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 Mueller 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.

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.

CHAPTER XXVI