As he listened, his first hearing of M. Cartel's fiddle crept back upon the feet of memory, and with it the recollection of the boy's rapture, the boy's wayward breaking of the spell and denial of the truth of love. Cautiously he moved his head and stole a glance at his companion, summing up the contrast between the present and the past.

Maxine was leaning forward, in thrall to the music: her gray cloak had fallen slightly back, displaying her white dress—her white neck; her hands were clasped, her eyes—the woman's eyes, the eyes of mystery—gazed into profound space.

He held himself rigid; he dared not stir, lest he should brush her cloak; he scarce dared breathe, lest he should break her dream. A feeling akin to adoration awakened in him, and as if in expression of the emotion, the violin of M. Cartel cried out the supreme confession of the lovers, Louise's enraptured 'C'est le Paradis! C'est une feerie!', and Julian's answer, intoxicating as wine, 'Non! C'est la vie! l'Eternelle, la toute-puissante vie!'

And there, with the whimsicality of the artist, the bow of M. Cartel was lifted, and sharp, pregnant silence fell upon the night.

Blake turned to Maxine; and Maxine, with lips parted, eyes dark with thought, met his regard.

For one second her impulse seemed to sway to words, her body to yield to some gracious, drooping enchantment; then, swiftly as M. Cartel had called up silence, she recalled herself—straightened her body and lifted her head.

"Monsieur," she said, with dignity, "I thank you for your kindness and for your companionship—and I bid you good-night!"

The swiftness of his dismissal scarcely touched Blake. Already she was his sovereign lady—her look a command, her word paramount.

"As you will, princess!"

She held out her hand; and taking, he bowed over, but did not kiss it.

She smiled, conceiving his desire and his restraint.

"I shall convey to Max how charmingly you have entertained me, monsieur and, perhaps—" Her voice dropped to its softest note.

Blake looked up.

"Perhaps, princess—?"

She smiled again, half diffidently. "Nothing, monsieur! Good-night!"

"Good-night!"

He left her to the gray mystery of the stars, and passed back through the quiet, lamp-lit room and down the slippery stairs that led to the mundane world; and with each step he took, each breath he drew, the words from Louise repeated themselves, justifying all things, glorifying all things: 'C'est la vie! l'Eternelle, la toute-puissante vie!'



CHAPTER XXVIII

Blake must have reached the last step of the Escalier de Sainte-Marie, must indeed have turned the corner of the rue Andre de Sarte before the creaking of a footstep or the opening of a door disturbed the silence of the fifth floor; but, due time having expired—due deference having been paid to taste and the proprieties—the handle of M. Cartel's door was very softly turned, and Jacqueline slipped forth into the shadowed landing.

Never were human curiosity and feminine craft more signally displayed than in the slim little form creeping on tiptoe, the astute, piquante little face thrust forth into the dark. Across the landing she stole, and with deft fingers opened Max's door without a sound.

Here, in the narrow hallway, she paused and called gently, "Monsieur Max!" But as no voice answered, she crept to the salon door and, with a little comedy of smiles all for her own diversion, called again with pursed lips and in a stage whisper: "Madame! Madame!"

It carried—this portentous word—across the quiet room to the balcony where Maxine was lingering; it drew from her a little 'oh,' of consternation; finally, it brought her running across the room to her visitor.

Jacqueline, lynx-eyed, stood and looked at her—noting how flushed she was, how youthful-looking, how unguarded and brimming with emotion.

"Madame!" she cried. "I know without a word! It has been a grand success."



Maxine laughed, a girlish laugh of self-betrayal. "A grand success! Absolutely a grand success! And, Jacqueline"—she hesitated, laughed again with charming self-consciousness, rushed afresh into speech—"Jacqueline, he thought me beautiful! Not a word was said, but I know he thought me beautiful. Tell me! Am I beautiful?" Swiftly, as might the boy, she threw off her velvet cloak, letting it fall to the ground, and showed herself tall and supple and straight in her white dress.

Jacqueline rushed forward warmly, caught and kissed her hand.

"Madame, you are ravishing!" And, with her pretty native practicality, she picked up the cloak, carefully folded and carefully laid it aside.

"Ravishing!" Maxine laughed once more. "Jacqueline, I am something more than that! I am happy!" She threw out her arms, as if to embrace the universe. "I am happier than the saints in heaven! I am living in the moment, and the moment is perfection! I care nothing that yesterday I wept, that to-morrow I may weep again. I am alive and I am happy. I feel as I used to feel at fifteen years old, galloping a spirited horse. The whole world is sublime—from the dust in the streets to the stars in the sky!" She forgot her companion, her speech broke off, she turned and began to pace the room with head thrown back, hands clasped behind her with careless, boyish ease.

For a while Jacqueline watched her, diligently sifting out every emotional sign; then, deeming that some moment of her own choosing had arrived, she slipped unobserved from the room, to return a minute later bearing a kettle full of boiling water.

Maxine looked round as she made her entry.

"A kettle, Jacqueline?"

"For madame's tea. And, my God, but it is hot!" She set it down hastily in the fireplace, and sucked her finger with a pouting smile.

Maxine smiled, too, coming back from her dream with vague graciousness. "But I do not need tea."

Jacqueline did not refute the statement, but merely began to manipulate the samovar in the manner learned of Max, while Maxine, yielding to her own delicious exaltation, fell again to her long, slow pacing of the floor.

Presently the inviting smell of tea began to pervade the room, and Jacqueline set out a cup and saucer—Max's first purchase from old Bluebeard of the curios.

"Madame is served!" She stood behind the chair ordained for Maxine, very sedate, very assured of her own arrangements.

Maxine paused, as though the suggestion of tea was brought to her for the first time.

"How delightful!" she said, with swift, serene pleasure. "How kind! How thoughtful!"

"Seat yourself, madame!"

The chair was drawn forward; the just and proper thrill of preparation was conveyed by Jacqueline; and Maxine seated herself, still in her smiling dream.

Half the cup of tea was consumed under Jacqueline's watchful eye, then she stole round the chair.

"Madame, a cigarette?" Her fingers crept to the cigarette-box, then found and struck a match, all with a deft, unobtrusive quiet that won its way undenied.

The cigarette was lighted, Maxine leaned back in her chair, Jacqueline's confidential moment was secured.

"And so, madame, it was a grand success?"

Maxine looked up. The first fine ecstasy was past; the after-glow of deep contentment curled round her with the cigarette smoke; she was the pliant reed to the soft wind of Jacqueline's whispering.

"It was past belief," she answered, "past all belief. We stood together in the light of the lamp and looked each other in the eyes, and he never guessed. He never guessed—he, who has—Oh, it was past belief!"

"Ah!" murmured Jacqueline, complacently. "I told madame I had a quite extraordinary talent in the dressing of hair—though madame was sceptical! And as for the purchase of clothes. Did he admire madame's velvet cloak?"

Maxine smiled tolerantly. "Of course he did not!"

Jacqueline cast up her eyes to heaven. "These English—they are extraordinary! But I tell you this, madame, he knew here"—she touched her heart—"he knew here, that madame looked what she is—a queen!"

"Absurd child!"

The reproof was gentle; Jacqueline's nimble tongue took advantage of the chance given it.

"And tell me, madame? He play his part gallantly—Monsieur Edouard?" Never before had she dared so much; but never before had Maxine's eyes looked as they looked to-night.

Before replying, Maxine leaned her elbows on the table and took her face between her hands.

"It was past belief—that also!" she said at last. "He seemed a different being. I cannot understand it."

"He seemed of a greater interest, madame?"

"Of a strangely greater interest."

"In what manner, madame? Looks? Words?" Cunning as a monkey, little Jacqueline was all soft innocence in the method of her questioning.

"In every way—manner—speech—expression of thought. And, Jacqueline"—she turned her face, all radiant and unsuspicious, to her interlocutor—"I made a discovery! He loves Max!"

Jacqueline, with downcast eyes and discreet bearing, carefully removed the empty tea-cup.

"Yes, he loves me as Max! He told me so. It has made me marvellously happy—marvellously happy and, also"—she sighed—"also, Jacqueline, just a little sad!"

"Sad, madame?"

"Yes, sad because he loves Max as one loves a child, expecting no return; and—I would be loved as an equal."

"Assuredly, madame."

"I must be loved as an equal!" Fire suddenly kindled her dreaming voice; a look, clear and alert, suddenly crossed her eyes. "Jacqueline," she cried, "I have set myself a new task. I shall make him respect Max as well as love him; Max shall become his equal. Now, suppose you set yourself a task like that, how would you begin?"

"Oh, madame!" Jacqueline was all deprecation.

"Do not fear. Tell me!"

"Madame, it is not for me—" Jacqueline's triumph in the moment, and her concealing of the triumph, were things exquisitely feminine.

"Tell me!"

"I may speak from the heart, madame?"

Maxine bent her head in gracious condescension.

"Then, madame, I would make of Monsieur Edouard a book of figures. The princess would learn the rules; Monsieur Max would shut the book, and make up the sum. It would be quite simple."

The hot color scorched Maxine's face; she rose quickly. "Jacqueline! I had not expected this!"

"Madame desired me to speak from the heart. The heart, at times, is unruly!"

"True! Forgive me. But you should not suggest a thing that you know to be impossible."

"Pardon, madame! I was thinking of the many impossibilities performed in a good cause!"

