"How charming! Oh, but how charming!" The exclamation was won from Maxine as her glance skimmed the palms, the glittering glasses and the white table-linen, and rested upon the spacious windows that convey the fascinating impression that one whole wall of the room has been removed, and that the ranged trees outside with their satiny green stems actually commune with the gourmet as he eats his meal.

"It's what you wanted, isn't it?" Blake's pleasure in her pleasure was patent. Every look, every gesture manifested it.

"It is wonderful!" she said, gently.

"Good! And now, what is the meal to be? Dragon's wings en casserole? Or Moonbeams surprise?"

She laughed, and a flash of mischief stole through the glance she gave him.

"What do you say, mon ami, to poulet bonne femme?"

She watched for a gleam of remembrance, but he was too engrossed in the present to recall the trivialities of the past. He gave the order without a thought save to do her will.

Delay was inevitable, and while the meal was in preparation they wandered into the open and visited the farm at the rear of the restaurant, conjuring the farm-like traditions of the place after the accepted custom—entering the sweet-smelling, shadowy cow-shed, stroking the sleek, soft-breathing cows, amusing themselves over the antics of the monkey chained beside the door.

It was all very pleasant, the illusion of Arcadia was charmingly rendered, and they returned, happy and hungry, in search of their meal. That meal from its first morsel was raised above common things, for was it not the first time Blake had broken bread with Maxine? And what true lover ever forgets the rare moment when all the joys of intimacy are foreshadowed in the first serving of his lady with no matter what triviality of meat or bread, or water or wine? The points of the affair are so slight and yet so tremendous; for are they not sacramental—a typifying of things unspeakable?

No intimate word was spoken, but at such times looks speak—more poignantly still, hearts speak; and their gay voices, as they laughed and talked and laughed again, held notes that the ear of the waiter never caught, and their silences vibrated with meaning.

At last the meal was over; they rose and by one consent looked toward the spacious world outside.

"Shall we go into the gardens?"

Blake put the question; Maxine silently bent her head.

Softly and assiduously their sleek waiter bowed them to the door, and they passed down the shallow steps into the slim shadows of the trees as they might have passed into some paradise fashioned for their special pleasure.

It was a place—an hour—removed from the mundane world; passing out of the region of the trees, they came upon a shrubbery—a shrubbery that enclosed a lawn and flower-beds, and here, by grace of the gods, was a seat where they sat down side by side and gave their eyes to the beauty that encompassed them.

It was an exotic beauty, yet a beauty of intense suggestion. Summer lay lavishly displayed in the shaven lawn, the burdened shrubs, the glory of flowers, but over her redundant loveliness autumn had spun an ethereal garment. No words could paint the subtlety of this sheath; it was neither mist nor shadow, it was a golden transparency spun from nature's loom—the bridal veil of the young season.

"How exquisite!" whispered Maxine, as if a breath might break the spell. "Look at those yellow butterflies above the flowers! They are the only moving things."

"It is the place of the Sleeping Beauty, sweet! It is the place of love." Blake took her hands again and kissed them; then, with a gentle, enveloping tenderness, he drew her to him, looking into her face, but not attempting to touch it.

"My sweet, I have come back. What are you going to do with me?"

She did not answer; she lay quite still within his arms, her half-closed eyes lingering on the garden—on the white roses, the clustering mignonette, the hovering yellow butterflies.

"What are you going to do with me?"

She lifted her eyes, dewy with the beauty of the world.

"Wait!" she whispered. "Oh, wait!"

"I have waited."

"Ah, but a little longer!"

"But my love, my dear one—"

She stirred in his embrace; she turned with a swift passion of entreaty, putting her fingers across his mouth.

"Ned! Ned! I know. But do this great thing for me! Shut your eyes and your ears. Forget yesterday, think there will be no to-morrow. Hold this one moment! Give me my one hour!"

She pleaded as if for life, her body vibrating, her eyes beseeching him; and his answer was to press her hand harder against his lips, and to kiss it fervently. He gave no sign of the struggle within him—the doubt that encompassed him. Something had been demanded of him, and he gave it loyally.

"There was no yesterday, there will be no to-morrow!" he said. "But to-day is ours!"

It was the perfect word, spoken perfectly; Maxine's eyes drooped in supreme content, her lips curled like a pleased child's.

