IT was the morning after the reunion—the morning after the catastrophe, and Blake was breakfasting alone in his rooms.
Typically Parisian rooms they were, rooms that stood closed and silent for more than half the year and woke to offer him a welcome when his wandering footsteps turned periodically toward Paris; typically Parisian, with their long windows and stiffly draped curtains, their marble mantelpieces and gilt-framed mirrors, their furniture arranged with a suggestion of ancient formality that by its very rigidity soothed the eye.
At the moment, evidences of Blake's unusually long occupancy broke this stiffness in many directions; intimate trifles that speak a man's presence were strewn here and there—objects of utility, objects of value and interest gathered upon his last long journey. Eminently pleasant thesalonappeared in the sunshine of the May morning—full of air and light, its gray carpet and gray-panelled walls making an agreeably neutral setting to the household gods of a gentleman of leisure. But the gentleman in question, so agreeably situated, seemed to find his state less gratifying than it might appear; a sense of dissatisfaction possessed him, as he sat at his solitary meal, a sense of dulness and loss most tenacious of hold.
More than once he roundly called himself a fool; more than once he shook out the thin sheets of his morning paper and buried himself in their contents, but unavailingly. The feeling of flatness, the sense of dissatisfaction with the world as it stood, grew instead of diminishing. At last, throwing down the paper, he gave up the unequal struggle and yielded to the pessimistic pleasure of self-analysis. He recalled last night and its vexatious trend of events, and with something akin to shame, he remembered his anger against Max; but although he admitted its possible exaggeration, the admission brought no palliation of Max's offence. He, possibly, had behaved like a brute; but Max had behaved like an imbecile!
At this point, he fell to staring fixedly in front of him, and through the meshes of his day-dream floated a face—not the face of the boy he was condemning, but that of the mysterious cause of last night's calamity.
He conjured it with quite astonishing vividness—the face of the portrait—the face so like, so unlike, the boy's. Every detail of the picture assailed him; the subtle illusion of the mirror—the strange, reflected eyes propounding their riddle.
Looking in imagination into those eyes, he lost himself delightfully. Sensations, periods of time passed and repassed in his brain—speculation, desire, and memory danced an enchanting, tangled measure.
He recalled the hundred fancies that had held, or failed to hold him in his thirty-eight years; he recalled the women who had loved too little, the women who had loved too much; and, quick upon the recollection, came the consciousness of the disillusion that had inevitably followed upon adventure.
He did not ask himself why these dreams should stir, why these ghosts should materialize and kiss light hands to him in the blue brilliance of this May morning; he realized nothing but that behind them all—a reality in a world of shadows—he saw the eyes of the picture insistently propounding their riddle—the riddle, the question that from youth upward had rankled, inarticulate, in his own soul.
It arose now, renewed, with his acknowledgment of it—the troubling, insistent question that cries in every human brain, sometimes softly, like a child sobbing outside a closed door, sometimes loudly and terribly, like a man in agony. The eternal question ringing through the ages.
He recognized it, clear as the spoken word, in this unknown woman's gaze; and for the first time in all his life the desire to make answer quickened within him. He, who had invariably sought, invariably questioned, suddenly craved to make reply!
An incurable dreamer, the fancy took him and he yielded to its glamour. How delightful to know and study that exquisite face! How fascinating beyond all words to catch the fleeting semblance of his charming Max—to lose it in the woman's seriousness—to touch it again in some gleam of boyish humor! It was a quaint conceit, apart from, untouched by any previous experience. Its subtlety possessed him; existence suddenly took on form and purpose; the depression, the sense of loss dispersed as morning clouds before the sun.
He rose, forgetful of his unfinished meal, his vitality stirring, his curiosity kindling as it had not kindled for years.
What, all things reckoned, stood between him and this alluring study? A boy! A mere boy!
No thought came to him of the boy himself—the instrument of the desire. No thought came; for every human creature is a pure egoist in the first stirring of a passion, and stalks his quarry with blind haste, fearful that at any turn he may be balked by time or circumstance. Later, when grief has chastened, or joy cleansed him, the altruist may peep forth, but never in the primary moment.
With no thought of the clinging hands and beseeching voice of last night—with no knowledge of a mournful figure that had dragged itself up the stairway of the house in the rue Müller and sobbed itself to sleep in a lonely bed, he walked across the room to his writing-table and calmly picked up a pen.
He dipped the pen into the ink and selected a sheet of note-paper; then, as he bent to write, impatience seized him, he tore the paper across and took up a telegraph form.
On this he wrote the simple message:
Will you allow me to meet your sister?—NED.