"Say no more, Jacqueline! To-night was to-night! To-night is over!" She walked across the room and passed out upon the balcony, leaning over the railing at the spot where Blake had stood.

Jacqueline, swift and guileful, was instantly beside her.

"Madame, at its most serious, to-night was a little comedy. Is it so criminal to repeat a little comedy—once, or even twice—in a good cause? It is not as if madame were not sure of herself! Besides, the comedy was charming!"

"Yes; the comedy was charming!" Maxine echoed the sentiment, and in her heart called 'charming' a poor word. "But even if I were weak, Jacqueline," she added, "how could I banish Max? Max could scarcely continue to have important business."

"Perhaps not, madame; but Monsieur Max might continue to display temper! Do not forget that he and Monsieur Edouard did not part upon the friendliest terms."

Maxine smiled.

"But even granted that, I could not be here again—alone."

Jacqueline, with airiest scorn, tossed the words aside.

"That, madame? Why, that arranges itself! The princess loves her brother! His quarrel is her grief. Is not woman always compassionate?"

The tone was irresistible. Maxine laughed. "Jacqueline, you were the Serpent in Adam's Garden! There is not a doubt of it! No wonder poor M. Cartel has taken so big a bite of the Apple."

She laughed again, and Jacqueline laughed too, in mischievous delight.

"Madame!" she coaxed. "Madame!"

"No!" said Maxine, with eyes fixed determinately upon the lights of the city; while somewhere above her in the cool, clear starlight, a hidden voice—her own, and not her own—whispered a subtle 'Yes!'



CHAPTER XXIX

The universe is compounded of the miraculous; but love is the miracle of miracles. Again the impossible had been contrived; again Maxine and Blake were standing together on the balcony. The Parisian night seemed as still as a held breath, and as palpitating with human possibilities; the domes of the Sacre-Coeur loomed white against the sky, dumb witnesses to the existence of the spirit. The scene was undoubtedly poetic; yet, placed in the noisiest highway of London or the most desolate bog-land of Blake's native country, these two would have been as truly and amply cognizant of the real and the ideal; for the cloak of love was about them, the vapor of love was before their eyes, and for the hour, although they knew it not, they were capable of reconstructing a whole world from the material in their own hearts.

But they were divinely ignorant; they each tricked themselves with the age-old fallacy of a unique position, each wandered onward in the dream-like fields of romance, content to believe that the other knew the hidden way.

The scene bore a perfect similarity to the scene of the first meeting—about them, the darkness and the quiet—behind them, the little salon lit by the familiar lamp, showing all the reassuring evidences of the boy's occupation. For close upon an hour they had enjoyed this intimacy of the balcony, at first talking much and rapidly upon the ostensible object of their meeting—Max's quarrel with Blake, later falling to a happy silence, as though they deliberately closed their lips, the more fully to drink in the secrets of the night through eyes and ears. Strange spells were in the weaving, and no two souls are fused to harmony without much subtle questioning of spirit, many delicate, tremulous speculations compounded of wordless joy and wordless fear.

Some issue, it was, in this matter of fusing personalities, that at last caused Maxine to turn her head and find Blake studying her.

The circumstance was trivial—a mere crossing of glances, but it brought the color to her face as swiftly as if she had been taken in some guilty act.

Blake saw the expression, and interpreted it wrongly.

"You are displeased, princess? I am a bad companion to-night?" He spoke impulsively, with an anxiety in his voice that spurred her to a desire to comfort him.

"When people are sympathetic, monsieur, they are companions, whether good or bad. Is it not so?"

He moved a little nearer to her; neither was aware of the movement.

"Do you find me sympathetic?"

"Indeed, yes!" Her luminous glance rested on him thoughtfully.

"But you scarcely know me."

"Monsieur, I do know you."

"Through the boy, perhaps—" He spoke with a touch of impatience, but she stopped him with upraised hand.

"You are angry with Max, therefore you must be silent! Anger does not make for true judgment."

"Ah, that's unfair!" He laughed. "'Tis Max who is angry with me! You know I came here to-night with open arms—to find him flown! Still, I am willing to keep them open, and give the kiss of peace whenever he relents—to please you."

"Ah, no, monsieur! To please him. To please him."

"Indeed, no! To please you—and no one else. If I followed my own devices, I'd wait till he comes back, and box his ears. He'd very well deserve it."

Maxine laughed; then, swift as a breeze or a racing cloud, her mood changed.

"Monsieur, you care for Max?"

"What a question! I love Max. He's a star in my darkness—or was, until the sun shone."

He paused, fearful of where his impulses had led him; but Maxine was all sweetness, all seriousness.

"Am I, then, the sun, monsieur?"

In any other woman the words must have seemed a lure; but here was a fairness, a frankness and dignity that lifted the question to another and higher plane. Blake, comprehending, answered simply with the truth.

"Yes, you are the sun; and all my life I have been a sun-worshipper."

She made no comment; she accepted the words, waiting for the flow of speech that she knew was close at hand—the speech, probably irrelevant, certainly delightful, that he invariably poured forth at such a moment.

"Princess, do you know my country?"

She shook her head, smiling a little.

"Ah, then you don't understand my worship! In Ireland, nature condemns us to a long, black, wet winter and a long, gray, wet spring, so that the heart of a man is nearly drowned in his body, and he grows to believe that his country is nothing but a neutral-tinted waste; but one day, when even hope is dying, a miracle comes to pass—the sun shines out! The sun shines out, and he suddenly sees that his waste land is the color of emeralds and that his dripping woods are gardens, tinted like no stones that jewellers ever handle. Oh, no wonder I am a sun-worshipper!"

Maxine, glowing to his sudden enthusiasm, clasped her hands, as when she heard the music of M. Cartel.

"Ah, and that is your country?"

"That is my country, princess."

"I wish——" She stopped.

"That you could see it?"

She nodded.

"And why not? Why not—when this boy sees reason? How I would love to show it to you! You would understand."

"When would you show it to me?" She spoke very low.

"When? Oh, perhaps in April—April, when the washed skies are a blue that even Max could not find in his color-box, and the bare boughs tremble with promise. In April—or, better still, in the autumn. In October, when the lights are cool and white and the sea is an opal; when you smell the ozone strong as violets, and at every turn of the road a cart confronts you, heaped with bronze seaweed and stuck with a couple of pikes that rise stark against the sky-line, to suggest the taking of the spoils. Yes, in October! In October, it should be!"

He was carried away, and she loved him for his enthusiasm.

"You care for your country?" she said, very softly.

"Yes—in an odd way! When wonder or joy or ambition comes to me, I always have a craving to walk those roads and watch the sea and whisper my secrets to the salt earth, but I never gratify the desire; it belongs to the many incongruities of an incongruous nature. But I think if great happiness came to me, I should go back, if only for a day; or if—" He paused. "—If I were to break my heart over anything, I believe I'd creep back, like a child to its mother. We're odd creatures—we Irish!"

"I understand you," said Maxine. "You have the soul."

He looked down into the rue Mueller, and a queer smile touched his lips.

"A questionable blessing one is apt to say, princess—in one's bad moments!"

"But only in one's bad moments!" Her tone was warm; her words came from her swiftly, after the manner of Max—the manner that Blake loved.

"You are quite right!" he said, "and I despise myself instantly I have uttered such a cynicism. The capacity to feel is worth all the pain it brings. If one had but a single moment of realization, one should die content. That is the essential—to have known the highest."

Once again Maxine had the sense of lifting a tangible veil, of gaining a glimpse of the hidden personality—not the half-sceptical, pleasant, friendly Blake of the boy's acquaintance, but Blake the dreamer, the idealist who sought some grail of infinite holiness figured in his own imagination, zealously guarded from the scoffer and the worldling. A swift desire pulsed in her to share the knowledge of this quest—to see the face of the knight illumined for his adventure—to touch the buckles of his armor.

"Monsieur," she whispered, "if you were to die to-night, would you die satisfied?"

In the silence that had fallen upon them, Blake had turned his face to the stars, but now again his glance sought hers.

"No, princess," he said, simply.

No weapons are more potent than brevity and simplicity. His answer brought the blood to her face as no long dissertation could have brought it; it was so direct, so personal, so compounded of subtle values.

"Then you have not known the highest?" It was not she who framed the question; some power outside herself constrained her to its speaking.

"I have recognized perfection," he said, "but I have not known it. And sometimes my weaker self—the primitive, barbaric self—cries out against the limitation; sometimes—"

"Sometimes—?"

"Nothing, princess—and everything!" With a sudden wave of self-control he brought himself back to the moment and its responsibilities. "Forgive me! And, if you are merciful, dismiss me! They say we Irish talk too much. I am afraid I am a true Irishman." He laughed, but there was a sound behind the laughter that brought tears to her eyes.

"Monsieur, it has been happy to-night?"

"It has been heaven."

"We are not wholly a trouble to you—Max and I?"

She put out her hand, and he took it.

"Max is my friend, princess; you are my sovereign lady."

The night was close about them; Paris was below, gilding the rose of human love; the church domes were above, tending whitely toward the stars. Maxine moved nearer to him, her heart beating fast, her whole radiant being dispensing fragrance.

"Monsieur, if I am your lady, pay me homage!"

The enchantment was delicate and perfect; her voice wove a spell, her slight, strong fingers trembled in his. He had been less than man had he refused the moment. Silently he bent his head, and his lips touched her hand in a swift, ardent kiss.



