there. We can sit in a corner and observe,
+and I give you my word there will be no encounters with old friends this
+time! I'll be blind and deaf and dumb if anything is washed up from the
+past!"
+
+Guiding the boy across the crowded roadway, he passed through the narrow
+door and up the steep stair that ends so abruptly into the long, low
+supper-room of the Rat Mort.
+
+Max felt the abruptness of this entry, as so many climbers of the
+ladder-like stairs have felt it before him; and a dazed sensation seized
+upon him as the wild _Ztigane_ music of the stringed orchestra beat
+suddenly upon his ears and the intense white light struck upon his
+sight.
+
+He felt it as others have felt it--the excitement, the consciousness of
+an emotional atmosphere--as he followed Blake down the dazzingly bright
+room. It was in the air, as it had been at the Bal Tabarin.
+
+As they seated themselves, the barbaric music ceased; the orchestra
+broke forth afresh with a light Parisian waltz, and down between the
+lines of tables came a negro and a negress--properties of the place, as
+were the glasses and the table linen--waltzing with the pliant
+suppleness, the conscious sensuality of their race, and close behind
+them followed a second couple--a Spaniard, restless and lithe, small of
+stature and pallid of face, and a young Spanish girl of splendid
+physique.
+
+Max sat silent, attentive to this dance, while Blake ordered supper; but
+when the wine was brought, he lifted his glass and drank, as if some
+strong sensation had dried his throat.
+
+Blake turned and looked at him.
+
+"Well? Is it amusing?"
+
+"It is--and it is not. Those black creatures are extraordinary. They are
+repulsive--like figures in a nightmare."
+
+"Oh! Repulsive, are they? And what about a certain picture we once
+looked at--when I was swept off the face of the earth for using that
+same word? I believe, you know, that points of view are changing! I
+believe I'm coming to part two of my little book! These niggers aren't a
+bit more disgusting than the monkey sucking the fruit."
+
+Max glanced at him, laughed a trifle self-consciously and drank some
+more wine. "Let us forget monkeys and little books and all such
+stupidities. There is a pretty woman over there! Make me a story
+concerning her." He nodded toward a table in the middle of the room.
+
+Blake, looking, saw a slim woman in white, whose large hat threw a
+becoming shadow on auburn hair and red-brown eyes.
+
+"Ah, now," he said, thoughtfully, "you've given me too much to do! At a
+first glance I'd say she's just the ordinary better-class _cocotte_; but
+at a second glance it seems to me I'd pause. There's something about the
+eyes--there's something about the mouth that puzzles me. You'll have to
+wait, my boy, and let fate tell you your fairy tale!"
+
+Trained in the consciousness of regard, the woman they discussed looked
+across at them as Blake ceased, and the flicker of a smile touched her
+lips--a smile of interest in which there lurked no hint of invitation.
+
+"Ah, wasn't I right! She discriminates--our auburn lady! We'll see
+something interesting before the night is out, mark my words!"
+
+They half forgot her and her possible story in the hour that followed,
+though Max noted that the woman who wanders from party to party at the
+Rat Mort, distributing roses, paused twice by her table and spoke to
+her, each time departing without unburdening herself of her wares; also,
+he noted that the pallid little Spaniard, who had been scattering his
+attentions among the ladies unprovided with companions, came and bowed
+before her, and that, contrary to her impression of aloofness, she rose
+and danced a waltz with him.
+
+At this episode of the dance, Blake's eyes as well as the boy's were
+attracted; and, as she glided up and down between the tables, cool,
+unmoved, seemingly indifferent to the world about her, his interest
+reawakened, and he cast a sidelong glance at Max.
+
+"Wait!" he said. "When you see that guarded look in a woman's eyes, you
+may always know she's expecting something."
+
+Even as he spoke, she returned to her solitary table, dismissing the
+Spaniard with an inclination of the head and, as she seated herself,
+both observers saw a change pass over her face--saw her gaze narrow and
+turn toward the door--saw a faint flush touch her cheeks and recede,
+leaving them paler than before.
+
+It was a controlled emotion, almost imperceptible--differing in essence
+from either the latent violence of the woman Lize or the artless
+impulsiveness of the little Jacqueline; but with certain intuition it
+sent Max's glance winging to the door of the supper-room, assured that
+some issue in the subtle war of sex was about to be fought out.
+
+A new party was entering the room--a small dark _Parisienne_, bringing
+in her wake two Englishmen--one brown--the other fair, with the accepted
+Saxon fairness.
+
+Down the long room the little lady came, ushered by obsequious waiters,
+the recipient of many glances, admiring or envious; close behind her
+followed the brown-haired Englishman and, a little in the rear, her
+second cavalier--reserved of demeanor, distinguished of carriage,
+obviously upholding the tradition of _sang-froid_ that clings to his
+countrymen.
+
+Max's instinct was fully awake now; and when, in passing her table, the
+fair man inclined his head to the auburn-haired lady, the matter merely
+fitted with his expectations.
+
+What brief emotional past lay in the mists of the unknown, linking this
+woman to this man? Nothing was to be read from her face--no expression
+of pleasure, none of chagrin; but in her half-veiled eyes a certain
+brilliance was observable and her long, white fingers began softly to
+drum upon the table in time to the music.
+
+No explanation was demanded; in a clear, disconcerting flash, the
+situation was laid bare. Here was woman desiring the love of man; woman
+determined to reap her spoil. It was one issue in the deathless,
+relentless struggle--the struggle wherein the little Jacqueline clung to
+her M. Cartel, tenacious as the frail fern to the ungainly rock--wherein
+Madame Salas had fought sickness and neglect to protect a fading life.
+It was a truth--arresting as truth must ever be; and stricken with a
+tingling fear, the boy drove it from him, and turned his eyes from the
+fateful, shadowed face and the light, drumming fingers.
+
+A new dance had begun: the grinning negro had seized upon the Spanish
+girl and was whirling her down the room to the laughter of the company,
+while her countryman looked round the tables in indifferent search for a
+partner.
+
+His glance skimmed the white figure at the lonely table, the eyes of the
+woman were lifted for an instant, revealing a flash of their new light,
+and in a moment the two were dancing again, moving up and down the
+room, in and out between the tables with their original easy grace; but
+this time the woman's lips were parted and her eyelids drooped in a
+clever simulation of enjoyment.
+
+Up and down they glided, passing and repassing the table where the
+little dark lady supped with her two cavaliers, but never once did the
+woman raise her eyes to the Englishman's or seem aware of the cold,
+close glance that followed her movements; but once, as the music faded
+to silence, and her white skirt swept past his table for the last time,
+she murmured something softly in Spanish to her partner, and allowed one
+level, effective glance to fall on his pallid face.
+
+That was all; the waltz stopped, she disengaged herself gently, and
+walked back alone to her table.
+
+This waltz was followed by another and yet another, and again she fell
+to her old attitude of lowered eyes and drumming fingers.
+
+The Englishman at his table made pretence to eat his supper, poured
+himself out a fresh glass of champagne, drank it, and with a suddenly
+achieved decision, gave a cool laugh of excuse, rose and walked straight
+toward the solitary figure.
+
+Max, momentarily _clairvoyant_, felt the violent heartbeat, the caught
+breath, that told the woman of his presence--felt to a nicety the
+control of her expression, the rigidity of her body, as she slowly
+raised her head and met his eyes; then he saw the man bow, making some
+suggestion, and he leaned back in his seat with a little sigh of
+satisfaction as the woman smiled and rose and the two began to dance.
+
+Both tall above the ordinary, they were a well-suited couple, and a
+certain pleasure filled the beholder's mind as they moved decorously up
+and down the long aisle formed by the double row of tables--the man
+entirely indifferent to his surroundings, dancing in this Parisian
+supper-place precisely as he would have danced in a London ball-room;
+the woman following his every movement with a passivity--a oneness--that
+gave no hint of the definite purpose at work within her brain.
+
+The dance over, he led her back to her table, drew her chair forward
+with elaborate politeness, bowed and, with a murmured word, strolled
+back to his own table.
+
+So sure had been her triumph, so abrupt its collapse, that Max--smoking
+his cigarette, sipping his coffee--turned, with a little exclamation, to
+Blake.
+
+"Have you observed, _mon ami_? Oh, why was that?"
+
+Blake was carefully lighting a cigar.
+
+"'Twould be hard to say," he answered, meditatively. "In a matter of
+emotion, an Englishman has a way of getting frightened of himself. This
+particular specimen has come over to Paris to play--and he doesn't fancy
+fire for a toy!"
+
+"And what will happen? What will be the end?" Max had laid his cigarette
+aside; his fingers were interlaced, sure sign that his emotions were
+running high; and his eyes, when he fixed them on Blake's, held a touch
+of their rare sombre fire.
+
+"How will it end, you say? Guess, my child!"
+
+Max shook his head.
+
+"Well, boy, Eve will be Eve to the end of time--and Adam will be Adam!"
+
+"You mean--? Oh, but look!"
+
+This last was called forth by the rising from table of the trio--the
+quiet passing from the room of the fair man in the train of his friend
+and the little dark lady.
+
+It seemed so final, so sharp an answer to his question, that Max could
+feel--as things personal and close--the sick sinking of the heart, the
+accompanying whiteness of cheek that must fall upon the woman sitting
+immovable and alone.
+
+"I am sorry!" he cried. "Oh, but I am sorry!"
+
+Blake looked thoughtfully at the tip of his cigar.
+
+"Wait!"
+
+Even as he said it, the fair man reappeared alone. "What did I say? Eve
+will be Eve--Adam will be Adam!"
+
+But Max was not listening. Excited, lifted beyond himself, he was
+watching the Englishman thread a way between the tables--watching the
+woman thrill to his approach without lifting an eyelid, moving a muscle.
+Rigid as a statue she sat, until he was quite close; then, curiously, as
+if nature demanded some symbol of the fires within, her lips opened and
+she began to hum the tune the orchestra was playing.
+
+It was a strange form of self-expression, and as she yielded to it her
+cheeks burned suddenly and her eyes shone between their narrowed lids.
+
+She did not speak when the man seated himself at her table, she did not
+even look up; she went on humming in a strange ecstatic reverie, but she
+smiled--a very slow, a very subtle smile.
+
+A waiter came, and wine was brought; she drank, laid down her glass and
+continued her strange song. The seller of flowers hovered about the
+table, smiling at the Englishman, and laid a sheaf of pink roses on the
+white cloth; still the humming continued, though mechanically the
+woman's long, white fingers gathered up the flowers and held them
+against her face. At last, unexpectedly, she raised her head, looked at
+the man whose eyes were now fixed in fascination upon her, looked away
+beyond him, and, lifting her voice from its murmuring note, began to
+sing aloud.
+
+It was a scene curious beyond description--the hot, white room, the many
+painted faces, the many jewelled hands, the grotesque black forms of
+the negro dancers, and in the midst a woman hypnotized by her own
+triumph into absolute oblivion.
+
+She sat with the roses in her hands, her eyes looking into space, while
+her voice, pure and singularly true, gathered strength until gradually
+the chattering of voices and the clinking of glasses lessened, and the
+musicians lowered their music to a deliberate accompaniment.
+
+Nowhere but in Paris could such a scene take place; but here, although
+the faces turned toward the singer's were flushed with wine, they were
+touched with comprehension. The gathered roses--the high, sweet
+voice--the rapt face composed a picture, and even when his eyes are
+glazed, your Parisian is a connoisseur.
+
+The last note quivered into silence; a little ripple of applause
+followed; and with the same concentrated, hypnotized gaze, the woman's
+eyes turned from space and rested again upon the man.
+
+It was the glance ancient as tradition--significant as fate. At his
+distant table, Max rose and laid a trembling hand upon Blake's arm.
+
+"Ned! May we go?"
+
+"Oh, why? The night is young!"
+
+"Please!"
+
+"But why?"
+
+"I desire it."
+
+Blake looked more closely, and his expression changed.
+
+"Why, you're ill, boy!" he said. "You're as white as a sheet!"
+
+Max tried to laugh. "It is the heat--nothing more."
+
+"Of course it is! The place is like a hot-house! You want a breath of
+air!"
+
+Again Max tried to laugh, but it was a laugh oddly broken.
+
+"That is it!" he said. "I want the air."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Max passed down the long, low room, blind to the white light, blind to
+the flowers and faces, deaf to the voices and laughter and swaying sound
+of stringed instruments.
+
+One glance he permitted himself--one only--at the table where the man
+and woman still looked into each other's eyes and where the sheaf of
+pink roses still shed its incense: then he passed down the steep, short
+stairs, halting at the door of the _café_, hesitating between two
+atmospheres--outside, the sharp street lights, the cold, wind-swept
+pavement--within, the hot air, the close sense of humanity, powerful as
+a narcotic.
+
+"Ned!" he said, looking back for Blake, "I need a favor. Will you grant
+it?"
+
+"A hundred!" Blake was buttoning up his coat.
+
+"Then wish me good-night here. I would go home alone."
+
+"Alone? What nonsense! You don't think I'd desert you when you're seedy?
+What you want is air. We'll take a stroll along the boulevards."
+
+Max shook his head. He seemed rapt in his own thoughts; his pale face
+was full of purpose.
+
+"I am quite well--now."
+
+"Then all the more reason for the stroll! Come along!"
+
+But the boy drew away. "Another time! Not to-night."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I cannot tell you."
+
+Blake looked more closely at the nervously set lips, the dark eyebrows
+drawn into a frown.
+
+"I say, boy, it hasn't got on your nerves--this place? I know what a
+queer little beggar you are."
+
+"No; it is not that."
+
+"Then what? Another inspiration?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Very well! I won't probe. I'm old enough to know that the human animal
+is inexplicable. Good-night--and good luck! I'll see you to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow, yes!"
+
+There was relief in the readiness of the response, relief in the quick
+thrusting forth of the boy's hand.
+
+"Good-night!"
+
+"Good-night! And go to bed when you get home. You're very white."
+
+"Yes."
+
+His voice seemed to recede further into its distant absorbed note, his
+fingers were withdrawn from Blake's close pressure with a haste that was
+unusual, and turning away, he crossed the boulevard as though the vision
+of some spectre had lent wings to his feet.
+
+No impression of romance touched him as he hastened up the narrow
+streets toward his home. He had no eyes for the secret shadows, the
+mysterious corners usually so fruitful of suggestion; his whole
+perceptions were turned inward; his self-consciousness was a thing so
+living, so acute that he went forward as one bereft of sight or hearing.
+
+Reaching the foot of the Escalier de Sainte-Marie, he quickened his
+already hurried pace, and began to run up the uneven steps. The door of
+his house stood open, and he plunged into the dark well of the hall
+without waiting to strike a match. By instinct his hand found the
+smooth banister, and he began his climb of the stairs.
+
+Up he went, and up, living in himself with that perfect absorption that
+comes in rare and violent moments--moments of sorrow, of pleasure or, it
+may be, of surprise, when a new thought suspends the action of the
+brain.
+
+In obedience to some unconsidered instinct he softened his steps on
+reaching the fifth floor, and crept across the bare corridor to the door
+of his own rooms.
+
+He entered quietly, and still ignoring the need for light, groped a way
+to his bedroom.
+
+It was the room that had once belonged to Madame Salas; and, like the
+kitchen, it looked upon the network of roofs and chimneys that spread
+away at the rear of the house. Now, as he entered, closed the door, and
+stood leaning against it, breathing quickly, these roofs and chimneys,
+seen through the uncurtained window, made a picturesque medley of lines
+and curves startlingly distinct against the star-powdered sky.
+
+The ethereal light of a Parisian spring night filled the room, touching
+the white walls--the white bed--a bowl of flowers upon the
+dressing-table and its fairy-like reflection in the mirror--to a subtly
+insidious fragility that verged upon the unreal; and the boy, quivering
+to his tangled sensations, felt this unreality quicken his
+self-distrust, touch and goad him as a spur.
+
+Physical action became imperative; he walked unsteadily across the room,
+pulled the serge curtains across the window, abruptly shutting out both
+stars and roofs, and turning to the dressing-table, groped for matches
+and struck a light.
+
+Four candles stood in an old silver candelabra; he touched them with the
+match-flame, they flickered, spat, rose to a steady glow. In the new
+light the room looked warmer, more in touch with human things and,
+moving with the inevitableness of a pendulum, his mind swung to a
+definite desire.
+
+Impulse seized him; questions, doubts, fears were submerged; trembling
+to a loosed emotion, he ran across the room and bent over his narrow
+bed.
+
+He was alone now; alone in the absolutely primal sense of the word, when
+the individual ceases to act even to himself. The instinct he had denied
+was dominating him, and he was yielding with a sense of intoxication.
+
+With hands that shook in excitement, he raised the mattress and,
+searching beneath, drew forth an object--a flat packet, bound and
+sealed--the packet, in fine, that had lain so deep and snug in the
+pocket of his overcoat on the night of his entry into Paris.
+
+His hand--his whole body--was trembling as he brought it to light and
+walked back to the dressing-table.
+
+There, he pulled forward a chair and sat down before the mirror. For a
+full minute he sat, as if enchained, then at length--in obedience to the
+force that was dominating him--his fingers crept under the string, there
+came to the ear a faint, sharp crackle, and the seals broke.
+
+The seals broke, a gasp slipped from between his parted lips, and in his
+hands lay the symbol of all the imaginings, all the pretty mockery
+wherewith he purported to cheat nature.
+
+It lay in his hands--a simple thing, potent as simple things ever are.
+No rare jewel, no state paper, merely the long, thick strands of a
+woman's hair.
+
+The paper fell away, and he lifted it shakingly to the light.
+Stiff-coiled from its long imprisonment, it unwound slowly, allowing the
+candle-light to filch strange hues from its dark length--glints of
+bronze, tinges of copper-color that gleamed elusively from the one end,
+where it had been roughly clipped from the head, to the other, where it
+still curled and twisted into little tendrils like a living thing.
+
+A woman's hair! A weapon old as time--as light, as destructible, as
+possessed of subtle powers as woman herself. Strand upon strand, he drew
+it out, following the glints of light with dazed, questioning eyes.
+
+A woman's hair! A woman's hair, woven to blind men's eyes!
+
+Max leaned forward, quivering to a new impulse, and, raising the heavy
+coils, twisted them swiftly about his head. With the action, the blood
+rushed into his cheeks, a flame of excitement sprang into his eyes and,
+drawing the candles closer, he peered into the mirror.
+
+There are moments when a retrospective impression is overwhelming--when
+a scent, a sight, a sound can quicken things dead--things buried out of
+mind.
+
+Max looked and, looking, lost himself. The boy with his bravery of
+ignorance, his frankly arrogant egoism was effaced as might be the
+writing from a slate, and in his place was a sexless creature, rarely
+beautiful, with parted, tremulous lips and wide eyes in which subtle,
+crowding thoughts struggled for expression.
+
+He looked, he lost himself, and losing, heard nothing of a sound, faint
+and undefined, that stole from the region of the outer door--nothing of
+a light step in the little hall outside his room. Leaning closer to the
+mirror, still gazing absorbed, he began to twist the short waves of his
+own hair more closely into the strands that resembled them so nearly in
+texture and hue.
+
+It was then, quietly--with the appalling quietude that can appertain to
+a fateful action--that the handle of the bedroom door clicked, the door
+itself opened, and the little Jacqueline--more child than ever in the
+throes of a swift amazement--stood revealed, a lighted candle in one
+hand, in the other a china mug.
+
+At sound of the entry, Max had wheeled round, his hands still
+automatically holding up the strands of hair; at the vision that
+confronted him, a look of rage flashed over his face--the violent,
+unrestrained rage of the creature taken unawares.
+
+At the look the little Jacqueline quailed, her lips opened and drooped,
+her right hand was lowered, until the candlestick hung at a perilous
+angle and the wax began to drip upon the floor.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, "and I thought to find the room empty! _Pardon!
+Pardon!_ Oh, _pardon, mons--madame!_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+It was spoken--the one word, so brief, so significant; and Jacqueline
+stood hesitating, pleading, equally ready to rush forward or to fly.
+
+At last Max spoke.
+
+"Why do you call me that?"
+
+The tone in which the question was put was extremely low, the gray eyes
+were steady almost to coldness, the strong, slight fingers began
+mechanically to fold up the hair, strand upon strand.
+
+Jacqueline's candle swayed, until a stream of the melted wax guttered to
+the floor.
+
+"Because--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Because--oh, because--because--I have always known!"
+
+Then indeed a silence fell. Jacqueline, too petrified to embellish
+her statement, let her voice trail off into silence; Max,
+folding--mechanically folding--the strands of hair, offered neither
+disclaimer nor acceptance. With the force of the inevitable the
+confession had struck home, and deep within him was the strong soul's
+respect for the inevitable.
+
+"You have always known?" he said, slowly, when the silence had fulfilled
+itself. "You have always known--that I am a woman?"
+
+It sounded abominably crude, abominably banal--this tardy question, and
+never had Max felt less feminine than in the uttering of it.
+
+The lips of Jacqueline quivered, her blue eyes brimmed with tears of
+distress.
+
+"Oh, I could wish myself dead!"
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Because I have made myself an imbecile!"
+
+The humiliation, the self-contempt were so candid, so human, that
+something changed in Max's face and the icy rigidity of pose relaxed.
+
+"Come here!"
+
+The guilty child to the life, Jacqueline came timidly across the room,
+the candlestick still drooping unhappily from her right hand, the
+mysterious mug clutched in her left.
+
+Max's first action was to take possession of both, and to set them side
+by side upon the dressing-table. The candle Jacqueline delivered up in
+silence, but as the mug was wrested from her, she cried out in sudden
+vindictiveness:
+
+"And that--look you--that is the cause of all! It was Lucien's idea! I
+served a cup of _bouillon_ to him and to his friend at midnight, for
+they had talked much; and finding it good, nothing would serve but I
+must place a cup also for Monsieur Max, to await him on his return.
+Alas! Alas!"
+
+Max pushed the cup away, as if to remove a side issue.
+
+"Answer the question I put to you! You know that I am a woman?"
+
+"Yes; I know."
+
+"Since when? Since the night at the Bal Tabarin?"
+
+"Oh, but no!"
+
+"Since the morning we met upon this doorstep?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Since the morning you made the coffee for M. Blake and me?"
+
+Jacqueline was twisting the buckle of her belt in nervous perturbation.
+
+"Answer me! It was since that morning?"
+
+"No! Yes! Oh, it was before that morning. Oh, madame--monsieur!" She
+wrung her hands in a confusion of misery. "Oh, do not torture me! I
+cannot tell you how it was--or when. I cannot explain. You know how
+these things come--from here!" She lightly touched the place where she
+imagined her heart to be.
+
+Max, sitting quiet, made no betrayal of the agony of apprehension at
+work within.
+
+"And how many others have had this--instinct? M. Cartel? M. Blake?"
+
+So surprising, so grotesque seemed the questions, that self-confidence
+rushed suddenly in upon Jacqueline. She threw back her head and
+laughed--laughed until her old inconsequent self was restored to power.
+
+"Lucien! Monsieur Édouard! Oh, _la, la_! How droll!"
+
+"Then they do not know?"
+
+"Know? Are they not men? And are men not children?"
+
+The vast superiority--the wordly wisdom in the babyish face was at once
+so comical and so reassuring that irresistibly Max laughed too; and at
+the laugh, the little Jacqueline dropped to her knees beside the
+dressing-table and looked up, smiling, radiant.
+
+"I am forgiven?"
+
+"I suppose so!"
+
+"Then grant me a favor--one favor! Permit me to touch the beautiful
+hair!"
+
+Without waiting for the permission, the eager little hands caught up the
+coiled strands, and in a moment the candlelight was again chasing the
+red tints and the bronze through the dark waves.
+
+"My faith, but it is beautiful! Beautiful! And what a pity!"
+
+"A pity--?"
+
+"That no man may see it!" For an instant Jacqueline buried her face in
+the silky mass; then, like a little bright bird, looked up again. "A man
+would go mad for this!"
+
+"For a thing like that? Absurd!"
+
+"Yet a thing like that can demolish Monsieur Max, and leave in his
+place--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"How shall I say? His sister?" She looked up anew, disarming in her
+naïve candor: and a swift temptation assailed her listener--the
+temptation that at times assails the strongest--the temptation to
+unburden the mind.
