"Was there never a little dancer," he added, "never a little model in all these years--and you so very ancient?"
"I am not a believer in love," he said, evasively.
"Not a believer in love! Well, upon my soul, the world is getting very old! You look like a child from school, and you talk like some quaint little book I might have picked up on the _quais_. What does it all mean?"
At the perplexity of the tone Max laughed. "Very little, _mon ami_! I am no philosopher; but about this love, I have thought a little, and have gained to a conclusion. It is like this! Light love is desire of pleasure; great love is fear of being alone."
"Then you hold that man should be alone?"
"Why not?" Max shrugged his shoulders. "We come into the world alone; we go out of it alone."
"A true one, I think. If more lives were based upon it we would have more achievement and less emotion."
The Irishman's enthusiasm caught sudden fire.
"And who wants less emotion? Isn't emotion the salt of life? Why, where would a poor devil of a wanderer like myself be, if he hadn't the dream in the back of his head that the right woman was waiting for him somewhere?"
"Never loved? God save us! I have been in and out of love ever since I was seventeen. But, bless your heart, that has nothing to do with the right woman!"
Max's intent eyes flashed. "And you think the right woman will be content to take you--after all that?"
Blake came a step nearer, leaning over the parapet, his shoulder touching his companion's.
"Boy," he said, in a changed tone, "listen to me. It's a big subject, this subject of love and liking--too big for me to riddle out, perhaps. But this I know, the world was made as it is, and neither you nor I can change it; no, nor ten thousand cleverer than we! It's all a mystery, and the queerest bit of mystery in it is that a man may go down into the depths and rub shoulders with the worst, and yet keep the soul of him clean for the one woman."
"Don't you think there are men who can do without either the depths or the one woman?"
Max waived the words. "I am serious. I ask you if you do not believe that there are certain people to whom these things you speak of are poor things--people who believe that they are sufficient unto themselves?"