CHAPTER XXX

Maxine was in high exaltation—the exaltation that makes no count of cost. Yesterday mattered not at all; to-morrow might never dawn! As the outer door closed upon Blake, she turned back into the lighted salon—the little salon of Max's books, of Max's boyish tastes—the little salon loved beyond all rooms in Paris!

In a smiling dream she passed through it, on into the studio where no light was, save the light from a shred of crescent moon that had lately climbed into the sky. It had a curious effect—this bare, white room with its gaunt easel, upon which the portrait still stood, and to superstitious eyes, it might well have suggested a ghost-chamber, peopled by dead thoughts, dead impressions: but Maxine was in no morbid mood, happiness ran too high—too red and warm—to permit of shadows disputing its high place.

Smiling, smiling, she passed from the studio to the bedroom. The room that had witnessed her first weakness; the room that had brought her strength. How infinitely wise had been the conduct of that night! How irrevocably fate had created doubt and dispersed it by inspiration. If she had not twisted her hair about her head—if the little Jacqueline had not entered at the critical moment—if, for that matter, M. Cartel and his friend had not talked late and partaken of bouillon—

She laughed; she wandered round the room, touching, appraising the little familiar trifles associated with that past hour; at last she sat down before her mirror, and there Jacqueline found her ten minutes later, when curiosity could no longer be withheld and she came creeping across the landing for news of the night's doings.

Maxine heard her enter; heard her search the salon and then the studio; finally called to her.

"Jacqueline!"

"Madame!"

The door opened, and Maxine looked round, the smile still upon her lips.

"No soup for me to-night, Jacqueline? Not even tea?"

Jacqueline caught the happy lightness of the tone, and silently nodded her blonde head as she tiptoed into the room.

"Ah, madame has had a banquet of the mind! Madame has no need of my poor food."

Maxine picked up a comb and arranged the tendrils of hair that curled about her temples.

"Jacqueline," she said, after a silence, "what do you consider the highest thing?"

The question might have been astonishing, but her visitor did not betray surprise by even the quiver of an eyelash.

"Love, madame," she said.

And Maxine did not flash round upon her in one of her swift rages, did not even draw her brows together into their frowning line. She merely gazed into the mirror, as if weighing the statement judicially.

"All people do not hold that opinion," she said, at last.

Jacqueline shrugged her shoulders in the exercise of an infinite patience. "No, madame?"

"No. M. Blake talked to-night of 'the highest thing,' and he did not mean love."

"No, madame?" Jacqueline was very guileless.

But guileless as her tone was—nay, by reason of its guilelessness—it touched Maxine in some shadowy corner of her woman's consciousness; and spurred by a subtle, disquieting suggestion, she turned in her chair, and fixed her serious gray eyes upon her visitor.

"What are your thoughts, Jacqueline?"

Jacqueline, taken unawares, deprecated.

"Oh, madame—"

But Maxine was set to her point. "Answer my question," she insisted. "I wish to know. I am, above all things, practical."

It was to Jacqueline's credit that she did not smile, that she simply murmured: "Who doubts it, madame?"

"Yes; I am, above all things, practical. In this affair of the woman, I know exactly where I stand."

The girl made no comment; but even to Maxine's own ears, her declaration left a little suggestion of over-vehemence vibrating in the air; and startled by this suggestion, she did the least wise, the most human thing possible, she accentuated it.

"If I were different—if M. Blake were different, I grant that, perhaps—" She stopped abruptly. "Jacqueline, what are your thoughts?"

"Oh, madame, I have none!"

And here Maxine made a change of front, became very grave, touched the gracious, encouraging note of the being to whom life is an open book.

"You must not say that," she corrected, sweetly. "You always have ideas—even if they are sometimes a little in the air. Come! Tell me. What are your thoughts?"

But Jacqueline was wary, as befitted one who made no pretence of scholarship, but who knew the old human story by heart, and daily recited it to one ardent listener.

"Oh, madame, it is not fitting—"

"Absurd! Tell me."

Jacqueline, hard pressed, sought refuge in a truth.

"My thoughts might displease madame."

Maxine sat straighter in her chair. Here was another matter!

"Ah, so that is it! Well, now I am determined. Now I will have the thoughts at any cost."

When Maxine spoke like this, when her lips closed upon her words, when her eyes rested unflinchingly upon her listener, she was wont to have her questions answered. Jacqueline recognized the moment, saw Maxine in all her proud foolishness, loved her with that swift intermingling of pity and worship that such beings as she inevitably call forth, finally tossed her little head in her most tantalizing manner and laughed.

"With madame's permission," she said, "I will wish her good-night!"

"The permission is not granted."

"Nevertheless, madame!" Her hand was on the door.

"Wait!" cried Maxine, peremptorily. "I have asked you a question and you must answer it."

Jacqueline stopped half-way through the doorway, and looked back, her flower-like face alight with mischief.

"Pardon, madame! 'Must' is the word for the ruler. Lucien says 'must' to me; M. Blake says 'must' to"—she paused, with maddening precision; she dropped a little impertinent curtsy—"to M. Max!"

She tossed the word upon the air, as a child might blow thistle-down; she laughed and was gone, leaving Maxine conscious of a strange new sensation that whipped her to anger and yet, most curiously, left her bereft of words.



CHAPTER XXXI

Nothing less than absolute conviction can shake a strong nature. A wave of doubt swept over Maxine as her little neighbor's words died out and the door closed, leaving her to silence and solitude; but for all her folly, she was strong, and strength such as hers is not shaken by the shaft of a Jacqueline, however cunningly sped.

She sat for long, troubled, perplexed—almost, it might have seemed, fearful of herself—- but gradually the strength asserted itself, the fine, blind faith within her asserted itself in a wave of reaction.

Some small weakness had been hers, she admitted—some small shrinking from the truth of things! She had been remiss in the application of her test, allowing the dream to oust the reality in that fascinating hour with Blake. Remiss, but no more!

At this stage in her meditations, she returned to the balcony, studying the sky anew—drinking in confidence from the glory of the stars, the slight grace of the crescent moon.

She became the boy again in mind and heart, enthusiastic, assured, thirsting for action; she looked down upon Paris frankly and without defiance—or so she deemed; and the old, wild suggestions of 'liberty, equality, brotherhood,' seemed to rise, ghostly, from its stones.

Enthusiasm is ever a gracious, pardonable thing, because in its essentials are youth and zeal and all high, white-hot qualities whose roots strike not in the base earth. Any sage, nay, any simpleton, seeing Maxine upon the balcony, could have told her what a fool she was; but who would have told it without a pause, without a sigh for the divinity of such folly?

Next day she rose, refreshed of body, because refreshed of soul; and arrayed in the garments of her strength, went forth to prove her faith.

Max it was—Max of the quick, lithe feet and eager glance—who left the rue Mueller, heedless of breakfast, and began his descent upon Paris, making straight for the heart of the citadel with the true instinct of the raider.

Up to this moment, Blake's rooms had been a mere name, lying as they did within the forbidden precincts of the fashionable world, but to-day no corner of Paris offered terrors, for the simple reason that Paris itself had come to be incorporated in Blake, and that, being strong enough to dare Blake, Max was strong enough to dare the city.

Self-analysis played no part in his mental process as he swung down the steep, familiar streets. A singleness of purpose, high as it was foolish, possessed and inspired him. He loved Blake with a wonderful, unsexual love, and he yearned to lay himself at his feet, to offer him of his best—gifts of the gods, given with free hands from a free heart.

Something of the sweet foolishness must have shown upon his face, for when he reached his destination, Blake's concierge, usually a taciturn individual, offered him a welcome as he stepped from the brilliant sunshine into the dim cool hallway, and gave him the information he needed with a good grace.

So far, well! But happy assurance emanated from him, and success is compounded of such assurance. He knocked upon Blake's door, certain that Blake himself and not his servant would answer to his summons; and as though the gods smiled at the childish confidence, his certainty was rewarded. The sound of a familiar step set his pulses racing, a hand was laid upon the door, and desire became accomplished.

"What! Max?"

"Yes, Max! Is he welcome?" All the hoarded strength of the night was audible in the words. Max threw up his head, met Blake's eyes, held out his hand—the boy in every particular.

"Welcome? As welcome as the flowers in May! Come in! Come along in!" Blake had accepted the masquerade; all was as before.

Together they passed into the salon, and instantly Blake became host—the role of roles for him.

"Now, boy, don't tell me you have breakfasted! But even if you have, you must breakfast again. Come, sit down! Sit down! My fellow makes most excellent coffee—good as Madame Gustav's of the rue Fabert! Remember the rue Fabert?"

So he rattled on, placing a second chair, seeking an additional cup, and ever Max listened, happy with an acute happiness that almost touched the verge of tears.

But though emotion choked him he played his part gallantly. He was the boy of old days to the very life, swaggering a little in a youthful forgivable conceit, playing the lord of creation to an amused, sympathetic audience.

"Ned," he cried at last, flinging his words from him with all the old frank ease, "tell me to apologize!"

Blake looked up, and the affection, the tolerance in the look quivered through Max's senses.

"Now, boy! Now!" he warned. "Be careful what you're saying! It's only very ordinary friends talk about apologies. And I don't think we have ever been very ordinary friends."

"No! No! But still—"

"Well, say your say!"

The tone was full of indulgence, but, also, it was touched with subtler things. This unexpected invasion had pleased and flattered Blake; it spoke an influence used on his behalf that he dared not have claimed—dared not have expected.