"Ah, but God is good!" she said, and with a child's supreme sweetness, she lifted her face for his kiss.



CHAPTER XL

The hour was sped, the day past; night, with its dark wings, covered the eastern sky and, one by one, the stars came forth—stars that gleamed like new silver in the light sharpness of the September air.

Having closed eyes to the world at the Pre Catelan, Maxine and Blake had lengthened the coil of their dream as the day waxed. Three o'clock had seen them driving into the heart of the Bois, and late afternoon had found them wandering under the formal, interlaced trees in the gardens of the Petit Trianon. At Versailles they dined, falling a little silent over their meal, for neither could longer hold at bay the sense that events impended—that all paths, however devious, however touched by the enchanter's wand, lead back by an unalterable law to the world of realities.

With an unspoken anxiety they clung to the last moment of their meal; and when coffee had been partaken of, Maxine demanded yet another cup and, resting her elbows on the table, took her face between her hands.

"Ned! Will you not offer me a cigarette?"

He was all confusion at seeming remiss.

"My dear one! A thousand pardons! I did not think—"

"—That I smoked? Are you disappointed?"

He smiled. "It is one charm the more—if there is room for one."

He handed her a cigarette and lighted a match, his eyes resting upon her as she drew in the first breath of smoke with a quaint seriousness that smote him with a thought of the boy.

"Dearest," he said, suddenly, "I have been so happy to-day that I have thought of no one but ourselves, and now, all at once—"

Her eyes flashed up to his; she divined his thought, and it was as though she put forth all her strength to ward off a physical danger.

"Oh, mon cher, and was it not your day—our day? Would you have marred it with other thoughts?"

"No; but yet—"

"No! No!" She put out her hand, she pleaded with eyes and lips and voice. "Look! Until this little cigarette is burned out!" She held up the glowing tip. "When that is over, our day is over; then we return to the world—but not until then. Is it—what do you say—a bargain?" Her white teeth flashed, her glance flashed with the brightness of tears, her fingers rested for a second upon his.

The restaurant was practically empty; a few summer tourists were dining at tables close to the door, but Blake had chosen the farthest, dimmest corner and there they sat in semi-isolation, living the last moments of their day with an intensity that neither dared to express and that each was conscious of with every beat of the heart.

Maxine laughed as she drew her second puff of smoke, but her laugh had a nervous thinness. Blake filled their liqueur-glasses, but his gesture was uneven and a little of the brandy spilled upon the cloth.

"A libation to the gods!" he said. "May they smile upon us!" He lifted his glass and emptied it.

Maxine forced a smile. "The gods know best!" she said, but as she raised her glass, her hand, also, trembled.

But Blake ignored her perturbation, as she ignored his. The coming ordeal lay stark across their path, but neither would look upon it, neither would see beyond the tip of Maxine's cigarette—the tiny beacon, consuming even as it gave light!

A silence fell—a silence of full five minutes—then Blake, yielding once more to the craving for the solace of contact, put his hand over hers.

"Dear one, I know nothing of what is coming, but that I am utterly in your hands. But let me say one thing. To-day has been heaven—the golden, the seventh heaven!"

She said nothing, she did not meet his eyes, but her cold fingers clasped his convulsively, and two tears fell hot upon their hands.

That was all; that was the sum of their expression. No other word was spoken. They sat silent, watching the cigarette burn itself out between Maxine's fingers.

She held it to the very last, then dropped it into her finger-bowl and rose.

"Now, mon cher!" In the dim light she looked very tall and slight and seemed possessed of a curious dignity. All the animation had left her face, beneath the eyes were shadows, and in the eyes a tragic sadness—the sadness that the soul creates for itself.

Blake rose also and, side by side, very quietly, they left the restaurant. In the street outside, the cab that had assisted in the day's adventures still waited their pleasure.

He handed her to her place and paused, his foot upon the step.

"And now, liege lady—where?"

She looked at him gravely and answered without a tremor, "To Max's studio."

Surprise—if surprise touched him—showed not at all upon his face. He gave the order quietly and explicitly, and took his place beside her.

Down the broad street of Versailles they wheeled, but both were too preoccupied to see the lurking ghosts of a past regime that lie so palpably in the shadows, and presently Blake's hand found hers once more.

