CHAPTER XXII
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 absolute; in the fire of loss, grief softens to indifference or hardens to enduring need.
The pale blue sky of May smiled upon Montmartre. The shrubs in the plantation shimmered forth in green garments, the news-vender by the gate, the little old Basque peasant woman telling her beads in the shade of a holly-tree, even the children screaming at play on the gravelled pathway, were touched with the charm of the hour. Or so it seemed to Max—Max, debonair of carriage—Max, hastening to a rendezvous with fast-beating heart and nerves that throbbed alternately to a wild joy of anticipation and a ridiculous, self-conscious dread.
How he had counted upon the moment! How he had loved and feared it in ardent, varying imagination! And now, that it had at last arrived, how hopelessly his prearranged actions eluded him, how humanly his rehearsed sentences failed to marshal themselves for speech! As he climbed up the plantation, dazzled by the sun, intoxicated by the budding summer, he felt the merest unsophisticated youth—the merest novice, dumb and impotent under his own emotions.
Then, suddenly, all self-distrust—even all self-consciousness—was reft from him and he stood quite still, the blood burning his face, a strange sensation contracting his throat.
"At last! After a hundred thousand years!"
The first impression that fled across his mind was the intense familiarity of Blake's voice—the delightful familiarity of Blake's phrasing; the second, the brimming joy of regained companionship.
"Mon ami! Cher ami!"
His hands went out and were caught in Blake's; and all existence became a mirror to the blue, smiling sky.