Will you allow me to meet your sister?—NED.
It was brief, it was informal, it was entirely unjustifiable. But what circumstance in his relation to the boy had lent itself either to formality or justification?
He rang the bell, dispatched his message, and then sat down to wait.
His attitude in that matter of waiting was entirely characteristic. He did not arrange his action in the event of defeat; he did not speculate upon probable triumph. The affair had passed out of his hands; the future was upon the knees of the gods!
He did not finish his breakfast in that time of probation; he did not again take up the paper he had thrown aside. He made no effort to occupy or to amuse himself; he merely waited, and in due time the gods gave him a sign—a telegraphic message, brief and concise as his own:
Come to-night at ten. She will be here.—MAX.
Come to-night at ten. She will be here.—MAX.
AT ten o'clock, punctual to the moment, Blake walked up the Escalier de Sainte-Marie. All day a curious agitation compounded of elation and impatience had lifted him as upon wings, but now that the hour had arrived, doubt amounting almost to reluctance assailed his spirit. He walked slowly, looking about him as though the way were strange; outside the house in the rue Müller he paused and glanced up at the fifth floor, suddenly daunted, suddenly thrilled by the faint light coming mistily through the open windows of thesalonand the studio.
What would she be like—this sister of Max? He strove ineffectually to materialize the portrait, but it eluded him. Only the soul of the woman seemed to have place in his imagination—the soul, seen through the questioning eyes.
Still a victim to the strange, new reticence, he entered the open doorway and began the familiar ascent. Here again the thought of the woman obsessed him. How must this place appear to her? His thoughts touched the varying scenes of Max's story—scenes of the girl's free youth and sumptuous, exotic after-life. None fitted accurately with a rue Müller. Of a certainty she, as well as the boy, must have the adventuring spirit!
His senses stirred, routing his diffidence, and under their spur he ran up the remaining steps, only pausing at the fifth floor as a light voice hailed him out of the dusk, a little flitting figure darted from the shadows, and Jacqueline, brimming with suppressed excitement, caught him by the arm.
"Monsieur Édouard!"
He laughed in recognition and greeting. "Well, Jacqueline! Always the air of the grand secret! Always the air of the little bird that has discovered the topmost bough of the tree! What is it to-night?"
His feelings were running riot; it was agreeable to spend them in badinage. But Jacqueline slapped his hand in reproof.
"No pleasantries, monsieur! The affair is serious."
He smiled; he lowered his voice to the tone of hers. "You have a visitor, then, Jacqueline, to this fifth floor of yours?"
Jacqueline nodded her blonde head, and again her excitement brimmed full measure.
"Monsieur, she is here—the sister of M. Max! The princess!" She whispered the last word—a whisper delicious, tremulous with the weight of actual romance.
Blake heard it, and his own heart stirred to a joyous youthful sensation. It was so naïve, so charming, so absolutely French.
"The princess!" he whispered back in just the expected tone. "Jacqueline, is she beautiful?"
Jacqueline threw up her hands, invoked heaven with her eyes, earth with her shrugging shoulders.
"Monsieur, she is ravishing!"
Blake's expressive answer was to put her gently aside and step toward Max's door.
But she was after him with a little cry. "Monsieur, not yet! I must deliver my message! The message of M. Max!"
"Of M. Max?"
"But yes, monsieur!" Her hands, her whole body expressed apology and eager explanation. "M. Max has been called away—upon a business of much importance. M. Max desires his profoundest, his most affectionate excuses—and will monsieur place him under a debt never possible of repayment by entering theappartement—by entertaining the princess during his absence?"
Blake stared "In the name of Heaven—"
But Jacqueline's white hands again made free with his arm.
"Monsieur, Heaven will arrange! Heaven is bountiful in these affairs!"
"But I don't understand. He has gone upon business, you say? He never had any business."
Jacqueline laughed and clapped her hands. "Do not be too sure, monsieur! He is growing up, is M. Max!" She gave another little twittering laugh of sheer delight.
"Come, monsieur! The princess is alone. It is not gallant to keep a lady waiting!"
"But you don't understand, Jacqueline. It is impossible—impossible that I should intrude—"
"It is no intrusion, monsieur! I have explained everything to madame—and she expects you!" She flitted past him to the door, threw it open and dropped him a pretty, impertinent curtsy.
"Now, monsieur!" she commanded; and Blake, half amused, half resentful, saw nothing for it but to obey.
He stepped across the threshold; he heard Jacqueline laugh again softly and close the door; then he stood, a prey to profound trepidation.
He stood for a moment, hesitating between flight and advance, then shame at his weakness forced him to go forward and open thesalondoor.
