which he had once known as the informal
club of the Marston cult, he realized that here the hilarity was more
pronounced than elsewhere. The boulevard itself was for squares a
thread, stringing cafes like beads in a necklace. Each had its crowd
of revelers; its boisterous throng of frowsy, velvet-jacketed,
long-haired students; its laughing models; its inevitable brooding and
despondent _absintheurs_ sitting apart in isolated melancholy. Yet,
here at the "_Chat Noir_," the chorus was noisier. Although the
evening was chill, the sidewalk tables were by no means deserted. The
Parisian proves his patriotism by his adherence to the out-door table,
even if he must turn up his collar, and shiver as he sips his wine.

Listlessly, Steele turned into the place. It was so crowded this
evening that for a time it looked as though he would have difficulty
in finding a seat. At last, a waiter led him to a corner where,
dropping to the seat along the wall, he ordered his wine, and sat
gloomily looking on.

The place was unchanged. There were still the habitues quarreling over
their warring tenets of the brush; men drawn to the center of painting
as moths are drawn to a candle; men of all nationalities and sorts,
alike only in the general quality of their unkempt _grotesquerie_.

There was music of a sort; a plaintive chord long-drawn from the
violin occasionally made its sweet wail heard above the babel and
through the reeking smoke of the room. Evidently, it was some occasion
beyond the ordinary, and Steele, leaning over to the student nearest
him, inquired in French:

"Is there some celebration?"

The stranger was a short man, with hair that fell low on his neck and
greased his collar. He had a double-pointed beard and deep-set black
eyes, which he kept fixed on his absinthe as it dripped drop by drop
from the nickeled device attached to his _frappe_ glass. At the
question, he looked up, astonished.

"But is it possible monsieur does not know? We are all brothers
here--brothers in the worship of the beautiful! Does not monsieur
know?"

Steele did not know, and he told the stranger so without persiflage.

"It is that the great Marston has returned!" proclaimed the student,
in a loud voice. "It is that the master has come back to us--to
Paris!"

The sound of his voice had brought others about the table. "Does
monsieur know that the Seine flows?" demanded a pearly pretty model,
raising her glass and flashing from her dark e