+
+"Jacqueline," Max cried, impetuously, "you speak a great truth when you
+say that! We have all of us the two natures--the brother and the sister!
+Not one of us is quite woman--not one of us is all man!"
+
+The thought sped from him, winged and potent; and Jacqueline, wise in
+her child's wisdom, offered no comment, put forward no opinion.
+
+"It is a war," Max cried again, "a relentless, eternal war; for one
+nature must conquer, and one must fail. There cannot be two rulers in
+the same city."
+
+"No," Jacqueline murmured, discreetly, "that is most true."
+
+"It is. Most true."
+
+"Why, then, was madame adorning herself with her beautiful hair when I
+had the unhappiness to enter? Has not madame already waged her war--and
+conquered?"
+
+The eyes were full of innocent question, the soft lips perfectly grave.
+
+Max paused to frame the falsehood that should fit the occasion; but,
+like a flood-tide, the frankness, the courage of the boy nature rose up,
+and the truth broke forth.
+
+"I thought until to-night, Jacqueline, that the battle was won; but
+to-night, while I supped with M. Blake, a little play was played out
+before me--a little human play, where real people played real parts,
+where the woman clung to her womanhood, as you cling to yours, and the
+man to his manhood, as does M. Cartel; where the stage effects were
+smiles and glances and eyes and hair--"
+
+Jacqueline nodded, but said not a word.
+
+"And as I watched, the thought came to me--the mad thought, that I had,
+perhaps, lost something--that I had, perhaps, put something from me. Oh,
+it was a possession! A possession of some evil spirit!"
+
+Max sprang from the chair, and began to pace up and down the shadowed
+room, while the little Jacqueline, sitting back upon her heels in a
+stillness almost Oriental, watched, evolving some thought of her own.
+
+"And so madame desired to strangle the evil spirit with her beautiful
+hair?"
+
+The hurried steps ceased.
+
+"I wished to see the woman in me--and to dismiss her!"
+
+"And was she easily dismissed?"
+
+The new question seemed curiously pregnant. Max heard it, and in swift
+response came back again to the dressing-table, took the hair from
+Jacqueline's hands and began again to intertwist it with the boyish
+locks.
+
+Jacqueline raised herself from her crouching position, the more easily
+to gratify her curiosity.
+
+"It is extraordinary--the change!" she murmured. "Extraordinary! Madame,
+let us complete it! Let us remove that ugly coat!" Excitedly, and
+without permission, she began to free Max of the boy's coat, while Max
+yielded with a certain passive excitement. "And, now, what can we find
+to substitute? Ah!" She gave a cry of delight and ran to the bed, over
+the foot of which was thrown a faded gold scarf--a strip of rich fabric
+such as artists delight in, for which Max had bargained only the day
+before in the rue André de Sarte.
+
+"Now the tie! And the ugly collar!" She ran back, the scarf floating
+from her arm; and Max, still passive, still held mute by conflicting
+sensations, suffered the light fingers to unloose the wide black tie, to
+remove the collar, to open a button or two of the shirt.
+
+"And now the hair!" With lightning-like dexterity, Jacqueline drew a
+handful of hairpins from her own head, reduced her short blonde curls to
+confusion, and in a moment had brushed the thick waves of Max's clipped
+hair upward and secured them into a firm foundation.
+
+"Now! Now, madame! Close your eyes! I am the magician!"
+
+Max's eyes closed, and the illusion of dead hours rose again, more
+vivid, more poignant than before. With the familiar sensation of deft
+fingers at work upon the business of hairdressing, a thousand
+recollections of countless nights and mornings--countless preparations
+and wearinesses--countless anticipations and disgusts, born with the
+placing of each hairpin, the coiling of the unfamiliar--familiar--weight
+of hair.
+
+"Now, madame! Is it not a picture?"
+
+With the gesture and pride of an artist, Jacqueline cast the wide scarf
+round Max's shoulders and stepped back.
+
+Max's eyes opened, gazing straight into the mirror, and once again in
+that night of contrasts, emotion rose paramount.
+
+It was most truly a picture; not the earlier, puzzling sketch--the
+anomalous mingling of sex--but the complete semblance of the woman--the
+slim neck rising from the golden folds, the proud head, seeming smaller
+under its coiled hair than it had ever appeared in the untidiness of its
+boy's locks.
+
+"And now, madame, tell me! Is the evil spirit one lightly to be
+dismissed?"
+
+All the woman in the little Jacqueline--the creature of eternal
+tradition, eternal intrigue--was glorying in her handiwork, in the
+consciousness of its potency.
+
+But Max never answered; Max continued to stare into the glass.
+
+"You will dismiss it, madame?"
+
+Max still stared, a peculiar light of thought shining and wavering in
+the gray eyes.
+
+"Madame, you will dismiss it?"
+
+Max turned slowly.
+
+"I will do more, Jacqueline. I will destroy it utterly."
+
+"Madame!"
+
+"I have a great idea."
+
+"Madame!"
+
+"If a spirit--no matter how evil--could be materialized, it would cease
+to affect the imagination. I shall materialize mine!"
+
+"Madame!"
+
+"Yes; I have arrived at a conclusion. I shall render my evil spirit
+powerless by materializing it. But I must first have a promise from you;
+you must promise me to keep my secret."
+
+"Madame--madame!" Jacqueline stammered.
+
+"You will promise?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And how am I to trust you?"
+
+Jacqueline's blue eyes went round and round the room, in search of some
+overwhelming proof of her fidelity; then swiftly they returned to Max's.
+
+[Illustration: THE COMPLETE SEMBLANCE OF THE WOMAN]
+
+"Not even to Lucien, madame, shall it be revealed!" And silently Max
+nodded, realizing the greatness of the pledge.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Many hours later, when all the lights were out in the rue Müller and all
+the doors wore closed, the slight figure of the boy Max might have been
+seen by any belated wanderer slipping down the Escalier de Sainte-Marie
+to post a letter--a letter that had cost much thought, and upon which
+had been dropped many blots of ink; and had the belated wanderer been
+possessed of occult powers and wished to probe inside the envelope, the
+words he would have read were these--scrawled with bold impetuosity:
+
+     _Mon Ami_,--My idea--the true idea--has come to me. It was born in
+     the first hour of this new day, and with it has come the knowledge
+     that, either you were right and some artists need solitude, or I am
+     one of the fools I talked of yesterday!
+
+     All this means that I am ill of the fever of work, and that for
+     many, many days--many, many weeks--I shall be in my studio--locked
+     away even from you.
+
+     Think no unkind thing of me! All my friendship is yours--and all my
+     thought. Be not jealous of my work! Understand! Oh, Ned,
+     understand! And know me, for ever and for ever, your boy.
+
+     MAX.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Of all the ills that circumstance forces upon man, separation from a
+beloved object is, perhaps, the most salutary. Separation is the
+crucible wherein love undergoes the test absolute; in the fire of loss,
+grief softens to indifference or hardens to enduring need.
+
+The pale blue sky of May smiled upon Montmartre. The shrubs in the
+plantation shimmered forth in green garments, the news-vender by the
+gate, the little old Basque peasant woman telling her beads in the shade
+of a holly-tree, even the children screaming at play on the gravelled
+pathway, were touched with the charm of the hour. Or so it seemed to
+Max--Max, _debonair_ of carriage--Max, hastening to a _rendezvous_ with
+fast-beating heart and nerves that throbbed alternately to a wild joy of
+anticipation and a ridiculous, self-conscious dread.
+
+How he had counted upon the moment! How he had loved and feared it in
+ardent, varying imagination! And now, that it had at last arrived, how
+hopelessly his prearranged actions eluded him, how humanly his rehearsed
+sentences failed to marshal themselves for speech! As he climbed up the
+plantation, dazzled by the sun, intoxicated by the budding summer, he
+felt the merest unsophisticated youth--the merest novice, dumb and
+impotent under his own emotions.
+
+Then, suddenly, all self-distrust--even all self-consciousness--was reft
+from him and he stood quite still, the blood burning his face, a
+strange sensation contracting his throat.
+
+"At last! After a hundred thousand years!"
+
+The first impression that fled across his mind was the intense
+familiarity of Blake's voice--the delightful familiarity of Blake's
+phrasing; the second, the brimming joy of regained companionship.
+
+"_Mon ami! Cher ami!"_
+
+His hands went out and were caught in Blake's; and all existence became
+a mirror to the blue, smiling sky.
+
+No further word was said; Blake took possession of his arm in the old,
+accustomed fashion, and silently--in that silence which makes speech
+seem poor--they turned and began to pace up and down the gravelled path.
+
+There was nothing beautiful in the plantation of the Sacré-Coeur; the
+shrubs, for all their valor of green, were slight things if one thought
+of forest trees, the grass was a mere pretence of grass. But the human
+mind is a great magician, weaving glories from within, and neither Blake
+nor Max had will for anything but the moment set precisely as it was.
+
+For the gift of the universe, Blake could not have told why the mere
+holding of the boy's arm, the mere regulating of his pace to his, filled
+him with such satisfaction; nor, for the same magnificent bribe, could
+Max have explained the glow--the all-sufficing sense of fulfilment, born
+of the physical contact.
+
+For long they paced up and down, wrapped in their cloak of content; then
+some look, some movement brought the world back, and Blake paused.
+
+"What a selfish brute I am! What about the work? Tell me, is it done?"
+
+Max looked up, the sun discovering the little flecks of gold in his gray
+eyes; Max laughed from sheer happiness.
+
+"_Mon ami!_ But absolutely I had forgotten! Figure it to yourself! I
+came out of the house, hot and cold for my poor picture, and immediately
+we met--" He laughed again. "_Mon ami_! What a compliment to you!"
+
+"It is done then--the great work?"
+
+"Yes; it is finished."
+
+"Then I must see it this minute--this minute--this very minute!"
+
+The definiteness of the tone was like the clasp of the arm, and Max
+glowed anew. By a swift, emotional effort, he conjured up the longings
+that had preyed upon him in his self-imposed solitude--conjured them for
+the sheer joy of feeling them evaporate before reality.
+
+"It awaits you, _mon ami_!" He made a sweeping gesture, as though he
+laid the world at his friend's feet. And Blake, noting this, noted also
+with an odd little sense of gratification, that Max's English was a
+trifle more halting--a trifle more stilted for the break in their
+companionship.
+
+Still arm in arm, they passed down the sloping pathway to the gate,
+where the children still played shrilly and the old Basque peasant still
+drowsed over her rosary beads. As they passed her, Blake put his hand in
+his pocket and slipped a silver coin into her fingers.
+
+"They're so like my own people--these Basque peasants!" he said, by way
+of excuse. "They always give me a warm feeling about the heart."
+
+The old woman looked up surprised, and both were attracted by the
+picture she made against the dark holly-trees--- the brown withered
+face, the astonishingly bright eyes like the eyes of a bird, the spare,
+bent figure with its scrupulous cleanliness of dress.
+
+"The blessing of the good God rest upon you, monsieur!" she said,
+solemnly. "And may He provide you with your heart's desire!"
+
+"And for me, _bonne mère_?" Max broke in. "What for me?"
+
+The small bright eyes scanned the young face thoughtfully. "The good
+God, monsieur, will take you where He means that you should go!" Her
+thin lips closed, and she fell again to the telling of her beads, her
+inner vision doubtless weaving the scenes of her youth--the grave brown
+hills and sounding sea of her native country.
+
+"For the moment it would seem that the good God points a way to the
+studio!" said Max, as they turned away. "_Mon ami_, I burn and tremble
+at once! Suppose it is of no use--my picture?" He stopped suddenly by
+the gate, to gaze with unpremeditated consternation at Blake; and Blake,
+touched by the happy familiarity of the action, laughed aloud.
+
+"The same Max!" he cried. "The same, same Max! It's like turning back to
+the first page of my little book. Come along! I have spirit for anything
+to-day--even to tell you that you've made a failure. Come along, boy!
+It's a great world, when all's said and done! Come along! I'll race you
+up the steps!"
+
+Laughing like a couple of children, they ran up the Escalier de
+Sainte-Marie, smiled upon indulgently by the careless passers-by, and
+entering the house, the race was continued up the polished stairs.
+
+At the door of the _appartement_ Max came level with Blake, his face
+glowing with excitement, his laughter broken by quick breaths.
+
+"Oh, Ned, no! No! You must not enter! I am to go first. I have arranged
+it all. Ned, please!" He pulled Blake back and, opening the door, passed
+into the little hall and on into the bare, bright studio.
+
+To Blake, following closely, the scene bore a striking resemblance to
+another scene--to the occasion upon which Max had blocked in, and then
+destroyed, his _cabaret_ picture--save that now the light was no longer
+the silvery light of spring, but the pale gold radiance of a youthful
+summer.
+
+The impression came, but the impression was summarily erased, for as he
+crossed the threshold, Max flew to him, his exuberance suddenly dead,
+the trepidation of the artist enveloping him again, chasing the blood
+from his cheeks.
+
+"Oh, Ned! Dear Ned! If it is bad?" He caught and clung to Blake's arm,
+restraining him forcibly. "Do not look! Wait one moment! Just one little
+moment!"
+
+Very gently Blake disengaged the clinging hands. "What a child he is,
+after all! He shuts himself away and works like a galley-slave and then,
+when the moment of justification comes--! Nonsense, boy! I'm not a
+critic. Let me see!"
+
+As in a dream, Max saw him walk round the easel and pause full in front
+of it; in an agony of apprehension, a quaking eagerness, he lived
+through the moment of silence; then at Blake's first words the blood
+rushed singing to his ears.
+
+"It's extraordinary! But who is it?"
+
+"Extraordinary? Extraordinary?" In a wild onset of emotion, Max caught
+but the one word. "Does that mean good--or does it mean bad? Oh, _mon
+cher_, all that I have put into that picture! Speak! Speak! Be cruel! It
+is all wrong? It is all bad?"
+
+"Don't be a fool!" said Blake, harshly. "You know it's good. But who is
+it? That's what I'm asking you. Who is it?"
+
+Heedless, unstrung--half laughing, half crying--Max ran across the room.
+"Oh, _mon ami_, how you terrified me--I thought you had condemned it!"
+
+But Blake's eyes were for the picture; the portrait of a woman seated at
+a mirror--a portrait in which the delicate reflected face looked out
+from its shadowing hair with a curious questioning intentness, a
+fascinating challenge at once elusive and vital.
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+He spoke low and with a deliberate purpose; and at his tone recklessness
+seized upon Max.
+
+"A woman, _mon ami_! Just a woman!" He stiffened his shoulders, threw up
+his head, like a child who would dare the universe.
+
+"Yes, but what woman?" With amazing suddenness Blake swung round and
+fixed a searching glance upon him. "She's the living image of you--but
+you with such a difference--"
+
+He stopped as swiftly as he had begun, and in the silence Max quailed
+under his glance. Out of the unknown, fear assailed him; it seemed that
+under this mastering scrutiny his mask must drop from him, his very
+garments be rent. In sudden panic his thought skimmed possibilities like
+a circling bird and lighted upon the first-found point of safety.
+
+"She is my sister," he said, in a voice that shook a little. "She is my
+sister--Maxine."
+
+Blake's eyes still held his.
+
+"But you never said you had a sister."
+
+Max seized upon his bravado, flinging it round him as a garment.
+
+"_Mon ami_," he cried, "we are not all as confiding as you! Besides, it
+is not given to us all to possess five aunts, seven uncles, and
+twenty-four first cousins! If I have but one sister, may I not guard her
+as a secret?"
+
+He spoke fast; his eyes flashed with the old light, half pleading, half
+impertinent, his chin was lifted with the old defiant tilt. The effect
+was gained. Blake's severity fell from him, and with a quick gesture of
+affection he caught him by the shoulder.
+
+"I'm well reproved!" he said. "Well reproved! 'Twas quite the right way
+of telling me to mind my own affairs. And if she were _my_ sister--" He
+turned again to the picture, but as his eyes met the mirrored eyes with
+their profound, inscrutable look, his words broke off unaccountably.
+
+"Yes, _mon ami_? If she were your sister--?" Max, with eager, stealthy
+glance, was following his expressions.
+
+But he did not answer; he stood lost in contemplation, speculating, he
+knew not why, upon the question in the mirrored face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+The studio was in darkness; the old leathern arm-chair was drawn close
+to the window, and from its capacious depths Blake looked down upon the
+lights of Paris, while Max, leaning over the balcony, looked upward at
+the pale May stars clustering like jewelled flowers in the garden of the
+sky.
+
+They had finished dinner--a dinner cooked by Blake in the little kitchen
+beyond the hall, and empty coffee-cups testified to a meal enjoyed to
+its legitimate end. The sense of solitude--of an intimate hour--lay upon
+the scene as intangibly and as definitely as did the darkness; but Max,
+watching the pageant of the stars, resting his light body against the
+iron railing, was filled with a mental restlessness, the nervous
+reaction of the day's triumph. More than once he glanced at Blake, a
+little gleam of uncertainty flashing in his eyes, and more than once his
+glance returned to the sky, as if seeking counsel of its immensity.
+
+Upon what point was Blake speculating? What were the thoughts at work
+behind his silence? The questions tormented him like the flicking of a
+whip, and he marked with an untoward jealousy the profundity of Blake's
+calm--marked it until, goaded by a sudden loneliness, he cried his fear
+aloud.
+
+"Ned! You missed me in these weeks?"
+
+Blake started, giving evidence of a broken dream. "Missed you, boy?" he
+said, quietly. "I didn't know how much I missed you until I saw you
+again to-day."
+
+"And you have made no new friend?"
+
+"Not a solitary one--man, woman, or child!"
+
+The reply would have satisfied the most suspicious; and Max gave a
+quick, deep sigh of relief.
+
+"Ah! I thank God!"
+
+In the darkness, Blake smiled, looking indulgently at the youthful
+figure silhouetted against the sky. "Why are you so absurd, boy?" he
+asked, gently. "Surely, I have proved myself!"
+
+"Forgive me! I was jealous!" With one of his engaging impulses, the boy
+straightened himself and came across the balcony. "I am a strange
+creature, Ned! I want you altogether for myself--I want to know you
+satisfied to be all mine!"
+
+Blake looked up. "Do you know," he said, irrelevantly and a little
+dreamily, "do you know that is just the speech I could imagine issuing
+from the lips of your picture! Tell me something of this mysterious
+sister of yours; I've been patient until now."
+
+Max drew back into the darkness.
+
+"Of my sister? There is nothing to tell!"
+
+"Nonsense! There's always something to tell. It's the sense of a story
+behind things that keeps half of us alive. Come! I've spun you many a
+yarn." With the quiet air of the man who means to have his way, he took
+out and lighted a cigar.
+
+"Come, boy! I'm listening!"
+
+Max had turned back to the railing, and once more he leaned out into the
+night; but now his eyes were for the meshed lights of the city and no
+longer for the stars, his restlessness had heightened to excitement, his
+heart seemed to beat in his throat. The temptation to make confession,
+to make confession here, isolated in the midst of the world, with the
+friend of his soul for confessor, caught him with the urgency of an
+embracing gale. To lay himself bare, and yet retain his garments! His
+head swam, as he yielded to the suggestion.
+
+"There is nothing to tell!" he said again.
+
+"That's admitted! All the best stories begin that way."
+
+Max laughed and took a cigarette from his pocket. His nerves were
+tingling, his blood racing to the thought of the precipice upon which he
+stood. One false step and the fabric of his existence was imperilled!
+The adventurer awoke in him alive and alert.
+
+"She intrigues you, then--Maxine?"
+
+"Marvellously--as the Sphinx intrigues me! To begin with, why the name?
+You Max! She Maxine!"
+
+For an instant Max scanned the dark plantation with knitted brows; then
+he looked over his shoulder with a peculiar smile.
+
+"We are twins, _mon cher!_" he said, taking secret joy in the
+elaboration of his lie. "My mother was a Frenchwoman, by name Maxine,
+and when she died at our birth, my father in his grief bestowed the name
+upon us both--the boy and the girl--Max and Maxine!" Very carefully he
+lighted his cigarette. His whole nature was quivering to the dangers of
+this masked confession--this dancing upon the edge of the precipice. "My
+father was a man of ideas!" He carefully threw the match down into the
+rue Müller.
+
+"Your father, I take it, was a personage of importance?" Blake was
+momentarily sarcastic.
+
+"A personage, yes," the boy admitted, "but that is not the point. The
+point is that he was a man of ideas, who understood the body and the
+soul. A man who trained a child in every outdoor sport until it was one
+with nature, and then taught it to entrap nature and bend her to the
+uses of art. He was very great--my father!"
+
+"He is dead?"
+
+"Yes; he is dead. He died the year before Maxine married."
+
+"Ah, she married?" Absurd as it might seem, there was a fleeting shadow
+of disappointment discernible in Blake's voice.
+
+"Yes, she married. After my father's death she went to my aunt in
+Petersburg, and there she forgot both nature and art--and me."
+
+"And who was the man she married?"
+
+Max shrugged his shoulders to the ears. "Does it serve any purpose to
+relate? He was very charming, very accomplished; how was my sister, at
+eighteen, to know that he was also very callous, very profligate, very
+cruel? These things happen every day in every country!"
+
+"Did she love him?" Blake was leaning forward in his chair; he had
+forgotten to keep his cigar alight.
+
+"Love him?" With a vehemence electric as it was unheralded, Max's voice
+altered; with the passionate changefulness of the Russian, indifference
+was swept aside, emotion gushed forth. "Love him? Yes, she loved
+him--she, who was as proud as God! She loved him so that all her pride
+left her--all the high courage of my father left her--"
+
+"And he--the man, the husband?"
+
+"The man?" Max laughed a short, bitter laugh unsuggestive of himself.
+"The man did what every man does, my friend, when a woman lies down
+beneath his feet--he spurned her away."
+
+"But, my God, a creature like that!"
+
+Again Max laughed. "Yes! That is what you all say of the woman who is
+not beneath your own heel! You wonder why I disapprove of love. That is
+the reason of my disapproval--the story of my sister Maxine! Maxine who
+was as fine and free as a young animal, until love snared her and its
+instrument crushed her."
+
+"But the man--the husband?" said Blake again.
+
+"The man? The man followed the common way, dragging her with him--step
+by step, step by step--down the sickening road of disillusionment--down
+that steep, steep road that is bitter as the Way of the Cross!"
+
+"Boy!"
+
+"I shock you? You have not travelled that road! You have not seen the
+morass at the bottom! You have not seen the creature you loved stripped
+of every garment that you wove--as has my sister Maxine! You do well to
+be shocked. You have not been left with a scar upon your heart; you have
+not viewed the last black picture of all--the picture of your beloved as
+a dead thing--dead over some affair of passion so sordid that even
+horror turns to disgust. You do well to be shocked!"
+
+"Dead?" repeated Blake, caught by the sound of the word. "He died,
+then?"
+
+"He killed himself." Max laughed harshly. "Killed himself when all the
+wrong was done!"
+
+"And your sister? Your sister? Where did she go--what did she do?"
+
+"What does a woman do when she is thrown up like wreckage after the
+storm?"
+
+"She does as her temperament directs. I think your sister would go back
+to nature--to the great and simple things."
+
+With a tense swiftness the boy turned from his fixed contemplation of
+the sky, his glance flashing upon Blake.
+
+"One must be naked and whole to go back to nature! One fears nature
+when one is wreckage from the storm!"
+
+"Then she turned to art?"
+
+"No, my friend! No! Art, like nature, exacts--and she had already given!
+She was too frightened--too hurt to meddle with great things. She dried
+her tears before they had time to fall; she hardened her heart, and went
+back to the world that gives nothing and exacts nothing."
+
+"Poor child!" said Blake. "Poor child!"
+
+"She went back to the world--and the world poured oil on her wounds, and
+soothed her fears and taught her its smiling, shallow ways."
+
+"Poor child!"
+
+The reiterated word had a curious effect upon the boy; his fierceness
+dropped from him; he turned again to the railing and, looking upward,
+seemed to drench himself in the coolness of the starlight.
+
+"For years she lived her shallow life. She took lightly the light gifts
+the world offered; among those gifts was love--"
+
+"Stop!" cried Blake, involuntarily. "You are tarnishing the picture!"
