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 dejeuner, 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! Garcon!"

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 Mueller—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 Mueller, 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 dejeuner, 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 Andre 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 role 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 Hotel 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 Andre 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 Andre 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.



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 ou je me suis donnee"—

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 Mueller, 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 Sacre-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 debut! 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 naive 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.



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 dejeuner with Lucien and me. A very special dejeuner, 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. Edouard should make the acquaintance of my Lucien. M. Edouard 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 cafe 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 cafe 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.