“There are abnormalities, of course.”

Max waived the words.  “I am serious.  I ask you if you do not believe that there are certain people to whom these things you speak of are poor things—­people who believe that they are sufficient unto themselves?”

The other’s mouth twisted into a sarcastic smile.

“Show me the man who is sufficient unto himself!”

Swiftly—­as swiftly as he had whipped the pencil from his pocket in the cafe that morning—­Max stepped back, his head up, his hand resting lightly on the wooden parapet.

“Monsieur!  You see him!”

Blake’s expression changed to keen surprise; he turned sharply and peered into the boy’s face.

“You?” he said, incredulously.  “You, a slip of a boy, to ignore the softer side of life and set yourself up against Nature?  Take that fairy-tale elsewhere!”

Max laughed.  “Very well, my friend, wait and see!”

“And do you know how long I give you to defy the world, the flesh, and the devil?  A full-blooded young animal like you!”

“How long?”

“Three months—­not a day more.”

“Three months!” Max laughed, and, as had happened before, his mood altered with the laugh.  The moment of artistic exaltation passed; again he was the boy—­the adventurer, brimming with spirits, thirsting to break a lance with life.  “Three months!  Very well!  Wait and see!  And, in the mean time, Paris is awake, is she not?”

Blake looked at the laughing face, the bright eyes, and shook his head.

“I believe you’re a cluricaun, come all the way from the bogs of Clare!  Come here, and take my arm again, or you’ll be vanishing into that plantation!”

It is unlikely that Max understood all the other’s phrases, but he understood the lenient, bantering tone that had in it a touch of something bordering upon affection, and with a gracious eagerness he stepped forward and slipped his hand through the proffered arm.

“Where are you going to take me?” All the lightness, all the arrogance had melted from his voice, his tone was almost as soft, almost as submissive as a woman’s.

Blake looked down upon him.  “I hardly know—­after that philosophy of yours!  I thought of taking you to a little Montmartre cabaret, where many a poet wrote his first verses and many an artist sang his first song—­a dingy place, but a place with atmosphere.”

Max clung to his arm, the light flashing into his eyes.  “Oh, my friend, that is the place!  That is the place!  Let us go—­let us run, lest we miss a moment!”

“Good!  Then hey for the Boulevard de Clichy and the quest of the great idea!”

CHAPTER IX

The ascent of the heights had been exciting, the descent held a sense of satisfaction.  At a more sober pace, with a finer, less exuberant sense of comradeship, the two passed down the hundred-odd steps of the Escalier de Sainte-Marie, taking an occasional peep into some dark and silent corner, halting here and there to glance into the dimly lighted hallway of some mysterious house.  On the upward way they had been all anticipation; now, with appetites appeased, they toyed with their sensations like diners with their dessert.