Max

A night journey is essentially a thing of possibilities. To those who count it as mere transit, mere linking of experiences, it is, of course, a commonplace; but to the imaginat...

'Journeys end in lovers' meeting.' The phrase conjures a picture. The court-yard of some inn, glowing ripe in the tints of the setting sun--open doors--an ancient coach disgorgi...

The ascent of the heights had been exciting, the descent held a sense of satisfaction. At a more sober pace, with a finer, less exuberant sense of comradeship, the two passed do...

The hour was sped, the day past; night, with its dark wings, covered the eastern sky and, one by one, the stars came forth--stars that gleamed like new silver in the light sharp...

With a new day began a new epoch. On the morning following the night, of first adventure Max woke in his odd, mountainous bed at the Hôtel Railleux kindling to fresh and definit...

He had wanted in a vague, subconscious way to see the flash of the white teeth, the quick, familiar lifting of the boy's glance, and now he smiled as a man secretly satisfied.

They dined with a full measure of satisfaction; for with his invitation to a feast, your Parisian accepts an obligation to bring forth his best in gayety, in conversation, in go...

From a distinctly precarious perch--one foot on the back of a chair, the other on an oak chest--Blake surveyed the unfurnished _salon_ of the fifth-floor _appartement_. His coat...

Nine o'clock found Max waiting in the rue de Dunkerque. Paris, consummate actress that she is, was already arraying herself for the nightly appeal to her audience of pleasure-se...

All was finished. Mystery was at an end. The pilgrim's staff had been placed in Maxine's hand, her feet set toward the great white road. She leaned back against the window of th...

He had slept as a child might sleep--dreamlessly, happily, unthinkingly. In that silent hour Nature had drawn him into her wide embrace, lulling him with a mother's gentleness;...

It seemed to Max, as the door closed behind him and he found himself upon the bare landing, that he had dreamed and was awake again; for in truth the _ménage_ into which he had...

It trembled and hung upon the air--that brief word "fame"--as it has so often hung and trembled in the streets and in the _cafés_ of Paris, winged with the exuberance of youth,...

So the step was taken, and two souls, drawn together from different countries, different races, touched in a first subtle fusion. With an ease kindled by the fine and stinging a...

The studio was in darkness; the old leathern arm-chair was drawn close to the window, and from its capacious depths Blake looked down upon the lights of Paris, while Max, leanin...

Rapture gilded the world; rapture trembled on the air like the vibrations of a chord struck from some celestial harp. Coming as a divine gift, the first autumnal frost had light...

The tone in which the question was put was extremely low, the gray eyes were steady almost to coldness, the strong, slight fingers began mechanically to fold up the hair, strand...

It was a perfect moment; one of those rare and delicate spaces of time in which Fate's fingers seem to strike a chord at once poignant and satisfying, faint and far-reaching. Th...

To the zest of the amateur, Blake added knowledge of a practical kind in the arrangement of household gods, and long ere the February dusk had fallen, the fifth-floor _apparteme...

With the laugh the personal moment passed. Henceforward it was the technique of the pictures, the individualism of the artists that claimed the boy's attention, and in this new...

There is impetus, if not necessarily inspiration in a goading thought, and Max returned to his interrupted task with a zeal almost in excess of his protestations. He worked with...

Of all the ills that circumstance forces upon man, separation from a beloved object is, perhaps, the most salutary. Separation is the crucible wherein love undergoes the test ab...

Max swung down the Escalier de Sainte-Marie in as reckless a mood as ever possessed being of either sex. Nothing of the sweet Maxine was discernible in face or carriage; the boy...

The universe is compounded of the miraculous; but love is the miracle of miracles. Again the impossible had been contrived; again Maxine and Blake were standing together on the...

It came sharply, as the crash of a breaking vessel might come to the ear--this ring of reality in Blake's voice! Abruptly, unpleasantly, Max came back to the world and the conse...

Blake must have reached the last step of the Escalier de Sainte-Marie, must indeed have turned the corner of the rue André de Sarte before the creaking of a footstep or the open...

The mind of the boy was very full as he passed out of the hotel, so full that he scarcely noticed the whip of cold air that stung his face or the white mantle that lay upon the...

Max passed down the long, low room, blind to the white light, blind to the flowers and faces, deaf to the voices and laughter and swaying sound of stringed instruments.

Who shall depict the soul of woman? As well essay to number the silk hairs on the moth's wing, or paint truly the hues in the blown bubble! The soul of woman dwells apart, subje...

After Jacqueline had closed the door and the light laugh had died into silence, Max stood before his easel, hands inert, the flush still scorching his face. For the first time s...

Nothing less than absolute conviction can shake a strong nature. A wave of doubt swept over Maxine as her little neighbor's words died out and the door closed, leaving her to si...

Comradeship in its broader sense is Bohemianism at its best; Bohemianism, not as it is imagined by the _dilettante_--a thing of picturesque penury and exotic vice--but a spontan...

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 breez...

Perfect self-deception can be a rare, almost a precious thing, ranking with all absurd, delightful faiths from the child's sweet certainty of fairydom to the enthusiast's belief...

It was midway between the hours of nine and ten on the morning following. Max was standing in the studio; the easel, still bearing the portrait, had been pushed into a corner, i...

Typically Parisian rooms they were, rooms that stood closed and silent for more than half the year and woke to offer him a welcome when his wandering footsteps turned periodical...

At ten o'clock, punctual to the moment, Blake walked up the Escalier de Sainte-Marie. All day a curious agitation compounded of elation and impatience had lifted him as upon win...

No hesitation touched her; she needed sanctuary; sanctuary she must have. She opened her neighbor's door, careless of what might lie behind, bringing with her into the quiet roo...

Maxine was in high exaltation--the exaltation that makes no count of cost. Yesterday mattered not at all; to-morrow might never dawn! As the outer door closed upon Blake, she tu...

That night the pencil-sketch obsessed the brain of Max. Tossing wakeful upon his bed, he saw the pageant of the future--touched the robe, all saffron and silver, of the goddess...

The fifth floor was dim and silent, the door of M. Cartel's _appartement_ was closed; but Max, mounting the stairs two steps at a time, was not daunted by silence or lack of lig...