"You are cold?"

She shook her head.

Through the cool night they drove, under the jewelled cloak of the sky, rushing forward toward Paris as Max had once rushed in the mysterious north express.

Blake did not speak or move again until the city was close about them; then, with a gesture that startled her by its unexpectedness, he drew from his hand the signet ring he always wore—a ring familiar to Max as the stones of the rue Mueller—and slipped it over her third finger.

"Oh, Ned!" She started as the ring slipped into place, and her voice trembled with fear and superstition.

He pressed her hand. "Don't refuse it! The ring is the emblem of the eternal, and all my thoughts for you belong to eternity."

No more was said; they skimmed through the familiar ways until Maxine could have cried aloud for grace, and at last they stopped at the corner of the rue Andre de Sarte.

She stood aside as Blake dismissed the cab, she knew that had speech been demanded of her then she could not have brought forth a word, so parched were her lips, so impotent her tongue.

Her ordeal confronted her; no human power could eliminate it now. To her was the disentangling of knotted threads, the sorting of the colors in the scheme of things. She averted her face from Blake as they mounted the Escalier de Sainte-Marie, and her hand clung for support to the iron railing.

Familiar to the point of agony was the open doorway, the dark hall of the house in the rue Mueller. Side by side they entered; side by side, and in complete silence, they made the ascent of the stairs, each step of which was heavy with memories.

On the fifth floor she went forward and opened the door of Max's appartement. Within, all was dark and quiet, and Blake, loyally following her, passed without comment through the tiny hall, on into the little salon where the light from the brilliant sky made visible the pathetically familiar objects—the old copper vessels, the dower chest, the leathern arm-chair.

This leather chair stood like a faithful sentinel close to the open window, and as his eyes rested on it he was conscious of a pained contraction of the heart, for it stood exactly where it had stood when last he watched the stars and rambled through his dreams and ideals, with the boy for listener. The thought came quick and sharp, goading him as many a puzzled thought had goaded him in his months of solitude, and as at Versailles, he turned to Maxine, a question on his lips.

But again she checked that question. Stepping through the shadows, she drew him across the room toward the window. Reaching the old chair, she touched his shoulder, gently compelling him to sit down.

"Ned," she said, and to her own ears the word sounded infinitely far away. "I seem to you very mad. But you have a great patience. Will you be patient a little longer?"

She had withdrawn behind the chair, laying both her hands upon his shoulders, and as she spoke her voice shook in an unconquerable nervousness, her whole body shook.

"My sweet!" He turned quickly and looked up at her. "What is all this? Why are you torturing yourself? For God's sake, let us be frank with each other—"

But she pressed his shoulders convulsively. "Wait! wait! It is only a little moment now. I implore you to wait!"

He sank back, and as in a dream felt her fingers release their hold and heard her move gently back across the room; then, overwhelmed by the burden of dread that oppressed him, he leaned forward, bowing his face upon his hands.

Minutes passed—how few, how many, he made no attempt to reckon—then again the hushed steps sounded behind him, the sense of a gracious presence made itself felt.

Instinctively he attempted to rise, but, as before, Maxine's hands were laid upon his shoulders, pressing him back into his seat. He saw her hands in the starlight—saw the glint of his own ring.

"Ned!"

"Dear one?"

"It is dim, here in this room, but you know me? Your soul sees me?" Her voice was shaking, her words sobbed like notes upon an instrument strung to breaking pitch.

"My dear one! My dear one!" His voice, too, was sharp and pained; he strove to turn in his chair, but she restrained him.

"No! No! Say it without looking. You know me? I am Maxine?"

"Of course you are Maxine!"

"Ah!"

It was a short, swift sound like the sobbing breath of a spent runner. It spoke a thousand things, and with its vibrations trembling upon her lips, Maxine came round the chair and Blake, looking up, saw Max—Max of old, Max of the careless clothes, the clipped waving locks.

It is in moments grotesque or supreme that men show themselves. He sprang to his feet; he stared at the apparition until his eyes grew wide, but all he said was 'God!' very softly to himself. 'God!' And then again, 'God!'

It was Maxine who opened the flood-gates of emotion; Maxine who, with wild gesture and broken voice, dressed the situation in words.