+
+"I am only painting in crude colors! Much love was offered lightly to
+Maxine, and she took it--lightly; then one day her friend the world
+brought for her consideration a suitor more powerful, more
+distinguished, even less exigent than the rest--"
+
+"Stop! Stop!" cried Blake, again. "I can't see her as this hard woman.
+She frightens me!"
+
+"She has sometimes frightened me," said Max, enigmatically, "but that is
+outside the picture. She took, as I tell you, with both hands, smiling
+very wisely to herself, holding her head very high. But when the head is
+held too high, the feet sometimes fall into a trap. It came
+suddenly--the trapping of my sister Maxine."
+
+"Yes! Yes! Tell me!"
+
+"I am telling you, my friend! The date of Maxine's marriage was fixed,
+and she moved through her world content. One night a great court
+function was held; she was present, her _fiancé_ was present, the
+atmosphere was all congratulation--like honey and wine. When it was
+over, the _fiancé_ begged the privilege of escorting her to her home,
+and they drove together through the cold Russian night. They spoke
+little; Maxine's thoughts skimmed lightly over the future, her hands lay
+lightly in her _fiancé's_. All was unemotional--all was smooth and
+undisturbed--until they reached the street where her house stood; then,
+with the swiftness that belongs to mad moments, the being beside her
+showed himself. Quick as a flash of lightning, the dignified,
+distinguished, unexacting lover was effaced, and in his place was a
+man--an animal--a passionate egoist! He caught her in his arms, and his
+arms were like iron bands; his lips pressed hers, and they were like a
+flame. In a flash, the fabric of her illusions was scattered. She saw
+the truth. The world had cheated her, this second marriage was to be as
+the first. Terror seized my sister Maxine--terror of life, terror of
+herself. Her false calm broke up, as the ice breaks under the hand of
+spring--wells of fear gushed in her heart. She dismissed her lover at
+the gateway of her house; he guessed nothing--he knew nothing but that
+her hands were shaking and that her face was white, but when he was gone
+she rushed to her own room, cast off all her jewels, wrapped herself in
+a fur cloak and commanded her sledge and her swiftest horses."
+
+"Boy!" cried Blake. "What a situation!"
+
+"She drove, drove for hours, feeling nothing of the biting cold, seeing
+nothing of the imprisoning white world about her, goaded by one
+idea--the terror of life--the terror of giving herself again--"
+
+"She fled," cried Blake, with sudden intuition. "She never returned to
+Petersburg!" He had risen from his chair; he was supremely, profoundly
+interested.
+
+"She never returned to her own house. Three days after that wild drive
+she left Russia--left Russia and came--"
+
+"To you!" cried Blake. "What a superb situation! She came back to
+you--the companion of her youth--to you, adventuring here in your own
+odd way! Oh, boy, it's great!"
+
+"It is strange--yes!" said Max, suddenly curbing himself.
+
+"Strange? It's stupendous!" Blake caught him by the shoulder, wheeling
+him round, looking straight into his face. "Boy! You know what I'm going
+to ask? You know what I'm wanting with all my heart and soul?"
+
+The pressure of his hand was hard; he was the Blake of rare moments--the
+Blake roused from nonchalant good-nature into urgency of purpose. Max
+felt a doubt, a thin, wavering fear flutter across his mind.
+
+"_Mon cher_," he stammered, "I do not know. How could I know?"
+
+"It's this, then! With all my heart and soul I want to know this sister
+of yours."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+It came sharply, as the crash of a breaking vessel might come to the
+ear--this ring of reality in Blake's voice! Abruptly, unpleasantly, Max
+came back to the world and the consequences of his act.
+
+Impressions and instincts spring to the artist mind; in a moment he was
+armored for self-preservation--so straitly armored that every sentiment,
+even the vague-stirring jealousy of himself that had been given sudden
+birth, was overridden and cast into the dark.
+
+With the old hauteur, the old touch of imperiousness, he returned
+Blake's glance.
+
+"_Mon ami_," he said, gravely, "what you desire is impossible."
+
+Only a moment had intervened between Blake's declaration and his reply,
+but it seemed to him that the universe had reeled and steadied again in
+that brief interval.
+
+"And why impossible?"
+
+Again it was the atmosphere of their first meeting--the boy hedged
+behind his pride, the man calmly breaking a way through that hedge.
+
+Max shrugged. "The word is final. It explains itself."
+
+With a conciliatory, affectionate movement, Blake's hand slipped from
+his shoulder to his arm. "Don't be absurd, boy," he said, gently.
+"Nothing on God's earth is impossible. 'Impossibility' is a word coined
+by weak people behind which to shelter. Why may I not know your sister?"
+
+Max drew away his arm, not ostentatiously, but with definite purpose.
+
+"Can you not understand without explanation--you, who comprehend so
+well?"
+
+"Frankly, I cannot."
+
+"My sister is in Paris secretly. She would think it very ill of me to
+discuss her affairs--"
+
+Blake looked quickly into the cold face. "I wonder if she would, boy?"
+he said. "I think I'll go and see!" With perfect seriousness he stepped
+back into the studio, struck a match, lighted a candle and walked
+deliberately to the easel, while Max, upon the balcony, held his breath
+in astonishment.
+
+For long he stood before the portrait; then at last he spoke, and his
+words were as unexpected as his action had been.
+
+"She loves you, boy?" he asked.
+
+"Loves me? Oh, of course!" Max was startled into the reply.
+
+"Then 'twill be all right!" With a touch of finality he blew out his
+candle and came back to the balcony. "It will be all right, or I'm no
+judge of human nature! That woman could be as proud as Lucifer where she
+disliked or despised, but she'd be all toleration, all generosity where
+her love was touched. Tell her I'm your friend and, believe me, she'll
+ask no other passport to her favor."
+
+Max, standing in the darkness--eager of glance, quick of thought,
+acutely attentive to every tone of Blake's voice--suddenly became
+cognizant of his demon of jealousy, felt its subtle stirring in his
+heart, its swift spring from heart to throat. A wave of blood surged to
+his face and receded, leaving him pale and trembling, but with the
+intense self-possession sometimes born of such moments, he stepped into
+the studio and relighted the candle Blake had blown out.
+
+"Why are you so anxious to know my sister?" His voice was measured--it
+gave no suggestion either of pleasure or of pain.
+
+Blake, unsuspicious, eager for his own affairs, followed him into the
+room.
+
+"I can't define the desire," he said; "I feel that I'd find something
+wonderful behind that face; I feel that"--he paused and laughed a
+little--"that somehow I should find _you_ transfigured and idealized and
+grown up."
+
+"It is the suggestion of me that intrigues you?"
+
+"I suppose it is--in a subtle way!" He glanced up, to accentuate his
+words, but surprise seized him at sight of the boy's white, passionate
+face. "Why, Max, boy! What's the matter?"
+
+Max made a quick gesture, sweeping the words aside. "I am not sufficient
+to you?"
+
+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.
+
+Blake looked at him in surprise.
+
+"My good boy," he said, "you're forgetting the terms of our friendship;
+to my knowledge they never included hysterics."
+
+The tonic effect of the words was supreme; the sob was strangled in
+Max's throat; a swift, pained certainty came to him that Blake would not
+have spoken these words in the plantation that morning, would not have
+spoken them as they raced together up the Escalier de Sainte-Marie.
+
+"I understand, _mon ami_!" he said, tensely. "I understand so perfectly
+that, were you dying, and were this request your last, I would refuse
+it! I hope I have explained myself!"
+
+The tone was bitter and contemptuous, it succeeded in stinging Blake. Up
+to that moment he had played with the affair; now the play became
+earnest, his own temper was stirred.
+
+"Thanks, boy!" he said; "but when I'm dying I'll hope for an archangel
+to attend to my wants--not a little cherub. Good-night to you!" Without
+look or gesture of farewell, he picked up his hat and walked out of the
+room.
+
+Once before this thing had happened; once before Max had heard the
+closing of the door, and known the blank isolation following upon it.
+But then weeks of close companionship, weeks of growing affection had
+preceded the moment, giving strength for its endurance; now it came hot
+upon a long abstinence from friendship, an abstinence made doubly
+poignant by one day's complete reunion.
+
+For a moment he stood--pride upon his right hand, love upon his left;
+for a moment he stood, waging his secret war, then with amazing
+suddenness, the issue was decided, he capitulated shamelessly. Pride
+melted into the night and love caught him in a quick embrace.
+
+Lithe and silent as some creature of the forest, he was across the
+studio and down the stairs, his mind tense, his desires fixed upon one
+point.
+
+Blake was crossing the dim hallway as the light feet skimmed the last
+slippery steps; he paused in answer to a swift, eager call.
+
+"Ned! Ned! Wait! Ned, I want you!"
+
+Blake paused; in the dim light it was not possible to read his face, but
+something in the outline of his figure, in the rigidity and definiteness
+of his stopping, chilled the boy with a sense of antagonism.
+
+"Ned! Ned!" He ran to him, caught and clung to his arm, put forth all
+his wiles.
+
+"Ned, you are angry! Why are you angry?"
+
+"I am not angry; I am disappointed." Some strange wall of coldness, at
+once intangible and impenetrable, had risen about Blake. In fear the boy
+beat vain hands against it.
+
+"You are disappointed, Ned--in me?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"And why? Why?"
+
+"Because you have behaved like a little fool."
+
+In themselves, the words were nothing, but Blake's tone was serious.
+
+"And--because of that--you are disappointed?"
+
+Max's voice undeniably shook; and the fates, peering into the dark
+hallway, smiled as they pushed the little human comedy nearer the tragic
+verge.
+
+"I am," answered Blake, with cruel deliberateness. "I thought until
+to-night that you were a reasonable being--a bit elusive, perhaps--a bit
+wayward and tantalizing--but still a reasonable being. Now--"
+
+"Now?" Suddenly Max had a sensation of being very small, very
+insignificant; suddenly he had an impression of Blake as a denizen of a
+wider world, where other emotions than laughter and comradeship held
+place--and his heart trembled unreasonably.
+
+"Oh, _mon cher_!" he cried. "Forgive me! Forgive me! Say I am still your
+boy! Say it! Say it!"
+
+Truth lent passion to his voice--false passion Blake esteemed it, and
+the cold, imaginary wall became more impregnable.
+
+"That'll do, Max! Heroics are no more attractive to me than hysterics.
+Good-night to you!" He freed his arm and turned to the door.
+
+In the darkness, Max threw out both hands in despairing appeal.
+
+"Ned! Oh, Ned!" he called. But only the sound of Blake's retreating
+steps responded. And here was no merciful intervention of gods and
+mortals, to make good the evil hour; no pretty, tactful Jacqueline, no
+M. Cartel with his magic fiddle. Only the dim hall, the lonely stairway,
+the open door with its vision of cold, pale stars and whispering trees.
+
+His misery was a tangible thing. Like a lost child, obsessed by its own
+fears, he bent under the weight of his sorrow; he sank down upon the
+lowest step of the stairs and, resting his head against the banister,
+broke into pitiful, silent tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+It was the morning after the reunion--the morning after the catastrophe,
+and Blake was breakfasting alone in his rooms.
+
+Typically Parisian rooms they were, rooms that stood closed and silent
+for more than half the year and woke to offer him a welcome when his
+wandering footsteps turned periodically toward Paris; typically
+Parisian, with their long windows and stiffly draped curtains, their
+marble mantelpieces and gilt-framed mirrors, their furniture arranged
+with a suggestion of ancient formality that by its very rigidity soothed
+the eye.
+
+At the moment, evidences of Blake's unusually long occupancy broke this
+stiffness in many directions; intimate trifles that speak a man's
+presence were strewn here and there--objects of utility, objects of
+value and interest gathered upon his last long journey. Eminently
+pleasant the _salon_ appeared in the sunshine of the May morning--full
+of air and light, its gray carpet and gray-panelled walls making an
+agreeably neutral setting to the household gods of a gentleman of
+leisure. But the gentleman in question, so agreeably situated, seemed to
+find his state less gratifying than it might appear; a sense of
+dissatisfaction possessed him, as he sat at his solitary meal, a sense
+of dulness and loss most tenacious of hold.
+
+More than once he roundly called himself a fool; more than once he shook
+out the thin sheets of his morning paper and buried himself in their
+contents, but unavailingly. The feeling of flatness, the sense of
+dissatisfaction with the world as it stood, grew instead of diminishing.
+At last, throwing down the paper, he gave up the unequal struggle and
+yielded to the pessimistic pleasure of self-analysis. He recalled last
+night and its vexatious trend of events, and with something akin to
+shame, he remembered his anger against Max; but although he admitted its
+possible exaggeration, the admission brought no palliation of Max's
+offence. He, possibly, had behaved like a brute; but Max had behaved
+like an imbecile!
+
+At this point, he fell to staring fixedly in front of him, and through
+the meshes of his day-dream floated a face--not the face of the boy he
+was condemning, but that of the mysterious cause of last night's
+calamity.
+
+He conjured it with quite astonishing vividness--the face of the
+portrait--the face so like, so unlike, the boy's. Every detail of the
+picture assailed him; the subtle illusion of the mirror--the strange,
+reflected eyes propounding their riddle.
+
+Looking in imagination into those eyes, he lost himself delightfully.
+Sensations, periods of time passed and repassed in his
+brain--speculation, desire, and memory danced an enchanting, tangled
+measure.
+
+He recalled the hundred fancies that had held, or failed to hold him in
+his thirty-eight years; he recalled the women who had loved too little,
+the women who had loved too much; and, quick upon the recollection, came
+the consciousness of the disillusion that had inevitably followed upon
+adventure.
+
+He did not ask himself why these dreams should stir, why these ghosts
+should materialize and kiss light hands to him in the blue brilliance of
+this May morning; he realized nothing but that behind them all--a
+reality in a world of shadows--he saw the eyes of the picture
+insistently propounding their riddle--the riddle, the question that from
+youth upward had rankled, inarticulate, in his own soul.
+
+It arose now, renewed, with his acknowledgment of it--the troubling,
+insistent question that cries in every human brain, sometimes softly,
+like a child sobbing outside a closed door, sometimes loudly and
+terribly, like a man in agony. The eternal question ringing through the
+ages.
+
+He recognized it, clear as the spoken word, in this unknown woman's
+gaze; and for the first time in all his life the desire to make answer
+quickened within him. He, who had invariably sought, invariably
+questioned, suddenly craved to make reply!
+
+An incurable dreamer, the fancy took him and he yielded to its glamour.
+How delightful to know and study that exquisite face! How fascinating
+beyond all words to catch the fleeting semblance of his charming Max--to
+lose it in the woman's seriousness--to touch it again in some gleam of
+boyish humor! It was a quaint conceit, apart from, untouched by any
+previous experience. Its subtlety possessed him; existence suddenly took
+on form and purpose; the depression, the sense of loss dispersed as
+morning clouds before the sun.
+
+He rose, forgetful of his unfinished meal, his vitality stirring, his
+curiosity kindling as it had not kindled for years.
+
+What, all things reckoned, stood between him and this alluring study? A
+boy! A mere boy!
+
+No thought came to him of the boy himself--the instrument of the desire.
+No thought came; for every human creature is a pure egoist in the first
+stirring of a passion, and stalks his quarry with blind haste, fearful
+that at any turn he may be balked by time or circumstance. Later, when
+grief has chastened, or joy cleansed him, the altruist may peep forth,
+but never in the primary moment.
+
+With no thought of the clinging hands and beseeching voice of last
+night--with no knowledge of a mournful figure that had dragged itself up
+the stairway of the house in the rue Müller and sobbed itself to sleep
+in a lonely bed, he walked across the room to his writing-table and
+calmly picked up a pen.
+
+He dipped the pen into the ink and selected a sheet of note-paper; then,
+as he bent to write, impatience seized him, he tore the paper across and
+took up a telegraph form.
+
+On this he wrote the simple message:
+
+     Will you allow me to meet your sister?--NED.
+
+It was brief, it was informal, it was entirely unjustifiable. But what
+circumstance in his relation to the boy had lent itself either to
+formality or justification?
+
+He rang the bell, dispatched his message, and then sat down to wait.
+
+His attitude in that matter of waiting was entirely characteristic. He
+did not arrange his action in the event of defeat; he did not speculate
+upon probable triumph. The affair had passed out of his hands; the
+future was upon the knees of the gods!
+
+He did not finish his breakfast in that time of probation; he did not
+again take up the paper he had thrown aside. He made no effort to occupy
+or to amuse himself; he merely waited, and in due time the gods gave him
+a sign--a telegraphic message, brief and concise as his own:
+
+     Come to-night at ten. She will be here.--MAX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+At ten o'clock, punctual to the moment, Blake walked up the Escalier de
+Sainte-Marie. All day a curious agitation compounded of elation and
+impatience had lifted him as upon wings, but now that the hour had
+arrived, doubt amounting almost to reluctance assailed his spirit. He
+walked slowly, looking about him as though the way were strange; outside
+the house in the rue Müller he paused and glanced up at the fifth floor,
+suddenly daunted, suddenly thrilled by the faint light coming mistily
+through the open windows of the _salon_ and the studio.
+
+What would she be like--this sister of Max? He strove ineffectually to
+materialize the portrait, but it eluded him. Only the soul of the woman
+seemed to have place in his imagination--the soul, seen through the
+questioning eyes.
+
+Still a victim to the strange, new reticence, he entered the open
+doorway and began the familiar ascent. Here again the thought of the
+woman obsessed him. How must this place appear to her? His thoughts
+touched the varying scenes of Max's story--scenes of the girl's free
+youth and sumptuous, exotic after-life. None fitted accurately with a
+rue Müller. Of a certainty she, as well as the boy, must have the
+adventuring spirit!
+
+His senses stirred, routing his diffidence, and under their spur he ran
+up the remaining steps, only pausing at the fifth floor as a light voice
+hailed him out of the dusk, a little flitting figure darted from the
+shadows, and Jacqueline, brimming with suppressed excitement, caught him
+by the arm.
+
+"Monsieur Édouard!"
+
+He laughed in recognition and greeting. "Well, Jacqueline! Always the
+air of the grand secret! Always the air of the little bird that has
+discovered the topmost bough of the tree! What is it to-night?"
+
+His feelings were running riot; it was agreeable to spend them in
+badinage. But Jacqueline slapped his hand in reproof.
+
+"No pleasantries, monsieur! The affair is serious."
+
+He smiled; he lowered his voice to the tone of hers. "You have a
+visitor, then, Jacqueline, to this fifth floor of yours?"
+
+Jacqueline nodded her blonde head, and again her excitement brimmed full
+measure.
+
+"Monsieur, she is here--the sister of M. Max! The princess!" She
+whispered the last word--a whisper delicious, tremulous with the weight
+of actual romance.
+
+Blake heard it, and his own heart stirred to a joyous youthful
+sensation. It was so naïve, so charming, so absolutely French.
+
+"The princess!" he whispered back in just the expected tone.
+"Jacqueline, is she beautiful?"
+
+Jacqueline threw up her hands, invoked heaven with her eyes, earth with
+her shrugging shoulders.
+
+"Monsieur, she is ravishing!"
+
+Blake's expressive answer was to put her gently aside and step toward
+Max's door.
+
+But she was after him with a little cry. "Monsieur, not yet! I must
+deliver my message! The message of M. Max!"
+
+"Of M. Max?"
+
+"But yes, monsieur!" Her hands, her whole body expressed apology and
+eager explanation. "M. Max has been called away--upon a business of much
+importance. M. Max desires his profoundest, his most affectionate
+excuses--and will monsieur place him under a debt never possible of
+repayment by entering the _appartement_--by entertaining the princess
+during his absence?"
+
+Blake stared "In the name of Heaven--"
+
+But Jacqueline's white hands again made free with his arm.
+
+"Monsieur, Heaven will arrange! Heaven is bountiful in these affairs!"
+
+"But I don't understand. He has gone upon business, you say? He never
+had any business."
+
+Jacqueline laughed and clapped her hands. "Do not be too sure, monsieur!
+He is growing up, is M. Max!" She gave another little twittering laugh
+of sheer delight.
+
+"Come, monsieur! The princess is alone. It is not gallant to keep a lady
+waiting!"
+
+"But you don't understand, Jacqueline. It is impossible--impossible that
+I should intrude--"
+
+"It is no intrusion, monsieur! I have explained everything to
+madame--and she expects you!" She flitted past him to the door, threw it
+open and dropped him a pretty, impertinent curtsy.
+
+"Now, monsieur!" she commanded; and Blake, half amused, half resentful,
+saw nothing for it but to obey.
+
+He stepped across the threshold; he heard Jacqueline laugh again softly
+and close the door; then he stood, a prey to profound trepidation.
+
+He stood for a moment, hesitating between flight and advance, then shame
+at his weakness forced him to go forward and open the _salon_ door.
+
+As he opened it, another change took place within him; his diffidence
+forsook him, his excitement was allayed as, by a restraining hand, he
+was dominated by a peculiar clarity of vision.
+
+This accentuated keenness of observation came into action even in a
+material sense; as he passed into the familiar room, each object
+appealed to him in its appointed place--in its just and proper value.
+The quaint odd articles of furniture that he and Max had chosen in
+company! The pictures that he had hung upon the white walls at Max's
+bidding! The Russian _samovar_, the books, the open cigarette-box, each
+of which spoke and breathed of Max!
+
+Every object came to him clearly in the quiet light of the lamp upon the
+bureau; it seemed like the setting of a play, where the atmosphere had
+been carefully created, the details definitely woven into a perfect
+chain.
+
+He stood, looking upon the silent room, wondering what would
+happen--convinced that something must happen; and at last, with the same
+quietness--the same intense naturalness, perfect as extreme art--a
+slight sound came from the balcony and a woman stepped into the subdued
+light.
+
+She stepped into the quiet lamplight and paused; and Blake's first
+subconscious feeling was that, miraculously, the empty room had taken on
+life and meaning--that this sudden, gracious presence filled and
+possessed it absolutely and by right divine.
+
+She seemed very tall as she stood looking down into the room, her rich
+hair crowning her head, her young figure clothed in white and wrapped in
+a cloak of soft mysterious gray that fell from her shoulders simply, yet
+with the dignity of a royal mantle.
+
+She stood for a full minute, looking at him, almost it seemed sharing
+his own uncertainty; then, with a little gesture that irresistibly
+conjured Max, she stepped into the room--and into his life.
+
+"Monsieur," she said, very softly, "I am the sister of Max; you are his
+friend. It is surely meant that we know each other!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+It was a perfect moment; one of those rare and delicate spaces of time
+in which Fate's fingers seem to strike a chord at once poignant and
+satisfying, faint and far-reaching. The lamp-lit room, the open window
+and, beyond, the balcony veiled in the obscurity of the night! It was a
+fair setting for romance; and romance, young, beautiful, gracious as in
+the fairy-tale, had emerged from it into Blake's life. A smile, a
+word--and an atmosphere had been created! The things of the past were
+obscured, and the things of the present made omnipotent.
+
+"What a brother this is of mine!" Maxine smiled again with a little
+quiver of humor that set her eyes alight. "Is it not like him to invite
+me to criticise my portrait, and leave me to receive his friend?"
+
+She spoke, not in the English which Max invariably used, but in French;
+and the sound of her voice entangled Blake's senses. It seemed the boy's
+voice at its lowest and tenderest, but touched with new inflections
+tantalizing as they were delightful. Self-consciousness fled before it;
+he was at one with the sister as he had been at one with the brother on
+the crisp white morning when comradeship had been sealed to the marching
+of soldiers' feet and the rattle of fife and drum.
+
+"Princess," he said, "I shall be as frank as Max himself would be! The
+situation is overwhelming; do with me what you will! If I intrude,
+dismiss me! I know how fascinating solitude on this balcony can be."
+
+She smiled again, but gravely with a hint of the portrait's mystery.
+
+"Solitude is an excellent thing, monsieur, but to-night I think I need
+the solace of a fellow-being. Will you not stay and keep me company?"
+
+He looked at the smiling lips, the serious, searching eyes, and he spoke
+his thoughts impulsively.
+
+"I shall be the most honored man in Paris!"
+
+"That is well! Then we will talk, and watch the stars."