As he opened it, another change took place within him; his diffidence forsook him, his excitement was allayed as, by a restraining hand, he was dominated by a peculiar clarity of vision.
This accentuated keenness of observation came into action even in a material sense; as he passed into the familiar room, each object appealed to him in its appointed place—in its just and proper value. The quaint odd articles of furniture that he and Max had chosen in company! The pictures that he had hung upon the white walls at Max's bidding! The Russiansamovar, the books, the open cigarette-box, each of which spoke and breathed of Max!
Every object came to him clearly in the quiet light of the lamp upon the bureau; it seemed like the setting of a play, where the atmosphere had been carefully created, the details definitely woven into a perfect chain.
He stood, looking upon the silent room, wondering what would happen—convinced that something must happen; and at last, with the same quietness—the same intense naturalness, perfect as extreme art—a slight sound came from the balcony and a woman stepped into the subdued light.
She stepped into the quiet lamplight and paused; and Blake's first subconscious feeling was that, miraculously, the empty room had taken on life and meaning—that this sudden, gracious presence filled and possessed it absolutely and by right divine.
She seemed very tall as she stood looking down into the room, her rich hair crowning her head, her young figure clothed in white and wrapped in a cloak of soft mysterious gray that fell from her shoulders simply, yet with the dignity of a royal mantle.
She stood for a full minute, looking at him, almost it seemed sharing his own uncertainty; then, with a little gesture that irresistibly conjured Max, she stepped into the room—and into his life.
"Monsieur," she said, very softly, "I am the sister of Max; you are his friend. It is surely meant that we know each other!"
IT was a perfect moment; one of those rare and delicate spaces of time in which Fate's fingers seem to strike a chord at once poignant and satisfying, faint and far-reaching. The lamp-lit room, the open window and, beyond, the balcony veiled in the obscurity of the night! It was a fair setting for romance; and romance, young, beautiful, gracious as in the fairy-tale, had emerged from it into Blake's life. A smile, a word—and an atmosphere had been created! The things of the past were obscured, and the things of the present made omnipotent.
"What a brother this is of mine!" Maxine smiled again with a little quiver of humor that set her eyes alight. "Is it not like him to invite me to criticise my portrait, and leave me to receive his friend?"
She spoke, not in the English which Max invariably used, but in French; and the sound of her voice entangled Blake's senses. It seemed the boy's voice at its lowest and tenderest, but touched with new inflections tantalizing as they were delightful. Self-consciousness fled before it; he was at one with the sister as he had been at one with the brother on the crisp white morning when comradeship had been sealed to the marching of soldiers' feet and the rattle of fife and drum.
"Princess," he said, "I shall be as frank as Max himself would be! The situation is overwhelming; do with me what you will! If I intrude, dismiss me! I know how fascinating solitude on this balcony can be."
She smiled again, but gravely with a hint of the portrait's mystery.
"Solitude is an excellent thing, monsieur, but to-night I think I need the solace of a fellow-being. Will you not stay and keep me company?"
He looked at the smiling lips, the serious, searching eyes, and he spoke his thoughts impulsively.
"I shall be the most honored man in Paris!"
"That is well! Then we will talk, and watch the stars."
Here the naïve imperiousness of the boy gleamed out, familiar and reassuring, and Maxine walked across the room, turning at the window to look back for Blake.
"He is not without appreciation—this little brother of mine?" She put the question softly, tentatively, as she and Blake leaned over the balcony railing.
"He is an artist, princess."
"You think so?" Her voice warmed and vibrated; through the vague darkness he felt her eyes search his face.
"Undoubtedly."
"Ah, you love him?" The voice dropped to a great gentleness—a gentleness that touched him in a strange degree.
"It would be difficult to tell you what he has been to me," he said. "Our friendship has been a thing of great value. Has he ever told you how we met?"
"He has told me!" Her tone was still low—still curiously attractive. "And he appreciates very highly, monsieur, the affection you have given him."
She paused; and Blake, looking down upon Paris, was conscious of that pause as of something pregnant and miraculous. It filled the moment, combining, with the soft texture of her garments and the faint scent from her hair, to weave a spell subtle as it was intangible.
"There is nothing to appreciate," he made answer. "I am merely a commonplace mortal who found in him something uncommon. The appreciation is mine entirely—the appreciation of the youth, the vitality he expresses."
"Ah, but you do yourself an injustice!" She spoke impulsively and, as if alarmed at her own eagerness, broke off and began anew in a soberer voice. "I mean, monsieur, that friendship is not a solitary affair. Whatever you discerned in Max, Max must equally have discerned in you."
