“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 said again, in response to his original impulse.  “You have somebody to meet you?”

The boy glanced up, a secret emotion burning in his eyes.  “No, monsieur.”

“You are quite alone?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“And why are you here—­to play or to work?”

The question was unwarrantable, but an Irishman can dispense with warranty in a manner unknown to other men.  It had ever been Blake’s way to ask what he desired to know.

This time no offence showed itself in the boy’s face.

“In part to work, in part to play, monsieur,” he answered, gravely; “in part to learn life.”