ch of
hospitality patent in the girl's manner the moment she crossed her own
threshold, conscious of the friendly smile of M. Lucien Cartel, typical
artist, typical Frenchman of the southern provinces--short, swarthy,
alive from his coarse black hair to the square tips of his fingers. It
was in the air--the sense of good-will--the desire for conviviality; and
in the first greeting, the first hand-shake, the relations of the party
were established.

But the true note of this Bohemianism is not so much spontaneous
friendship as a spontaneous capacity for the interchange of
thought--that instant opening of mind to mind, when place becomes of
slight, and time of no importance.

Such an atmosphere was created by M. Lucien Cartel in his poor
Montmartre _appartement_, and under its spell Max and Blake fell as
surely, as luxuriously as they might have fallen under the spell of a
summer day. It was not that M. Cartel was brilliant; his only capacity
for brilliance lay in his strong, square hands; but he was a good fellow
and possessed of a philosophy that at once challenged and interested.
For Church and State he had a wide contempt, a scoffing raillery, a
candid blasphemy that outraged orthodoxy: for humanity and for his art
he owned an enthusiasm touching on the sublime. Upon every subject--the
meanest and the most profound--he held an opinion and aired it with
superb frankness and incredible fluency. So it was that, when the
_poulet bonne femme_ had been picked to the bones and Jacqueline had
retired to some sanctum whence the clatter of plates and the sound of
running water told of domestic duties, the three pushed their chairs
back from the table and fell to talk.

Precisely how they talked, precisely what they talked of in that
pleasant period subsequent to the meal is not to be related. They
thrashed the paths of morality, science, religion until their contending
voices filled the room and the tobacco smoke hung in clouds about them.
They talked until the last drop of Jacqueline's coffee had been drained;
they talked until Jacqueline herself came silently back into the room
and seated herself by Cartel's side, slipping her hand into his with
artless spontaneity.

Morality, science, religion, and then, in natural sequence, art--music!
The brain of M. Cartel tingled, his fingers twitched as the rival merits
of composers--the varying schools of thought--were touched upon, warmed
to, or torn by contending opinions. One e