er
of a lamp glowed before a shrine or the sun struck sharp through the
splendor of stained glass.

There are few churches--to some minds there is no other church--where
the idea of the profound broods as it does in Notre Dame. The sense of
dignity, the curious ancient scent compounded by time, the mystic colors
of the great windows breathe of the infinite.

Max, walking up the aisle, looked at the dark walls; Max--modern,
critical--looked up at the wondrous rose window, and felt the
overshadowing power of superhuman things. The modern world crumbled
before the impassive silence, criticism found no challenge in its
brooding spirit, for the mind cannot analyze what it cannot measure.

Max subscribed to no creed; but, by a strange impulsion, born of dead
ages, his eyes fell from the glowing window and turned to the high
altar. He did not want to pray; he rebelled against the idea of
supplication; but the circling thoughts within him concentrated
suddenly, he clasped his hands with a clasp so fierce that it was pain.

"Oh, God!" he said, under his breath. "God! God, let me possess myself!"
And as if some chord had snapped, relieving the tension in his brain, he
dropped upon his knees, as he had once done at the foot of his own
staircase and, crouching against a pillar, wept like a lost child.

PART IV

CHAPTER XXXVI

The last days of August in Paris! A deadly oppression of heat; a
brooding inertia that lay upon the city like a cloak!

In the little _appartement_ every window stood gaping, thirsting for a
draught of air; but no stir lightened the haze that weighed upon the
atmosphere, no faintest hint of breeze ruffled the plantation shrubs,
dark in their fulness of summer foliage. Stillness lay upon
Montmartre--upon the rue Mueller--most heavily of all, upon the home of
Max.

It was an obvious, weighty stillness unconnected with repose. It seemed
as though the spirit of the place were fled, and that in its stead the
vacant quiet of death reigned. In the _salon_ the empty hearth hurt the
observer with its poignant suggestion of past comradeship, dead fires,
long hours when the spring gales had whistled through the plantation and
stories had been told and dreams woven to the spurt of blue and copper
flames. The place had an aspect of desertion; no book lay thrown, face
downward, upon chair or table; no flowers glowed against the white
walls, though flowers were to be had for the asking in a land