"Now it is over! Now it is finished—the whole foolish play! Now you have your sight—and your liberty to hate me! Hate me! Hate me! I am waiting."

"God!" whispered Blake again, not hearing her, piecing his thoughts together as a waking man tries to piece a dream. 'God!'

The reiteration tortured her. She suddenly caught his arm, forcing him into contact with her. "Do not speak to yourself!" she cried. "Speak to me! Say all you think! Hate me! Hate me!"

Then at last he broke through the confusion of his mind, startling her as such men will always startle women by their innate singleness of thought.

"Hate you?" he said. "Why, in God's name, should I hate you?"

"Because it is right and just."

"That I should hate you, because I have been a fool? I do not see that."

"But, Ned!" she cried; then, suddenly, at its sharpest, her voice broke; she threw herself upon her knees beside the chair and sobbed.

And then it was that Blake showed himself. Kneeling down beside her, he put both arms about the boyish figure and, holding it close, poured forth—not questions, not reproaches, not protestations—but a stream of compassion.

"Poor child! Poor child! Poor child! What a fool I've been! What a brute I've been!"

But Maxine sobbed passionately, shrinking away from him, as though his touch were pain.

"My child! My child! How foolish I have been! But how foolish you have been, too—how sweetly foolish! You gave with one hand and took away with the other. But now it is all over. Now you are going to give with both hands—- I am to have my friend and my love as well. It is very wonderful. Oh, sweet, don't fret! Don't fret! See how simple it all is!"

But Maxine's bitter crying went on, until at last it frightened him.

"Maxine, don't! Don't, for God's sake! Why should you cry like this? What is it, when all's said and done, but a point of view? And a point of view is adjusted much more quickly than you think. At first I thought the earth was reeling round me, but now I know that 'twas only my own brain that reeled; and I know, too, that subconsciously I must always have recognized you in Max—for I never treated Max as a common boy, did I? Did I, now? I always had a queer—a queer respect for him. Dear one, see it with me! Try to see it with me?"

His appeal was pathetic; it was he who was the culprit—he who extenuated and pleaded. The position struck Maxine, wounding her like a knife.

"Oh, don't!" she cried in her own turn. "Don't, for the sake of God!"

"But why? Why? My sweet! My love! My little friend! Max—Maxine!"

It was not to be borne. She wrenched herself free and sprang to her feet, confronting him with a pale face down which the tears streamed.

"Because I am not your love! I am not your friend! I am not your Max—or your Maxine!"

Swift as she, he was on his feet, his bearing changed, his manhood recognizing the challenge in her voice, his instinct of possession alive to combat it.

"Not mine?" he said; and to Maxine, standing white and frail before him, the words seemed to have all the significance of life itself. Now at last they confronted each other—man and woman; now at last the issue in the war of sex was to be put to the test.

She had always known that this moment would arrive—always known that she would meet it in some such manner as she was meeting it now.

"Not mine?" Blake said again.

She shook her head, throwing back her shoulders, clasping her hands behind her, unconsciously taking on the attitude of defiance.

"And why not?"

It was curt, this question, as man's vital questions ever are; it was an onslaught that clove to the heart of things.

She trembled for an instant, then met his eyes.

"Because I will belong to no one. I must possess myself."

He stared at her.

"But it is not given to any one to possess himself! How can you separate an atom from the universal mass?"

"An atom may detach itself—"

"And fall into space! Is that self-possession? But, my God, are we going to split hairs? Maxine! Maxine!" He came close to her and put out his arms, but with a fierce gesture she evaded him; then, as swiftly, caught his hand.

"Oh, Ned! Oh, Ned! Can't you see?"

"No!" said Blake, simply. "I cannot."

"Listen! Then listen! I know myself for an individual—for a definite entity; I know that here—here, within me"—she struck her breast—"I have power—power to think—power to achieve. And how do you think that power is to be developed?" She paused, looking at him with burning eyes. "Not by the giving of my soul into bondage—not by the submerging of myself in another being. That night in Petersburg I saw my way—the hard way, the lonely way! Oh, Ned!" She stopped again, searching his face, but his face was pale and immobile—curiously, unnaturally immobile.