"I wonder!" He turned his gaze from the lights of the city to the rustling trees of the plantation. The hour was magical, the situation beyond belief. Standing there upon the balcony, suspended as it were between heaven and earth, companioned by this wonderful, familiar, unfamiliar being, he seemed to see his own soul—to see it from afar off and with a great lucidity. "I wonder!" he said again; and the sadness, the discontent that stalked him in lonely moments touched him briefly, like the shadow of a travelling cloud.
"What do you wonder, monsieur?"
"The meaning of it all, princess! Existence is such a chase. I, perhaps, hunt friendship—and find Max; I, perhaps, dream that I have found my goal, while to him I may be but a wayside inn—a place to linger in and leave! We both follow the chase, but who can say if we mark the same quarry? It's a puzzling world!"
"Monsieur, it is sometimes a glorious world!" So swift was her change of voice, so impulsive the gesture with which she turned to him, that the vividness of a suggested Max startled him. She was infinitely like to Max—Max when life intoxicated him, when he threw out both arms to embrace it.
"When you look like that, princess," he cried, "I could forget everything—I could take your hand, and show you all my heart, for you literallyarethe boy!"
There was another pause—a pause fraught with poignant things. Standing there, between heaven and earth, they were no longer creatures of conventionality, fettered by individual worlds. They were two souls conscious of an affinity.
Briefly, sweetly, Maxine's fingers touched his hand and then withdrew. "Monsieur, in moments IamMax!"
Nothing of surprise, nothing of question came to him. He only knew that a touch, infinitely desired, had lighted upon him—that a comprehension born of immaterial things was luring him whither he knew not.
"You are Max, princess," he said, swiftly, "but Max suddenly made possessor of a soul! I've always fancied Max a mythical being—a creature of eternal youth, fascinating as he is elusive—a faun-like creature, peeping into the world from some secret grove, ready to dart back at any human touch. Max's lips were made for laughter; his eyes are too bright for tears."
"And I, monsieur? What am I?"
"You are the miracle! You are the elusive creature deserting the green groves—stepping voluntarily into the mortal world."
"Yet if you know of me at all, you must know that I have left the mortal world and am seeking the secret groves."
"I have been told that."
"And you disbelieve?"
"I am afraid, princess, I do." He turned and looked at her—at the slim body wrapped in its long, smooth cloak of velvet—at the shadowed, questioning eyes. "I know I am greatly daring, but there are moments when we are outside ourselves—when we know and speak things of which we can give no logical account. You have put life behind you; yet what is life but a will-o'-the-wisp? Who can say where the light may not break forth again?"
"But have we not power over our senses, monsieur? Can we not shut our eyes, even if the light does break forth?"
"No, princess, we cannot! Because nature will inevitably say, 'I have given you eyes with which to see. Open those eyes'!"
"Ah, there we differ, monsieur!"
Blake laughed. "There, princess, you are the boy! He, too, thinks he can cheat nature; but I preach my gospel to him, I tell him Nature will have her own. If we will not bend to her, she will take and break us. Ah, but listen to that!"
His discourse broke off; they both involuntarily raised their heads and looked toward the windows of the neighboringappartement.
"Princess!" he said, delightedly. "I wouldn't have had you miss this for ten thousand pounds! Has Max described his neighbor, M. Cartel? I tell you you will have a little of heaven when M. Cartel playsLouise!"
Very delicately, with a curious human clarity of sound, the violin of M. Cartel executed the first notes of Louise's declaration in the duet with Julian—'Depuis le jour où je me suis donnée!'One caught the whole intention of the composer in the few crystal notes—one figured the whole scene—the little house of love, the lovers in their Garden of Eden, and below Paris—symbolic Paris!
"You knowLouise, princess?"
"Yes, monsieur, I knowLouise."
All was clear, all was understood in that brief reply. A wide contentment, vitalized by excitement, lifted the soul of Blake. Leaning over the balcony railing, drinking in the music of M. Cartel, more than a little of heaven opened to him; a unique emotion thrilled him—a consciousness of sublimity, a sense of being part of some unfathomable yet perfect scheme. The music wove its story; the lovers became one with his own existence, as he himself was one with the stars above him and the lights below. He followed every note, and in his own brain was spun the subtle thread that bound Julian and Louise; his own fancy ran the gamut of their emotions from mere human reminiscence to overwhelming passion.
As he listened, his first hearing of M. Cartel's fiddle crept back upon the feet of memory, and with it the recollection of the boy's rapture, the boy's wayward breaking of the spell and denial of the truth of love. Cautiously he moved his head and stole a glance at his companion, summing up the contrast between the present and the past.