+
+Here the naïve imperiousness of the boy gleamed out, familiar and
+reassuring, and Maxine walked across the room, turning at the window to
+look back for Blake.
+
+"He is not without appreciation--this little brother of mine?" She put
+the question softly, tentatively, as she and Blake leaned over the
+balcony railing.
+
+"He is an artist, princess."
+
+"You think so?" Her voice warmed and vibrated; through the vague
+darkness he felt her eyes search his face.
+
+"Undoubtedly."
+
+"Ah, you love him?" The voice dropped to a great gentleness--a
+gentleness that touched him in a strange degree.
+
+"It would be difficult to tell you what he has been to me," he said.
+"Our friendship has been a thing of great value. Has he ever told you
+how we met?"
+
+"He has told me!" Her tone was still low--still curiously attractive.
+"And he appreciates very highly, monsieur, the affection you have given
+him."
+
+She paused; and Blake, looking down upon Paris, was conscious of that
+pause as of something pregnant and miraculous. It filled the moment,
+combining, with the soft texture of her garments and the faint scent
+from her hair, to weave a spell subtle as it was intangible.
+
+"There is nothing to appreciate," he made answer. "I am merely a
+commonplace mortal who found in him something uncommon. The appreciation
+is mine entirely--the appreciation of the youth, the vitality he
+expresses."
+
+"Ah, but you do yourself an injustice!" She spoke impulsively and, as if
+alarmed at her own eagerness, broke off and began anew in a soberer
+voice. "I mean, monsieur, that friendship is not a solitary affair.
+Whatever you discerned in Max, Max must equally have discerned in you."
+
+"I wonder!" He turned his gaze from the lights of the city to the
+rustling trees of the plantation. The hour was magical, the situation
+beyond belief. Standing there upon the balcony, suspended as it were
+between heaven and earth, companioned by this wonderful, familiar,
+unfamiliar being, he seemed to see his own soul--to see it from afar off
+and with a great lucidity. "I wonder!" he said again; and the sadness,
+the discontent that stalked him in lonely moments touched him briefly,
+like the shadow of a travelling cloud.
+
+"What do you wonder, monsieur?"
+
+"The meaning of it all, princess! Existence is such a chase. I, perhaps,
+hunt friendship--and find Max; I, perhaps, dream that I have found my
+goal, while to him I may be but a wayside inn--a place to linger in and
+leave! We both follow the chase, but who can say if we mark the same
+quarry? It's a puzzling world!"
+
+"Monsieur, it is sometimes a glorious world!" So swift was her change of
+voice, so impulsive the gesture with which she turned to him, that the
+vividness of a suggested Max startled him. She was infinitely like to
+Max--Max when life intoxicated him, when he threw out both arms to
+embrace it.
+
+"When you look like that, princess," he cried, "I could forget
+everything--I could take your hand, and show you all my heart, for you
+literally _are_ the boy!"
+
+There was another pause--a pause fraught with poignant things. Standing
+there, between heaven and earth, they were no longer creatures of
+conventionality, fettered by individual worlds. They were two souls
+conscious of an affinity.
+
+Briefly, sweetly, Maxine's fingers touched his hand and then withdrew.
+"Monsieur, in moments I _am_ Max!"
+
+Nothing of surprise, nothing of question came to him. He only knew that
+a touch, infinitely desired, had lighted upon him--that a comprehension
+born of immaterial things was luring him whither he knew not.
+
+"You are Max, princess," he said, swiftly, "but Max suddenly made
+possessor of a soul! I've always fancied Max a mythical being--a
+creature of eternal youth, fascinating as he is elusive--a faun-like
+creature, peeping into the world from some secret grove, ready to dart
+back at any human touch. Max's lips were made for laughter; his eyes are
+too bright for tears."
+
+"And I, monsieur? What am I?"
+
+"You are the miracle! You are the elusive creature deserting the green
+groves--stepping voluntarily into the mortal world."
+
+"Yet if you know of me at all, you must know that I have left the mortal
+world and am seeking the secret groves."
+
+"I have been told that."
+
+"And you disbelieve?"
+
+"I am afraid, princess, I do." He turned and looked at her--at the slim
+body wrapped in its long, smooth cloak of velvet--at the shadowed,
+questioning eyes. "I know I am greatly daring, but there are moments
+when we are outside ourselves--when we know and speak things of which we
+can give no logical account. You have put life behind you; yet what is
+life but a will-o'-the-wisp? Who can say where the light may not break
+forth again?"
+
+"But have we not power over our senses, monsieur? Can we not shut our
+eyes, even if the light does break forth?"
+
+"No, princess, we cannot! Because nature will inevitably say, 'I have
+given you eyes with which to see. Open those eyes'!"
+
+"Ah, there we differ, monsieur!"
+
+Blake laughed. "There, princess, you are the boy! He, too, thinks he can
+cheat nature; but I preach my gospel to him, I tell him Nature will have
+her own. If we will not bend to her, she will take and break us. Ah, but
+listen to that!"
+
+His discourse broke off; they both involuntarily raised their heads and
+looked toward the windows of the neighboring _appartement_.
+
+"Princess!" he said, delightedly. "I wouldn't have had you miss this for
+ten thousand pounds! Has Max described his neighbor, M. Cartel? I tell
+you you will have a little of heaven when M. Cartel plays _Louise_!"
+
+Very delicately, with a curious human clarity of sound, the violin of M.
+Cartel executed the first notes of Louise's declaration in the duet with
+Julian--'_Depuis le jour où je me suis donnée!'_ One caught the whole
+intention of the composer in the few crystal notes--one figured the
+whole scene--the little house of love, the lovers in their Garden of
+Eden, and below Paris--symbolic Paris!
+
+"You know _Louise_, princess?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur, I know _Louise_."
+
+All was clear, all was understood in that brief reply. A wide
+contentment, vitalized by excitement, lifted the soul of Blake. Leaning
+over the balcony railing, drinking in the music of M. Cartel, more than
+a little of heaven opened to him; a unique emotion thrilled him--a
+consciousness of sublimity, a sense of being part of some unfathomable
+yet perfect scheme. The music wove its story; the lovers became one with
+his own existence, as he himself was one with the stars above him and
+the lights below. He followed every note, and in his own brain was spun
+the subtle thread that bound Julian and Louise; his own fancy ran the
+gamut of their emotions from mere human reminiscence to overwhelming
+passion.
+
+As he listened, his first hearing of M. Cartel's fiddle crept back upon
+the feet of memory, and with it the recollection of the boy's rapture,
+the boy's wayward breaking of the spell and denial of the truth of love.
+Cautiously he moved his head and stole a glance at his companion,
+summing up the contrast between the present and the past.
+
+Maxine was leaning forward, in thrall to the music: her gray cloak had
+fallen slightly back, displaying her white dress--her white neck; her
+hands were clasped, her eyes--the woman's eyes, the eyes of
+mystery--gazed into profound space.
+
+He held himself rigid; he dared not stir, lest he should brush her
+cloak; he scarce dared breathe, lest he should break her dream. A
+feeling akin to adoration awakened in him, and as if in expression of
+the emotion, the violin of M. Cartel cried out the supreme confession of
+the lovers, Louise's enraptured '_C'est le Paradis! C'est une féerie_!',
+and Julian's answer, intoxicating as wine, '_Non! C'est la vie!
+l'Eternelle, la toute-puissante vie_!'
+
+And there, with the whimsicality of the artist, the bow of M. Cartel was
+lifted, and sharp, pregnant silence fell upon the night.
+
+Blake turned to Maxine; and Maxine, with lips parted, eyes dark with
+thought, met his regard.
+
+For one second her impulse seemed to sway to words, her body to yield to
+some gracious, drooping enchantment; then, swiftly as M. Cartel had
+called up silence, she recalled herself--straightened her body and
+lifted her head.
+
+"Monsieur," she said, with dignity, "I thank you for your kindness and
+for your companionship--and I bid you good-night!"
+
+The swiftness of his dismissal scarcely touched Blake. Already she was
+his sovereign lady--her look a command, her word paramount.
+
+"As you will, princess!"
+
+She held out her hand; and taking, he bowed over, but did not kiss it.
+
+She smiled, conceiving his desire and his restraint.
+
+"I shall convey to Max how charmingly you have entertained me, monsieur
+and, perhaps--" Her voice dropped to its softest note.
+
+Blake looked up.
+
+"Perhaps, princess--?"
+
+She smiled again, half diffidently. "Nothing, monsieur! Good-night!"
+
+"Good-night!"
+
+He left her to the gray mystery of the stars, and passed back through
+the quiet, lamp-lit room and down the slippery stairs that led to the
+mundane world; and with each step he took, each breath he drew, the
+words from _Louise_ repeated themselves, justifying all things,
+glorifying all things: '_C'est la vie! l'Eternelle, la toute-puissante
+vie_!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Blake must have reached the last step of the Escalier de Sainte-Marie,
+must indeed have turned the corner of the rue André de Sarte before the
+creaking of a footstep or the opening of a door disturbed the silence of
+the fifth floor; but, due time having expired--due deference having been
+paid to taste and the proprieties--the handle of M. Cartel's door was
+very softly turned, and Jacqueline slipped forth into the shadowed
+landing.
+
+Never were human curiosity and feminine craft more signally displayed
+than in the slim little form creeping on tiptoe, the astute, _piquante_
+little face thrust forth into the dark. Across the landing she stole,
+and with deft fingers opened Max's door without a sound.
+
+Here, in the narrow hallway, she paused and called gently, "Monsieur
+Max!" But as no voice answered, she crept to the _salon_ door and, with
+a little comedy of smiles all for her own diversion, called again with
+pursed lips and in a stage whisper: "Madame! Madame!"
+
+It carried--this portentous word--across the quiet room to the balcony
+where Maxine was lingering; it drew from her a little 'oh,' of
+consternation; finally, it brought her running across the room to her
+visitor.
+
+Jacqueline, lynx-eyed, stood and looked at her--noting how flushed she
+was, how youthful-looking, how unguarded and brimming with emotion.
+
+"Madame!" she cried. "I know without a word! It has been a grand
+success."
+
+[Illustration: _"C'EST LA VIE! L'ETERNELLE, LA TOUTE-PUISSANTE VIE_!"]
+
+Maxine laughed, a girlish laugh of self-betrayal. "A grand success!
+Absolutely a grand success! And, Jacqueline"--she hesitated, laughed
+again with charming self-consciousness, rushed afresh into
+speech--"Jacqueline, he thought me beautiful! Not a word was said, but I
+know he thought me beautiful. Tell me! Am I beautiful?" Swiftly, as
+might the boy, she threw off her velvet cloak, letting it fall to the
+ground, and showed herself tall and supple and straight in her white
+dress.
+
+Jacqueline rushed forward warmly, caught and kissed her hand.
+
+"Madame, you are ravishing!" And, with her pretty native practicality,
+she picked up the cloak, carefully folded and carefully laid it aside.
+
+"Ravishing!" Maxine laughed once more. "Jacqueline, I am something more
+than that! I am happy!" She threw out her arms, as if to embrace the
+universe. "I am happier than the saints in heaven! I am living in the
+moment, and the moment is perfection! I care nothing that yesterday I
+wept, that to-morrow I may weep again. I am alive and I am happy. I feel
+as I used to feel at fifteen years old, galloping a spirited horse. The
+whole world is sublime--from the dust in the streets to the stars in the
+sky!" She forgot her companion, her speech broke off, she turned and
+began to pace the room with head thrown back, hands clasped behind her
+with careless, boyish ease.
+
+For a while Jacqueline watched her, diligently sifting out every
+emotional sign; then, deeming that some moment of her own choosing had
+arrived, she slipped unobserved from the room, to return a minute later
+bearing a kettle full of boiling water.
+
+Maxine looked round as she made her entry.
+
+"A kettle, Jacqueline?"
+
+"For madame's tea. And, my God, but it is hot!" She set it down hastily
+in the fireplace, and sucked her finger with a pouting smile.
+
+Maxine smiled, too, coming back from her dream with vague graciousness.
+"But I do not need tea."
+
+Jacqueline did not refute the statement, but merely began to manipulate
+the _samovar_ in the manner learned of Max, while Maxine, yielding to
+her own delicious exaltation, fell again to her long, slow pacing of the
+floor.
+
+Presently the inviting smell of tea began to pervade the room, and
+Jacqueline set out a cup and saucer--Max's first purchase from old
+Bluebeard of the curios.
+
+"Madame is served!" She stood behind the chair ordained for Maxine, very
+sedate, very assured of her own arrangements.
+
+Maxine paused, as though the suggestion of tea was brought to her for
+the first time.
+
+"How delightful!" she said, with swift, serene pleasure. "How kind! How
+thoughtful!"
+
+"Seat yourself, madame!"
+
+The chair was drawn forward; the just and proper thrill of preparation
+was conveyed by Jacqueline; and Maxine seated herself, still in her
+smiling dream.
+
+Half the cup of tea was consumed under Jacqueline's watchful eye, then
+she stole round the chair.
+
+"Madame, a cigarette?" Her fingers crept to the cigarette-box, then
+found and struck a match, all with a deft, unobtrusive quiet that won
+its way undenied.
+
+The cigarette was lighted, Maxine leaned back in her chair, Jacqueline's
+confidential moment was secured.
+
+"And so, madame, it was a grand success?"
+
+Maxine looked up. The first fine ecstasy was past; the after-glow of
+deep contentment curled round her with the cigarette smoke; she was the
+pliant reed to the soft wind of Jacqueline's whispering.
+
+"It was past belief," she answered, "past all belief. We stood together
+in the light of the lamp and looked each other in the eyes, and he never
+guessed. He never guessed--he, who has--Oh, it was past belief!"
+
+"Ah!" murmured Jacqueline, complacently. "I told madame I had a quite
+extraordinary talent in the dressing of hair--though madame was
+sceptical! And as for the purchase of clothes. Did he admire madame's
+velvet cloak?"
+
+Maxine smiled tolerantly. "Of course he did not!"
+
+Jacqueline cast up her eyes to heaven. "These English--they are
+extraordinary! But I tell you this, madame, he knew here"--she touched
+her heart--"he knew here, that madame looked what she is--a queen!"
+
+"Absurd child!"
+
+The reproof was gentle; Jacqueline's nimble tongue took advantage of the
+chance given it.
+
+"And tell me, madame? He play his part gallantly--Monsieur Édouard?"
+Never before had she dared so much; but never before had Maxine's eyes
+looked as they looked to-night.
+
+Before replying, Maxine leaned her elbows on the table and took her face
+between her hands.
+
+"It was past belief--that also!" she said at last. "He seemed a
+different being. I cannot understand it."
+
+"He seemed of a greater interest, madame?"
+
+"Of a strangely greater interest."
+
+"In what manner, madame? Looks? Words?" Cunning as a monkey, little
+Jacqueline was all soft innocence in the method of her questioning.
+
+"In every way--manner--speech--expression of thought. And,
+Jacqueline"--she turned her face, all radiant and unsuspicious, to her
+interlocutor--"I made a discovery! He loves Max!"
+
+Jacqueline, with downcast eyes and discreet bearing, carefully removed
+the empty tea-cup.
+
+"Yes, he loves me as Max! He told me so. It has made me marvellously
+happy--marvellously happy and, also"--she sighed--"also, Jacqueline,
+just a little sad!"
+
+"Sad, madame?"
+
+"Yes, sad because he loves Max as one loves a child, expecting no
+return; and--I would be loved as an equal."
+
+"Assuredly, madame."
+
+"I _must_ be loved as an equal!" Fire suddenly kindled her dreaming
+voice; a look, clear and alert, suddenly crossed her eyes. "Jacqueline,"
+she cried, "I have set myself a new task. I shall make him respect Max
+as well as love him; Max shall become his equal. Now, suppose you set
+yourself a task like that, how would you begin?"
+
+"Oh, madame!" Jacqueline was all deprecation.
+
+"Do not fear. Tell me!"
+
+"Madame, it is not for me--" Jacqueline's triumph in the moment, and her
+concealing of the triumph, were things exquisitely feminine.
+
+"Tell me!"
+
+"I may speak from the heart, madame?"
+
+Maxine bent her head in gracious condescension.
+
+"Then, madame, I would make of Monsieur Édouard a book of figures. The
+princess would learn the rules; Monsieur Max would shut the book, and
+make up the sum. It would be quite simple."
+
+The hot color scorched Maxine's face; she rose quickly. "Jacqueline! I
+had not expected this!"
+
+"Madame desired me to speak from the heart. The heart, at times, is
+unruly!"
+
+"True! Forgive me. But you should not suggest a thing that you know to
+be impossible."
+
+"Pardon, madame! I was thinking of the many impossibilities performed
+in a good cause!"
+
+"Say no more, Jacqueline! To-night was to-night! To-night is over!" She
+walked across the room and passed out upon the balcony, leaning over the
+railing at the spot where Blake had stood.
+
+Jacqueline, swift and guileful, was instantly beside her.
+
+"Madame, at its most serious, to-night was a little comedy. Is it so
+criminal to repeat a little comedy--once, or even twice--in a good
+cause? It is not as if madame were not sure of herself! Besides, the
+comedy was charming!"
+
+"Yes; the comedy was charming!" Maxine echoed the sentiment, and in her
+heart called 'charming' a poor word. "But even if I were weak,
+Jacqueline," she added, "how could I banish Max? Max could scarcely
+continue to have important business."
+
+"Perhaps not, madame; but Monsieur Max might continue to display temper!
+Do not forget that he and Monsieur Édouard did not part upon the
+friendliest terms."
+
+Maxine smiled.
+
+"But even granted that, I could not be here again--alone."
+
+Jacqueline, with airiest scorn, tossed the words aside.
+
+"That, madame? Why, that arranges itself! The princess loves her
+brother! His quarrel is her grief. Is not woman always compassionate?"
+
+The tone was irresistible. Maxine laughed. "Jacqueline, you were the
+Serpent in Adam's Garden! There is not a doubt of it! No wonder poor M.
+Cartel has taken so big a bite of the Apple."
+
+She laughed again, and Jacqueline laughed too, in mischievous delight.
+
+"Madame!" she coaxed. "Madame!"
+
+"No!" said Maxine, with eyes fixed determinately upon the lights of the
+city; while somewhere above her in the cool, clear starlight, a hidden
+voice--her own, and not her own--whispered a subtle 'Yes!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+The universe is compounded of the miraculous; but love is the miracle of
+miracles. Again the impossible had been contrived; again Maxine and
+Blake were standing together on the balcony. The Parisian night seemed
+as still as a held breath, and as palpitating with human possibilities;
+the domes of the Sacré-Coeur loomed white against the sky, dumb
+witnesses to the existence of the spirit. The scene was undoubtedly
+poetic; yet, placed in the noisiest highway of London or the most
+desolate bog-land of Blake's native country, these two would have been
+as truly and amply cognizant of the real and the ideal; for the cloak of
+love was about them, the vapor of love was before their eyes, and for
+the hour, although they knew it not, they were capable of reconstructing
+a whole world from the material in their own hearts.
+
+But they were divinely ignorant; they each tricked themselves with the
+age-old fallacy of a unique position, each wandered onward in the
+dream-like fields of romance, content to believe that the other knew the
+hidden way.
+
+The scene bore a perfect similarity to the scene of the first
+meeting--about them, the darkness and the quiet--behind them, the little
+_salon_ lit by the familiar lamp, showing all the reassuring evidences
+of the boy's occupation. For close upon an hour they had enjoyed this
+intimacy of the balcony, at first talking much and rapidly upon the
+ostensible object of their meeting--Max's quarrel with Blake, later
+falling to a happy silence, as though they deliberately closed their
+lips, the more fully to drink in the secrets of the night through eyes
+and ears. Strange spells were in the weaving, and no two souls are fused
+to harmony without much subtle questioning of spirit, many delicate,
+tremulous speculations compounded of wordless joy and wordless fear.
+
+Some issue, it was, in this matter of fusing personalities, that at last
+caused Maxine to turn her head and find Blake studying her.
+
+The circumstance was trivial--a mere crossing of glances, but it brought
+the color to her face as swiftly as if she had been taken in some guilty
+act.
+
+Blake saw the expression, and interpreted it wrongly.
+
+"You are displeased, princess? I am a bad companion to-night?" He spoke
+impulsively, with an anxiety in his voice that spurred her to a desire
+to comfort him.
+
+"When people are sympathetic, monsieur, they are companions, whether
+good or bad. Is it not so?"
+
+He moved a little nearer to her; neither was aware of the movement.
+
+"Do you find me sympathetic?"
+
+"Indeed, yes!" Her luminous glance rested on him thoughtfully.
+
+"But you scarcely know me."
+
+"Monsieur, I do know you."
+
+"Through the boy, perhaps--" He spoke with a touch of impatience, but
+she stopped him with upraised hand.
+
+"You are angry with Max, therefore you must be silent! Anger does not
+make for true judgment."
+
+"Ah, that's unfair!" He laughed. "'Tis Max who is angry with me! You
+know I came here to-night with open arms--to find him flown! Still, I
+am willing to keep them open, and give the kiss of peace whenever he
+relents--to please you."
+
+"Ah, no, monsieur! To please him. To please him."
+
+"Indeed, no! To please you--and no one else. If I followed my own
+devices, I'd wait till he comes back, and box his ears. He'd very well
+deserve it."
+
+Maxine laughed; then, swift as a breeze or a racing cloud, her mood
+changed.
+
+"Monsieur, you care for Max?"
+
+"What a question! I love Max. He's a star in my darkness--or was, until
+the sun shone."
+
+He paused, fearful of where his impulses had led him; but Maxine was all
+sweetness, all seriousness.
+
+"Am I, then, the sun, monsieur?"
+
+In any other woman the words must have seemed a lure; but here was a
+fairness, a frankness and dignity that lifted the question to another
+and higher plane. Blake, comprehending, answered simply with the truth.
+
+"Yes, you are the sun; and all my life I have been a sun-worshipper."
+
+She made no comment; she accepted the words, waiting for the flow of
+speech that she knew was close at hand--the speech, probably irrelevant,
+certainly delightful, that he invariably poured forth at such a moment.
+
+"Princess, do you know my country?"
+
+She shook her head, smiling a little.
+
+"Ah, then you don't understand my worship! In Ireland, nature condemns
+us to a long, black, wet winter and a long, gray, wet spring, so that
+the heart of a man is nearly drowned in his body, and he grows to
+believe that his country is nothing but a neutral-tinted waste; but one
+day, when even hope is dying, a miracle comes to pass--the sun shines
+out! The sun shines out, and he suddenly sees that his waste land is the
+color of emeralds and that his dripping woods are gardens, tinted like
+no stones that jewellers ever handle. Oh, no wonder I am a
+sun-worshipper!"
+
+Maxine, glowing to his sudden enthusiasm, clasped her hands, as when she
+heard the music of M. Cartel.
+
+"Ah, and that is your country?"
+
+"That is my country, princess."
+
+"I wish----" She stopped.
+
+"That you could see it?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"And why not? Why not--when this boy sees reason? How I would love to
+show it to you! You would understand."
+
+"When would you show it to me?" She spoke very low.
+
+"When? Oh, perhaps in April--April, when the washed skies are a blue
+that even Max could not find in his color-box, and the bare boughs
+tremble with promise. In April--or, better still, in the autumn. In
+October, when the lights are cool and white and the sea is an opal; when
+you smell the ozone strong as violets, and at every turn of the road a
+cart confronts you, heaped with bronze seaweed and stuck with a couple
+of pikes that rise stark against the sky-line, to suggest the taking of
+the spoils. Yes, in October! In October, it should be!"
+
+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?"
+
+In the silence that had fallen upon them, Blake had turned his face to
+the stars, but now again his glance sought hers.
+
+"No, princess," he said, simply.
+
+No weapons are more potent than brevity and simplicity. His answer
+brought the blood to her face as no long dissertation could have brought
+it; it was so direct, so personal, so compounded of subtle values.
+
+"Then you have not known the highest?" It was not she who framed the
+question; some power outside herself constrained her to its speaking.
+
+"I have recognized perfection," he said, "but I have not known it. And
+sometimes my weaker self--the primitive, barbaric self--cries out
+against the limitation; sometimes--"
+
+"Sometimes--?"
