“No!  A something of no consequence.  Do not question me.  Be kind to me, and take me where I can see life and forget myself.”

“Where will I take you?”

“To some place of gayety—­where no one thinks.”

“Very well!  We’ll go over and have supper at the Rat Mort.  You won’t be over-troubled with thought there.  We can sit in a corner and observe, and I give you my word there will be no encounters with old friends this time!  I’ll be blind and deaf and dumb if anything is washed up from the past!”

Guiding the boy across the crowded roadway, he passed through the narrow door and up the steep stair that ends so abruptly into the long, low supper-room of the Rat Mort.

Max felt the abruptness of this entry, as so many climbers of the ladder-like stairs have felt it before him; and a dazed sensation seized upon him as the wild Ztigane music of the stringed orchestra beat suddenly upon his ears and the intense white light struck upon his sight.

He felt it as others have felt it—­the excitement, the consciousness of an emotional atmosphere—­as he followed Blake down the dazzingly bright room.  It was in the air, as it had been at the Bal Tabarin.

As they seated themselves, the barbaric music ceased; the orchestra broke forth afresh with a light Parisian waltz, and down between the lines of tables came a negro and a negress—­properties of the place, as were the glasses and the table linen—­waltzing with the pliant suppleness, the conscious sensuality of their race, and close behind them followed a second couple—­a Spaniard, restless and lithe, small of stature and pallid of face, and a young Spanish girl of splendid physique.

Max sat silent, attentive to this dance, while Blake ordered supper; but when the wine was brought, he lifted his glass and drank, as if some strong sensation had dried his throat.

Blake turned and looked at him.

“Well?  Is it amusing?”

“It is—­and it is not.  Those black creatures are extraordinary.  They are repulsive—­like figures in a nightmare.”

“Oh!  Repulsive, are they?  And what about a certain picture we once looked at—­when I was swept off the face of the earth for using that same word?  I believe, you know, that points of view are changing!  I believe I’m coming to part two of my little book!  These niggers aren’t a bit more disgusting than the monkey sucking the fruit.”

Max glanced at him, laughed a trifle self-consciously and drank some more wine.  “Let us forget monkeys and little books and all such stupidities.  There is a pretty woman over there!  Make me a story concerning her.”  He nodded toward a table in the middle of the room.

Blake, looking, saw a slim woman in white, whose large hat threw a becoming shadow on auburn hair and red-brown eyes.

“Ah, now,” he said, thoughtfully, “you’ve given me too much to do!  At a first glance I’d say she’s just the ordinary better-class cocotte; but at a second glance it seems to me I’d pause.  There’s something about the eyes—­there’s something about the mouth that puzzles me.  You’ll have to wait, my boy, and let fate tell you your fairy tale!”