CHAPTER VIII


Nine o'clock found Max waiting in the rue de Dunkerque. Paris,
consummate actress that she is, was already arraying herself for the
nightly appeal to her audience of pleasure-seekers. Like a dancer in her
dressing-room, she but awaited the signal to step forth into the glamour
of the footlights; the rouge was on her lips, the stars shone in her
hair, the jewelled slippers caressed her light feet. Even here, in the
colorless region of the Gare du Nord, the perfumed breath of the
courtesan city crept like the fumes of wine; the insidious sense of
nocturnal energy swept the brain, as the traffic jingled by and the
crowds upon the footpaths thronged into the _cafés_ and overflowed into
the roadway.

To the boy, walking slowly up and down, with eager eyes that sought the
one face among the many, the scene came as a joyous revelation that
called inevitably to his youth and his vitality. He made no pretence of
analyzing his sensations: he was stirred, intoxicated by the movement,
the lights, the naturalness and artificiality that walked hand-in-hand
in so strange a fellowship. A new excitement, unlike the excitement of
the morning, was at work within him; his blood danced, his brain
answered to every fleeting picture. He was in that subtlest of all moods
when the mind swings out upon the human tide, comprehending its every
ripple with a deep intuition that seems like a retrospective knowledge.
He had never until this moment stood alone in a Paris street at night;
he had never before rubbed shoulders with a Parisian night crowd; but
the inspiration was there--the exaltation--that made him one with this
restless throng of men and women whose antecedents were unknown to him,
whose future was veiled to his gaze.