With a passionate gesture, she flung his hand from her. "Oh, it is so cruel! Can't you see? Can't you understand? I left Russia to make a new life; I made myself a man, not for a whim, but as a symbol. Sex is only an accident, but the world has made man the independent creature—and I desired independence. Sex is only an accident. Mentally, I am as good a man as you are."

"Ten times a better man," said Blake, startingly. "But not near so good a woman. For I know the highest thing—and you do not."

"The highest thing?"

"Love."

"Ah!" She threw up her hands in despair and walked to the window, looking up blankly at the stars. Then, suddenly, she spoke again, tossing her words back into the room.

"I suppose you think I am happy in all this?"

He was silent.

"I suppose you think I find this heaven?"

At last he answered. He came across to her; he stood looking at her with his strange new expression of inscrutability.

"Oh, Maxine!" he said, "why must you misjudge me? Little Maxine, who could be taken in my arms this minute and carried away to my castle, like a princess of long ago—but who would break her heart over the bondage! I haven't much, dear one, to justify my existence—but the gods have given me intuition. I do not think you are in heaven."

He waited a moment, while in the sky above them the stars looked down impartially upon the white domes of the church and the beacons of pleasure in the city below.

"Maxine! Shall I say the things for you that you want to say?"

She bent her head.

"Well, first of all, God help us, the world is a terrible tangle; and then you have a strange soul that has never yet half revealed itself. You sent me away from you because you feared love; you called me back because you feared your fear—"

"No! No! You are reasoning now, not justifying! You are entrapping me!"

"Am I?"

"Yes, and I refuse to be entrapped! I know love—I know all the specious things that love can say; the talk of independence, the talk of equality! But I know the reality, too. The reality is the absolute annihilation of the woman—the absolute merging of her identity."

"So that is love?"

"That is love."

He stood looking at her with a long profound look of deep restraint, of great sadness.

"Maxine," he said, at last, "you have many gifts—a high intelligence, a young body, a strong soul, but in the matter of love you are a little child. To you, love is barter and exchange; but love is not that. Love is nothing but a giving—an exhaustless giving of one's very best."

She tried to laugh. "I understand! I should give!"

"No, sweet, you should not. You cannot know the privileges of love, for you do not know love."

"Oh, Ned! How cruel! How cruel!"

"You do not know love," he spoke, very gently, without any bitterness, "and I do know it; for it has grown in me, day by day, in these long months away from you. I am not to be praised, any more than you are to be blamed. But I do love you—with my heart and my soul—with my life and my strength. I would die for you, if dying would help you; and as it won't, I will do the harder thing—live for you."

Her lips were parted, but they uttered no sound; her eyes, dark with thought, searched his face.

"Oh, Maxine!" He caught her hand. "How low you have rated me—to think I would wrest you from yourself! Is it my place to make life harder for you?"

Still she gazed at him. "I do not understand," she said, in a frightened whisper.

"Never mind, sweet! It doesn't matter if you never understand. Just give me credit for one saving grace."

He spoke lightly, as men speak when they are bankrupt of hope, then with a sudden breaking of his stoicism, he caught her in his arms, straining her close, kissing her mouth, talking incoherently to himself.

"Oh, Maxine! Little faun of the green groves! If you could know! But what am I that I should possess the kingdom of heaven?"

His ecstasy frightened her; she struggled to free herself.

"What is it?" she asked. "What is it?"

"Just love—no more, no less! Good-bye! Take your life—make it what you will; but know always that one man at least has seen heaven in your eyes." Again he held her to him, his whole life seeming to flow out upon his thoughts and to envelop her, then his arms relaxed and very soberly he took, first one of her hands, and then the other, kissing each in turn.

"Maxine!"

"Ned!" The word faltered on her lips.

"That's right!" he whispered. "I only wanted you to say my name. Good-bye now! Don't fret for me! After all, everything is as it should be."

She stood before him, the conqueror. All preconceptions had been scattered; she had not even won her laurels, they had been placed at her feet; and all the pomp and circumstance she could summon to her triumphing was a white face, a drooping head, and speechless lips.

"Good-bye, Maxine!" The words cried for response, and by a supreme effort she summoned her voice from some far region.

"Good-bye!"

He did not kiss her hand again, but bending his head, he solemnly kissed his own ring, lying cold upon her finger.