Maxine was leaning forward, in thrall to the music: her gray cloak had fallen slightly back, displaying her white dress—her white neck; her hands were clasped, her eyes—the woman's eyes, the eyes of mystery—gazed into profound space.
He held himself rigid; he dared not stir, lest he should brush her cloak; he scarce dared breathe, lest he should break her dream. A feeling akin to adoration awakened in him, and as if in expression of the emotion, the violin of M. Cartel cried out the supreme confession of the lovers, Louise's enraptured 'C'est le Paradis! C'est une féerie!', and Julian's answer, intoxicating as wine, 'Non! C'est la vie! l'Eternelle, la toute-puissante vie!'
And there, with the whimsicality of the artist, the bow of M. Cartel was lifted, and sharp, pregnant silence fell upon the night.
Blake turned to Maxine; and Maxine, with lips parted, eyes dark with thought, met his regard.
For one second her impulse seemed to sway to words, her body to yield to some gracious, drooping enchantment; then, swiftly as M. Cartel had called up silence, she recalled herself—straightened her body and lifted her head.
"Monsieur," she said, with dignity, "I thank you for your kindness and for your companionship—and I bid you good-night!"
The swiftness of his dismissal scarcely touched Blake. Already she was his sovereign lady—her look a command, her word paramount.
"As you will, princess!"
She held out her hand; and taking, he bowed over, but did not kiss it.
She smiled, conceiving his desire and his restraint.
"I shall convey to Max how charmingly you have entertained me, monsieur and, perhaps—" Her voice dropped to its softest note.
Blake looked up.
"Perhaps, princess—?"
She smiled again, half diffidently. "Nothing, monsieur! Good-night!"
"Good-night!"
He left her to the gray mystery of the stars, and passed back through the quiet, lamp-lit room and down the slippery stairs that led to the mundane world; and with each step he took, each breath he drew, the words fromLouiserepeated themselves, justifying all things, glorifying all things: 'C'est la vie! l'Eternelle, la toute-puissante vie!'
BLAKE must have reached the last step of the Escalier de Sainte-Marie, must indeed have turned the corner of the rue André de Sarte before the creaking of a footstep or the opening of a door disturbed the silence of the fifth floor; but, due time having expired—due deference having been paid to taste and the proprieties—the handle of M. Cartel's door was very softly turned, and Jacqueline slipped forth into the shadowed landing.
Never were human curiosity and feminine craft more signally displayed than in the slim little form creeping on tiptoe, the astute,piquantelittle 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 thesalondoor 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."
"C'EST LA VIE! L'ETERNELLE, LA TOUTE-PUISSANTE VIE!"
"C'EST LA VIE! L'ETERNELLE, LA TOUTE-PUISSANTE VIE!"
Maxine laughed, a girlish laugh of self-betrayal. "A grand success! Absolutely a grand success! And, Jacqueline"—she hesitated, laughed again with charming self-consciousness, rushed afresh into speech—"Jacqueline, he thought me beautiful! Not a word was said, but I know he thought me beautiful. Tell me! Am I beautiful?" Swiftly, as might the boy, she threw off her velvet cloak, letting it fall to the ground, and showed herself tall and supple and straight in her white dress.
Jacqueline rushed forward warmly, caught and kissed her hand.
"Madame, you are ravishing!" And, with her pretty native practicality, she picked up the cloak, carefully folded and carefully laid it aside.
"Ravishing!" Maxine laughed once more. "Jacqueline, I am something more than that! I am happy!" She threw out her arms, as if to embrace the universe. "I am happier than the saints in heaven! I am living in the moment, and the moment is perfection! I care nothing that yesterday I wept, that to-morrow I may weep again. I am alive and I am happy. I feel as I used to feel at fifteen years old, galloping a spirited horse. The whole world is sublime—from the dust in the streets to the stars in the sky!" She forgot her companion, her speech broke off, she turned and began to pace the room with head thrown back, hands clasped behind her with careless, boyish ease.
For a while Jacqueline watched her, diligently sifting out every emotional sign; then, deeming that some moment of her own choosing had arrived, she slipped unobserved from the room, to return a minute later bearing a kettle full of boiling water.
Maxine looked round as she made her entry.
"A kettle, Jacqueline?"
"For madame's tea. And, my God, but it is hot!" She set it down hastily in the fireplace, and sucked her finger with a pouting smile.
Maxine smiled, too, coming back from her dream with vague graciousness. "But I do not need tea."