Max walked to the window, looked down an instant into the brilliant, sunlit street, came back to Blake's side, all with a swift impulsiveness.

"Ned, I am the same friend—the same comrade?"

"Indeed, yes!"

"But you do not think I possess a soul?"

Blake, taken unawares, colored like any boy.

"Oh, come!"

"But it is true. I know, for I have been told. And you are wrong—quite wrong."

Blake was about to laugh, but he looked at the young face, suddenly grown grave, and his own words came back to him guiltily. 'Max's lips were made for laughter—his eyes are too bright for tears!'

"Poor little faun!" he said, with jesting tenderness. "Have I misjudged you?"

Max nodded seriously. "You have. She has made me realize."

"Ah! That was like her!" It was Blake's turn to walk to the window; and the boy, watching him eagerly, was unable to place the constraint that suddenly tinged his voice, suddenly veiled his manner.

"Ned," he was urged to say, "tell me! Has she brought us nearer together—my sister Maxine?"

Blake hesitated; for even your Irishman, brimming to confide, is reticent when he stands before his holy of holies.

"Ned, tell me!"

The tone was enticing. Blake turned from the window, strode back across the room, cast an affectionate arm about the boy's shoulder.

"She is a worker of miracles—your sister Maxine!"

The words were warm, the clasp was warm; Max's inspiration gushed up, a fountain of faith.

"She understands you? She shows you 'the higher things'?"

"By God, she does!"

"Then you shall see her once more!" The ideal was predominant; zeal and youth, the white-hot gifts, were lavished at Blake's feet. "Come to the studio to-night, and I shall leave you in her company willingly, gladly, with all my heart. Ned! Say you will come!"

And Blake, dreaming his own dream, pressed the boy's shoulder and laughed, and answered with the jest that covers so many things.

"Will I come? Will a man turn back from the gate of heaven when Saint Peter uses his key?"



CHAPTER XXXII

Perfect self-deception can be a rare, almost a precious thing, ranking with all absurd, delightful faiths from the child's sweet certainty of fairydom to the enthusiast's belief in the potency of his own star.

Maxine, in her little white bedroom, arraying herself for Blake, was wrapped in a cloud of illusion, translated to a sphere above the common earth by this magic blindness. Never again while life lasted was she to stand as she stood to-night, eyes searching her mirror with perfect steadfast sincerity, lips parted in breathless joy of confidence. Never again! But for the moment the illusion was complete. She saw the triumphing soul of Max glimmer through her own fair body, saw the boy's faith carried like a banner in her woman's hands.

Her dressing was a tremulous affair, tinged with a fine excitement. Again she clothed herself in the soft white dress, the long gray cloak of former meetings; but, banishing the willing Jacqueline, she coiled her hair with her own hands and last, most significant touch, pinned a white rose at her breast.

It was the night of nights! No need to assure herself of the fact; the knowledge sang in her blood, burned in her cheeks. The night of nights! When Maxine would receive the soul of Blake and place it, mystic and sacramental, in the keeping of Max!

The folly of the affair, the naivety of it, made for tears as well as smiles; and Maxine, glowing to the eternal, aspiring flame, looked her last into the little mirror that had so carefully preserved its secrets, and passed across the hall to the salon, where the night stretched beckoning, velvet fingers through the open window.

Young, luxurious summer palpitated through the dusk, fanning the ardor in her heart. She ran forward, drawn by its allurement; then, all at once, she stopped, her hand flying to her heart, her breath suspended in a little cry of surprise. Blake had slipped unheard into the appartement, and was awaiting her on the balcony.

At her cry, he turned—wheeled round toward her—and his eyes scanned her surprised, betraying face.

"You are glad!" he cried, in sudden self-expression. "You are glad to see me!" The words were hot as they were abrupt, they seared her with their swiftness and their conviction, they were as a raiding army before which all ramparts fell. Mentally, morally, she felt herself sway until preconceived ideas drifted to and fro, weeds upon a tide.

"Yes," she answered, scarcely aware of her own voice. "I am glad."

Where now were the subtle ways, the divers interlacing paths wherein Maxine was to pursue her chase, delivering her quarry into the hands of Max? Where were the barbed and potent shafts whereby that capture was to be achieved? All had vanished into the night; she stood before her intended victim unarmed, ungirt, and—miracle of miracles—undismayed!

She and Blake confronted each other. Their lips were dumb, but their looks embraced. Fate—life—was in the air, in the myriad voices of the night, the myriad pulses of their bodies, the myriad thoughts that wheeled and flashed within their brains.

This knowledge rushed in upon her swimming senses, upon eyes suddenly opened, ears suddenly made free of the music of the spheres; and her hand—the hand that had first girded on her boy's attire—went out to Blake like that of any girl.

It was nature's signal, stronger in its frailty than any attained art of woman; and he answered to it as man has ever answered—ever will answer.

"Oh, my love!" he cried. "My love!" And his arms went round her.

It is sacrilege to attempt analysis of birth or love or death. Death and birth, the mysteries! Love, the revelation! Man, as he has existed through all time, had being in Blake's embrace; woman, as she has been from the first, lived in Maxine's leap of the heart, her leap of the spirit as the ecstasy of his touch thrilled her. Here was no coldness; here was no sensuality. Divinity manifested itself, no longer above, but within them. The lights in the sky were divine, but so were the lights of the town. Divinity fired their souls, merging each in each; but as truly it fired their clasping hands, their lips trembling to kiss.

Maxine—removed by fabulous distances from Max, from the studio, from all accepted things—breathed her wonderment in an unconscious appeal.

"Speak to me!"

And Blake, awed and enraptured, whispered his answer.

"There is nothing to say that you do not know. I worship you. I bent my knee and kissed the hem of your garment the first moment it brushed my path. There is nothing to say that you do not know. I have waited all my life for this."

"All your life?"

"All my life. But love is not reckoned by time. One dreams—and one wakes."

"You dreamed—" She closed her eyes, her ears drank in the cadences of his voice.

"Always! As a child, I dreamed over my play; as a boy, I dreamed over my books—and as a man, over my loves. I was never in love with woman—always in love with love."

"And now?"

"I am awake—I have come into my inheritance! My love! My love!" It was an instant of intense sensation. She could feel the beating of his heart; his fingers and hers were interlaced. "Maxine! Open your eyes! Look at me!"

Obediently—any woman to any man—she opened them and met his gaze.

"You know? You understand?"

She stood rigid, her eyes wide, her nostrils dilated—a creature swaying upon the verge of an abyss, contemplating a plunge into space.

"Maxine!" he said again. "Maxine!"

It was the primitive human cry. She heard and acknowledged it in every fibre of her being; she drew a swift, sharp breath, then, with a free gesture, cast her arms about his neck.

"Ned! Ned! Say again that you love me! Say it a thousand, say it a million times and for every time you say it, I will tell you twice that I love you."

Passion, intoxication sped the words, and Blake's mouth, closing upon hers, broke the ecstasy of speech.

"I love you! I worship you! You are my life. You are myself."

Reality vibrated through his speech; and Maxine, hearing, lost herself. With arms still clasped about him, she leaned her body backward, gazing into his face.

"Again! Say it again!"

"You are my life! We are one! Maxine! Maxine!" His glance burned her, his arms were close about her. With a sudden ardent movement, she caught his face between her hands, drew it down, and kissed it full upon the mouth, not once but many times, fiercely, closely; then, with a little cry, inarticulate as the cry of an animal, she freed herself and fled through the salon, through the hall and out upon the landing, the door of the appartement closing behind her.



CHAPTER XXXIII

The door of her appartement closed behind Maxine, and she turned, swift as a coursed hare, to the door of M. Cartel.

No hesitation touched her; she needed sanctuary; sanctuary she must have. She opened her neighbor's door, careless of what might lie behind, bringing with her into the quiet rooms a breath of fierce disorder.

The living-room, with its piano and its homely chairs and table, was lighted by a common lamp; and the little Jacqueline, the only occupant, sat in the radius of the light, peacefully sewing at a blue muslin gown that was to adorn a Sunday excursion into the country.

At the sound of the stormy entry she merely raised her head; but at sight of her visitor, she was on her feet in an instant, the heap of muslin flowing in a blue cascade from her lap to the floor.

"Madame!"

"Hide me!" cried Maxine.

"Madame!"

"Lock the outer door! And if M. Blake should knock—"

Jacqueline made no further comment. When a visitor's face is blanched and her limbs tremble as did those of Maxine, the Jacquelines of this world neither question nor hesitate. She went across the room without a word, and the key clicked in the lock.

Maxine was standing in the middle of the room when Jacqueline returned; her body was still quivering, her nostrils fluttering, her fingers twisting and intertwisting in an excess of emotion; and at sight of the familiar little figure, words broke from her with the fierceness of a freed torrent.

"Jacqueline! You see before you a mad woman! A mad woman—and one filled with the fear of her madness! They say the insane are mercifully oblivious. It is untrue!" She almost cried the last words and, turning, began a swift pacing of the room.

"Madame!" Jacqueline caught her breath at her own daring. "Madame, you know at last, then, that he loves you?"

Maxine stopped and her burning eyes fixed themselves upon the girl. This speech of Jacqueline's was a breach of all their former relations, but her brain had no room for pride. She was grappling with vital facts.

"I know at last that he loves me?" she repeated, confusedly.

"That he loves you, madame; that, unknowingly, he has always loved you. How else could he have treated Monsieur Max so sacredly—almost as he might have treated his own child?"