CHAPTER XLI

All was finished. Mystery was at an end. The pilgrim's staff had been placed in Maxine's hand, her feet set toward the great white road. She leaned back against the window of the salon and her mental eyes scanned that road—the coveted road of freedom, the way of splendid isolation—and in a vague, dumb fashion she wondered why the whiteness that had gleamed like snow in the distance should take on the hue of dust seen at close quarters. She wondered why she should feel so absolutely numbed—why life, with its exuberances of joy and sorrow, should suddenly have receded from her as a tide recedes.

There had been no battle; hers was a bloodless victory. Fate had been exquisitely kind, as is Fate's way when she would be ironical. Maxine could call up no cause for grief or for resentment, no cause even for remorse. She had confessed herself; she had been shriven and blessed, and bade to go her way!

Passing in review these phantom speculations, her eyes suddenly refused the vision of the mythical white road, stretching away in brain-sickening length, and her physical sight caught at the familiar picture revealed by the balcony—the thrice-known, thrice-loved shrubbery, where already the glossy holly leaves were stirring under September's fingers, whispering one to the other of fine cold autumn hours when gales would sweep the heights, bringing death to their frailer brethren, while they themselves nestled snug and strong, laughing at the elements. She traced the familiar outline of these sturdy bushes, and her perfect triumph seemed like a winding sheet about her limbs. She was above the world, removed from care, and all she knew was that she would have given her heart for one moment of the hot human grief that had seared her not four months ago.

She turned from the trees, turned from the stars and moved back into the unlighted room. All was quiet and dim; she stumbled against the arm-chair and recoiled as though a friend had touched her inopportunely; then she passed blindly onward, finding the little hall, finding the outer door with groping hands.

Outside was a deeper darkness, for here no starlight penetrated; but M. Cartel's door was ajar, and through the opening came a streak of lamplight and the hum of voices.

Pausing, Maxine caught the deep, humorous tones of M. Cartel himself, broken first by an unknown voice, quick, tense, typically Parisian, then by the light laugh of Jacqueline.

In her cruel perfection of triumph, she had no need to fear these voices—these little evidences of sociability. They could not hurt her, for was she not impervious to pain?

Another laugh, full and contented, came to her ear, then the opening of the piano and the masterful striking of a chord.

A murmur of pleasure gave evidence of an audience, and instinctively she moved forward, as a wanderer on a dark night draws near to a lighted dwelling. Gaining the door, she softly pushed it open, as M. Cartel executed a roulade, which melted into a brilliant piece of improvization.

A bright lamp shone in the hall; but beyond, the open door of the living-room displayed a half-lighted interior, with a handful of people grouped about it. Foremost figure was M. Cartel seated at his music within a radius of yellow light shed by four candles, while, beside him, a tall thin boy, and, behind him, Jacqueline seemed enclosed in a secondary, fainter circle of luminance. The rest of the room was in shadow, and as Maxine entered, she scarcely noticed the three other occupants—two men and a woman—who sat in a row close to the door, their backs to the wall.

No one commented upon her entry. The little Jacqueline glanced round once, smiling a quick welcome, but returned immediately to her contemplation of M. Cartel; the younger of the two men by the door—an Italian—paused in the lighting of a cigarette, but his companion—an old Polish Jew with a classic head and long, gray beard—retained his attitude of rapt attention, while the woman, who sat a little apart, and whose large black hat hid her face, made no sign.

Treading softly, Maxine entered and crept into a seat opposite the trio, realizing, with an indifference that surprised her, that the woman was Lize of the Bal Tabarin and the Cafe des Cerises-jumelles.

The music poured forth, a glittering stream of sound. The young Italian lighted cigarette after cigarette, smoking furiously and beating soundless time upon the floor with his foot, the old Pole sat lost in an emotional dream, tears gathering slowly in his eyes and trickling unheeded down his cheeks, while Lize, in her moveless isolation, gazed with fixed intensity at the wall above Maxine's head.

Time passed; time seemed of small account in that atmosphere—as the outside world was of small account. Not one of the little audience questioned how the other lived. It mattered nothing that in other hours the artistic fingers of the young Italian were employed in the manufacture of fraudulent antiques—that the enthusiast by the piano wrote humorous songs at a starvation wage for an unsuccessful comique—that Lize, finding humanity foolish, made profit of its folly! 'What would you?' they would have asked with a shrug. 'One must live!' For the rest, there were moments such as this—moments when the artist was paramount in each of them—when pure enthusiasm made them children again!

