“Depuis le jour ou je me suis donnee, toute fleurie semble ma
        destinee. 
    Je crois rever sous un ciel de feerie, l’ame encore grisee de ton
        premier baiser!”

But, abruptly—­abruptly as a light might be extinguished—­the music ceased, and Max released Blake’s hand.

“It is all most wonderful,” he said; “but the words of that song—­they do not quite please me.”

“Why?  Have you never sung that ’l’ame encore grisee de ton premier baiser!’”

Then, as if half ashamed of the emotional moment, he gave a little laugh, satirical and yet sad.

“Was there never a little dancer,” he added, “never a little model in all these years—­and you so very ancient?”

The boy ignored the jest.

“I am not a believer in love,” he said, evasively.

“Not a believer in love!  Well, upon my soul, the world is getting very old!  You look like a child from school, and you talk like some quaint little book I might have picked up on the quais.  What does it all mean?”

At the perplexity of the tone Max laughed.  “Very little, mon ami!  I am no philosopher; but about this love, I have thought a little, and have gained to a conclusion.  It is like this!  Light love is desire of pleasure; great love is fear of being alone.”

“Then you hold that man should be alone?”

“Why not?” Max shrugged his shoulders.  “We come into the world alone; we go out of it alone.”

“A cold philosophy!”

“A true one, I think.  If more lives were based upon it we would have more achievement and less emotion.”

The Irishman’s enthusiasm caught sudden fire.

“And who wants less emotion?  Isn’t emotion the salt of life?  Why, where would a poor devil of a wanderer like myself be, if he hadn’t the dream in the back of his head that the right woman was waiting for him somewhere?”

Max watched him seriously.

“Then you have never loved?”

“Never loved?  God save us!  I have been in and out of love ever since I was seventeen.  But, bless your heart, that has nothing to do with the right woman!”

Max’s intent eyes flashed.  “And you think the right woman will be content to take you—­after all that?”

Blake came a step nearer, leaning over the parapet, his shoulder touching his companion’s.

“Boy,” he said, in a changed tone, “listen to me.  It’s a big subject, this subject of love and liking—­too big for me to riddle out, perhaps.  But this I know, the world was made as it is, and neither you nor I can change it; no, nor ten thousand cleverer than we!  It’s all a mystery, and the queerest bit of mystery in it is that a man may go down into the depths and rub shoulders with the worst, and yet keep the soul of him clean for the one woman.”

“Don’t you think there are men who can do without either the depths or the one woman?”