+
+"Nothing, princess--and everything!" With a sudden wave of self-control
+he brought himself back to the moment and its responsibilities. "Forgive
+me! And, if you are merciful, dismiss me! They say we Irish talk too
+much. I am afraid I am a true Irishman." He laughed, but there was a
+sound behind the laughter that brought tears to her eyes.
+
+"Monsieur, it has been happy to-night?"
+
+"It has been heaven."
+
+"We are not wholly a trouble to you--Max and I?"
+
+She put out her hand, and he took it.
+
+"Max is my friend, princess; you are my sovereign lady."
+
+The night was close about them; Paris was below, gilding the rose of
+human love; the church domes were above, tending whitely toward the
+stars. Maxine moved nearer to him, her heart beating fast, her whole
+radiant being dispensing fragrance.
+
+"Monsieur, if I am your lady, pay me homage!"
+
+The enchantment was delicate and perfect; her voice wove a spell, her
+slight, strong fingers trembled in his. He had been less than man had he
+refused the moment. Silently he bent his head, and his lips touched her
+hand in a swift, ardent kiss.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+Maxine was in high exaltation--the exaltation that makes no count of
+cost. Yesterday mattered not at all; to-morrow might never dawn! As the
+outer door closed upon Blake, she turned back into the lighted
+_salon_--the little _salon_ of Max's books, of Max's boyish tastes--the
+little _salon_ loved beyond all rooms in Paris!
+
+In a smiling dream she passed through it, on into the studio where no
+light was, save the light from a shred of crescent moon that had lately
+climbed into the sky. It had a curious effect--this bare, white room
+with its gaunt easel, upon which the portrait still stood, and to
+superstitious eyes, it might well have suggested a ghost-chamber,
+peopled by dead thoughts, dead impressions: but Maxine was in no morbid
+mood, happiness ran too high--too red and warm--to permit of shadows
+disputing its high place.
+
+Smiling, smiling, she passed from the studio to the bedroom. The room
+that had witnessed her first weakness; the room that had brought her
+strength. How infinitely wise had been the conduct of that night! How
+irrevocably fate had created doubt and dispersed it by inspiration. If
+she had not twisted her hair about her head--if the little Jacqueline
+had not entered at the critical moment--if, for that matter, M. Cartel
+and his friend had not talked late and partaken of _bouillon_--
+
+She laughed; she wandered round the room, touching, appraising the
+little familiar trifles associated with that past hour; at last she sat
+down before her mirror, and there Jacqueline found her ten minutes
+later, when curiosity could no longer be withheld and she came creeping
+across the landing for news of the night's doings.
+
+Maxine heard her enter; heard her search the _salon_ and then the
+studio; finally called to her.
+
+"Jacqueline!"
+
+"Madame!"
+
+The door opened, and Maxine looked round, the smile still upon her lips.
+
+"No soup for me to-night, Jacqueline? Not even tea?"
+
+Jacqueline caught the happy lightness of the tone, and silently nodded
+her blonde head as she tiptoed into the room.
+
+"Ah, madame has had a banquet of the mind! Madame has no need of my poor
+food."
+
+Maxine picked up a comb and arranged the tendrils of hair that curled
+about her temples.
+
+"Jacqueline," she said, after a silence, "what do you consider the
+highest thing?"
+
+The question might have been astonishing, but her visitor did not betray
+surprise by even the quiver of an eyelash.
+
+"Love, madame," she said.
+
+And Maxine did not flash round upon her in one of her swift rages, did
+not even draw her brows together into their frowning line. She merely
+gazed into the mirror, as if weighing the statement judicially.
+
+"All people do not hold that opinion," she said, at last.
+
+Jacqueline shrugged her shoulders in the exercise of an infinite
+patience. "No, madame?"
+
+"No. M. Blake talked to-night of 'the highest thing,' and he did not
+mean love."
+
+"No, madame?" Jacqueline was very guileless.
+
+But guileless as her tone was--nay, by reason of its guilelessness--it
+touched Maxine in some shadowy corner of her woman's consciousness; and
+spurred by a subtle, disquieting suggestion, she turned in her chair,
+and fixed her serious gray eyes upon her visitor.
+
+"What are your thoughts, Jacqueline?"
+
+Jacqueline, taken unawares, deprecated.
+
+"Oh, madame--"
+
+But Maxine was set to her point. "Answer my question," she insisted. "I
+wish to know. I am, above all things, practical."
+
+It was to Jacqueline's credit that she did not smile, that she simply
+murmured: "Who doubts it, madame?"
+
+"Yes; I am, above all things, practical. In this affair of the woman, I
+know exactly where I stand."
+
+The girl made no comment; but even to Maxine's own ears, her declaration
+left a little suggestion of over-vehemence vibrating in the air; and
+startled by this suggestion, she did the least wise, the most human
+thing possible, she accentuated it.
+
+"If I were different--if M. Blake were different, I grant that,
+perhaps--" She stopped abruptly. "Jacqueline, what are your thoughts?"
+
+"Oh, madame, I have none!"
+
+And here Maxine made a change of front, became very grave, touched the
+gracious, encouraging note of the being to whom life is an open book.
+
+"You must not say that," she corrected, sweetly. "You always have
+ideas--even if they are sometimes a little in the air. Come! Tell me.
+What are your thoughts?"
+
+But Jacqueline was wary, as befitted one who made no pretence of
+scholarship, but who knew the old human story by heart, and daily
+recited it to one ardent listener.
+
+"Oh, madame, it is not fitting--"
+
+"Absurd! Tell me."
+
+Jacqueline, hard pressed, sought refuge in a truth.
+
+"My thoughts might displease madame."
+
+Maxine sat straighter in her chair. Here was another matter!
+
+"Ah, so that is it! Well, now I am determined. Now I will have the
+thoughts at any cost."
+
+When Maxine spoke like this, when her lips closed upon her words, when
+her eyes rested unflinchingly upon her listener, she was wont to have
+her questions answered. Jacqueline recognized the moment, saw Maxine in
+all her proud foolishness, loved her with that swift intermingling of
+pity and worship that such beings as she inevitably call forth, finally
+tossed her little head in her most tantalizing manner and laughed.
+
+"With madame's permission," she said, "I will wish her good-night!"
+
+"The permission is not granted."
+
+"Nevertheless, madame!" Her hand was on the door.
+
+"Wait!" cried Maxine, peremptorily. "I have asked you a question and you
+must answer it."
+
+Jacqueline stopped half-way through the doorway, and looked back, her
+flower-like face alight with mischief.
+
+"Pardon, madame! 'Must' is the word for the ruler. Lucien says 'must' to
+me; M. Blake says 'must' to"--she paused, with maddening precision; she
+dropped a little impertinent curtsy--"to M. Max!"
+
+She tossed the word upon the air, as a child might blow thistle-down;
+she laughed and was gone, leaving Maxine conscious of a strange new
+sensation that whipped her to anger and yet, most curiously, left her
+bereft of words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+Nothing less than absolute conviction can shake a strong nature. A wave
+of doubt swept over Maxine as her little neighbor's words died out and
+the door closed, leaving her to silence and solitude; but for all her
+folly, she was strong, and strength such as hers is not shaken by the
+shaft of a Jacqueline, however cunningly sped.
+
+She sat for long, troubled, perplexed--almost, it might have seemed,
+fearful of herself--- but gradually the strength asserted itself, the
+fine, blind faith within her asserted itself in a wave of reaction.
+
+Some small weakness had been hers, she admitted--some small shrinking
+from the truth of things! She had been remiss in the application of her
+test, allowing the dream to oust the reality in that fascinating hour
+with Blake. Remiss, but no more!
+
+At this stage in her meditations, she returned to the balcony, studying
+the sky anew--drinking in confidence from the glory of the stars, the
+slight grace of the crescent moon.
+
+She became the boy again in mind and heart, enthusiastic, assured,
+thirsting for action; she looked down upon Paris frankly and without
+defiance--or so she deemed; and the old, wild suggestions of 'liberty,
+equality, brotherhood,' seemed to rise, ghostly, from its stones.
+
+Enthusiasm is ever a gracious, pardonable thing, because in its
+essentials are youth and zeal and all high, white-hot qualities whose
+roots strike not in the base earth. Any sage, nay, any simpleton, seeing
+Maxine upon the balcony, could have told her what a fool she was; but
+who would have told it without a pause, without a sigh for the divinity
+of such folly?
+
+Next day she rose, refreshed of body, because refreshed of soul; and
+arrayed in the garments of her strength, went forth to prove her faith.
+
+Max it was--Max of the quick, lithe feet and eager glance--who left the
+rue Müller, heedless of breakfast, and began his descent upon Paris,
+making straight for the heart of the citadel with the true instinct of
+the raider.
+
+Up to this moment, Blake's rooms had been a mere name, lying as they did
+within the forbidden precincts of the fashionable world, but to-day no
+corner of Paris offered terrors, for the simple reason that Paris itself
+had come to be incorporated in Blake, and that, being strong enough to
+dare Blake, Max was strong enough to dare the city.
+
+Self-analysis played no part in his mental process as he swung down the
+steep, familiar streets. A singleness of purpose, high as it was
+foolish, possessed and inspired him. He loved Blake with a wonderful,
+unsexual love, and he yearned to lay himself at his feet, to offer him
+of his best--gifts of the gods, given with free hands from a free heart.
+
+Something of the sweet foolishness must have shown upon his face, for
+when he reached his destination, Blake's _concierge_, usually a taciturn
+individual, offered him a welcome as he stepped from the brilliant
+sunshine into the dim cool hallway, and gave him the information he
+needed with a good grace.
+
+So far, well! But happy assurance emanated from him, and success is
+compounded of such assurance. He knocked upon Blake's door, certain that
+Blake himself and not his servant would answer to his summons; and as
+though the gods smiled at the childish confidence, his certainty was
+rewarded. The sound of a familiar step set his pulses racing, a hand was
+laid upon the door, and desire became accomplished.
+
+"What! Max?"
+
+"Yes, Max! Is he welcome?" All the hoarded strength of the night was
+audible in the words. Max threw up his head, met Blake's eyes, held out
+his hand--the boy in every particular.
+
+"Welcome? As welcome as the flowers in May! Come in! Come along in!"
+Blake had accepted the masquerade; all was as before.
+
+Together they passed into the _salon_, and instantly Blake became
+host--the _rôle_ of _rôles_ for him.
+
+"Now, boy, don't tell me you have breakfasted! But even if you have, you
+must breakfast again. Come, sit down! Sit down! My fellow makes most
+excellent coffee--good as Madame Gustav's of the rue Fabert! Remember
+the rue Fabert?"
+
+So he rattled on, placing a second chair, seeking an additional cup, and
+ever Max listened, happy with an acute happiness that almost touched the
+verge of tears.
+
+But though emotion choked him he played his part gallantly. He was the
+boy of old days to the very life, swaggering a little in a youthful
+forgivable conceit, playing the lord of creation to an amused,
+sympathetic audience.
+
+"Ned," he cried at last, flinging his words from him with all the old
+frank ease, "tell me to apologize!"
+
+Blake looked up, and the affection, the tolerance in the look quivered
+through Max's senses.
+
+"Now, boy! Now!" he warned. "Be careful what you're saying! It's only
+very ordinary friends talk about apologies. And I don't think we have
+ever been very ordinary friends."
+
+"No! No! But still--"
+
+"Well, say your say!"
+
+The tone was full of indulgence, but, also, it was touched with subtler
+things. This unexpected invasion had pleased and flattered Blake; it
+spoke an influence used on his behalf that he dared not have
+claimed--dared not have expected.
+
+Max walked to the window, looked down an instant into the brilliant,
+sunlit street, came back to Blake's side, all with a swift
+impulsiveness.
+
+"Ned, I am the same friend--the same comrade?"
+
+"Indeed, yes!"
+
+"But you do not think I possess a soul?"
+
+Blake, taken unawares, colored like any boy.
+
+"Oh, come!"
+
+"But it is true. I know, for I have been told. And you are wrong--quite
+wrong."
+
+Blake was about to laugh, but he looked at the young face, suddenly
+grown grave, and his own words came back to him guiltily. 'Max's lips
+were made for laughter--his eyes are too bright for tears!'
+
+"Poor little faun!" he said, with jesting tenderness. "Have I misjudged
+you?"
+
+Max nodded seriously. "You have. She has made me realize."
+
+"Ah! That was like her!" It was Blake's turn to walk to the window; and
+the boy, watching him eagerly, was unable to place the constraint that
+suddenly tinged his voice, suddenly veiled his manner.
+
+"Ned," he was urged to say, "tell me! Has she brought us nearer
+together--my sister Maxine?"
+
+Blake hesitated; for even your Irishman, brimming to confide, is
+reticent when he stands before his holy of holies.
+
+"Ned, tell me!"
+
+The tone was enticing. Blake turned from the window, strode back across
+the room, cast an affectionate arm about the boy's shoulder.
+
+"She is a worker of miracles--your sister Maxine!"
+
+The words were warm, the clasp was warm; Max's inspiration gushed up, a
+fountain of faith.
+
+"She understands you? She shows you 'the higher things'?"
+
+"By God, she does!"
+
+"Then you shall see her once more!" The ideal was predominant; zeal and
+youth, the white-hot gifts, were lavished at Blake's feet. "Come to the
+studio to-night, and I shall leave you in her company willingly, gladly,
+with all my heart. Ned! Say you will come!"
+
+And Blake, dreaming his own dream, pressed the boy's shoulder and
+laughed, and answered with the jest that covers so many things.
+
+"Will I come? Will a man turn back from the gate of heaven when Saint
+Peter uses his key?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Perfect self-deception can be a rare, almost a precious thing, ranking
+with all absurd, delightful faiths from the child's sweet certainty of
+fairydom to the enthusiast's belief in the potency of his own star.
+
+Maxine, in her little white bedroom, arraying herself for Blake, was
+wrapped in a cloud of illusion, translated to a sphere above the common
+earth by this magic blindness. Never again while life lasted was she to
+stand as she stood to-night, eyes searching her mirror with perfect
+steadfast sincerity, lips parted in breathless joy of confidence. Never
+again! But for the moment the illusion was complete. She saw the
+triumphing soul of Max glimmer through her own fair body, saw the boy's
+faith carried like a banner in her woman's hands.
+
+Her dressing was a tremulous affair, tinged with a fine excitement.
+Again she clothed herself in the soft white dress, the long gray cloak
+of former meetings; but, banishing the willing Jacqueline, she coiled
+her hair with her own hands and last, most significant touch, pinned a
+white rose at her breast.
+
+It was the night of nights! No need to assure herself of the fact; the
+knowledge sang in her blood, burned in her cheeks. The night of nights!
+When Maxine would receive the soul of Blake and place it, mystic and
+sacramental, in the keeping of Max!
+
+The folly of the affair, the naivety of it, made for tears as well as
+smiles; and Maxine, glowing to the eternal, aspiring flame, looked her
+last into the little mirror that had so carefully preserved its secrets,
+and passed across the hall to the _salon_, where the night stretched
+beckoning, velvet fingers through the open window.
+
+Young, luxurious summer palpitated through the dusk, fanning the ardor
+in her heart. She ran forward, drawn by its allurement; then, all at
+once, she stopped, her hand flying to her heart, her breath suspended in
+a little cry of surprise. Blake had slipped unheard into the
+_appartement_, and was awaiting her on the balcony.
+
+At her cry, he turned--wheeled round toward her--and his eyes scanned
+her surprised, betraying face.
+
+"You are glad!" he cried, in sudden self-expression. "You are glad to
+see me!" The words were hot as they were abrupt, they seared her with
+their swiftness and their conviction, they were as a raiding army before
+which all ramparts fell. Mentally, morally, she felt herself sway until
+preconceived ideas drifted to and fro, weeds upon a tide.
+
+"Yes," she answered, scarcely aware of her own voice. "I am glad."
+
+Where now were the subtle ways, the divers interlacing paths wherein
+Maxine was to pursue her chase, delivering her quarry into the hands of
+Max? Where were the barbed and potent shafts whereby that capture was to
+be achieved? All had vanished into the night; she stood before her
+intended victim unarmed, ungirt, and--miracle of miracles--undismayed!
+
+She and Blake confronted each other. Their lips were dumb, but their
+looks embraced. Fate--life--was in the air, in the myriad voices of the
+night, the myriad pulses of their bodies, the myriad thoughts that
+wheeled and flashed within their brains.
+
+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.
+
+"Speak to me!"
+
+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 your life?"
+
+"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."
+
+"And now?"
+
+"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.
+
+"You know? You understand?"
+
+She stood rigid, her eyes wide, her nostrils dilated--a creature swaying
+upon the verge of an abyss, contemplating a plunge into space.
+
+"Maxine!" he said again. "Maxine!"
+
+It was the primitive human cry. She heard and acknowledged it in every
+fibre of her being; she drew a swift, sharp breath, then, with a free
+gesture, cast her arms about his neck.
+
+"Ned! Ned! Say again that you love me! Say it a thousand, say it a
+million times and for every time you say it, I will tell you twice that
+I love you."
+
+Passion, intoxication sped the words, and Blake's mouth, closing upon
+hers, broke the ecstasy of speech.
+
+"I love you! I worship you! You are my life. You are myself."
+
+Reality vibrated through his speech; and Maxine, hearing, lost herself.
+With arms still clasped about him, she leaned her body backward, gazing
+into his face.
+
+"Again! Say it again!"
+
+"You are my life! We are one! Maxine! Maxine!" His glance burned her,
+his arms were close about her. With a sudden ardent movement, she
+caught his face between her hands, drew it down, and kissed it full upon
+the mouth, not once but many times, fiercely, closely; then, with a
+little cry, inarticulate as the cry of an animal, she freed herself and
+fled through the _salon_, through the hall and out upon the landing, the
+door of the _appartement_ closing behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+The door of her _appartement_ closed behind Maxine, and she turned,
+swift as a coursed hare, to the door of M. Cartel.
+
+No hesitation touched her; she needed sanctuary; sanctuary she must
+have. She opened her neighbor's door, careless of what might lie behind,
+bringing with her into the quiet rooms a breath of fierce disorder.
+
+The living-room, with its piano and its homely chairs and table, was
+lighted by a common lamp; and the little Jacqueline, the only occupant,
+sat in the radius of the light, peacefully sewing at a blue muslin gown
+that was to adorn a Sunday excursion into the country.
+
+At the sound of the stormy entry she merely raised her head; but at
+sight of her visitor, she was on her feet in an instant, the heap of
+muslin flowing in a blue cascade from her lap to the floor.
+
+"Madame!"
+
+"Hide me!" cried Maxine.
+
+"Madame!"
+
+"Lock the outer door! And if M. Blake should knock--"
+
+Jacqueline made no further comment. When a visitor's face is blanched
+and her limbs tremble as did those of Maxine, the Jacquelines of this
+world neither question nor hesitate. She went across the room without a
+word, and the key clicked in the lock.
+
+Maxine was standing in the middle of the room when Jacqueline returned;
+her body was still quivering, her nostrils fluttering, her fingers
+twisting and intertwisting in an excess of emotion; and at sight of the
+familiar little figure, words broke from her with the fierceness of a
+freed torrent.
+
+"Jacqueline! You see before you a mad woman! A mad woman--and one filled
+with the fear of her madness! They say the insane are mercifully
+oblivious. It is untrue!" She almost cried the last words and, turning,
+began a swift pacing of the room.
+
+"Madame!" Jacqueline caught her breath at her own daring. "Madame, you
+know at last, then, that he loves you?"
+
+Maxine stopped and her burning eyes fixed themselves upon the girl. This
+speech of Jacqueline's was a breach of all their former relations, but
+her brain had no room for pride. She was grappling with vital facts.
+
+"I know at last that he loves me?" she repeated, confusedly.
+
+"That he loves you, madame; that, unknowingly, he has always loved you.
+How else could he have treated Monsieur Max so sacredly--almost as he
+might have treated his own child?"
+
+But Maxine was not dealing in psychological subtleties.
+
+"Love!" she cried out. "Love! All the world is in a conspiracy over this
+love!"
+
+"Because love is the only real thing, madame."
+
+"Perhaps! But not the love of which you speak. The love of the soul, but
+not the love of the body!"
+
+"Madame, can one truly give the soul and refuse the body? Is not the
+instinct of love to give all?"
+
+The little Jacqueline spoke her truth with a frail confidence very
+touching to behold. She was a child of the people, her sole weapons
+against the world were a certain blonde beauty, a certain engaging
+youthfulness; but she looked Maxine steadfastly in the eyes, meeting
+the anger, the scorn, the fear compassed in her glance.
+
+"I know the world, madame; it is not a pretty place. When I was sixteen
+years old, I left my parents because it called to me--and in the
+distance its voice was pleasant. I left my home; I had lovers." She
+shrugged her shoulders with an extreme philosophy. "I tried
+everything--except love. Then--I met Lucien!" Her philosophy merged
+curiously to innocence, almost to the soft innocence of a child. "I ran
+away again, madame; I fled to Lize." She paused. "Poor Lize! She has a
+good heart! That was the night at the Bal Tabarin. That night Lucien
+opened his arms, and I flung myself into them."
+
+She spoke with perfect artlessness, ignorant of a world other than her
+own, innocent of a moral code other than that which she followed.
+
+Once again, as on the day she had first visited the _appartement_ and
+made acquaintance with the old painter and his wife, dread of some
+mysterious force filled Maxine. What marvellous power was this that
+could smile secure at poverty and oblivion--that could cast a halo of
+true emotion over a Bal Tabarin?
+
+"It is not true!" she cried out, in answer to herself.
+
+"Not true, madame? Why did I choose Lucien, who is nothing to look
+upon--who is an artist and penniless?"
+
+She ran across to Maxine; she caught her by the shoulders.
+
+"Oh, madame! How beautiful you are--and how blind! You bandage your
+eyes, and you tighten the knot. Oh, my God, if I could but open it for
+you!"
+
+"And reduce me to kisses and folly and tears?"
+
+"One may drift into heaven on a kiss!" Jacqueline's voice was like some
+precious metal, molten and warm.
+
+"Or one may slip into hell! Do you think I have not known what it is to
+kiss? It was from a kiss I fled to-night."
+
+Her tone was fervent as it was reckless, and Jacqueline stood aghast.
+The entire denial of love was comprehensible to her, if inexplicable;
+but her mind refused this problem of realization and rejection.
+
+"Madame--" she began, quickly, but she paused on the word, listening;
+the sound of Max's door opening and closing came distinctly to the ear,
+followed by a footstep descending the stairs. "Monsieur Édouard!" she
+whispered, finger on lip.
+
+Maxine, also, had heard, and a look of relief broke the tension of her
+expression.
+
+"He is gone. That is well!"
+
+Something in her look, in her voice startled Jacqueline anew.
+
+"Why do you speak like that, madame? Why do you look so cold?"
+
+"I am sane again, Jacqueline."
+
+"And Monsieur Édouard? Is he sane, I wonder? Is he cold? Oh, madame, he
+loves you!"
+
+"I am going to prove his love."
+
+"But, madame! Oh, madame, love isn't a matter of proving; it is an
+affair of giving--giving--giving with all the heart."
+
+"Trust me, Jacqueline! I understand. Good-night!"
+
+Jacqueline framed no word, but her eyes spoke many things.
+
+"Say good-night, Jacqueline! Forget that you have entertained a mad
+woman!"
+
+"Good-night, madame!"
+
+But the little Jacqueline, left alone, shook her head many times,
+leaving her heap of blue muslin neglected upon the floor.
+
+"Poor child!" she said softly to herself. "Poor child! Poor child!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+It was midway between the hours of nine and ten on the morning
+following. Max was standing in the studio; the easel, still bearing the
+portrait, had been pushed into a corner, its face to the wall;
+everywhere the warm sun fell upon a rigid severity of aspect, as though
+the room had instinctively been bared for the enacting of some scene.
+
+Max himself, in a subtle manner, struck the same note. The old painting
+blouse he usually wore had been discarded for the blue serge suit,
+severely masculine in aspect; his hair had been reduced to an usual
+order, his whole appearance was rigid, active, braced for the coming
+moment.
