CHAPTER XXXVII

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

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

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

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