lutely! I have made my choice; I have come to it
out of many situations. I would die now rather than I would fail."

In his voice was a suppressed fervor akin to some harsh or cruel
emotion; and to Blake, watching and listening, there floated the hot
echo of stories in which Russians had acted strange parts with a
resolve, a callousness incomprehensible to other races.

"When you talk like that, boy, I could almost go back to that first
night, and adopt McCutcheon's theory. You might feasibly be a
revolutionary with those blazing eyes."

Max laughed, coming back to the moment.

"Only revolutionary in my own cause! I fight myself for myself. You take
my meaning?"

"Not in the very least! But I accept your statement; I like its brave
ring. You are your own romance."

"I am my own romance."

"Let's drink to it, then! Your romance--whatever it may be!" He raised
the half-empty tumbler, drank a little, and handed it across the table.

Max laughed and drank as well. "My romance--whatever it may be!"

"Whatever it may be! And now for that breath of air we promised
ourselves! It's close on ten o'clock."

So the meal ended; coats were found, candles blown out, and a last
proprietary inspection of the _appartement_ made by the aid of matches.

They ran down the long, smooth staircase, and, stepping into the quiet,
starlit rue Mueller, linked arms and began their descent upon Paris with
as much ease, as nice a familiarity as though life for both of them had
been passed in the shadow of the Sacre-Coeur.

On the Boulevard de Clichy the usual confusion of lights and humanity
greeted them like welcoming arms, and with the same agreeable
nonchalance they yielded to the embrace.

Conscious of no definite purpose, they turned to the right and began to
breast the human tide with eyes carelessly critical of the thronging
faces, ears heedlessly open to the many tangled sounds of street life.
Outside the theatres, flaunting posters made pools of color; in the
roadway, the network of traffic surged and intermingled; from amid the
flat house fronts, at every few hundred yards, some _cabaret_ broke upon
the sight in crude confusion of scenic painting and electric light;
while dominating all--a monument to the power of tradition--the sails of
the time-honored mill sprang red and glaring from a background of quiet
sky.

But the two, walking arm-in-arm, had no glance for revolving mill-sails
or vivid advertisement, and presently B