+
+And this moment arrived sooner even than anticipation had suggested. The
+clocks of Paris had barely clashed the half hour, when his strained ears
+caught a step upon the landing, a sharp knock upon the door, and before
+his brain could leap to fear or joy, Blake was in the _appartement_--in
+the room.
+
+There was no mistaking Blake's attitude as he swung into the boy's
+presence; it was patent in every movement, every glance, even had his
+white, strained face not testified to it. Coming into the studio, he
+affected nothing--neither apology, greeting, nor explanation; without
+preamble he came straight to the matter that possessed his mind.
+
+"You know of this?" He held out a square white envelope, bearing bold
+feminine handwriting--writing over which time and thought and labor had
+been expended in this same room ten hours earlier. "You know this?"
+
+"Yes." Max's tongue clicked dryly against the roof of his mouth, but his
+eyes bore the fire of Blake's scrutiny.
+
+"You know the contents?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"'Yes!' And you can stand there like a graven image. Do you realize it,
+at all? Do you grasp it?"
+
+"I--think I understand."
+
+"You think you understand?" Blake laughed in a manner that was not
+agreeable. "Understand, forsooth! You, who have never seen anything
+human or divine that you rate above your own little finger! Understand!"
+He laughed again, then suddenly his attitude changed. "But I haven't
+come here to waste words! You know that, your sister has left Paris?"
+
+Max nodded, finding no words.
+
+"She tells me here that she has gone--gone out of my life--that I am to
+forget her."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, that has only one meaning, when it comes from the one woman. I
+must know where she is."
+
+Max set his lips and studiously averted his face.
+
+"Come! Tell me where she is! Time counts."
+
+"I do not know."
+
+"I expected that! You're lying, of course; but when you're up against a
+man in my frame of mind, lies are poor ammunition. I don't ask you why
+she has gone--that's between her and me, that's my affair. But I must
+know where she is."
+
+"I cannot tell you."
+
+"You cannot refuse to tell me! Look here, boy, you've always seen my
+soft side, you don't believe there is a hard one. But we Irish can
+surprise you."
+
+Max had no physical fear, but he backed involuntarily before the menace
+in Blake's eyes.
+
+"I'm not lying to you, Ned. I cannot tell you, because I do not know. My
+sister Maxine has ceased to exist--for me, as much as for you."
+
+"Stop!" Blake stepped close to him and for an instant his hand was
+raised, but it fell at once to his side, and he laughed once more,
+harshly and self-consciously. "Don't play with me, boy! I've had a hard
+knock."
+
+"I'm not playing. It's true! It's true!" Dark eyes, with dark lines
+beneath them, stared at Blake, carrying conviction. "It's true! It's
+true! I do not know."
+
+"God, boy!" Blake faltered in his vehemence.
+
+"It's true!" said Max again.
+
+"True that she's gone--vanished? That I can't find her? That you can't
+find her? It isn't!"
+
+"It is."
+
+The blood rushed into Blake's face. For a moment he stood rigid and
+speechless, drinking in the fact; then his feelings broke bounds.
+
+"It's true? And you stand there, gaping! God, boy, rouse yourself!" He
+caught him by the shoulder and shook him. "Don't you know what this is?
+Have you never seen a man dealt a mortal blow?"
+
+"Love is not everything!" cried Max.
+
+"Not everything? Oh, you poor, damned little fool, how bitterly you'll
+retract that prating! Not everything? Isn't water everything in a
+parched desert? Isn't the sun everything to a frozen world?" He stopped,
+suddenly loosing the boy, casting him from him, a thing of no
+significance.
+
+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!"
+
+"Do you imagine I can live in this town--climb these steps--stand on
+that balcony, that breathes of her?"
+
+Max was leaning back against the window-frame. His brain seemed empty of
+blood, his heart seemed to pulse in a strange, unfamiliar fashion, while
+somewhere within his consciousness a tiny voice commanded him urgently
+to preserve his strength--not to betray himself.
+
+"You will go away?" he heard himself say. "Where will you go? To
+Ireland?"
+
+"To Ireland--or hell!" Blake walked to the door.
+
+"Then you are leaving me?"
+
+"You shall know where I am."
+
+"And if I should need you?"
+
+Blake made no answer; he did not even look back.
+
+"If--if she should need you?"
+
+He turned.
+
+"I will come to her at any moment--from anywhere."
+
+The door closed. He was gone, and Max stood leaning against the window.
+His blood still circulated oddly, and now the inner voice with its
+reiterated commands was rising, rising until it became the thunder of a
+sea that filled his ears, annihilating all other sounds. A swift, sharp
+terror smote him; he sought desperately to maintain his consciousness,
+but, breaking across the effort an icy breath crept up from nowhere,
+fanning his cheek, suspending all struggle, and a palpable darkness,
+like the darkness of brooding wings, closed in upon him, bringing
+oblivion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Who shall depict the soul of woman? As well essay to number the silk
+hairs on the moth's wing, or paint truly the hues in the blown bubble!
+The soul of woman dwells apart, subject to no laws, trammelled by no
+precedent; mysterious in its essence, strong in its very frailty, it
+passes through many phases to its ultimate end, working as all great
+agents work, silently and in the dark.
+
+With the passing of Blake, the spiritual Maxine entered upon a new
+phase--was arbitrarily forced into a new phase of existence. The passing
+of Blake was sudden, tremendous, devastating in its effect, leaving as
+consequences a moral blackness, a moral chaos.
+
+It was a new Maxine who wakened to the realization of facts; rather, it
+was a new Max, for it was the masculine, not the feminine ego that
+turned a set face to circumstance in the moment of desertion--that
+sedulously wrapped itself in the garment of pride spun and fashioned in
+happier hours.
+
+'Now is the test! Now is the time!' Max insisted, drowning by insistence
+the poignant cry of the heart; and to this watchword he marched against
+fate.
+
+With set purpose he faced life and its vexed questions in that bitter,
+precipitate moment. Again it was the beginning of things; but it was the
+rue Müller and not the Gare du Nord that was the scene of action; the
+May sun fell burning on the Parisian pavements, while the blood of the
+adventurer ran slow and cold. The illusions bred of the winter dawn had
+been dispersed by the light of day; life was no glad enterprise--no
+climbing of golden heights, but the barren crossing of a trackless
+region where no hand proffered guidance and false signs misled the weary
+eyes. One weapon alone was necessary in the pursuance of the gray
+journey--a sure command--a sure possession of one's self!
+
+This thought alone made harmony with the music of the past, and toward
+its thin sound his ears were strained. Comradeship had come and
+gone--love had come and gone--the fundamental idea that had lured him to
+Paris alone remained, stark, colorless, but recognizable!
+
+One must possess one's self! And to achieve this supreme good, one must
+close the senses and seal up the heart, and be as a creature already
+dead!
+
+To this profound end, Max locked himself in his studio and sat alone
+while the May morning waxed; to this profound end, moving as in a dream,
+he at last rose at midday and left the _appartement_ in quest of his
+customary meal. What that meal was to consist of--whether stones or
+bread--did not touch his brain, for his mind was solely exercised with
+wonder at the fact that his will could command the search for
+food--could compel his dry lips to the savorless duty of eating.
+
+As he left the little _café_, paying his score, he half expected to see
+his wonder reflected on the good face of madame the proprietress, and
+was curiously shocked to receive the usual cheerful smile, the usual
+cheerful 'good-day!' that took no heed of his heavy plight.
+
+It was that cheerful superficiality of Paris that can so delightfully
+mirror one's mood when the heart is light--that can ring so sadly hollow
+when the soul is sick. It cut Max with a bitter sharpness; and, like a
+man fleeing from his own shadow, he fled the shop.
+
+Outside in the dazzling glitter of the streets, the sun blinded him,
+accentuating the scorching pain of unshed tears; the very pavements
+seemed to rise up and sear him with their memories. Here in this very
+street Blake and he had strolled and smoked on many a night, wending
+homeward from the play or the opera, laughing, jesting, arguing as they
+paced arm-in-arm up and down before the sleeping shops. The thought
+stung him with an amazing sharpness, and he fled from it, as he had fled
+from the _café_ and its smiling proprietress.
+
+His descent upon Paris was a descent upon a region of beauty. The sense
+of summer lay like a bloom upon the flowers for sale at the street
+corners, and shimmered--a ribbon of silver sunlight--across the
+pale-blue sky. The trees in the grand boulevards shone in their green
+trappings; rainbow colors glinted in the shop windows; everywhere, save
+in the heart of Max, was fairness and youth and joy.
+
+Supremely conscious of himself, adrift and wretched, he passed through
+the crowds of people--passed from sun to shade, from shade to sun--with
+a hopeless eager haste that possessed no object save to outstrip his
+thoughts.
+
+It is a curious fact that, to the desponding, water has a magnetic call;
+without knowledge, almost without volition, his footsteps turned toward
+the river--that river which has so closely girdled Paris through all her
+varied life. Smooth and pale, it slipped secretly past its quays as Max
+approached, indifferent to the tragedies it concealed, as it was
+indifferent to the ardent life that ebbed and flowed across its many
+bridges. On its breast, the small, dark craft of the city nestled
+lazily; to right and left along its banks, the sun struck glints of gold
+and bronze from spire and monument; while, close against its sides, on
+the very parapet of its quays, there was in progress that quaint book
+traffic that strikes so intimate a note in the life of the quarter.
+
+It is a charming thought that in the heart of Paris--Paris, the
+pleasure city--there is time and space for the vender of old books to
+set out his wares, to lay them open to the kindly sky, to tempt the
+studious and idle alike to pause and dally and lose themselves in that
+most fascinating of all pursuits--- the search for the treasure that is
+never found. Max paused beside this row of tattered bookstalls, and
+quivered to the stab of a new pain. Scores of happy mornings he had
+wandered with Blake in this vicarious garden of delight, flitting from
+the books to the curio shops across the roadway, from the curios back
+again to the books, while Blake talked with his easy friendliness to the
+odd beings who bartered in this open market.
+
+It was pain inexpressible--it was loneliness made palpable--to stand by
+the tressel stalls and allow his eyes to rest upon the familiar
+merchandise; and for the third time in that black morning he fled from
+his own shadow--fled onward into the darker, older Paris--the Paris of
+tradition, where the church of Notre Dame frowns, silently scornful of
+those who disturb its peace.
+
+As he approached the great building, its sombre impressiveness fell upon
+his troubled spirit mercifully as its shadow fell across the blinding
+sunlight. He paused in the wide space that fronts the heavy doors, and
+caught his breath as the fugitive of old might have caught breath at
+sight of sanctuary.
+
+Here was a place of shade and magnitude--- a place untouched by memory!
+
+Blindly he moved toward the door, entered the church, walked up the
+aisle. Few sight-seers disturbed the sense of peace, for outside it was
+high noon and Paris was engrossed in the serious business of _déjeuner_;
+no service was in progress; all was still, all dim save where a taper
+of a lamp glowed before a shrine or the sun struck sharp through the
+splendor of stained glass.
+
+There are few churches--to some minds there is no other church--where
+the idea of the profound broods as it does in Notre Dame. The sense of
+dignity, the curious ancient scent compounded by time, the mystic colors
+of the great windows breathe of the infinite.
+
+Max, walking up the aisle, looked at the dark walls; Max--modern,
+critical--looked up at the wondrous rose window, and felt the
+overshadowing power of superhuman things. The modern world crumbled
+before the impassive silence, criticism found no challenge in its
+brooding spirit, for the mind cannot analyze what it cannot measure.
+
+Max subscribed to no creed; but, by a strange impulsion, born of dead
+ages, his eyes fell from the glowing window and turned to the high
+altar. He did not want to pray; he rebelled against the idea of
+supplication; but the circling thoughts within him concentrated
+suddenly, he clasped his hands with a clasp so fierce that it was pain.
+
+"Oh, God!" he said, under his breath. "God! God, let me possess myself!"
+And as if some chord had snapped, relieving the tension in his brain, he
+dropped upon his knees, as he had once done at the foot of his own
+staircase and, crouching against a pillar, wept like a lost child.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+The last days of August in Paris! A deadly oppression of heat; a
+brooding inertia that lay upon the city like a cloak!
+
+In the little _appartement_ every window stood gaping, thirsting for a
+draught of air; but no stir lightened the haze that weighed upon the
+atmosphere, no faintest hint of breeze ruffled the plantation shrubs,
+dark in their fulness of summer foliage. Stillness lay upon
+Montmartre--upon the rue Müller--most heavily of all, upon the home of
+Max.
+
+It was an obvious, weighty stillness unconnected with repose. It seemed
+as though the spirit of the place were fled, and that in its stead the
+vacant quiet of death reigned. In the _salon_ the empty hearth hurt the
+observer with its poignant suggestion of past comradeship, dead fires,
+long hours when the spring gales had whistled through the plantation and
+stories had been told and dreams woven to the spurt of blue and copper
+flames. The place had an aspect of desertion; no book lay thrown, face
+downward, upon chair or table; no flowers glowed against the white
+walls, though flowers were to be had for the asking in a land that
+teemed with summer fruitfulness.
+
+This was the _salon_; but in the studio the note of loss was still more
+sharply struck. Not because the easel, drawn into the full light,
+offered to the gaze a crude, unfinished study, nor yet because a laden
+palette was cast upon the floor to consort with tubes and brushes, but
+because the presiding genius of the place Max--Max the debonair, Max the
+adventurous--was seated on a chair before his canvas, a prey to black
+despair.
+
+Max was thinner. The great heat of August--or some more potent
+cause--had smoothed the curves from his youthful face, drawn the curled
+lips into an unfamiliar hardness and painted purple shadows beneath the
+eyes. Max had fought a long fight in the three months that had dwindled
+since the morning of Blake's going, and a long moral fight has full as
+many scars to leave behind as a battle of physical issues. The saddest
+human experience is to view alone the scenes one has viewed through
+other eyes--to walk solitary where one has walked in company--to have
+its particular barbed shaft aimed at one from every stick and stone that
+mark familiar ways. All this Max had known, wrapping himself in his
+pride, keeping long silence, fighting his absurd, brave fight.
+
+'The first days will be the worst!' he had assured himself, walking back
+from Notre Dame in the searching sun, heedless of who might notice his
+red eyes. 'The first days will be the worst!' And this formula he had
+repeated in the morning, standing uninspired and wretched before a blank
+canvas. Then had come Blake's first message--a note written from Sweden
+without care or comfort, importing nothing, indicating nothing beyond
+the place at which the writer might be found, and tears--torrents of
+tears--had testified to the fierce anticipation, the crushing
+disappointment for which it was responsible.
+
+He had sent no answer to the cold communication--no answer had been
+desired, and calling himself by every name contempt could coin, he had
+pushed forward along the lonely road, companioned by his work. But he
+himself had once said: 'One must come naked and whole to art, as one
+must come naked and whole to nature,' and he had spoken a truth. Art is
+no anodyne for a soul wounded in other fields, and Art closed arms to
+him when most he wooed her. He threw himself into work with pitiable
+vehemence in those first black weeks. By day, he haunted the galleries
+and attended classes like any art student; by night, he ranged the
+streets and _cafés_, seeking inspiration, returning to his lonely room
+to lie wakeful, fighting his ghosts, or else to sob himself to sleep.
+
+His theory of life had been amply proved. Blake had prated of the soul,
+but it had been the body he had desired! Again and again that thought
+had struck home, a savage spur goading him in daytime to a wild plying
+of his brushes, gripping him in the lonely darkness of the night-time
+until his sobs were suspended by their very poignancy and the scalding
+tears dried before they could fall.
+
+He saw darkly, he saw untruly, but the world is according to the
+beholder's vision, and in those sultry days, when summer waxed and Paris
+emptied, opening its gates to the foreigner, all the colors had receded
+from existence and he had tasted the lees of life.
+
+And now to-day it seemed that the climax had been reached. Seated idly
+before his canvas, the whole procession of his Paris life unwound before
+him--from the first tumultuous hour, when he had entered the Hôtel
+Railleux on fire for freedom, to this moment when, with dull resentful
+eyes, he confronted the sum of his labors--an unfinished, sorry study
+devoid of inspiration.
+
+He stared at the flat canvas--the rough outline of his picture--the
+reckless splashing on of color; and, abruptly, as if a hand had touched
+him, he sprang to his feet, making havoc among the paint tubes that
+strewed the floor, and turned summarily to the open window.
+
+It was after eight o'clock, but the hazy, unreal daylight of a summer
+evening made all things visible. He scanned the plantation, viewing it
+as if in some travesty of morning; he looked down upon the city,
+sleeping uneasily in preparation for the inevitable night of pleasure,
+and a sudden loathing of Paris shook him. It seemed as if some gauzy
+illusive garment had been lifted from a fair body and that his eyes,
+made free of the white limbs, had discerned a corpse.
+
+By a natural flight of ideas, the loathing of the city turned to
+loathing of himself--to an unsatiable desire for self-forgetfulness, for
+self-effacement. Solitude was no longer tenable, the walls of the
+_appartement_ seemed to close in about him, stifling--suffocating him.
+With a feverish movement, he turned from the window, picked up his hat
+and fled the room.
+
+On the landing he paused for a moment before the door of M. Cartel. He
+had paid many visits to M. Cartel under stress of circumstances similar
+to this, and invariably M. Cartel--and, moving in his shadow, the demure
+Jacqueline--had proffered a generous hospitality--talking to him of
+work, of politics, of Paris, but with a Frenchman's inimitable tact.
+
+For all this unobtrusive attention he had been silently grateful, but
+to-night he stood by the door hesitating; for long he hesitated,
+honestly fighting with his mood, but at last the desperation of the mood
+prevailed. Who could talk of work, when work was as an evil smell in the
+nostrils? Who could talk of politics, when the overthrow of nations
+would not stimulate the mind? He turned on his heel with a little
+exclamation, hopeless as it was cynical, and ran down the stairs with
+the gait of one whose destination concerns neither the world nor
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+Max swung down the Escalier de Sainte-Marie in as reckless a mood as
+ever possessed being of either sex. Nothing of the sweet Maxine was
+discernible in face or carriage; the boy predominated, but a boy
+possessed of a callousness that was pathetic seen hand-in-hand with
+youth.
+
+For the first time he was viewing Paris bereft of the glamour of
+romance; for the first time the Masque of Folly passed before him,
+licentious and unashamed. Many an hour, in days gone by, he had
+discussed with Blake this lighter side of many-sided Paris, and with
+Blake's wise and penetrating gaze he had seen it in true perspective;
+but to-night there was no sane interpreter to temper vision, to-night he
+was bitterly alone, and his mind, from long austerity, long
+concentration upon work, had swung with grievous suddenness to the
+opposing pole of thought. He had no purpose in his descent from the rue
+Müller, he had no desire of vice as an antidote to pain, but his
+loathing of Paris was drawing him to her with that morbid craving to
+hurt and rehurt his bruised soul that assails the artist in times of
+misery.
+
+The streets were quiet, for it was scarcely nine o'clock, and as yet the
+lethargy of the day lay heavy on the air. The heat and the accompanying
+laxity breathed an atmosphere of its own; every window of every house
+gaped, and behind the casements one caught visions of men and women
+negligent of attire and heedless of observation.
+
+Romance was dead! Of that supreme fact Max was very sure. A hard smile
+touched his lips, and hugging his cynicism, he went forward--crossing
+the Boulevard de Clichy, plunging downward into the darker regions of
+the rue des Martyrs and the rue Montmartre, where the lights of the
+boulevards are left behind, and the sight-seer is apt to look askance at
+the crude facts that the street lamps divulge to his curious eyes. To
+the boy, these corners had no terrors, for in his untarnished friendship
+with Blake all sides of life had been viewed in turn, as all topics had
+been discussed as component parts of a fascinatingly interesting world.
+To-night he went forward, mingling with the inhabitants of the district,
+revelling with morbid realism in the forbidding dinginess of their
+appearance. He was not of that quarter--that was patent to every rough
+who lounged outside a _café_ door, as it was patent to every slovenly
+woman who gave him a glance in passing. He was not of the quarter, but
+he was an artist--and a shabby one at that--so the men accorded him an
+indifferent shrug and the women a second glance.
+
+Forward he went, possessed by his morbidity--forward into the growing
+murkiness of environment until, association of ideas suddenly curbing
+impulse, he stopped before the door of a shabby _café_ bearing the
+fanciful appellation of the Café des Cerises-jumelles. Once, when bound
+upon a night exploration in this same region, he and Blake had stopped
+to smile at this odd name and wonder at its origin, and finally they had
+passed through the portal to find that the twin cherries smiled upon
+doubtful patrons. The vivid memory of that night smote him now as, drawn
+by some unquestioned influence, he again entered the _café_, passing
+through a species of bar to a long, low-ceiled eating-room set with
+small tables. How Blake had talked that night! How thoughtfully, how
+humanely and tolerantly he had judged their fellow-guests, as they sat
+at one of these tables, rubbing shoulders with the worst--or, as he had
+laughingly insisted, the best--of an odd fraternity!
+
+The recollection was keen as a knife when Max entered the eating-room,
+sat down and ordered a drink with the supreme indifference of
+disillusion. Six months ago he would have trembled to find himself alone
+in such a place; to-night he was beyond such a commonplace as fear.
+
+He smiled again cynically, emptied his glass and looked about him. His
+first experience of the place had been in the hours succeeding midnight,
+when the quarter hummed with its unsavory life; but now it was early,
+the lights were not yet at their fullest, the waiters had not as yet
+taken on their nocturnal air of briskness. In one corner three men were
+engrossed in a game of cards, in another a thin girl of fifteen sat with
+her arm round the neck of a boy scarce older than herself, whispering
+jests into his ear, at which they both laughed in coarse low murmurs,
+while in the middle of the room, with her back turned to him, a woman in
+a tight black dress and feathered hat was eating a meal of poached eggs.
+
+In a vague way, absorbed in his own thoughts, Max fell to studying this
+solitary woman, until something in her impassivity, something in the
+sphinx-like calm with which she went through the business of her meal,
+blent with his imaginings, and he suddenly found her placed beside Blake
+in the possession of his thoughts--an integral part of their joint
+lives. In a flash of memory the large black hat, the opulent figure took
+place within his consciousness and, answering to a new instinct, he rose
+and took an involuntary step in the woman's direction.
+
+She changed her position at sound of his approach, her large hat
+described new angles, and she looked back over her shoulder.
+
+"What!" she said aloud. "The little friend of Blake! But how droll!"
+
+She showed no surprise, she merely waved her hand to a chair facing her
+own.
+
+Max sat down; a hot and dirty waiter came forward languidly, and wine
+was ordered.
+
+Lize pushed aside the glass of green-tinted liquid that she had been
+consuming through a straw, and waited for what was to come. Max, looking
+at her in the crude light of a gas-jet, saw that her face was whiter,
+her eyes more hollow than when her wrath had fallen on him at the Bal
+Tabarin; also, he noted that a little dew of heat showed through the
+mask of powder on her face.
+
+Silence was maintained until the wine was brought; then she drank
+thirstily, laid down her empty glass and turned her eyes upon him.
+
+"You have parted with your friend, eh?"
+
+The surprise of the question was so sharp that it killed speculation. He
+did not ask how she had probed his secret--whether by mere intuition or
+through some feminine confidence of Jacqueline's. The fact of her
+knowledge swept him beyond the region of lucid thought; he accepted the
+situation as it was offered.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I have parted with my friend."
+
+"And why? He is a good boy--Blake!" She looked at him with her
+inscrutable eyes, and after many days he was conscious of the touch of
+human compassion. He did not analyze the woman's feelings--he did not
+even conjecture whether she knew him for boy or girl. All he
+comprehended was that out of this sordid atmosphere--out of the lethargy
+of the sultry night--some force had touched him, some force was drawing
+him back into the circle of human things. Strange indeed are the
+workings of the mind. He, who had shrunk with an agonized sensitiveness
+from the sympathy of M. Cartel--from the tender comprehension of the
+little Jacqueline--suddenly felt his reserve melt and break in presence
+of this woman of the boulevards with her air of impassive _ennui_.
+Theoretically, he knew life in all its harder aspects, and it called for
+no vivid imagination to trace the descent of the fresh _grisette_ of the
+_Quartier Latin_ to the creature who sought her meals in the Café des
+Cerises-jumelles, yet hers was the accepted compassion.
