Max’s eyes were still wide, but the anger had died down.

“And the girl?” he questioned.  “The girl, and the brute, and the man with the clever head?  What have they all to do with each other and with her?”

Blake’s lips parted to reply, but closed again.

“Never mind, boy!” he said, gently.  “Come along back to your hotel; you’ve seen enough life for one night.”

CHAPTER X

With a new day began a new epoch.  On the morning following the night, of first adventure Max woke in his odd, mountainous bed at the Hotel Railleux kindling to fresh and definite sensations.  In a manner miraculously swift, miraculously smooth and subtle, he had discovered a niche in this strange city, and had elected to fit himself to it.  A knowledge of present, a pledge of future interests seemed to permeate the atmosphere, and he rose and dressed with the grave deliberation of the being who sees his way clear before him.

It was nine o’clock when he entered the salle-a-manger, and one sharp glance brought the satisfying conviction that it was deserted save for the presence of the assiduous young waiter, who came hurrying forward as though no span of hours and incidents separated yesterday’s meal from to-day’s.

His attentive attitude was unrelaxed, his smile was as deferential as before, but this morning he found a less responsive guest.  Max was filled with a quiet assurance that debarred familiarity; Max, in fine, was bound upon a quest, and the submissive young waiter, the bare eating-room, Paris itself, formed but the setting and background in his arrogant young mind to the greatness of the mission.

The thought—­the small seed of thought that was responsible for the idea had been sown last night, as he leaned over the parapet fronting the Sacre-Coeur, looking down upon the city with its tangle of lights; and later, in the hours of darkness, when he had tossed on his heavy bed, too excited to lure sleep, it had fructified with strange rapidity, growing and blossoming with morning into definite resolve.

He drank his coffee and ate his roll in happy preoccupation, and, having finished his meal, left the room and went quietly down the stairs and through the glass door of the hotel.

The frost still held; Paris still smiled; and, buttoning up his coat, he paused for a moment on the doorstep to turn his face to the copper-red sun and breathe in the crisp, invigorating air; then, with a quaintly decisive manner that seemed to set sentiment aside, he walked to the edge of the footpath and hailed a passing fiacre.

“To the church of the Sacre-Coeur,” he commanded.

The cocher received the order with a grumble, looked from his unreliable horse to the frosty roadway, and was about to shake his head in definite negation when Max cajoled him with a more ingratiating voice.