ain
the eyes met Blake's in a deliberate gaze.

"Why do you ask, monsieur?"

The words were clipped, the tone proud and a little cold.

Another man might have hesitated to reply truthfully, but Blake was an
Irishman and used to self-expression.

"I ask," he said, simply, "because you are so young."

A new expression--a new daring--swept the boy's mobile face. A spirit of
raillery gleamed in his eyes, and he smiled for the first time.

"How old, monsieur?"

The question, the smile touched Blake anew. He laughed involuntarily
with a sudden sense of friendliness.

"Sixteen?--seventeen?"

The boy, still smiling, shook his head.

"Guess again, monsieur."

Blake's interest flashed out. Here, in the gray station, in this damp
hour of dawn, he had touched something magnetic--some force that drew
and held him. A quality intangible and indescribable seemed to emanate
from this unknown boy, some strange radiance of vitality that flooded
his surroundings as with sunshine.

"Eighteen, then!" He laughed once more, with a curious sense of
pleasure.

But from the corridor outside a slow voice was borne back on the damp,
close air, forbidding further parley.

"Blake! I say, Blake! For the Lord's sake, get a move on!"

The spell was broken, the moment of companionship passed. Blake drifted
toward the carriage door, the boy following.

Outside in the corridor they were sucked into the stream of departing
passengers--that odd medley of men and women, unadorned, jaded,
careless, that a night train disgorges. Slowly, step by step, the
procession made its way, each unit that composed it glancing
involuntarily into the empty carriages that he passed--the carriages
that, in their dimmed light, their airlessness, their _debris_ of
papers, seemed to be a reflection of his own exhausted condition; then a
gust of chilly air told of the outer world, and one by one the
travellers slid through the narrow doorway, each instinctively pausing
to brace himself against the biting cold before stepping down upon the
platform.

At last it was Blake's turn. He, too, paused; then he, too, took the
final plunge, shivered, glanced at where McCutcheon and the Englishman
were talking to their porters, then turned to watch the Russian boy
swing himself lithely down from the high step of the train.

All about him was the consciousness of the awakening crowd, conveyed by
the jostling of elbows, the deepening hum of voices.

"Look here!" he sa