+
+"Madame!" he said, suddenly. "Madame, tell me! You knew him once?"
+
+Lize wiped the dew of heat from her forehead; emptied a second glass of
+wine. "A thousand years ago, _mon petit_, when the world was as young as
+you!"
+
+"In the _Quartier_?"
+
+"In the _Quartier_--on the Boul' Mich'--at Bulliers--" She stopped,
+falling into a dream; then, suddenly, from the farthest corner of the
+room, came the sound of a loud kiss, and the boy and girl at the distant
+table began to sing in unison--a ribald song, but instinct with the zest
+of life. Lize started, as though she had been struck.
+
+"They have it--youth!" she cried, with a jerk of her head toward the
+distant corner. "The world is for them!" Then her voice and her
+expression altered. She leaned across the table, until her face was
+close to Max.
+
+"What a little fool you are!" she said. "It is written in those eyes of
+yours--that see too little and see too much. Go home! Think of what I
+have said! He is a good boy--this Blake!"
+
+Max mechanically replenished her glass, and mechanically she drank; then
+she produced a little mirror and made good the ravages of the heat upon
+her face with the nonchalance of her kind; finally, she looked at the
+clock.
+
+"Come!" she said. "We go the same way."
+
+He rose obediently. He made no question as to her destination. He had
+come to drown himself in the sordidness of Paris and, behold, his heart
+was beating with a human quickness it had not known since the moment he
+held Blake's first letter unopened in his hand; his throat was dry, his
+eyes were smarting with the old, half-forgotten smart of unshed tears.
+
+He followed her with a strange docility as she passed out of the
+unsavory Cerises-jumelles into the close, ill-smelling street. In
+complete silence they walked through what seemed a nightmare world of
+unpleasant sights, unpleasant sounds, until across his dazed thoughts
+the familiar sense of Paris--the sense of the pleasure-chase--swept from
+the Boulevard de Clichy.
+
+Lize paused; he saw her fully in the brave illumination--the large black
+hat, the close-clad figure, the pallid face--and as he looked, she
+smiled unexpectedly and, putting out her hand, patted him on the
+shoulder.
+
+"Good-bye, _mon enfant_! Go home! Youth comes but once; and this
+Blake--he is a good boy!"
+
+Before he could answer, before he could return smile or touch, she was
+gone--absorbed into the maze of lights, and he was alone, to turn which
+way he would.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+The fifth floor was dim and silent, the door of M. Cartel's
+_appartement_ was closed; but Max, mounting the stairs two steps at a
+time, was not daunted by silence or lack of light. Max was once again a
+prey to impulse, and under the familiar tyranny, his blood burned--raced
+in his veins, sang in his cars.
+
+Without an instant's pause, he knocked on M. Cartel's door, and when his
+knock was answered by Jacqueline--fair and cool-looking, oven in the
+great heat--words rushed from him as they had been wont to rush when
+life was a gay affair.
+
+"You are alone, Jacqueline?"
+
+Jacqueline nodded quickly, comprehending a crisis.
+
+"Ah, I thank God!" He caught both her hands; he gave a little laugh that
+ended in a sob; he passed into the _appartement_, drawing her with him.
+
+"Oh, _la, la_!" she cried, hiding her emotion in flippancy, "you take my
+breath away."
+
+Max laughed again. "You see I've lost my own!"
+
+She gave a scornful, familiar toss of the head. "Do not be foolish! What
+has happened?"
+
+"I have made a discovery, Jacqueline. Youth comes but once!"
+
+"Indeed! You need not have left the rue Müller to learn that."
+
+"It comes but once, and while it is with me I am going to look it in the
+face." His words tumbled forth, pell-mell, and as he spoke he pulled
+her forcibly into the living-room.
+
+"Jacqueline, I am serious. I have been down in hell; I must see heaven,
+or my faith is lost."
+
+Jacqueline stood very still, making no effort to loose the hot clasp of
+his hands, but all at once her gaze concentrated piercingly.
+
+"You have sent for him!" she exclaimed.
+
+"I have! Oh, I may be weak, but listen! listen! In the old days when the
+world was religious and people observed Lent, there was always
+_Mi-Carême_, was there not? Well, I have fasted, and now I must feast."
+
+They gazed at each other; the one aglow with anticipation, the other
+with curiosity.
+
+"You have sent for him--at last?"
+
+"I have sent a telegram with these words: 'Meet me at midday on Tuesday
+in the Place de la Concorde.--MAXINE.'"
+
+"And this is Friday," said Jacqueline. "In four days' time you will see
+him again!"
+
+"Again!" Max spoke the word inaudibly.
+
+"And--when you meet?" Jacqueline's blue eyes were sharp as
+needle-points.
+
+Max colored to the temples. "_Ma chérie,_ I have not even thought! All I
+know is that youth comes but once, and that youth is courage. I have
+been a coward--I am going to be brave."
+
+"You are going--to confess?"
+
+Max said nothing, but with her woman's instinct for such things,
+Jacqueline read assent in the silence.
+
+"Then the end is assured! He will take you--with your will, or without!
+Monsieur Max, or the princess!"
+
+Max shook his head. "I do not think so. But that is outside the
+moment--that is the afterward. First there must be midday and the Place
+de la Concorde! First there must be my _Mi-Carême_--my hour!"
+
+"Ah!" whispered the little Jacqueline, "your hour!" And who shall say
+what memories glinted through her quick brain--what conjurings of the
+first waltz with M. Cartel at the Moulin de la Galette, and the last
+waltz at the Bal Tabarin, when she stepped through the tawdry doorway
+into her paradise? "Your hour! And where will it be spent--madame?"
+
+"Ah!" Max's eyes sought heaven or, in lieu of heaven, M. Cartel's
+ceiling; Max's hands freed Jacqueline's and flew out in ecstatic
+gesture. "Ah, that is for the gods to say, _chérie_! And the gods know
+best."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+Rapture gilded the world; rapture trembled on the air like the
+vibrations of a chord struck from some celestial harp. Coming as a
+divine gift, the first autumnal frost had lighted upon Paris; during the
+night fainting August had died, and with the dawn, golden September had
+been born to the city.
+
+Blake, waiting at the foot of the Cours la Reine, consumed with
+anticipation, drank in the freshness of the morning as though it were a
+draught of wine; Maxine, crossing the Place de la Concorde, lifted her
+face to the sky, striving to quiet her pulses, to cool her hot cheeks in
+the wash of gentle air.
+
+Her hour had arrived; none could hinder its approach, as none could mar
+its beauty. She scarcely recognized the earth upon which she trod; the
+fierce excitement, the melting tenderness of her moods warred until
+emotion ran riot and the sifting of her feelings became a task
+impossible.
+
+She passed the spot where, eight months earlier, Max had saluted the
+flag of France. Her heart leaped, her glance, flying before her,
+discovered Blake waiting at his appointed place, and all her wild
+sensations were suspended.
+
+The violently beating heart seemed to stop, the blood moved with a sick
+slowness in her veins, it seemed impossible that she should go forward,
+and yet, by the curious mechanism of the human machine, her feet
+carried her on until Blake's presence was tangible to all her
+senses--until suspense was engulfed in actuality, and joy was singing
+about her in the air, a song so triumphant, so penetrating that it
+drowned all whispering of doubt--all murmurs of to-morrow or of
+yesterday. Tears welled into her eyes, her hands went out to him.
+
+Standing in the full light, she was a tall, slight girl, fastidiously,
+if simply dressed--veiled, gloved, shod as befitted a woman of the
+world; and as he gazed on her, one thought possessed Blake. She, who
+typified all beauty--whose presence was a fragrance--had called to him,
+chosen him. All the romance stored up through generations welled within
+him; he would have died for her at that moment as enthusiastically as
+his ancestors had died for their faith. Catching her hands, he kissed
+them without a thought for passing glances.
+
+"Princess!"
+
+The sound of his voice went through her, she laughed to break the sob
+that caught her throat, she looked up, unashamed of the tears trembling
+on her lushes.
+
+"Monsieur Ned!"
+
+"Oh, why the 'monsieur'?"
+
+"Why the 'princess'?"
+
+They both smiled.
+
+"Maxine!"
+
+"_Mon ami! Mon cher ami_!" It thrilled her to the heart to say the
+words; she glanced at him half fearfully, then broke forth afresh, lest
+he should have time to think. "Ned, tell me! It is true--all this? I am
+not asleep? It is not a dream?"
+
+He pressed her hands. "Look round you! It is morning."
+
+Her lips trembled; she obeyed him, looking slowly from the cool sky to
+the tree-tops, where the heavy leaves were still damp with the night's
+frost.
+
+"Yes, it is morning!" she said. "We have all the day!"
+
+Watching her intently, he did not add, as would the common lover, "we
+have many days"; she seemed to him so beautiful, so naïve that her words
+must compass perfection.
+
+"We have all the day," he echoed. "How shall it be spent?"
+
+Then she turned to him, all graciousness, her young face lifted to the
+light. "Ah, you must decide! I do not wish even to think; the world is
+so--how do you say--enchanted?"
+
+He laughed in delight at her charming, pleading smile, her charming,
+pleading hesitation; he caught her mood with swift intuition.
+
+"That's it! The world is enchanted! Away behind us, is the Dreaming
+Wood. What do you say? Shall we go and seek the Sleeping Beauty?"
+
+She nodded silently. He was so perfectly the Blake of old--the Blake who
+understood.
+
+"Then the first thing is to find the magic coach! We must have nothing
+so mundane as a carriage drawn by horses. A magic coach that travels by
+itself!" He signalled to a passing automobile.
+
+"Drive to the Pré Catelan--and drive slowly!" he directed; he handed her
+to her seat with all the courtliness proper to the occasion, and they
+were off, wheeling up the long incline toward the Arc de Triomphe.
+
+They were silent while the chauffeur made a way through the many
+vehicles, past the crowds of pedestrians that infest the entrance to the
+Bois; but as the way grew clearer--as the spell of the trees, of the
+green vistas and glimpsed water began to weave itself--Maxine turned and
+laid her hand gently upon Blake's.
+
+"_Mon cher_! How good you are!"
+
+He started, thrilling at her touch.
+
+"My dearest! Good?"
+
+"In coming to me like this--"
+
+He caught her hand quickly. "Don't!" he said. "Don't! It isn't right---
+from you to me. You never doubted that I'd come? You knew I'd come?"
+
+"Yes; I knew."
+
+"Then that's all right!" He pressed her hand, he smiled, he reassured
+her by all the subtle, intangible ways known to lovers, and it was borne
+in upon her that he had altered, had grown mentally in his months of
+exile--that he was steadier, more certain of life or of himself, than
+when he had rushed tempestuously out of Max's studio. She pondered the
+change, without attempting to analyze it; a deep sense of rest possessed
+her, and she allowed her hand to lie passive in his until, all too soon,
+their cab swept round to the left, sped past a bank of greenery and drew
+up, with a creaking of brakes, before the restaurant of the Pré Catelan.
+
+Everywhere was light, silence and, best boon of all, an unexpected
+solitude--a solitude that invested the white building with a glamour of
+unreality and converted the slight-stemmed, moss-grown trees into
+spellbound sentinels.
+
+"Here is the Castle!" said Blake. "Look! Even the waiters doze, until we
+come to wake them!" He handed her to the ground, gave his orders to the
+chauffeur, and as the cab disappeared into some unseen region, they
+mounted the wide steps.
+
+"Monsieur desires _déjeuner_?" A sleek waiter disengaged himself from
+his brethren and came persuasively forward. At this early hour
+everything at the Pré Catelan was soft and soothing; later in the day
+things would alter, the service would be swift and unrestful, the swish
+of motor-cars and the hum of voices would break the spell, but at this
+hour of noon Paris, for some obscure reason, ignored the fruitful oasis
+of the Bois, and peace lay upon it like balm.
+
+"How charming! Oh, but how charming!" The exclamation was won from
+Maxine as her glance skimmed the palms, the glittering glasses and the
+white table-linen, and rested upon the spacious windows that convey the
+fascinating impression that one whole wall of the room has been removed,
+and that the ranged trees outside with their satiny green stems actually
+commune with the _gourmet_ as he eats his meal.
+
+"It's what you wanted, isn't it?" Blake's pleasure in her pleasure was
+patent. Every look, every gesture manifested it.
+
+"It is wonderful!" she said, gently.
+
+"Good! And now, what is the meal to be? Dragon's wings _en casserole_?
+Or Moonbeams _surprise_?"
+
+She laughed, and a flash of mischief stole through the glance she gave
+him.
+
+"What do you say, _mon ami_, to _poulet bonne femme_?"
+
+She watched for a gleam of remembrance, but he was too engrossed in the
+present to recall the trivialities of the past. He gave the order
+without a thought save to do her will.
+
+Delay was inevitable, and while the meal was in preparation they
+wandered into the open and visited the farm at the rear of the
+restaurant, conjuring the farm-like traditions of the place after the
+accepted custom--entering the sweet-smelling, shadowy cow-shed, stroking
+the sleek, soft-breathing cows, amusing themselves over the antics of
+the monkey chained beside the door.
+
+It was all very pleasant, the illusion of Arcadia was charmingly
+rendered, and they returned, happy and hungry, in search of their meal.
+That meal from its first morsel was raised above common things, for was
+it not the first time Blake had broken bread with Maxine? And what true
+lover ever forgets the rare moment when all the joys of intimacy are
+foreshadowed in the first serving of his lady with no matter what
+triviality of meat or bread, or water or wine? The points of the affair
+are so slight and yet so tremendous; for are they not sacramental--a
+typifying of things unspeakable?
+
+No intimate word was spoken, but at such times looks speak--more
+poignantly still, hearts speak; and their gay voices, as they laughed
+and talked and laughed again, held notes that the ear of the waiter
+never caught, and their silences vibrated with meaning.
+
+At last the meal was over; they rose and by one consent looked toward
+the spacious world outside.
+
+"Shall we go into the gardens?"
+
+Blake put the question; Maxine silently bent her head.
+
+Softly and assiduously their sleek waiter bowed them to the door, and
+they passed down the shallow steps into the slim shadows of the trees as
+they might have passed into some paradise fashioned for their special
+pleasure.
+
+It was a place--an hour--removed from the mundane world; passing out of
+the region of the trees, they came upon a shrubbery--a shrubbery that
+enclosed a lawn and flower-beds, and here, by grace of the gods, was a
+seat where they sat down side by side and gave their eyes to the beauty
+that encompassed them.
+
+It was an exotic beauty, yet a beauty of intense suggestion. Summer lay
+lavishly displayed in the shaven lawn, the burdened shrubs, the glory of
+flowers, but over her redundant loveliness autumn had spun an ethereal
+garment. No words could paint the subtlety of this sheath; it was
+neither mist nor shadow, it was a golden transparency spun from nature's
+loom--the bridal veil of the young season.
+
+"How exquisite!" whispered Maxine, as if a breath might break the
+spell. "Look at those yellow butterflies above the flowers! They are the
+only moving things."
+
+"It is the place of the Sleeping Beauty, sweet! It is the place of
+love." Blake took her hands again and kissed them; then, with a gentle,
+enveloping tenderness, he drew her to him, looking into her face, but
+not attempting to touch it.
+
+"My sweet, I have come back. What are you going to do with me?"
+
+She did not answer; she lay quite still within his arms, her half-closed
+eyes lingering on the garden--on the white roses, the clustering
+mignonette, the hovering yellow butterflies.
+
+"What are you going to do with me?"
+
+She lifted her eyes, dewy with the beauty of the world.
+
+"Wait!" she whispered. "Oh, wait!"
+
+"I have waited."
+
+"Ah, but a little longer!"
+
+"But my love, my dear one--"
+
+She stirred in his embrace; she turned with a swift passion of entreaty,
+putting her fingers across his mouth.
+
+"Ned! Ned! I know. But do this great thing for me! Shut your eyes and
+your ears. Forget yesterday, think there will be no to-morrow. Hold this
+one moment! Give me my one hour!"
+
+She pleaded as if for life, her body vibrating, her eyes beseeching him;
+and his answer was to press her hand harder against his lips, and to
+kiss it fervently. He gave no sign of the struggle within him--the doubt
+that encompassed him. Something had been demanded of him, and he gave it
+loyally.
+
+"There was no yesterday, there will be no to-morrow!" he said. "But
+to-day is ours!"
+
+It was the perfect word, spoken perfectly; Maxine's eyes drooped in
+supreme content, her lips curled like a pleased child's.
+
+"Ah, but God is good!" she said, and with a child's supreme sweetness,
+she lifted her face for his kiss.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+The hour was sped, the day past; night, with its dark wings, covered the
+eastern sky and, one by one, the stars came forth--stars that gleamed
+like new silver in the light sharpness of the September air.
+
+Having closed eyes to the world at the Pré Catelan, Maxine and Blake had
+lengthened the coil of their dream as the day waxed. Three o'clock had
+seen them driving into the heart of the Bois, and late afternoon had
+found them wandering under the formal, interlaced trees in the gardens
+of the Petit Trianon. At Versailles they dined, falling a little silent
+over their meal, for neither could longer hold at bay the sense that
+events impended--that all paths, however devious, however touched by the
+enchanter's wand, lead back by an unalterable law to the world of
+realities.
+
+With an unspoken anxiety they clung to the last moment of their meal;
+and when coffee had been partaken of, Maxine demanded yet another cup
+and, resting her elbows on the table, took her face between her hands.
+
+"Ned! Will you not offer me a cigarette?"
+
+He was all confusion at seeming remiss.
+
+"My dear one! A thousand pardons! I did not think--"
+
+"--That I smoked? Are you disappointed?"
+
+He smiled. "It is one charm the more--if there is room for one."
+
+He handed her a cigarette and lighted a match, his eyes resting upon
+her as she drew in the first breath of smoke with a quaint seriousness
+that smote him with a thought of the boy.
+
+"Dearest," he said, suddenly, "I have been so happy to-day that I have
+thought of no one but ourselves, and now, all at once--"
+
+Her eyes flashed up to his; she divined his thought, and it was as
+though she put forth all her strength to ward off a physical danger.
+
+"Oh, _mon cher_, and was it not your day--our day? Would you have marred
+it with other thoughts?"
+
+"No; but yet--"
+
+"No! No!" She put out her hand, she pleaded with eyes and lips and
+voice. "Look! Until this little cigarette is burned out!" She held up
+the glowing tip. "When that is over, our day is over; then we return to
+the world--but not until then. Is it--what do you say--a bargain?" Her
+white teeth flashed, her glance flashed with the brightness of tears,
+her fingers rested for a second upon his.
+
+The restaurant was practically empty; a few summer tourists were dining
+at tables close to the door, but Blake had chosen the farthest, dimmest
+corner and there they sat in semi-isolation, living the last moments of
+their day with an intensity that neither dared to express and that each
+was conscious of with every beat of the heart.
+
+Maxine laughed as she drew her second puff of smoke, but her laugh had a
+nervous thinness. Blake filled their liqueur-glasses, but his gesture
+was uneven and a little of the brandy spilled upon the cloth.
+
+"A libation to the gods!" he said. "May they smile upon us!" He lifted
+his glass and emptied it.
+
+Maxine forced a smile. "The gods know best!" she said, but as she raised
+her glass, her hand, also, trembled.
+
+But Blake ignored her perturbation, as she ignored his. The coming
+ordeal lay stark across their path, but neither would look upon it,
+neither would see beyond the tip of Maxine's cigarette--the tiny beacon,
+consuming even as it gave light!
+
+A silence fell--a silence of full five minutes--then Blake, yielding
+once more to the craving for the solace of contact, put his hand over
+hers.
+
+"Dear one, I know nothing of what is coming, but that I am utterly in
+your hands. But let me say one thing. To-day has been heaven--the
+golden, the seventh heaven!"
+
+She said nothing, she did not meet his eyes, but her cold fingers
+clasped his convulsively, and two tears fell hot upon their hands.
+
+That was all; that was the sum of their expression. No other word was
+spoken. They sat silent, watching the cigarette burn itself out between
+Maxine's fingers.
+
+She held it to the very last, then dropped it into her finger-bowl and
+rose.
+
+"Now, _mon cher_!" In the dim light she looked very tall and slight and
+seemed possessed of a curious dignity. All the animation had left her
+face, beneath the eyes were shadows, and in the eyes a tragic
+sadness--the sadness that the soul creates for itself.
+
+Blake rose also and, side by side, very quietly, they left the
+restaurant. In the street outside, the cab that had assisted in the
+day's adventures still waited their pleasure.
+
+He handed her to her place and paused, his foot upon the step.
+
+"And now, liege lady--where?"
+
+She looked at him gravely and answered without a tremor, "To Max's
+studio."
+
+Surprise--if surprise touched him--showed not at all upon his face. He
+gave the order quietly and explicitly, and took his place beside her.
+
+Down the broad street of Versailles they wheeled, but both were too
+preoccupied to see the lurking ghosts of a past _régime_ that lie so
+palpably in the shadows, and presently Blake's hand found hers once
+more.
+
+"You are cold?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+Through the cool night they drove, under the jewelled cloak of the sky,
+rushing forward toward Paris as Max had once rushed in the mysterious
+north express.
+
+Blake did not speak or move again until the city was close about them;
+then, with a gesture that startled her by its unexpectedness, he drew
+from his hand the signet ring he always wore--a ring familiar to Max as
+the stones of the rue Müller--and slipped it over her third finger.
+
+"Oh, Ned!" She started as the ring slipped into place, and her voice
+trembled with fear and superstition.
+
+He pressed her hand. "Don't refuse it! The ring is the emblem of the
+eternal, and all my thoughts for you belong to eternity."
+
+No more was said; they skimmed through the familiar ways until Maxine
+could have cried aloud for grace, and at last they stopped at the corner
+of the rue André de Sarte.
+
+She stood aside as Blake dismissed the cab, she knew that had speech
+been demanded of her then she could not have brought forth a word, so
+parched were her lips, so impotent her tongue.
+
+Her ordeal confronted her; no human power could eliminate it now. To her
+was the disentangling of knotted threads, the sorting of the colors in
+the scheme of things. She averted her face from Blake as they mounted
+the Escalier de Sainte-Marie, and her hand clung for support to the iron
+railing.
+
+Familiar to the point of agony was the open doorway, the dark hall of
+the house in the rue Müller. Side by side they entered; side by side,
+and in complete silence, they made the ascent of the stairs, each step
+of which was heavy with memories.
+
+On the fifth floor she went forward and opened the door of Max's
+_appartement_. Within, all was dark and quiet, and Blake, loyally
+following her, passed without comment through the tiny hall, on into the
+little _salon_ where the light from the brilliant sky made visible the
+pathetically familiar objects--the old copper vessels, the dower chest,
+the leathern arm-chair.
+
+This leather chair stood like a faithful sentinel close to the open
+window, and as his eyes rested on it he was conscious of a pained
+contraction of the heart, for it stood exactly where it had stood when
+last he watched the stars and rambled through his dreams and ideals,
+with the boy for listener. The thought came quick and sharp, goading him
+as many a puzzled thought had goaded him in his months of solitude, and
+as at Versailles, he turned to Maxine, a question on his lips.
+
+But again she checked that question. Stepping through the shadows, she
+drew him across the room toward the window. Reaching the old chair, she
+touched his shoulder, gently compelling him to sit down.
+
+"Ned," she said, and to her own ears the word sounded infinitely far
+away. "I seem to you very mad. But you have a great patience. Will you
+be patient a little longer?"
+
+She had withdrawn behind the chair, laying both her hands upon his
+shoulders, and as she spoke her voice shook in an unconquerable
+nervousness, her whole body shook.
+
+"My sweet!" He turned quickly and looked up at her. "What is all this?
+Why are you torturing yourself? For God's sake, let us be frank with
+each other--"
+
+But she pressed his shoulders convulsively. "Wait! wait! It is only a
+little moment now. I implore you to wait!"
+
+He sank back, and as in a dream felt her fingers release their hold and
+heard her move gently back across the room; then, overwhelmed by the
+burden of dread that oppressed him, he leaned forward, bowing his face
+upon his hands.
+
+Minutes passed--how few, how many, he made no attempt to reckon--then
+again the hushed steps sounded behind him, the sense of a gracious
+presence made itself felt.
