"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 cafe, over the door of which hung the somewhat pretentious sign Maison Gustav.

The Maison Gustav was scarcely a more appetizing place than the Hotel Railleux. One-half of its interior was partitioned off and filled with long tables, at which, earlier in the day, workmen were served with dejeuner, 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 cafe was empty of customers as the two entered. With the ease and decision of an habitue, 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 ragout, 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 dejeuner. 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 cafe 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 Leon 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 cafes 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 fete 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!"



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 Leon 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 cafe 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, naively, "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 Hotel 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 Hotel 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 cafes 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 Barbes, the rue de la Nature, and the rue de Clignancourt, until at length they emerged into the rue Andre 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 Andre 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 Sacre-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 Mueller, and, if you desire it, to the Sacre-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 Mueller, 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 Mueller, and was leaning over the wooden paling that fronts the Sacre-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 Sacre-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 Desir tourmente! Je vais, cherchant les coeurs qu'oubli a le bonheur. La-bas glanant le Rire, ici semant l'Envie, Prechant partout le droit de tous a la folie; Je suis le Procureur de la grande Cite! Ton humble serviteur—ou ton maitre!"

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 ou je me suis donnee, toute fleurie semble ma destinee. Je crois rever sous un ciel de feerie, l'ame encore grisee 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'ame encore grisee 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 cafe 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 Andre 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 cafe 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. Garcon! Garcon!"

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 Hotel 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-a-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 Sacre-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 Sacre-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 Andre 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 Andre 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 Mueller; there, in the rue Mueller, 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 Mueller 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 a 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 naive 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 a louer 5ieme etage. Gaz: l'eau,' and without hesitation crossed the rue Mueller and passed through the open door.

The difference was vast between his nervous entry thirty-six hours ago into the Hotel 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 Hotel 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 naively 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 menage 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 Devet, 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 Mueller, 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 Mueller? 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.