life the desire to make answer
quickened within him. He, who had invariably sought, invariably
questioned, suddenly craved to make reply!

An incurable dreamer, the fancy took him and he yielded to its glamour.
How delightful to know and study that exquisite face! How fascinating
beyond all words to catch the fleeting semblance of his charming Max--to
lose it in the woman's seriousness--to touch it again in some gleam of
boyish humor! It was a quaint conceit, apart from, untouched by any
previous experience. Its subtlety possessed him; existence suddenly took
on form and purpose; the depression, the sense of loss dispersed as
morning clouds before the sun.

He rose, forgetful of his unfinished meal, his vitality stirring, his
curiosity kindling as it had not kindled for years.

What, all things reckoned, stood between him and this alluring study? A
boy! A mere boy!

No thought came to him of the boy himself--the instrument of the desire.
No thought came; for every human creature is a pure egoist in the first
stirring of a passion, and stalks his quarry with blind haste, fearful
that at any turn he may be balked by time or circumstance. Later, when
grief has chastened, or joy cleansed him, the altruist may peep forth,
but never in the primary moment.

With no thought of the clinging hands and beseeching voice of last
night--with no knowledge of a mournful figure that had dragged itself up
the stairway of the house in the rue Mueller and sobbed itself to sleep
in a lonely bed, he walked across the room to his writing-table and
calmly picked up a pen.

He dipped the pen into the ink and selected a sheet of note-paper; then,
as he bent to write, impatience seized him, he tore the paper across and
took up a telegraph form.

On this he wrote the simple message:

Will you allow me to meet your sister?--NED.

It was brief, it was informal, it was entirely unjustifiable. But what
circumstance in his relation to the boy had lent itself either to
formality or justification?

He rang the bell, dispatched his message, and then sat down to wait.

His attitude in that matter of waiting was entirely characteristic. He
did not arrange his action in the event of defeat; he did not speculate
upon probable triumph. The affair had passed out of his hands; the
future was upon the knees of the gods!

He did not finish his breakfast in that time of probation; he did not
again take up the paper he had thrown aside. He made n