Jacqueline did not refute the statement, but merely began to manipulate thesamovarin the manner learned of Max, while Maxine, yielding to her own delicious exaltation, fell again to her long, slow pacing of the floor.
Presently the inviting smell of tea began to pervade the room, and Jacqueline set out a cup and saucer—Max's first purchase from old Bluebeard of the curios.
"Madame is served!" She stood behind the chair ordained for Maxine, very sedate, very assured of her own arrangements.
Maxine paused, as though the suggestion of tea was brought to her for the first time.
"How delightful!" she said, with swift, serene pleasure. "How kind! How thoughtful!"
"Seat yourself, madame!"
The chair was drawn forward; the just and proper thrill of preparation was conveyed by Jacqueline; and Maxine seated herself, still in her smiling dream.
Half the cup of tea was consumed under Jacqueline's watchful eye, then she stole round the chair.
"Madame, a cigarette?" Her fingers crept to the cigarette-box, then found and struck a match, all with a deft, unobtrusive quiet that won its way undenied.
The cigarette was lighted, Maxine leaned back in her chair, Jacqueline's confidential moment was secured.
"And so, madame, it was a grand success?"
Maxine looked up. The first fine ecstasy was past; the after-glow of deep contentment curled round her with the cigarette smoke; she was the pliant reed to the soft wind of Jacqueline's whispering.
"It was past belief," she answered, "past all belief. We stood together in the light of the lamp and looked each other in the eyes, and he never guessed. He never guessed—he, who has—Oh, it was past belief!"
"Ah!" murmured Jacqueline, complacently. "I told madame I had a quite extraordinary talent in the dressing of hair—though madame was sceptical! And as for the purchase of clothes. Did he admire madame's velvet cloak?"
Maxine smiled tolerantly. "Of course he did not!"
Jacqueline cast up her eyes to heaven. "These English—they are extraordinary! But I tell you this, madame, he knew here"—she touched her heart—"he knew here, that madame looked what she is—a queen!"
"Absurd child!"
The reproof was gentle; Jacqueline's nimble tongue took advantage of the chance given it.
"And tell me, madame? He play his part gallantly—Monsieur Édouard?" Never before had she dared so much; but never before had Maxine's eyes looked as they looked to-night.
Before replying, Maxine leaned her elbows on the table and took her face between her hands.
"It was past belief—that also!" she said at last. "He seemed a different being. I cannot understand it."
"He seemed of a greater interest, madame?"
"Of a strangely greater interest."
"In what manner, madame? Looks? Words?" Cunning as a monkey, little Jacqueline was all soft innocence in the method of her questioning.
"In every way—manner—speech—expression of thought. And, Jacqueline"—she turned her face, all radiant and unsuspicious, to her interlocutor—"I made a discovery! He loves Max!"
Jacqueline, with downcast eyes and discreet bearing, carefully removed the empty tea-cup.
"Yes, he loves me as Max! He told me so. It has made me marvellously happy—marvellously happy and, also"—she sighed—"also, Jacqueline, just a little sad!"
"Sad, madame?"
"Yes, sad because he loves Max as one loves a child, expecting no return; and—I would be loved as an equal."
"Assuredly, madame."
"Imustbe loved as an equal!" Fire suddenly kindled her dreaming voice; a look, clear and alert, suddenly crossed her eyes. "Jacqueline," she cried, "I have set myself a new task. I shall make him respect Max as well as love him; Max shall become his equal. Now, suppose you set yourself a task like that, how would you begin?"
"Oh, madame!" Jacqueline was all deprecation.
"Do not fear. Tell me!"
"Madame, it is not for me—" Jacqueline's triumph in the moment, and her concealing of the triumph, were things exquisitely feminine.
"Tell me!"
"I may speak from the heart, madame?"
Maxine bent her head in gracious condescension.
"Then, madame, I would make of Monsieur Édouard a book of figures. The princess would learn the rules; Monsieur Max would shut the book, and make up the sum. It would be quite simple."
The hot color scorched Maxine's face; she rose quickly. "Jacqueline! I had not expected this!"
"Madame desired me to speak from the heart. The heart, at times, is unruly!"
"True! Forgive me. But you should not suggest a thing that you know to be impossible."
"Pardon, madame! I was thinking of the many impossibilities performed in a good cause!"
"Say no more, Jacqueline! To-night was to-night! To-night is over!" She walked across the room and passed out upon the balcony, leaning over the railing at the spot where Blake had stood.
Jacqueline, swift and guileful, was instantly beside her.
"Madame, at its most serious, to-night was a little comedy. Is it so criminal to repeat a little comedy—once, or even twice—in a good cause? It is not as if madame were not sure of herself! Besides, the comedy was charming!"
