s afternoon. You
had better come and see me the day before we start, so that we can make
our last arrangements. _Au revoir._"

CHAPTER IV

SCHAUNARD

The young man turned down the Avenue Malakoff, after he had left
Berselius's house, in the direction of the Avenue des Champs Elysees.

In twenty-four hours a complete change had taken place in his life. His
line of travel had taken a new and most unexpected course; it was as
though a train on the North German had, suddenly, by some mysterious
arrangement of points and tracks, found itself on the Paris-Lyons and
Mediterranean Railway.

Yesterday afternoon the prospect before him, though vague enough, was
American. A practice in some big central American town. It would be a hard
fight, for money was scanty, and in medicine, especially in the States,
advertisement counts for very much.

All that was changed now, and the hard, definite prospect that had elbowed
itself out of vagueness stood before him: Africa, its palms and poisonous
forests, the Congo--Berselius.

Something else besides these things also stood before him very definitely
and almost casting them into shade. Maxine.

Up to this, a woman had never stood before him as a possible part of his
future, if we except Mary Eliza Summers, the eleven-year-old daughter of
old Abe Summers, who kept the store in Dodgeville, Vermont, years
ago--that is to say, when Paul Quincy Adams was twelve, an orchard-robbing
hooligan, whose chief worry in life was that, though he could thrash his
eldest brother left-handed, he was condemned by the law of entail to wear
his old pants.

When a man falls in love with a woman--really in love--though the
attainment of his desire be all but impossible, he has reached the goal of
life; no tide can take him higher toward the Absolute. He has reached
life's zenith, and never will he rise higher, even though he live to wield
a sceptre or rule armies.

Adams reached the Place de la Concorde on foot, walking and taking his way
mechanically, and utterly unconscious of the passers-by.

He was studying in minute detail Maxine Berselius, the pose of her head
outlined against the tapestry, the curves of her lips that could speak so
well without speaking, the little shell-like ears, the brown-gold coils of
her hair, her hands, her dress.

He was standing undetermined as to his route, and whether he would cross
over to the Rue St. Honore or turn toward the Seine, when someone gripped