But Maxine was not dealing in psychological subtleties.

"Love!" she cried out. "Love! All the world is in a conspiracy over this love!"

"Because love is the only real thing, madame."

"Perhaps! But not the love of which you speak. The love of the soul, but not the love of the body!"

"Madame, can one truly give the soul and refuse the body? Is not the instinct of love to give all?"

The little Jacqueline spoke her truth with a frail confidence very touching to behold. She was a child of the people, her sole weapons against the world were a certain blonde beauty, a certain engaging youthfulness; but she looked Maxine steadfastly in the eyes, meeting the anger, the scorn, the fear compassed in her glance.

"I know the world, madame; it is not a pretty place. When I was sixteen years old, I left my parents because it called to me—and in the distance its voice was pleasant. I left my home; I had lovers." She shrugged her shoulders with an extreme philosophy. "I tried everything—except love. Then—I met Lucien!" Her philosophy merged curiously to innocence, almost to the soft innocence of a child. "I ran away again, madame; I fled to Lize." She paused. "Poor Lize! She has a good heart! That was the night at the Bal Tabarin. That night Lucien opened his arms, and I flung myself into them."

She spoke with perfect artlessness, ignorant of a world other than her own, innocent of a moral code other than that which she followed.

Once again, as on the day she had first visited the appartement and made acquaintance with the old painter and his wife, dread of some mysterious force filled Maxine. What marvellous power was this that could smile secure at poverty and oblivion—that could cast a halo of true emotion over a Bal Tabarin?

"It is not true!" she cried out, in answer to herself.

"Not true, madame? Why did I choose Lucien, who is nothing to look upon—who is an artist and penniless?"

She ran across to Maxine; she caught her by the shoulders.

"Oh, madame! How beautiful you are—and how blind! You bandage your eyes, and you tighten the knot. Oh, my God, if I could but open it for you!"

"And reduce me to kisses and folly and tears?"

"One may drift into heaven on a kiss!" Jacqueline's voice was like some precious metal, molten and warm.

"Or one may slip into hell! Do you think I have not known what it is to kiss? It was from a kiss I fled to-night."

Her tone was fervent as it was reckless, and Jacqueline stood aghast. The entire denial of love was comprehensible to her, if inexplicable; but her mind refused this problem of realization and rejection.

"Madame—" she began, quickly, but she paused on the word, listening; the sound of Max's door opening and closing came distinctly to the ear, followed by a footstep descending the stairs. "Monsieur Edouard!" she whispered, finger on lip.

Maxine, also, had heard, and a look of relief broke the tension of her expression.

"He is gone. That is well!"

Something in her look, in her voice startled Jacqueline anew.

"Why do you speak like that, madame? Why do you look so cold?"

"I am sane again, Jacqueline."

"And Monsieur Edouard? Is he sane, I wonder? Is he cold? Oh, madame, he loves you!"

"I am going to prove his love."

"But, madame! Oh, madame, love isn't a matter of proving; it is an affair of giving—giving—giving with all the heart."

"Trust me, Jacqueline! I understand. Good-night!"

Jacqueline framed no word, but her eyes spoke many things.

"Say good-night, Jacqueline! Forget that you have entertained a mad woman!"

"Good-night, madame!"

But the little Jacqueline, left alone, shook her head many times, leaving her heap of blue muslin neglected upon the floor.

"Poor child!" she said softly to herself. "Poor child! Poor child!"



CHAPTER XXXIV

It was midway between the hours of nine and ten on the morning following. Max was standing in the studio; the easel, still bearing the portrait, had been pushed into a corner, its face to the wall; everywhere the warm sun fell upon a rigid severity of aspect, as though the room had instinctively been bared for the enacting of some scene.

Max himself, in a subtle manner, struck the same note. The old painting blouse he usually wore had been discarded for the blue serge suit, severely masculine in aspect; his hair had been reduced to an usual order, his whole appearance was rigid, active, braced for the coming moment.

And this moment arrived sooner even than anticipation had suggested. The clocks of Paris had barely clashed the half hour, when his strained ears caught a step upon the landing, a sharp knock upon the door, and before his brain could leap to fear or joy, Blake was in the appartement—in the room.

There was no mistaking Blake's attitude as he swung into the boy's presence; it was patent in every movement, every glance, even had his white, strained face not testified to it. Coming into the studio, he affected nothing—neither apology, greeting, nor explanation; without preamble he came straight to the matter that possessed his mind.

"You know of this?" He held out a square white envelope, bearing bold feminine handwriting—writing over which time and thought and labor had been expended in this same room ten hours earlier. "You know this?"

"Yes." Max's tongue clicked dryly against the roof of his mouth, but his eyes bore the fire of Blake's scrutiny.

"You know the contents?"

"Yes."

"'Yes!' And you can stand there like a graven image. Do you realize it, at all? Do you grasp it?"

"I—think I understand."

"You think you understand?" Blake laughed in a manner that was not agreeable. "Understand, forsooth! You, who have never seen anything human or divine that you rate above your own little finger! Understand!" He laughed again, then suddenly his attitude changed. "But I haven't come here to waste words! You know that, your sister has left Paris?"

Max nodded, finding no words.

"She tells me here that she has gone—gone out of my life—that I am to forget her."

"Well?"

"Well, that has only one meaning, when it comes from the one woman. I must know where she is."

Max set his lips and studiously averted his face.

"Come! Tell me where she is! Time counts."

"I do not know."

"I expected that! You're lying, of course; but when you're up against a man in my frame of mind, lies are poor ammunition. I don't ask you why she has gone—that's between her and me, that's my affair. But I must know where she is."

"I cannot tell you."

"You cannot refuse to tell me! Look here, boy, you've always seen my soft side, you don't believe there is a hard one. But we Irish can surprise you."

Max had no physical fear, but he backed involuntarily before the menace in Blake's eyes.

"I'm not lying to you, Ned. I cannot tell you, because I do not know. My sister Maxine has ceased to exist—for me, as much as for you."

"Stop!" Blake stepped close to him and for an instant his hand was raised, but it fell at once to his side, and he laughed once more, harshly and self-consciously. "Don't play with me, boy! I've had a hard knock."

"I'm not playing. It's true! It's true!" Dark eyes, with dark lines beneath them, stared at Blake, carrying conviction. "It's true! It's true! I do not know."

"God, boy!" Blake faltered in his vehemence.

"It's true!" said Max again.

"True that she's gone—vanished? That I can't find her? That you can't find her? It isn't!"

"It is."

The blood rushed into Blake's face. For a moment he stood rigid and speechless, drinking in the fact; then his feelings broke bounds.

"It's true? And you stand there, gaping! God, boy, rouse yourself!" He caught him by the shoulder and shook him. "Don't you know what this is? Have you never seen a man dealt a mortal blow?"

"Love is not everything!" cried Max.

"Not everything? Oh, you poor, damned little fool, how bitterly you'll retract that prating! Not everything? Isn't water everything in a parched desert? Isn't the sun everything to a frozen world?" He stopped, suddenly loosing the boy, casting him from him, a thing of no significance.

Max, faint and pale, caught at his arm.

"Ned! Ned! I am here. I am your friend. I love you."

Blake, in all his whirl of passion, paused.

"You!" he said, and no long eloquence could have accentuated the blank amazement, the searing irony of the word.

But Max closed all his senses.

"Ned! Ned! Look at the truth of life! There is in me everything but one thing."

"Then, by God, that one thing is everything! It's the woman and the man that rule this world. The woman and the man—the soul and the body! All other things are dust and chaff."

"You feel that now. But time—time balances. We will be happy yet. We will relive the old days—"

Blake turned, wrenching away his arm. "The old days? Do you imagine Paris can hold me now she is gone?"

"Ned!"

"Do you imagine I can live in this town—climb these steps—stand on that balcony, that breathes of her?"

Max was leaning back against the window-frame. His brain seemed empty of blood, his heart seemed to pulse in a strange, unfamiliar fashion, while somewhere within his consciousness a tiny voice commanded him urgently to preserve his strength—not to betray himself.

"You will go away?" he heard himself say. "Where will you go? To Ireland?"

"To Ireland—or hell!" Blake walked to the door.

"Then you are leaving me?"

"You shall know where I am."

"And if I should need you?"

Blake made no answer; he did not even look back.

"If—if she should need you?"

He turned.

"I will come to her at any moment—from anywhere."

The door closed. He was gone, and Max stood leaning against the window. His blood still circulated oddly, and now the inner voice with its reiterated commands was rising, rising until it became the thunder of a sea that filled his ears, annihilating all other sounds. A swift, sharp terror smote him; he sought desperately to maintain his consciousness, but, breaking across the effort an icy breath crept up from nowhere, fanning his cheek, suspending all struggle, and a palpable darkness, like the darkness of brooding wings, closed in upon him, bringing oblivion.



CHAPTER XXXV

Who shall depict the soul of woman? As well essay to number the silk hairs on the moth's wing, or paint truly the hues in the blown bubble! The soul of woman dwells apart, subject to no laws, trammelled by no precedent; mysterious in its essence, strong in its very frailty, it passes through many phases to its ultimate end, working as all great agents work, silently and in the dark.

With the passing of Blake, the spiritual Maxine entered upon a new phase—was arbitrarily forced into a new phase of existence. The passing of Blake was sudden, tremendous, devastating in its effect, leaving as consequences a moral blackness, a moral chaos.

