lifted his valise from the rack. It was a simple movement, simple as the question and answer that had preceded it, but it held interest for Blake. He could not have analyzed the impression, but something in the boy's air touched him, something in the young figure so plainly clad, so aloof, stood out with sharp appeal in the grayness and unreality of the dawn. A feeling that was neither curiosity nor pity, and yet savored of both, urged him to further speech. As his two companions, anxious to be free of the train, passed out into the corridor, he glanced once more at the slight figure, at the high Russian boots, the long overcoat, the fur cap drawn down over the dark hair. "Look here! you aren't alone in Paris?" he asked in the easy, impersonal way that spoke his nationality. "You have people--friends to meet you?" For an instant the look that had possessed the boy's face during the journey--the look of suspicion akin to fear--leaped up, but on the moment it was conquered. The well-poised head was thrown back, and again 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 _débris_ of papers, seemed to be a reflection of his own 

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