ticipation; now, with appetites appeased, they toyed with their
sensations like diners with their dessert.

"Who are the people living in these houses?" The boy put the question in
a whisper, as if fearful of disturbing the strange silence, the close
secrecy that hung about them.

"The people who live here? God knows! Probably you would find a
_blanchisseuse_ on the ground floor, and on the fourth a poet or perhaps
a musician, like our fiddler of _Louise_. This is the real Bohemia, you
know--not the conscious Bohemia, but the true one, that is lawless
simply because it knows no laws."

They had come to the end of the steps and were once again traversing the
dim rue Andre de Sarte, the boy's eyes and ears awake to every
impression.

"Yes," he said in slow and meditative answer. "Yes, I think I
understand. It must be wonderful to be born unfettered."

"I don't know about wonderful; it's a profoundly interesting condition.
You get that blending of egoism and originality--daring and
scepticism--that may produce the artist or may produce the criminal."

"But you believe that the creature of temperament--of egoism and
originality--may spring up in a lawful atmosphere as well as in a
lawless one?" The question came softly. Max had ceased to look about
him, ceased to observe the streets that grew more crowded, more brightly
lighted as they made their downward way.

Blake smiled. "The tares among the wheat, eh?"

"Yes."

"Oh, of course I admit the tares among the wheat; but such growths are
mostly unsatisfactory. Forced fruit is never precisely the same as wild
fruit."

"Why not?"

"Because, my boy, there is a self-consciousness about all forced things,
and the hallmark of the Bohemian is an absolute ingenuousness."

"But to return to your example. Suppose the tare among the wheat had
always recognized itself--had always craved to be a tare with other
tares--until at length its roots spread and spread and passed beyond the
boundary of the wheat-field! Why should it not flourish and lift its
head among the weeds?"

"Because, boy, it would have its traditions. It might live forever among
the weeds, it might flourish and reign over them, but it would have a
reminiscence unknown to them--the knowledge of the years in which it
strove to mold itself to the likeness of the wheat before rebellion woke
within it. I know! I know! I know Bohemia--love Bohemia--but at best I
am only a naturalized Bohemian. I can live on a c