It was a new Maxine who wakened to the realization of facts; rather, it was a new Max, for it was the masculine, not the feminine ego that turned a set face to circumstance in the moment of desertion—that sedulously wrapped itself in the garment of pride spun and fashioned in happier hours.

'Now is the test! Now is the time!' Max insisted, drowning by insistence the poignant cry of the heart; and to this watchword he marched against fate.

With set purpose he faced life and its vexed questions in that bitter, precipitate moment. Again it was the beginning of things; but it was the rue Mueller and not the Gare du Nord that was the scene of action; the May sun fell burning on the Parisian pavements, while the blood of the adventurer ran slow and cold. The illusions bred of the winter dawn had been dispersed by the light of day; life was no glad enterprise—no climbing of golden heights, but the barren crossing of a trackless region where no hand proffered guidance and false signs misled the weary eyes. One weapon alone was necessary in the pursuance of the gray journey—a sure command—a sure possession of one's self!

This thought alone made harmony with the music of the past, and toward its thin sound his ears were strained. Comradeship had come and gone—love had come and gone—the fundamental idea that had lured him to Paris alone remained, stark, colorless, but recognizable!

One must possess one's self! And to achieve this supreme good, one must close the senses and seal up the heart, and be as a creature already dead!

To this profound end, Max locked himself in his studio and sat alone while the May morning waxed; to this profound end, moving as in a dream, he at last rose at midday and left the appartement in quest of his customary meal. What that meal was to consist of—whether stones or bread—did not touch his brain, for his mind was solely exercised with wonder at the fact that his will could command the search for food—could compel his dry lips to the savorless duty of eating.

As he left the little cafe, paying his score, he half expected to see his wonder reflected on the good face of madame the proprietress, and was curiously shocked to receive the usual cheerful smile, the usual cheerful 'good-day!' that took no heed of his heavy plight.

It was that cheerful superficiality of Paris that can so delightfully mirror one's mood when the heart is light—that can ring so sadly hollow when the soul is sick. It cut Max with a bitter sharpness; and, like a man fleeing from his own shadow, he fled the shop.

Outside in the dazzling glitter of the streets, the sun blinded him, accentuating the scorching pain of unshed tears; the very pavements seemed to rise up and sear him with their memories. Here in this very street Blake and he had strolled and smoked on many a night, wending homeward from the play or the opera, laughing, jesting, arguing as they paced arm-in-arm up and down before the sleeping shops. The thought stung him with an amazing sharpness, and he fled from it, as he had fled from the cafe and its smiling proprietress.

His descent upon Paris was a descent upon a region of beauty. The sense of summer lay like a bloom upon the flowers for sale at the street corners, and shimmered—a ribbon of silver sunlight—across the pale-blue sky. The trees in the grand boulevards shone in their green trappings; rainbow colors glinted in the shop windows; everywhere, save in the heart of Max, was fairness and youth and joy.

Supremely conscious of himself, adrift and wretched, he passed through the crowds of people—passed from sun to shade, from shade to sun—with a hopeless eager haste that possessed no object save to outstrip his thoughts.

It is a curious fact that, to the desponding, water has a magnetic call; without knowledge, almost without volition, his footsteps turned toward the river—that river which has so closely girdled Paris through all her varied life. Smooth and pale, it slipped secretly past its quays as Max approached, indifferent to the tragedies it concealed, as it was indifferent to the ardent life that ebbed and flowed across its many bridges. On its breast, the small, dark craft of the city nestled lazily; to right and left along its banks, the sun struck glints of gold and bronze from spire and monument; while, close against its sides, on the very parapet of its quays, there was in progress that quaint book traffic that strikes so intimate a note in the life of the quarter.

It is a charming thought that in the heart of Paris—Paris, the pleasure city—there is time and space for the vender of old books to set out his wares, to lay them open to the kindly sky, to tempt the studious and idle alike to pause and dally and lose themselves in that most fascinating of all pursuits—- the search for the treasure that is never found. Max paused beside this row of tattered bookstalls, and quivered to the stab of a new pain. Scores of happy mornings he had wandered with Blake in this vicarious garden of delight, flitting from the books to the curio shops across the roadway, from the curios back again to the books, while Blake talked with his easy friendliness to the odd beings who bartered in this open market.

It was pain inexpressible—it was loneliness made palpable—to stand by the tressel stalls and allow his eyes to rest upon the familiar merchandise; and for the third time in that black morning he fled from his own shadow—fled onward into the darker, older Paris—the Paris of tradition, where the church of Notre Dame frowns, silently scornful of those who disturb its peace.

As he approached the great building, its sombre impressiveness fell upon his troubled spirit mercifully as its shadow fell across the blinding sunlight. He paused in the wide space that fronts the heavy doors, and caught his breath as the fugitive of old might have caught breath at sight of sanctuary.

Here was a place of shade and magnitude—- a place untouched by memory!

Blindly he moved toward the door, entered the church, walked up the aisle. Few sight-seers disturbed the sense of peace, for outside it was high noon and Paris was engrossed in the serious business of dejeuner; no service was in progress; all was still, all dim save where a taper of a lamp glowed before a shrine or the sun struck sharp through the splendor of stained glass.

There are few churches—to some minds there is no other church—where the idea of the profound broods as it does in Notre Dame. The sense of dignity, the curious ancient scent compounded by time, the mystic colors of the great windows breathe of the infinite.

Max, walking up the aisle, looked at the dark walls; Max—modern, critical—looked up at the wondrous rose window, and felt the overshadowing power of superhuman things. The modern world crumbled before the impassive silence, criticism found no challenge in its brooding spirit, for the mind cannot analyze what it cannot measure.

Max subscribed to no creed; but, by a strange impulsion, born of dead ages, his eyes fell from the glowing window and turned to the high altar. He did not want to pray; he rebelled against the idea of supplication; but the circling thoughts within him concentrated suddenly, he clasped his hands with a clasp so fierce that it was pain.

"Oh, God!" he said, under his breath. "God! God, let me possess myself!" And as if some chord had snapped, relieving the tension in his brain, he dropped upon his knees, as he had once done at the foot of his own staircase and, crouching against a pillar, wept like a lost child.



PART IV



CHAPTER XXXVI

The last days of August in Paris! A deadly oppression of heat; a brooding inertia that lay upon the city like a cloak!

In the little appartement every window stood gaping, thirsting for a draught of air; but no stir lightened the haze that weighed upon the atmosphere, no faintest hint of breeze ruffled the plantation shrubs, dark in their fulness of summer foliage. Stillness lay upon Montmartre—upon the rue Mueller—most heavily of all, upon the home of Max.

It was an obvious, weighty stillness unconnected with repose. It seemed as though the spirit of the place were fled, and that in its stead the vacant quiet of death reigned. In the salon the empty hearth hurt the observer with its poignant suggestion of past comradeship, dead fires, long hours when the spring gales had whistled through the plantation and stories had been told and dreams woven to the spurt of blue and copper flames. The place had an aspect of desertion; no book lay thrown, face downward, upon chair or table; no flowers glowed against the white walls, though flowers were to be had for the asking in a land that teemed with summer fruitfulness.

This was the salon; but in the studio the note of loss was still more sharply struck. Not because the easel, drawn into the full light, offered to the gaze a crude, unfinished study, nor yet because a laden palette was cast upon the floor to consort with tubes and brushes, but because the presiding genius of the place Max—Max the debonair, Max the adventurous—was seated on a chair before his canvas, a prey to black despair.

Max was thinner. The great heat of August—or some more potent cause—had smoothed the curves from his youthful face, drawn the curled lips into an unfamiliar hardness and painted purple shadows beneath the eyes. Max had fought a long fight in the three months that had dwindled since the morning of Blake's going, and a long moral fight has full as many scars to leave behind as a battle of physical issues. The saddest human experience is to view alone the scenes one has viewed through other eyes—to walk solitary where one has walked in company—to have its particular barbed shaft aimed at one from every stick and stone that mark familiar ways. All this Max had known, wrapping himself in his pride, keeping long silence, fighting his absurd, brave fight.

'The first days will be the worst!' he had assured himself, walking back from Notre Dame in the searching sun, heedless of who might notice his red eyes. 'The first days will be the worst!' And this formula he had repeated in the morning, standing uninspired and wretched before a blank canvas. Then had come Blake's first message—a note written from Sweden without care or comfort, importing nothing, indicating nothing beyond the place at which the writer might be found, and tears—torrents of tears—had testified to the fierce anticipation, the crushing disappointment for which it was responsible.

He had sent no answer to the cold communication—no answer had been desired, and calling himself by every name contempt could coin, he had pushed forward along the lonely road, companioned by his work. But he himself had once said: 'One must come naked and whole to art, as one must come naked and whole to nature,' and he had spoken a truth. Art is no anodyne for a soul wounded in other fields, and Art closed arms to him when most he wooed her. He threw himself into work with pitiable vehemence in those first black weeks. By day, he haunted the galleries and attended classes like any art student; by night, he ranged the streets and cafes, seeking inspiration, returning to his lonely room to lie wakeful, fighting his ghosts, or else to sob himself to sleep.

His theory of life had been amply proved. Blake had prated of the soul, but it had been the body he had desired! Again and again that thought had struck home, a savage spur goading him in daytime to a wild plying of his brushes, gripping him in the lonely darkness of the night-time until his sobs were suspended by their very poignancy and the scalding tears dried before they could fall.