"Yes; the comedy was charming!" Maxine echoed the sentiment, and in her heart called 'charming' a poor word. "But even if I were weak, Jacqueline," she added, "how could I banish Max? Max could scarcely continue to have important business."
"Perhaps not, madame; but Monsieur Max might continue to display temper! Do not forget that he and Monsieur Édouard did not part upon the friendliest terms."
Maxine smiled.
"But even granted that, I could not be here again—alone."
Jacqueline, with airiest scorn, tossed the words aside.
"That, madame? Why, that arranges itself! The princess loves her brother! His quarrel is her grief. Is not woman always compassionate?"
The tone was irresistible. Maxine laughed. "Jacqueline, you were the Serpent in Adam's Garden! There is not a doubt of it! No wonder poor M. Cartel has taken so big a bite of the Apple."
She laughed again, and Jacqueline laughed too, in mischievous delight.
"Madame!" she coaxed. "Madame!"
"No!" said Maxine, with eyes fixed determinately upon the lights of the city; while somewhere above her in the cool, clear starlight, a hidden voice—her own, and not her own—whispered a subtle 'Yes!'
THE universe is compounded of the miraculous; but love is the miracle of miracles. Again the impossible had been contrived; again Maxine and Blake were standing together on the balcony. The Parisian night seemed as still as a held breath, and as palpitating with human possibilities; the domes of the Sacré-Coeur loomed white against the sky, dumb witnesses to the existence of the spirit. The scene was undoubtedly poetic; yet, placed in the noisiest highway of London or the most desolate bog-land of Blake's native country, these two would have been as truly and amply cognizant of the real and the ideal; for the cloak of love was about them, the vapor of love was before their eyes, and for the hour, although they knew it not, they were capable of reconstructing a whole world from the material in their own hearts.
But they were divinely ignorant; they each tricked themselves with the age-old fallacy of a unique position, each wandered onward in the dream-like fields of romance, content to believe that the other knew the hidden way.
The scene bore a perfect similarity to the scene of the first meeting—about them, the darkness and the quiet—behind them, the littlesalonlit by the familiar lamp, showing all the reassuring evidences of the boy's occupation. For close upon an hour they had enjoyed this intimacy of the balcony, at first talking much and rapidly upon the ostensible object of their meeting—Max's quarrel with Blake, later falling to a happy silence, as though they deliberately closed their lips, the more fully to drink in the secrets of the night through eyes and ears. Strange spells were in the weaving, and no two souls are fused to harmony without much subtle questioning of spirit, many delicate, tremulous speculations compounded of wordless joy and wordless fear.
Some issue, it was, in this matter of fusing personalities, that at last caused Maxine to turn her head and find Blake studying her.
The circumstance was trivial—a mere crossing of glances, but it brought the color to her face as swiftly as if she had been taken in some guilty act.
Blake saw the expression, and interpreted it wrongly.
"You are displeased, princess? I am a bad companion to-night?" He spoke impulsively, with an anxiety in his voice that spurred her to a desire to comfort him.
"When people are sympathetic, monsieur, they are companions, whether good or bad. Is it not so?"
He moved a little nearer to her; neither was aware of the movement.
"Do you find me sympathetic?"
"Indeed, yes!" Her luminous glance rested on him thoughtfully.
"But you scarcely know me."
"Monsieur, I do know you."
"Through the boy, perhaps—" He spoke with a touch of impatience, but she stopped him with upraised hand.
"You are angry with Max, therefore you must be silent! Anger does not make for true judgment."
"Ah, that's unfair!" He laughed. "'Tis Max who is angry with me! You know I came here to-night with open arms—to find him flown! Still, I am willing to keep them open, and give the kiss of peace whenever he relents—to please you."
"Ah, no, monsieur! To please him. To please him."
"Indeed, no! To please you—and no one else. If I followed my own devices, I'd wait till he comes back, and box his ears. He'd very well deserve it."
Maxine laughed; then, swift as a breeze or a racing cloud, her mood changed.
"Monsieur, you care for Max?"
"What a question! I love Max. He's a star in my darkness—or was, until the sun shone."
He paused, fearful of where his impulses had led him; but Maxine was all sweetness, all seriousness.
"Am I, then, the sun, monsieur?"
In any other woman the words must have seemed a lure; but here was a fairness, a frankness and dignity that lifted the question to another and higher plane. Blake, comprehending, answered simply with the truth.
"Yes, you are the sun; and all my life I have been a sun-worshipper."