M. Cartel played on. He had forsaken improvization now, and was interpreting magnificently; occasionally the boy by the piano threw up his hands ecstatically, muttering incoherently to himself; occasionally the young Italian broke silence by a sharp, irresistible 'Brava'; but for the most part respectful silence spoke the intensity of the spell.

Then at last Maxine, sitting in her corner, saw Jacqueline bend over the shoulder of M. Cartel, her hair shining like sun-rays in the candlelight—saw her whisper in his ear—saw him look up and nod in abrupt acquiescence, and saw his square-tipped fingers lift for an instant from the keys and descend again to a series of new chords.

A little murmur of interest passed over the listeners. The Italian threw away his half-smoked cigarette and lighted another, the Pole smiled tolerantly with half-closed eyes, as the old smile at the vagaries of the young, and Maxine in her shadowed seat felt her heart leap tumultuously as the little Jacqueline, her arm naively round the shoulder of M. Cartel, her head thrown back, began to sing the first lines of the duet in Louise:

'Depuis le jour ou je me suis donnee, toute fleurie semble ma destinee. Je crois rever sous un ciel de feerie, l'ame encore grisee de ton premier baiser!'

And M. Cartel, lifting his head, broke in with the single electric cry of Julian the lover:

'Louise!'

Then, as if answering to the personal note, Jacqueline melted into Louise's sweet admission of absolute surrender:

'Quelle belle vie! Ah, je suis heureuse! trop heureuse ... et je tremble delicieusement, Au souvenir charmant du premier jour d'amour!'

The effect was instant. The youth by the piano smiled radiantly and nodded in vehement approval; the young Italian puffed fiercely at his cigarette; a flash of light crossed Lize's gaze, causing it to concentrate.

Jacqueline had no extraordinary voice, but music was native to her, and she sang as birds sing, with a true light sweetness exquisite to the ear:

'Souvenir charmant du premier jour d'amour!'

The declaration came to the listeners with a pure sincerity, it abounded in simplicity, in youthfulness, in conviction. A quiver ran through Maxine, her numbed senses vibrated. By an acute intuition she realized the composer's meaning; more, she appreciated the thrill called up in the soul of M. Cartel. Her ears were strained to catch each note, each phrase, with an intentness that astonished her; it suddenly appeared that out of all the world, one thing alone was of significance—the close following of this song, the apprehending of its purpose.

'Souvenir charmant du premier jour d'amour!'

The first night with Blake upon the balcony sprang back to memory, and with it the wonder, the delight, the illimitable sense of kinship with the universe. Again the spiritual sense lived in her, not warring with the physical, but justifying, completing it. She sat upright against the wall, suddenly fearful of this overwhelming mental disturbance—fighting the cloud of memory almost as one fights a bodily faintness.

The music grew in meaning; she heard Julian's ardent question:

'Tu ne regrette rien?'

and Louise's triumphant answer:

'Rien!'

The words, simply human, divinely just, assailed her ears, and by light of the intuition—the superconsciousness that was dominating her—the whole truth of this confessed love poured in upon her soul. She saw the halo about the head of the little singer, she appreciated the sublime giving of herself that cried in the music of the song. It was no mere sentiment on the lips of this fair child, it was the proclamation of a tremendous fact.

She leaned back against the wall, lips set, hands clasped. She clung to the rock of her theories like a drowning man, and like the drowning man she realized the imminence of the inundation that threatened her.

The music swelled, and now it was not Jacqueline alone who sang; M. Cartel's voice rose, completing, perfecting the higher feminine notes, blending with them as the music of wind or running water might harmonize with the singing of a bird. It was not art but nature that was at work in the words:

'Nous sommes tous les amants, fideles a leur serment! Ah, le divin roman!

* * * * *

Nous sommes toutes les ames que brule le sainte flamme du desire! Ah, la parole ideale dont s'enivre mon corps tout entier! Dis encore ta chanson de delice! Ta chanson victorieuse, ta chanson de printemps!'