He saw darkly, he saw untruly, but the world is according to the beholder's vision, and in those sultry days, when summer waxed and Paris emptied, opening its gates to the foreigner, all the colors had receded from existence and he had tasted the lees of life.

And now to-day it seemed that the climax had been reached. Seated idly before his canvas, the whole procession of his Paris life unwound before him—from the first tumultuous hour, when he had entered the Hotel Railleux on fire for freedom, to this moment when, with dull resentful eyes, he confronted the sum of his labors—an unfinished, sorry study devoid of inspiration.

He stared at the flat canvas—the rough outline of his picture—the reckless splashing on of color; and, abruptly, as if a hand had touched him, he sprang to his feet, making havoc among the paint tubes that strewed the floor, and turned summarily to the open window.

It was after eight o'clock, but the hazy, unreal daylight of a summer evening made all things visible. He scanned the plantation, viewing it as if in some travesty of morning; he looked down upon the city, sleeping uneasily in preparation for the inevitable night of pleasure, and a sudden loathing of Paris shook him. It seemed as if some gauzy illusive garment had been lifted from a fair body and that his eyes, made free of the white limbs, had discerned a corpse.

By a natural flight of ideas, the loathing of the city turned to loathing of himself—to an unsatiable desire for self-forgetfulness, for self-effacement. Solitude was no longer tenable, the walls of the appartement seemed to close in about him, stifling—suffocating him. With a feverish movement, he turned from the window, picked up his hat and fled the room.

On the landing he paused for a moment before the door of M. Cartel. He had paid many visits to M. Cartel under stress of circumstances similar to this, and invariably M. Cartel—and, moving in his shadow, the demure Jacqueline—had proffered a generous hospitality—talking to him of work, of politics, of Paris, but with a Frenchman's inimitable tact.

For all this unobtrusive attention he had been silently grateful, but to-night he stood by the door hesitating; for long he hesitated, honestly fighting with his mood, but at last the desperation of the mood prevailed. Who could talk of work, when work was as an evil smell in the nostrils? Who could talk of politics, when the overthrow of nations would not stimulate the mind? He turned on his heel with a little exclamation, hopeless as it was cynical, and ran down the stairs with the gait of one whose destination concerns neither the world nor himself.



CHAPTER XXXVII

Max swung down the Escalier de Sainte-Marie in as reckless a mood as ever possessed being of either sex. Nothing of the sweet Maxine was discernible in face or carriage; the boy predominated, but a boy possessed of a callousness that was pathetic seen hand-in-hand with youth.

For the first time he was viewing Paris bereft of the glamour of romance; for the first time the Masque of Folly passed before him, licentious and unashamed. Many an hour, in days gone by, he had discussed with Blake this lighter side of many-sided Paris, and with Blake's wise and penetrating gaze he had seen it in true perspective; but to-night there was no sane interpreter to temper vision, to-night he was bitterly alone, and his mind, from long austerity, long concentration upon work, had swung with grievous suddenness to the opposing pole of thought. He had no purpose in his descent from the rue Mueller, he had no desire of vice as an antidote to pain, but his loathing of Paris was drawing him to her with that morbid craving to hurt and rehurt his bruised soul that assails the artist in times of misery.

The streets were quiet, for it was scarcely nine o'clock, and as yet the lethargy of the day lay heavy on the air. The heat and the accompanying laxity breathed an atmosphere of its own; every window of every house gaped, and behind the casements one caught visions of men and women negligent of attire and heedless of observation.

Romance was dead! Of that supreme fact Max was very sure. A hard smile touched his lips, and hugging his cynicism, he went forward—crossing the Boulevard de Clichy, plunging downward into the darker regions of the rue des Martyrs and the rue Montmartre, where the lights of the boulevards are left behind, and the sight-seer is apt to look askance at the crude facts that the street lamps divulge to his curious eyes. To the boy, these corners had no terrors, for in his untarnished friendship with Blake all sides of life had been viewed in turn, as all topics had been discussed as component parts of a fascinatingly interesting world. To-night he went forward, mingling with the inhabitants of the district, revelling with morbid realism in the forbidding dinginess of their appearance. He was not of that quarter—that was patent to every rough who lounged outside a cafe door, as it was patent to every slovenly woman who gave him a glance in passing. He was not of the quarter, but he was an artist—and a shabby one at that—so the men accorded him an indifferent shrug and the women a second glance.

Forward he went, possessed by his morbidity—forward into the growing murkiness of environment until, association of ideas suddenly curbing impulse, he stopped before the door of a shabby cafe bearing the fanciful appellation of the Cafe des Cerises-jumelles. Once, when bound upon a night exploration in this same region, he and Blake had stopped to smile at this odd name and wonder at its origin, and finally they had passed through the portal to find that the twin cherries smiled upon doubtful patrons. The vivid memory of that night smote him now as, drawn by some unquestioned influence, he again entered the cafe, passing through a species of bar to a long, low-ceiled eating-room set with small tables. How Blake had talked that night! How thoughtfully, how humanely and tolerantly he had judged their fellow-guests, as they sat at one of these tables, rubbing shoulders with the worst—or, as he had laughingly insisted, the best—of an odd fraternity!

The recollection was keen as a knife when Max entered the eating-room, sat down and ordered a drink with the supreme indifference of disillusion. Six months ago he would have trembled to find himself alone in such a place; to-night he was beyond such a commonplace as fear.

He smiled again cynically, emptied his glass and looked about him. His first experience of the place had been in the hours succeeding midnight, when the quarter hummed with its unsavory life; but now it was early, the lights were not yet at their fullest, the waiters had not as yet taken on their nocturnal air of briskness. In one corner three men were engrossed in a game of cards, in another a thin girl of fifteen sat with her arm round the neck of a boy scarce older than herself, whispering jests into his ear, at which they both laughed in coarse low murmurs, while in the middle of the room, with her back turned to him, a woman in a tight black dress and feathered hat was eating a meal of poached eggs.

In a vague way, absorbed in his own thoughts, Max fell to studying this solitary woman, until something in her impassivity, something in the sphinx-like calm with which she went through the business of her meal, blent with his imaginings, and he suddenly found her placed beside Blake in the possession of his thoughts—an integral part of their joint lives. In a flash of memory the large black hat, the opulent figure took place within his consciousness and, answering to a new instinct, he rose and took an involuntary step in the woman's direction.

She changed her position at sound of his approach, her large hat described new angles, and she looked back over her shoulder.

"What!" she said aloud. "The little friend of Blake! But how droll!"

She showed no surprise, she merely waved her hand to a chair facing her own.

Max sat down; a hot and dirty waiter came forward languidly, and wine was ordered.

Lize pushed aside the glass of green-tinted liquid that she had been consuming through a straw, and waited for what was to come. Max, looking at her in the crude light of a gas-jet, saw that her face was whiter, her eyes more hollow than when her wrath had fallen on him at the Bal Tabarin; also, he noted that a little dew of heat showed through the mask of powder on her face.

Silence was maintained until the wine was brought; then she drank thirstily, laid down her empty glass and turned her eyes upon him.

"You have parted with your friend, eh?"

The surprise of the question was so sharp that it killed speculation. He did not ask how she had probed his secret—whether by mere intuition or through some feminine confidence of Jacqueline's. The fact of her knowledge swept him beyond the region of lucid thought; he accepted the situation as it was offered.

"Yes," he said. "I have parted with my friend."

"And why? He is a good boy—Blake!" She looked at him with her inscrutable eyes, and after many days he was conscious of the touch of human compassion. He did not analyze the woman's feelings—he did not even conjecture whether she knew him for boy or girl. All he comprehended was that out of this sordid atmosphere—out of the lethargy of the sultry night—some force had touched him, some force was drawing him back into the circle of human things. Strange indeed are the workings of the mind. He, who had shrunk with an agonized sensitiveness from the sympathy of M. Cartel—from the tender comprehension of the little Jacqueline—suddenly felt his reserve melt and break in presence of this woman of the boulevards with her air of impassive ennui. Theoretically, he knew life in all its harder aspects, and it called for no vivid imagination to trace the descent of the fresh grisette of the Quartier Latin to the creature who sought her meals in the Cafe des Cerises-jumelles, yet hers was the accepted compassion.

"Madame!" he said, suddenly. "Madame, tell me! You knew him once?"

Lize wiped the dew of heat from her forehead; emptied a second glass of wine. "A thousand years ago, mon petit, when the world was as young as you!"

"In the Quartier?"

"In the Quartier—on the Boul' Mich'—at Bulliers—" She stopped, falling into a dream; then, suddenly, from the farthest corner of the room, came the sound of a loud kiss, and the boy and girl at the distant table began to sing in unison—a ribald song, but instinct with the zest of life. Lize started, as though she had been struck.

"They have it—youth!" she cried, with a jerk of her head toward the distant corner. "The world is for them!" Then her voice and her expression altered. She leaned across the table, until her face was close to Max.

"What a little fool you are!" she said. "It is written in those eyes of yours—that see too little and see too much. Go home! Think of what I have said! He is a good boy—this Blake!"

Max mechanically replenished her glass, and mechanically she drank; then she produced a little mirror and made good the ravages of the heat upon her face with the nonchalance of her kind; finally, she looked at the clock.

"Come!" she said. "We go the same way."

He rose obediently. He made no question as to her destination. He had come to drown himself in the sordidness of Paris and, behold, his heart was beating with a human quickness it had not known since the moment he held Blake's first letter unopened in his hand; his throat was dry, his eyes were smarting with the old, half-forgotten smart of unshed tears.

