They passed into the street, Blake raising his hat to a stout lady, presumably Madame Fruvier, who sat wedged behind the counter, Max glancing greedily at the bold rough sketches, the brilliantly Parisian caricatures adorning the walls.

“It is in the atmosphere!  One breathes it!” he said again, as they walked down the cool, lighted boulevard.  “I feel it to-night as I have not felt it before—­the artist’s Paris. Mon ami”—­he raised a glowing face—­“mon ami, tell me something!  Do you think I shall succeed?  Do you think I possess a spark of the great fire—­a spark ever so tiny?”

His earnestness was almost comical.  He stopped and arraigned his companion, regardless of interested glances and passing smiles.

“Ned, tell me!  Tell me!  Have you faith in me?”

Blake looked into the feverishly bright eyes, and a swift conviction possessed him.

“I know this, boy, whatever you do, you’ll do it finely!  More I cannot say.”

Max fell silent, and they proceeded on their way, each preoccupied with his own thoughts.  At the turning to the heights Blake paused.

“I’ll say good-bye here!  I have letters to write to-night; but I’ll be up to-morrow to spirit you off to lunch.  I won’t come too early, for I know what you’ll be doing all the morning.”

Max laughed, coming back out of his dream.  “And what is it I shall be doing all the morning?”

“Why, carting canvases and paint tubes, and God knows what, up those steps till your back is broken, and then settling down with your temper and your ambition at fever heat to begin the great picture at the most inopportune moment in the world!  Think I don’t know you?”

Max laughed again, but more softly.

“Mon ami!”

“I’m right, eh?  That sketch at the cabaret is meant to grow?”

Instantly Max was diffident.  “Oh, I am not so sure!  It is only an idea.  It may not arrive at anything.”

“Let’s have a look?”

Max’s hand went slowly toward his pocket.  “I am not sure that I like it; it is not my theory of life.  It’s more of your theory—­it is ironical.”

“Let’s see!”

The sketch-book came reluctantly to light, and as Max opened it, the two stepped close to a street lamp.

“As I tell you, it is ironical.  If it becomes a picture I shall give it this name—­The Failure.”  He handed it to Blake, leaning close and peering over his shoulder in nervous anxiety.

“Understand, it is but an idea!  I have put no work into it.”

Blake held the book up to the light, his observant face grave and interested.

“What a clever little beggar you are!” he said at length.

Max glowed at the words, and instantly his tongue was loosed.

“Ah, mon cher, but it is only a sketch!  That atmosphere—­that dim, smoky atmosphere—­is so difficult with the pencil.  The audience is, of course, but suggested; all that I really attempted was the singer—­the failure with the merry eyes.”