crouched comfortably by
the fire.

"The capacity, boy, for the _grande passion_. Odd that it should exist
in so light a vessel, but these are the secrets of Nature! There are
moments, you know, when this little Jacqueline isn't laughing at
life--rare, I admit, but still existent--and then you see that the
corners of her mouth can droop. She may live to find existence void, but
she'll never live to find it shallow. Thanks, boy!" He took his cup of
coffee, and, walking to the table, cut a slice of bread, which he
carried back to the fire. "Now, don't say a word! I'm going to make you
the finest bit of toast you ever saw in your life!"

Max, preserving the required silence, watched him make the toast,
carefully balancing the bread on the tip of a knife, carefully browning,
carefully buttering it.

"Now! Taste that, and tell me if there wasn't a great _chef_ lost in
me!"

He carried the toast back to the fire and watched Max eat the first
morsel.

"Nice?"

"Delicious!"

"Ah! Then it's all fair sailing! I'll cut myself a bit of bread and sit
down on my heels like you. There's something in that Turkish idea, after
all! But, as I was saying"--he buttered his bread and dropped into
position beside the boy--"as I was saying awhile ago, that child next
door, with all her innocent air and her blue eyes, has climbed the
slippery stairs and reached the seventh heaven. And not only reached it
herself, mind you, but dragged that ungainly Cartel with her by the tip
of her tiny finger! Wonderful! Wonderful! Enviable fate!"

Max's eyes laughed. "M. Cartel's?"

"M. Cartel's. Oh, boy, that seventh heaven! Those slippery steps!"

"And the tip of a tiny finger?" Max was jesting; but Blake, lost in his
own musings, did not perceive it.

"For Cartel--yes!" he said. "For me, no! I think I'd like the whole
hand."

Here Max picked up a tongs and stirred the logs until they blazed.

"Absurd!" he said. "The tip of a finger or the whole of a hand, it is
all the same! It is a mistake, this love! That old story of the Garden
and the Serpent is as true as truth. Man and Woman were content to live
and adorn the world until one day they espied the stupid red Apple--and
straightway they must eat! Look even at this Cartel! He is an artist; he
might make the world listen to his music. But, no! He sees a little
butterfly, as you call her--all blonde and blue--and down falls his
ambition, and up go his eyes to the sky, and henceforth he is