In his voice was a suppressed fervor akin to some harsh or cruel emotion; and to Blake, watching and listening, there floated the hot echo of stories in which Russians had acted strange parts with a resolve, a callousness incomprehensible to other races.

“When you talk like that, boy, I could almost go back to that first night, and adopt McCutcheon’s theory.  You might feasibly be a revolutionary with those blazing eyes.”

Max laughed, coming back to the moment.

“Only revolutionary in my own cause!  I fight myself for myself.  You take my meaning?”

“Not in the very least!  But I accept your statement; I like its brave ring.  You are your own romance.”

“I am my own romance.”

“Let’s drink to it, then!  Your romance—­whatever it may be!” He raised the half-empty tumbler, drank a little, and handed it across the table.

Max laughed and drank as well.  “My romance—­whatever it may be!”

“Whatever it may be!  And now for that breath of air we promised ourselves!  It’s close on ten o’clock.”

So the meal ended; coats were found, candles blown out, and a last proprietary inspection of the appartement made by the aid of matches.

They ran down the long, smooth staircase, and, stepping into the quiet, starlit rue Mueller, linked arms and began their descent upon Paris with as much ease, as nice a familiarity as though life for both of them had been passed in the shadow of the Sacre-Coeur.

On the Boulevard de Clichy the usual confusion of lights and humanity greeted them like welcoming arms, and with the same agreeable nonchalance they yielded to the embrace.

Conscious of no definite purpose, they turned to the right and began to breast the human tide with eyes carelessly critical of the thronging faces, ears heedlessly open to the many tangled sounds of street life.  Outside the theatres, flaunting posters made pools of color; in the roadway, the network of traffic surged and intermingled; from amid the flat house fronts, at every few hundred yards, some cabaret broke upon the sight in crude confusion of scenic painting and electric light; while dominating all—­a monument to the power of tradition—­the sails of the time-honored mill sprang red and glaring from a background of quiet sky.

But the two, walking arm-in-arm, had no glance for revolving mill-sails or vivid advertisement, and presently Blake halted before a house that, but for a certain prosperity of stained-glass window and dark-green paint, would have seemed a common wine shop.

“Max,” he said, “do you remember the famous night when we went to the Bal Tabarin, and saw much wine spilled?  It was here I was first going to bring you then.”

“Here?”

“This very place!  ’Tis one of the old artistic cabarets of Paris—­grown a bit too big for its shoes now, like the rest of Montmartre, but still retaining a flavor.  What do you say to turning in?”