The duet wore on, enthralling in its closeness to common human life, with its touches of tears, its touches of laughter, its hints of tenderness and bursts of passion. Not one face but had softened in comprehension as Louise painted the picture of her home—of the gentle father, the scolding mother, the little daily frictions that wear patience thin; not one heart but had leaped when passion broke a way through the song, mounting, mounting as upon wings, until Louise in her ecstasy of love and joy and incredulity exclaims:

'C'est le paradis! C'est une feerie!'

And Julian answers:

'Non! C'est la vie! l'Eternelle, la toute puissante vie!'

It was the supreme, the psychological moment! The duet continued, but Maxine heard no further words. They echoed and re-echoed in her brain, they obsessed her, lifting her to a sublimal state.

Across the room she saw the Italian throw away his cigarette and forget to replace it; she saw Lize lean forward breathlessly, and she knew that in fancy she was back in the Quartier Latin when life was young—when love laughed, and her hair was wreathed with vine leaves. She saw her at last as a living woman—felt the grape-juice run down her neck—felt the kisses of the Jacque Aujet who was ten years dead!

This, then, was the sum of life! Not the holding of fair things, but the giving of them!

She rose up; her limbs shook, but she paid no heed to physical strength or weakness; she was on a plane where the soul moved free, regardless of mortal needs. Neither Max nor Maxine had any place in her conceptions. She saw Lize, broken but justified, because she had given when life asked of her; she saw the little Jacqueline, with the halo of candle-light turning her blonde hair to gold; in a distant dream she saw the frail, steadfast Madame Salas, and in a near, poignant vision she saw Blake, and her soul melted within her.

She conceived the world as one immense censer into which men and women poured their all, and from which a wondrous white smoke, a scent incredibly lovely, rose continually, enveloping the universe.

To give! To give without hope of recompense, without question, without fear! That was the message of life.

She looked round the little room; she yearned to put out her arms, to clasp each hand, to touch each forehead with the kiss of living fellowship. Love consumed her, humility rilled her, she was a child again, with all things to learn.

The music was reaching its climax, it was filling every corner of the room, and as she glanced toward the piano in a last long look, the two voices rose in unison.

Silently—none knowing the revolution within her soul—none seeing the heights upon which she walked—Maxine moved to the door and slipped out into the hall, the picture of the lovers before her eyes, in her ears the symbolic cry:

'C'est la vie! l'Eternelle, la toute puissante vie!'

Like a being inspired, she passed back into her own appartement, and there, with a strange high excitement that was yet mystically calm, entered her little bedroom and lighted candles until not a shadow was left in all the white circumscribed space; then, standing in the illumination, like an acolyte who ministers to some secret rite, she slowly unburdened herself of her boy's garments.

The task was brief; they fell from her lightly, leaving her fair and virginal and untrammelled in body, as she was virginal and untrammelled in mind; and with a sweet gravity she clothed herself, garment by garment, in the dress of the morning.

Ardent and eager—yet restrained, as befitted a woman aware of her high place—she left the room and passed down the Escalier de Sainte-Marie. A rush of cool air came to her across the plantation, kissing her hot cheeks, the holly bushes whispered their secrets—which were her secrets as well, the eyes of the stars looked down, smiling into her eyes. She observed no face in the thronging faces that passed her; she made her steadfast way to the one point in the universe that was her goal by right divine. Even in the hallway of Blake's house she did not stop to question, but mounted the stairs and knocked upon his door, regardless of the stormy beating of her heart, the faintness of anticipation that encompassed her.

A moment passed—a moment or a century; then he was before her, appealing to the innermost recesses of her being.

He stared at her, as one might stare upon a ghost.

"Maxine!"

Her lips parted, trembling with a pleading tenderness.

"Maxine!" he said again; and now his voice shook, as hers had shaken in Max's little starlit studio.

It was the cry she had waited for—the confirmation of her faith. Her hands went out to him; her soul suddenly poured forth allegiance in look and voice.

"Ned! Ned! Take me! Take me and teach me! Take me away to your castle, like the princess of old. Show me the white sky and the opal sea, and the seaweed that smells like violets!"

His hands clasped hers, his incredulous eyes besought her. "Maxine, this is some dream?"

"No; it is no dream. We are awake. It is life!"

THE END