+
+Instinctively he attempted to rise, but, as before, Maxine's hands were
+laid upon his shoulders, pressing him back into his seat. He saw her
+hands in the starlight--saw the glint of his own ring.
+
+"Ned!"
+
+"Dear one?"
+
+"It is dim, here in this room, but you know me? Your soul sees me?" Her
+voice was shaking, her words sobbed like notes upon an instrument strung
+to breaking pitch.
+
+"My dear one! My dear one!" His voice, too, was sharp and pained; he
+strove to turn in his chair, but she restrained him.
+
+"No! No! Say it without looking. You know me? I am Maxine?"
+
+"Of course you are Maxine!"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+It was a short, swift sound like the sobbing breath of a spent runner.
+It spoke a thousand things, and with its vibrations trembling upon her
+lips, Maxine came round the chair and Blake, looking up, saw Max--Max
+of old, Max of the careless clothes, the clipped waving locks.
+
+It is in moments grotesque or supreme that men show themselves. He
+sprang to his feet; he stared at the apparition until his eyes grew
+wide, but all he said was 'God!' very softly to himself. 'God!' And then
+again, 'God!'
+
+It was Maxine who opened the flood-gates of emotion; Maxine who, with
+wild gesture and broken voice, dressed the situation in words.
+
+"Now it is over! Now it is finished--the whole foolish play! Now you
+have your sight--and your liberty to hate me! Hate me! Hate me! I am
+waiting."
+
+"God!" whispered Blake again, not hearing her, piecing his thoughts
+together as a waking man tries to piece a dream. 'God!'
+
+The reiteration tortured her. She suddenly caught his arm, forcing him
+into contact with her. "Do not speak to yourself!" she cried. "Speak to
+me! Say all you think! Hate me! Hate me!"
+
+Then at last he broke through the confusion of his mind, startling her
+as such men will always startle women by their innate singleness of
+thought.
+
+"Hate you?" he said. "Why, in God's name, should I hate you?"
+
+"Because it is right and just."
+
+"That I should hate you, because I have been a fool? I do not see that."
+
+"But, Ned!" she cried; then, suddenly, at its sharpest, her voice broke;
+she threw herself upon her knees beside the chair and sobbed.
+
+And then it was that Blake showed himself. Kneeling down beside her, he
+put both arms about the boyish figure and, holding it close, poured
+forth--not questions, not reproaches, not protestations--but a stream
+of compassion.
+
+"Poor child! Poor child! Poor child! What a fool I've been! What a brute
+I've been!"
+
+But Maxine sobbed passionately, shrinking away from him, as though his
+touch were pain.
+
+"My child! My child! How foolish I have been! But how foolish you have
+been, too--how sweetly foolish! You gave with one hand and took away
+with the other. But now it is all over. Now you are going to give with
+both hands--- I am to have my friend and my love as well. It is very
+wonderful. Oh, sweet, don't fret! Don't fret! See how simple it all is!"
+
+But Maxine's bitter crying went on, until at last it frightened him.
+
+"Maxine, don't! Don't, for God's sake! Why should you cry like this?
+What is it, when all's said and done, but a point of view? And a point
+of view is adjusted much more quickly than you think. At first I thought
+the earth was reeling round me, but now I know that 'twas only my own
+brain that reeled; and I know, too, that subconsciously I must always
+have recognized you in Max--for I never treated Max as a common boy, did
+I? Did I, now? I always had a queer--a queer respect for him. Dear one,
+see it with me! Try to see it with me?"
+
+His appeal was pathetic; it was he who was the culprit--he who
+extenuated and pleaded. The position struck Maxine, wounding her like a
+knife.
+
+"Oh, don't!" she cried in her own turn. "Don't, for the sake of God!"
+
+"But why? Why? My sweet! My love! My little friend! Max--Maxine!"
+
+It was not to be borne. She wrenched herself free and sprang to her
+feet, confronting him with a pale face down which the tears streamed.
+
+"Because I am not your love! I am not your friend! I am not your
+Max--or your Maxine!"
+
+Swift as she, he was on his feet, his bearing changed, his manhood
+recognizing the challenge in her voice, his instinct of possession alive
+to combat it.
+
+"Not mine?" he said; and to Maxine, standing white and frail before him,
+the words seemed to have all the significance of life itself. Now at
+last they confronted each other--man and woman; now at last the issue in
+the war of sex was to be put to the test.
+
+She had always known that this moment would arrive--always known that
+she would meet it in some such manner as she was meeting it now.
+
+"Not mine?" Blake said again.
+
+She shook her head, throwing back her shoulders, clasping her hands
+behind her, unconsciously taking on the attitude of defiance.
+
+"And why not?"
+
+It was curt, this question, as man's vital questions ever are; it was an
+onslaught that clove to the heart of things.
+
+She trembled for an instant, then met his eyes.
+
+"Because I will belong to no one. I must possess myself."
+
+He stared at her.
+
+"But it is not given to any one to possess himself! How can you separate
+an atom from the universal mass?"
+
+"An atom may detach itself--"
+
+"And fall into space! Is that self-possession? But, my God, are we going
+to split hairs? Maxine! Maxine!" He came close to her and put out his
+arms, but with a fierce gesture she evaded him; then, as swiftly, caught
+his hand.
+
+"Oh, Ned! Oh, Ned! Can't you see?"
+
+"No!" said Blake, simply. "I cannot."
+
+"Listen! Then listen! I know myself for an individual--for a definite
+entity; I know that here--here, within me"--she struck her breast--"I
+have power--power to think--power to achieve. And how do you think that
+power is to be developed?" She paused, looking at him with burning eyes.
+"Not by the giving of my soul into bondage--not by the submerging of
+myself in another being. That night in Petersburg I saw my way--the hard
+way, the lonely way! Oh, Ned!" She stopped again, searching his face,
+but his face was pale and immobile--curiously, unnaturally immobile.
+
+With a passionate gesture, she flung his hand from her. "Oh, it is so
+cruel! Can't you see? Can't you understand? I left Russia to make a new
+life; I made myself a man, not for a whim, but as a symbol. Sex is only
+an accident, but the world has made man the independent creature--and I
+desired independence. Sex is only an accident. Mentally, I am as good a
+man as you are."
+
+"Ten times a better man," said Blake, startingly. "But not near so good
+a woman. For I know the highest thing--and you do not."
+
+"The highest thing?"
+
+"Love."
+
+"Ah!" She threw up her hands in despair and walked to the window,
+looking up blankly at the stars. Then, suddenly, she spoke again,
+tossing her words back into the room.
+
+"I suppose you think I am happy in all this?"
+
+He was silent.
+
+"I suppose you think I find this heaven?"
+
+At last he answered. He came across to her; he stood looking at her with
+his strange new expression of inscrutability.
+
+"Oh, Maxine!" he said, "why must you misjudge me? Little Maxine, who
+could be taken in my arms this minute and carried away to my castle,
+like a princess of long ago--but who would break her heart over the
+bondage! I haven't much, dear one, to justify my existence--but the gods
+have given me intuition. I do not think you are in heaven."
+
+He waited a moment, while in the sky above them the stars looked down
+impartially upon the white domes of the church and the beacons of
+pleasure in the city below.
+
+"Maxine! Shall I say the things for you that you want to say?"
+
+She bent her head.
+
+"Well, first of all, God help us, the world is a terrible tangle; and
+then you have a strange soul that has never yet half revealed itself.
+You sent me away from you because you feared love; you called me back
+because you feared your fear--"
+
+"No! No! You are reasoning now, not justifying! You are entrapping me!"
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"Yes, and I refuse to be entrapped! I know love--I know all the specious
+things that love can say; the talk of independence, the talk of
+equality! But I know the reality, too. The reality is the absolute
+annihilation of the woman--the absolute merging of her identity."
+
+"So that is love?"
+
+"That is love."
+
+He stood looking at her with a long profound look of deep restraint, of
+great sadness.
+
+"Maxine," he said, at last, "you have many gifts--a high intelligence, a
+young body, a strong soul, but in the matter of love you are a little
+child. To you, love is barter and exchange; but love is not that. Love
+is nothing but a giving--an exhaustless giving of one's very best."
+
+She tried to laugh. "I understand! I should give!"
+
+"No, sweet, you should not. You cannot know the privileges of love, for
+you do not know love."
+
+"Oh, Ned! How cruel! How cruel!"
+
+"You do not know love," he spoke, very gently, without any bitterness,
+"and I do know it; for it has grown in me, day by day, in these long
+months away from you. I am not to be praised, any more than you are to
+be blamed. But I do love you--with my heart and my soul--with my life
+and my strength. I would die for you, if dying would help you; and as it
+won't, I will do the harder thing--live for you."
+
+Her lips were parted, but they uttered no sound; her eyes, dark with
+thought, searched his face.
+
+"Oh, Maxine!" He caught her hand. "How low you have rated me--to think I
+would wrest you from yourself! Is it my place to make life harder for
+you?"
+
+Still she gazed at him. "I do not understand," she said, in a frightened
+whisper.
+
+"Never mind, sweet! It doesn't matter if you never understand. Just give
+me credit for one saving grace."
+
+He spoke lightly, as men speak when they are bankrupt of hope, then with
+a sudden breaking of his stoicism, he caught her in his arms, straining
+her close, kissing her mouth, talking incoherently to himself.
+
+"Oh, Maxine! Little faun of the green groves! If you could know! But
+what am I that I should possess the kingdom of heaven?"
+
+His ecstasy frightened her; she struggled to free herself.
+
+"What is it?" she asked. "What is it?"
+
+"Just love--no more, no less! Good-bye! Take your life--make it what you
+will; but know always that one man at least has seen heaven in your
+eyes." Again he held her to him, his whole life seeming to flow out
+upon his thoughts and to envelop her, then his arms relaxed and very
+soberly he took, first one of her hands, and then the other, kissing
+each in turn.
+
+"Maxine!"
+
+"Ned!" The word faltered on her lips.
+
+"That's right!" he whispered. "I only wanted you to say my name.
+Good-bye now! Don't fret for me! After all, everything is as it should
+be."
+
+She stood before him, the conqueror. All preconceptions had been
+scattered; she had not even won her laurels, they had been placed at her
+feet; and all the pomp and circumstance she could summon to her
+triumphing was a white face, a drooping head, and speechless lips.
+
+"Good-bye, Maxine!" The words cried for response, and by a supreme
+effort she summoned her voice from some far region.
+
+"Good-bye!"
+
+He did not kiss her hand again, but bending his head, he solemnly kissed
+his own ring, lying cold upon her finger.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+All was finished. Mystery was at an end. The pilgrim's staff had been
+placed in Maxine's hand, her feet set toward the great white road. She
+leaned back against the window of the _salon_ and her mental eyes
+scanned that road--the coveted road of freedom, the way of splendid
+isolation--and in a vague, dumb fashion she wondered why the whiteness
+that had gleamed like snow in the distance should take on the hue of
+dust seen at close quarters. She wondered why she should feel so
+absolutely numbed--why life, with its exuberances of joy and sorrow,
+should suddenly have receded from her as a tide recedes.
+
+There had been no battle; hers was a bloodless victory. Fate had been
+exquisitely kind, as is Fate's way when she would be ironical. Maxine
+could call up no cause for grief or for resentment, no cause even for
+remorse. She had confessed herself; she had been shriven and blessed,
+and bade to go her way!
+
+Passing in review these phantom speculations, her eyes suddenly refused
+the vision of the mythical white road, stretching away in
+brain-sickening length, and her physical sight caught at the familiar
+picture revealed by the balcony--the thrice-known, thrice-loved
+shrubbery, where already the glossy holly leaves were stirring under
+September's fingers, whispering one to the other of fine cold autumn
+hours when gales would sweep the heights, bringing death to their
+frailer brethren, while they themselves nestled snug and strong,
+laughing at the elements. She traced the familiar outline of these
+sturdy bushes, and her perfect triumph seemed like a winding sheet about
+her limbs. She was above the world, removed from care, and all she knew
+was that she would have given her heart for one moment of the hot human
+grief that had seared her not four months ago.
+
+She turned from the trees, turned from the stars and moved back into the
+unlighted room. All was quiet and dim; she stumbled against the
+arm-chair and recoiled as though a friend had touched her inopportunely;
+then she passed blindly onward, finding the little hall, finding the
+outer door with groping hands.
+
+Outside was a deeper darkness, for here no starlight penetrated; but M.
+Cartel's door was ajar, and through the opening came a streak of
+lamplight and the hum of voices.
+
+Pausing, Maxine caught the deep, humorous tones of M. Cartel himself,
+broken first by an unknown voice, quick, tense, typically Parisian, then
+by the light laugh of Jacqueline.
+
+In her cruel perfection of triumph, she had no need to fear these
+voices--these little evidences of sociability. They could not hurt her,
+for was she not impervious to pain?
+
+Another laugh, full and contented, came to her ear, then the opening of
+the piano and the masterful striking of a chord.
+
+A murmur of pleasure gave evidence of an audience, and instinctively she
+moved forward, as a wanderer on a dark night draws near to a lighted
+dwelling. Gaining the door, she softly pushed it open, as M. Cartel
+executed a _roulade_, which melted into a brilliant piece of
+improvization.
+
+A bright lamp shone in the hall; but beyond, the open door of the
+living-room displayed a half-lighted interior, with a handful of people
+grouped about it. Foremost figure was M. Cartel seated at his music
+within a radius of yellow light shed by four candles, while, beside him,
+a tall thin boy, and, behind him, Jacqueline seemed enclosed in a
+secondary, fainter circle of luminance. The rest of the room was in
+shadow, and as Maxine entered, she scarcely noticed the three other
+occupants--two men and a woman--who sat in a row close to the door,
+their backs to the wall.
+
+No one commented upon her entry. The little Jacqueline glanced round
+once, smiling a quick welcome, but returned immediately to her
+contemplation of M. Cartel; the younger of the two men by the door--an
+Italian--paused in the lighting of a cigarette, but his companion--an
+old Polish Jew with a classic head and long, gray beard--retained his
+attitude of rapt attention, while the woman, who sat a little apart, and
+whose large black hat hid her face, made no sign.
+
+Treading softly, Maxine entered and crept into a seat opposite the trio,
+realizing, with an indifference that surprised her, that the woman was
+Lize of the Bal Tabarin and the Café des Cerises-jumelles.
+
+The music poured forth, a glittering stream of sound. The young Italian
+lighted cigarette after cigarette, smoking furiously and beating
+soundless time upon the floor with his foot, the old Pole sat lost in an
+emotional dream, tears gathering slowly in his eyes and trickling
+unheeded down his cheeks, while Lize, in her moveless isolation, gazed
+with fixed intensity at the wall above Maxine's head.
+
+Time passed; time seemed of small account in that atmosphere--as the
+outside world was of small account. Not one of the little audience
+questioned how the other lived. It mattered nothing that in other hours
+the artistic fingers of the young Italian were employed in the
+manufacture of fraudulent antiques--that the enthusiast by the piano
+wrote humorous songs at a starvation wage for an unsuccessful
+_comique_--that Lize, finding humanity foolish, made profit of its
+folly! 'What would you?' they would have asked with a shrug. 'One must
+live!' For the rest, there were moments such as this--moments when the
+artist was paramount in each of them--when pure enthusiasm made them
+children again!
+
+M. Cartel played on. He had forsaken improvization now, and was
+interpreting magnificently; occasionally the boy by the piano threw up
+his hands ecstatically, muttering incoherently to himself; occasionally
+the young Italian broke silence by a sharp, irresistible '_Brava_'; but
+for the most part respectful silence spoke the intensity of the spell.
+
+Then at last Maxine, sitting in her corner, saw Jacqueline bend over the
+shoulder of M. Cartel, her hair shining like sun-rays in the
+candlelight--saw her whisper in his ear--saw him look up and nod in
+abrupt acquiescence, and saw his square-tipped fingers lift for an
+instant from the keys and descend again to a series of new chords.
+
+A little murmur of interest passed over the listeners. The Italian threw
+away his half-smoked cigarette and lighted another, the Pole smiled
+tolerantly with half-closed eyes, as the old smile at the vagaries of
+the young, and Maxine in her shadowed seat felt her heart leap
+tumultuously as the little Jacqueline, her arm naïvely round the
+shoulder of M. Cartel, her head thrown back, began to sing the first
+lines of the duet in _Louise_:
+
+    'Depuis le jour où je me suis donnée, toute fleurie semble ma
+        destinée.
+    Je crois rêver sous un ciel de féerie, l'âme encore grisée de
+        ton premier baiser!'
+
+And M. Cartel, lifting his head, broke in with the single electric cry
+of Julian the lover:
+
+    'Louise!'
+
+Then, as if answering to the personal note, Jacqueline melted into
+Louise's sweet admission of absolute surrender:
+
+    'Quelle belle vie!
+    Ah, je suis heureuse! trop heureuse ... et je tremble délicieusement,
+    Au souvenir charmant du premier jour d'amour!'
+
+The effect was instant. The youth by the piano smiled radiantly and
+nodded in vehement approval; the young Italian puffed fiercely at his
+cigarette; a flash of light crossed Lize's gaze, causing it to
+concentrate.
+
+Jacqueline had no extraordinary voice, but music was native to her, and
+she sang as birds sing, with a true light sweetness exquisite to the
+ear:
+
+    'Souvenir charmant du premier jour d'amour!'
+
+The declaration came to the listeners with a pure sincerity, it abounded
+in simplicity, in youthfulness, in conviction. A quiver ran through
+Maxine, her numbed senses vibrated. By an acute intuition she realized
+the composer's meaning; more, she appreciated the thrill called up in
+the soul of M. Cartel. Her ears were strained to catch each note, each
+phrase, with an intentness that astonished her; it suddenly appeared
+that out of all the world, one thing alone was of significance--the
+close following of this song, the apprehending of its purpose.
+
+    'Souvenir charmant du premier jour d'amour!'
+
+The first night with Blake upon the balcony sprang back to memory, and
+with it the wonder, the delight, the illimitable sense of kinship with
+the universe. Again the spiritual sense lived in her, not warring with
+the physical, but justifying, completing it. She sat upright
+against the wall, suddenly fearful of this overwhelming mental
+disturbance--fighting the cloud of memory almost as one fights a bodily
+faintness.
+
+The music grew in meaning; she heard Julian's ardent question:
+
+    'Tu ne regrette rien?'
+
+and Louise's triumphant answer:
+
+    'Rien!'
+
+The words, simply human, divinely just, assailed her ears, and by light
+of the intuition--the superconsciousness that was dominating her--the
+whole truth of this confessed love poured in upon her soul. She saw the
+halo about the head of the little singer, she appreciated the sublime
+giving of herself that cried in the music of the song. It was no mere
+sentiment on the lips of this fair child, it was the proclamation of a
+tremendous fact.
+
+She leaned back against the wall, lips set, hands clasped. She clung to
+the rock of her theories like a drowning man, and like the drowning man
+she realized the imminence of the inundation that threatened her.
+
+The music swelled, and now it was not Jacqueline alone who sang; M.
+Cartel's voice rose, completing, perfecting the higher feminine notes,
+blending with them as the music of wind or running water might harmonize
+with the singing of a bird. It was not art but nature that was at work
+in the words:
+
+    'Nous sommes tous les amants, fidèles a leur serment! Ah, le divin
+        roman!
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Nous sommes toutes les âmes que brûle le sainte flamme du désire!
+      Ah, la parole idéale dont s'enivre mon corps tout entier!
+      Dis encore ta chanson de délice! Ta chanson victorieuse, ta chanson
+        de printemps!'
+
+The duet wore on, enthralling in its closeness to common human life,
+with its touches of tears, its touches of laughter, its hints of
+tenderness and bursts of passion. Not one face but had softened in
+comprehension as Louise painted the picture of her home--of the gentle
+father, the scolding mother, the little daily frictions that wear
+patience thin; not one heart but had leaped when passion broke a way
+through the song, mounting, mounting as upon wings, until Louise in her
+ecstasy of love and joy and incredulity exclaims:
+
+    'C'est le paradis! C'est une féerie!'
+
+And Julian answers:
+
+    'Non! C'est la vie! l'Eternelle, la toute puissante vie!'
+
+It was the supreme, the psychological moment! The duet continued, but
+Maxine heard no further words. They echoed and re-echoed in her brain,
+they obsessed her, lifting her to a sublimal state.
+
+Across the room she saw the Italian throw away his cigarette and forget
+to replace it; she saw Lize lean forward breathlessly, and she knew that
+in fancy she was back in the Quartier Latin when life was young--when
+love laughed, and her hair was wreathed with vine leaves. She saw her at
+last as a living woman--felt the grape-juice run down her neck--felt the
+kisses of the Jacque Aujet who was ten years dead!
+
+This, then, was the sum of life! Not the holding of fair things, but the
+giving of them!
+
+She rose up; her limbs shook, but she paid no heed to physical strength
+or weakness; she was on a plane where the soul moved free, regardless of
+mortal needs. Neither Max nor Maxine had any place in her conceptions.
+She saw Lize, broken but justified, because she had given when life
+asked of her; she saw the little Jacqueline, with the halo of
+candle-light turning her blonde hair to gold; in a distant dream she saw
+the frail, steadfast Madame Salas, and in a near, poignant vision she
+saw Blake, and her soul melted within her.
+
+She conceived the world as one immense censer into which men and women
+poured their all, and from which a wondrous white smoke, a scent
+incredibly lovely, rose continually, enveloping the universe.
+
+To give! To give without hope of recompense, without question, without
+fear! That was the message of life.
+
+She looked round the little room; she yearned to put out her arms, to
+clasp each hand, to touch each forehead with the kiss of living
+fellowship. Love consumed her, humility rilled her, she was a child
+again, with all things to learn.
+
+The music was reaching its climax, it was filling every corner of the
+room, and as she glanced toward the piano in a last long look, the two
+voices rose in unison.
+
+Silently--none knowing the revolution within her soul--none seeing the
+heights upon which she walked--Maxine moved to the door and slipped out
+into the hall, the picture of the lovers before her eyes, in her ears
+the symbolic cry:
+
+    'C'est la vie! l'Eternelle, la toute puissante vie!'
+
+Like a being inspired, she passed back into her own _appartement_, and
+there, with a strange high excitement that was yet mystically calm,
+entered her little bedroom and lighted candles until not a shadow was
+left in all the white circumscribed space; then, standing in the
+illumination, like an acolyte who ministers to some secret rite, she
+slowly unburdened herself of her boy's garments.
+
+The task was brief; they fell from her lightly, leaving her fair and
+virginal and untrammelled in body, as she was virginal and untrammelled
+in mind; and with a sweet gravity she clothed herself, garment by
+garment, in the dress of the morning.
+
+Ardent and eager--yet restrained, as befitted a woman aware of her high
+place--she left the room and passed down the Escalier de Sainte-Marie. A
+rush of cool air came to her across the plantation, kissing her hot
+cheeks, the holly bushes whispered their secrets--which were her secrets
+as well, the eyes of the stars looked down, smiling into her eyes. She
+observed no face in the thronging faces that passed her; she made her
+steadfast way to the one point in the universe that was her goal by
+right divine. Even in the hallway of Blake's house she did not stop to
+question, but mounted the stairs and knocked upon his door, regardless
+of the stormy beating of her heart, the faintness of anticipation that
+encompassed her.
+
+A moment passed--a moment or a century; then he was before her,
+appealing to the innermost recesses of her being.
+
+He stared at her, as one might stare upon a ghost.
+
+"Maxine!"
+
+Her lips parted, trembling with a pleading tenderness.
+
+"Maxine!" he said again; and now his voice shook, as hers had shaken in
+Max's little starlit studio.
+
+It was the cry she had waited for--the confirmation of her faith. Her
+hands went out to him; her soul suddenly poured forth allegiance in look
+and voice.
+
+"Ned! Ned! Take me! Take me and teach me! Take me away to your castle,
+like the princess of old. Show me the white sky and the opal sea, and
+the seaweed that smells like violets!"
+
+His hands clasped hers, his incredulous eyes besought her. "Maxine, this
+is some dream?"
+
+"No; it is no dream. We are awake. It is life!"
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Max, by Katherine Cecil Thurston
+
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