“Come, Max!  Up with your glass!”

“Monsieur, I—­I beg you to excuse me!  My heart is very full of your kindness.”

“Nonsense, boy!  Drink!”

The boy laughed with a catch in his breath, then he drank a little with nervous haste, coughing as he laid his glass down.  The cognac of the Maison Gustav was of a fiery nature.

The Irishman laughed.  “Ah, another peep behind the mask!  You may be an artist, young man—–­ you may have advanced ideas—­but, for all that, you’re only out of the nursery!  It’s for me to make a man of you, I see.  Come, madame, the addition, if you please!  We must be going.”

For a moment madame was lost in calculation, then she decorously mentioned the amount of their debt.

The Irishman paid with the manner of a prince, and, slipping his arm again through the boy’s, moved to the door; there he looked back.

“Good-day, madame!  Many thanks for your charming hospitality!  Give my respects to monsieur, your husband—­and kiss the little Leon for me!”

They passed out into the rue Fabert, into the fresh and frosty air, and involuntarily the boy’s arm pressed his.

“How am I to thank you?” he murmured.  “It is too much—­this kindness to a stranger.”

The Irishman paused and looked at him.  “Thanks be damned!—­and stranger be damned!” he said with sudden vehemence.  “Aren’t we citizens of a free world?  Must I know a man for years before I can call him my friend?  And must every one I’ve known since childhood be my friend?  I tell you I saw you and I liked you—­that was all, and ’twas enough.”

Max looked at him with a certain grave simplicity.  “Forgive me!” he said.

Instantly the other’s annoyance was dispelled.  “Forgive!  Nonsense!  Tell me your plans, that’s all I want.”

“My plans are very easy to explain.  I shall rent a studio here in Paris—­and there I shall work.”

“As a student?”

“No, I have had my years of study; I am older than you think.”  He took no notice of the other’s raised eyebrows.  “I want to paint a picture—­a great picture.  I am seeking the idea.”

“Good!  Good!  Then we’ll make that our basis—­the search for the idea.  The search for the great idea!”

Max thrilled.  ’The search for the idea!  How splendid!  Where must it begin?  Not in fashionable Paris!  Oh, not in fashionable Paris!’

“Fashionable Paris!” The Irishman laughed in loud disdain.  “Oh no!  For us it must be the highways and the byways, eh?”

Max freed his arm.  “Ah yes! that is what I want—­that is what I want.  The highways and the byways.  It is necessary that I am very solitary here in Paris.  Quite unknown, you understand?—­quite unnoticed.”

“The mystery?  I understand.  And now, tell me, shall it be the highways or the byways—­Montmartre or the Quartier Latin?”

Max smiled decisively.  “Montmartre.”