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 lightedsalon—the littlesalonof Max's books, of Max's boyish tastes—the littlesalonloved 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 ofbouillon—
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 thesalonand 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.
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 Müller, 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'sconcierge, 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 thesalon, and instantly Blake became host—therôleofrôlesfor 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?"
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 thesalon, 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 theappartement, 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 thesalon, through the hall and out upon the landing, the door of theappartementclosing behind her.
THE door of herappartementclosed 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 theappartementand 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 Édouard!" 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 Édouard? 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!"
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 theappartement—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.
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 Müller 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 theappartementin 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 littlecafé, 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 thecaféand 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 ofdéjeuner; 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.