Paris!  The murmur crept through the train, stirring the weariest to mechanical action.  Paris!  Heads were thrust through the windows, wraps and hand-bags passed out to the shadowy, mysterious porters who received them in a silence born of the godless hour and the penetrating, chilling dampness of the atmosphere.

In the carriage fifth or sixth from the engine the three fellow-travellers greeted the arrival in the orthodox way.  The tall American stretched his long limbs and groaned wearily as he got his belongings together, while the dapper young Englishman thrust his head out of the window and withdrew it as rapidly.

“Beastly morning!” he announced.  “Paris on a wet day is like a woman with draggled skirts.”

“Get rid of our belongings first, Billy, make epigrams after!” The man called Blake pushed him quietly aside and, stepping to the window, dropped a leather bag into the hands of a porter.

Of the three, his manner was the most indifferent, his temper the most unruffled; and of the three, he alone remembered the fourth occupant of the carriage, for, being relieved of his bag, he turned with his hand still upon the window, and his eyes sought the youthful figure drawn with lonely isolation into its corner.

“Do you want a porter?” he asked.

The question was unexpected.  The boy started and sat straighter in his seat.  For one moment he seemed to sway between two impulses, then, with a new determination, he looked straight at his questioner with his clear eyes.

“No,” he said, speaking slowly and with a grave deliberation, “I do not need a porter.  I have no luggage—­but this.”  He rose, as if to prove the truth of his declaration, and 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.