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
an