He followed her with a strange docility as she passed out of the unsavory Cerises-jumelles into the close, ill-smelling street. In complete silence they walked through what seemed a nightmare world of unpleasant sights, unpleasant sounds, until across his dazed thoughts the familiar sense of Paris—the sense of the pleasure-chase—swept from the Boulevard de Clichy.

Lize paused; he saw her fully in the brave illumination—the large black hat, the close-clad figure, the pallid face—and as he looked, she smiled unexpectedly and, putting out her hand, patted him on the shoulder.

"Good-bye, mon enfant! Go home! Youth comes but once; and this Blake—he is a good boy!"

Before he could answer, before he could return smile or touch, she was gone—absorbed into the maze of lights, and he was alone, to turn which way he would.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

The fifth floor was dim and silent, the door of M. Cartel's appartement was closed; but Max, mounting the stairs two steps at a time, was not daunted by silence or lack of light. Max was once again a prey to impulse, and under the familiar tyranny, his blood burned—raced in his veins, sang in his cars.

Without an instant's pause, he knocked on M. Cartel's door, and when his knock was answered by Jacqueline—fair and cool-looking, oven in the great heat—words rushed from him as they had been wont to rush when life was a gay affair.

"You are alone, Jacqueline?"

Jacqueline nodded quickly, comprehending a crisis.

"Ah, I thank God!" He caught both her hands; he gave a little laugh that ended in a sob; he passed into the appartement, drawing her with him.

"Oh, la, la!" she cried, hiding her emotion in flippancy, "you take my breath away."

Max laughed again. "You see I've lost my own!"

She gave a scornful, familiar toss of the head. "Do not be foolish! What has happened?"

"I have made a discovery, Jacqueline. Youth comes but once!"

"Indeed! You need not have left the rue Mueller to learn that."

"It comes but once, and while it is with me I am going to look it in the face." His words tumbled forth, pell-mell, and as he spoke he pulled her forcibly into the living-room.

"Jacqueline, I am serious. I have been down in hell; I must see heaven, or my faith is lost."

Jacqueline stood very still, making no effort to loose the hot clasp of his hands, but all at once her gaze concentrated piercingly.

"You have sent for him!" she exclaimed.

"I have! Oh, I may be weak, but listen! listen! In the old days when the world was religious and people observed Lent, there was always Mi-Careme, was there not? Well, I have fasted, and now I must feast."

They gazed at each other; the one aglow with anticipation, the other with curiosity.

"You have sent for him—at last?"

"I have sent a telegram with these words: 'Meet me at midday on Tuesday in the Place de la Concorde.—MAXINE.'"

"And this is Friday," said Jacqueline. "In four days' time you will see him again!"

"Again!" Max spoke the word inaudibly.

"And—when you meet?" Jacqueline's blue eyes were sharp as needle-points.

Max colored to the temples. "Ma cherie, I have not even thought! All I know is that youth comes but once, and that youth is courage. I have been a coward—I am going to be brave."

"You are going—to confess?"

Max said nothing, but with her woman's instinct for such things, Jacqueline read assent in the silence.

"Then the end is assured! He will take you—with your will, or without! Monsieur Max, or the princess!"

Max shook his head. "I do not think so. But that is outside the moment—that is the afterward. First there must be midday and the Place de la Concorde! First there must be my Mi-Careme—my hour!"

"Ah!" whispered the little Jacqueline, "your hour!" And who shall say what memories glinted through her quick brain—what conjurings of the first waltz with M. Cartel at the Moulin de la Galette, and the last waltz at the Bal Tabarin, when she stepped through the tawdry doorway into her paradise? "Your hour! And where will it be spent—madame?"

"Ah!" Max's eyes sought heaven or, in lieu of heaven, M. Cartel's ceiling; Max's hands freed Jacqueline's and flew out in ecstatic gesture. "Ah, that is for the gods to say, cherie! And the gods know best."



CHAPTER XXXIX

Rapture gilded the world; rapture trembled on the air like the vibrations of a chord struck from some celestial harp. Coming as a divine gift, the first autumnal frost had lighted upon Paris; during the night fainting August had died, and with the dawn, golden September had been born to the city.

Blake, waiting at the foot of the Cours la Reine, consumed with anticipation, drank in the freshness of the morning as though it were a draught of wine; Maxine, crossing the Place de la Concorde, lifted her face to the sky, striving to quiet her pulses, to cool her hot cheeks in the wash of gentle air.

Her hour had arrived; none could hinder its approach, as none could mar its beauty. She scarcely recognized the earth upon which she trod; the fierce excitement, the melting tenderness of her moods warred until emotion ran riot and the sifting of her feelings became a task impossible.

She passed the spot where, eight months earlier, Max had saluted the flag of France. Her heart leaped, her glance, flying before her, discovered Blake waiting at his appointed place, and all her wild sensations were suspended.

The violently beating heart seemed to stop, the blood moved with a sick slowness in her veins, it seemed impossible that she should go forward, and yet, by the curious mechanism of the human machine, her feet carried her on until Blake's presence was tangible to all her senses—until suspense was engulfed in actuality, and joy was singing about her in the air, a song so triumphant, so penetrating that it drowned all whispering of doubt—all murmurs of to-morrow or of yesterday. Tears welled into her eyes, her hands went out to him.

Standing in the full light, she was a tall, slight girl, fastidiously, if simply dressed—veiled, gloved, shod as befitted a woman of the world; and as he gazed on her, one thought possessed Blake. She, who typified all beauty—whose presence was a fragrance—had called to him, chosen him. All the romance stored up through generations welled within him; he would have died for her at that moment as enthusiastically as his ancestors had died for their faith. Catching her hands, he kissed them without a thought for passing glances.

"Princess!"

The sound of his voice went through her, she laughed to break the sob that caught her throat, she looked up, unashamed of the tears trembling on her lushes.

"Monsieur Ned!"

"Oh, why the 'monsieur'?"

"Why the 'princess'?"

They both smiled.

"Maxine!"

"Mon ami! Mon cher ami!" It thrilled her to the heart to say the words; she glanced at him half fearfully, then broke forth afresh, lest he should have time to think. "Ned, tell me! It is true—all this? I am not asleep? It is not a dream?"

He pressed her hands. "Look round you! It is morning."

Her lips trembled; she obeyed him, looking slowly from the cool sky to the tree-tops, where the heavy leaves were still damp with the night's frost.

"Yes, it is morning!" she said. "We have all the day!"

Watching her intently, he did not add, as would the common lover, "we have many days"; she seemed to him so beautiful, so naive that her words must compass perfection.

"We have all the day," he echoed. "How shall it be spent?"

Then she turned to him, all graciousness, her young face lifted to the light. "Ah, you must decide! I do not wish even to think; the world is so—how do you say—enchanted?"

He laughed in delight at her charming, pleading smile, her charming, pleading hesitation; he caught her mood with swift intuition.

"That's it! The world is enchanted! Away behind us, is the Dreaming Wood. What do you say? Shall we go and seek the Sleeping Beauty?"

She nodded silently. He was so perfectly the Blake of old—the Blake who understood.

"Then the first thing is to find the magic coach! We must have nothing so mundane as a carriage drawn by horses. A magic coach that travels by itself!" He signalled to a passing automobile.

"Drive to the Pre Catelan—and drive slowly!" he directed; he handed her to her seat with all the courtliness proper to the occasion, and they were off, wheeling up the long incline toward the Arc de Triomphe.

They were silent while the chauffeur made a way through the many vehicles, past the crowds of pedestrians that infest the entrance to the Bois; but as the way grew clearer—as the spell of the trees, of the green vistas and glimpsed water began to weave itself—Maxine turned and laid her hand gently upon Blake's.

"Mon cher! How good you are!"

He started, thrilling at her touch.

"My dearest! Good?"

"In coming to me like this—"

He caught her hand quickly. "Don't!" he said. "Don't! It isn't right—- from you to me. You never doubted that I'd come? You knew I'd come?"

"Yes; I knew."

"Then that's all right!" He pressed her hand, he smiled, he reassured her by all the subtle, intangible ways known to lovers, and it was borne in upon her that he had altered, had grown mentally in his months of exile—that he was steadier, more certain of life or of himself, than when he had rushed tempestuously out of Max's studio. She pondered the change, without attempting to analyze it; a deep sense of rest possessed her, and she allowed her hand to lie passive in his until, all too soon, their cab swept round to the left, sped past a bank of greenery and drew up, with a creaking of brakes, before the restaurant of the Pre Catelan.

Everywhere was light, silence and, best boon of all, an unexpected solitude—a solitude that invested the white building with a glamour of unreality and converted the slight-stemmed, moss-grown trees into spellbound sentinels.

"Here is the Castle!" said Blake. "Look! Even the waiters doze, until we come to wake them!" He handed her to the ground, gave his orders to the chauffeur, and as the cab disappeared into some unseen region, they mounted the wide steps.

"Monsieur desires dejeuner?" A sleek waiter disengaged himself from his brethren and came persuasively forward. At this early hour everything at the Pre Catelan was soft and soothing; later in the day things would alter, the service would be swift and unrestful, the swish of motor-cars and the hum of voices would break the spell, but at this hour of noon Paris, for some obscure reason, ignored the fruitful oasis of the Bois, and peace lay upon it like balm.