She made no comment; she accepted the words, waiting for the flow of speech that she knew was close at hand—the speech, probably irrelevant, certainly delightful, that he invariably poured forth at such a moment.
"Princess, do you know my country?"
She shook her head, smiling a little.
"Ah, then you don't understand my worship! In Ireland, nature condemns us to a long, black, wet winter and a long, gray, wet spring, so that the heart of a man is nearly drowned in his body, and he grows to believe that his country is nothing but a neutral-tinted waste; but one day, when even hope is dying, a miracle comes to pass—the sun shines out! The sun shines out, and he suddenly sees that his waste land is the color of emeralds and that his dripping woods are gardens, tinted like no stones that jewellers ever handle. Oh, no wonder I am a sun-worshipper!"
Maxine, glowing to his sudden enthusiasm, clasped her hands, as when she heard the music of M. Cartel.
"Ah, and that is your country?"
"That is my country, princess."
"I wish——" She stopped.
"That you could see it?"
She nodded.
"And why not? Why not—when this boy sees reason? How I would love to show it to you! You would understand."
"When would you show it to me?" She spoke very low.
"When? Oh, perhaps in April—April, when the washed skies are a blue that even Max could not find in his color-box, and the bare boughs tremble with promise. In April—or, better still, in the autumn. In October, when the lights are cool and white and the sea is an opal; when you smell the ozone strong as violets, and at every turn of the road a cart confronts you, heaped with bronze seaweed and stuck with a couple of pikes that rise stark against the sky-line, to suggest the taking of the spoils. Yes, in October! In October, it should be!"
He was carried away, and she loved him for his enthusiasm.
"You care for your country?" she said, very softly.
"Yes—in an odd way! When wonder or joy or ambition comes to me, I always have a craving to walk those roads and watch the sea and whisper my secrets to the salt earth, but I never gratify the desire; it belongs to the many incongruities of an incongruous nature. But I think if great happiness came to me, I should go back, if only for a day; or if—" He paused. "—If I were to break my heart over anything, I believe I'd creep back, like a child to its mother. We're odd creatures—we Irish!"
"I understand you," said Maxine. "You have the soul."
He looked down into the rue Müller, and a queer smile touched his lips.
"A questionable blessing one is apt to say, princess—in one's bad moments!"
"But only in one's bad moments!" Her tone was warm; her words came from her swiftly, after the manner of Max—the manner that Blake loved.
"You are quite right!" he said, "and I despise myself instantly I have uttered such a cynicism. The capacity to feel is worth all the pain it brings. If one had but a single moment of realization, one should die content. That is the essential—to have known the highest."
Once again Maxine had the sense of lifting a tangible veil, of gaining a glimpse of the hidden personality—not the half-sceptical, pleasant, friendly Blake of the boy's acquaintance, but Blake the dreamer, the idealist who sought some grail of infinite holiness figured in his own imagination, zealously guarded from the scoffer and the worldling. A swift desire pulsed in her to share the knowledge of this quest—to see the face of the knight illumined for his adventure—to touch the buckles of his armor.
"Monsieur," she whispered, "if you were to die to-night, would you die satisfied?"
In the silence that had fallen upon them, Blake had turned his face to the stars, but now again his glance sought hers.
"No, princess," he said, simply.
No weapons are more potent than brevity and simplicity. His answer brought the blood to her face as no long dissertation could have brought it; it was so direct, so personal, so compounded of subtle values.
"Then you have not known the highest?" It was not she who framed the question; some power outside herself constrained her to its speaking.
"I have recognized perfection," he said, "but I have not known it. And sometimes my weaker self—the primitive, barbaric self—cries out against the limitation; sometimes—"
"Sometimes—?"
"Nothing, princess—and everything!" With a sudden wave of self-control he brought himself back to the moment and its responsibilities. "Forgive me! And, if you are merciful, dismiss me! They say we Irish talk too much. I am afraid I am a true Irishman." He laughed, but there was a sound behind the laughter that brought tears to her eyes.
"Monsieur, it has been happy to-night?"
"It has been heaven."
"We are not wholly a trouble to you—Max and I?"
She put out her hand, and he took it.
"Max is my friend, princess; you are my sovereign lady."
The night was close about them; Paris was below, gilding the rose of human love; the church domes were above, tending whitely toward the stars. Maxine moved nearer to him, her heart beating fast, her whole radiant being dispensing fragrance.
"Monsieur, if I am your lady, pay me homage!"
The enchantment was delicate and perfect; her voice wove a spell, her slight, strong fingers trembled in his. He had been less than man had he refused the moment. Silently he bent his head, and his lips touched her hand in a swift, ardent kiss.