“No!  No!” he cried, with a little gasp, a little sob of excitement that caught the breath.  “No!  No!  I demand grace.  A starving man, mon ami!  A starving man!  It is not fair.”

He knew his adversary.  Blake’s hands dropped to his sides, he yielded with a laugh.

“Very well!  Very well!  Another time I’ll see what you’re made of.  And now ‘we’ll exterminate the bread-stuffs,’ as McCutcheon would say!”

And laughing, jesting—­content in the moment for the moment’s sake—­they sat down to their first serious meal in the little salon.

CHAPTER XIV

The meal was over; the candles had burned low; in the quiet, warm room the sense of repose was dominant.

Blake took out his cigarette-case and passed it across the table, watching Max with lazy interest as he chose a cigarette and lighted it at a candle-flame.

“Happy?”

“Absolutely!”

He had wanted in a vague, subconscious way to see the flash of the white teeth, the quick, familiar lifting of the boy’s glance, and now he smiled as a man secretly satisfied.

“I know just exactly what you’re feeling,” he said, as Max threw himself back in his chair and inhaled a first deep breath of smoke.  “You feel that that little white curl from the end of your cigarette is the last puff of smoke from the boats you have burned; and that, with your own four walls around you, you can snap your fingers at the world.  I know!  God, don’t I know!”

Max smiled slowly, watching the tip of his cigarette.  “Yes, you know!  That is the beautiful thing about you.”

The appreciation warmed Blake’s soul as the good red wine had warmed his blood.

“I believe I do—­with you.  I believe I could tell you precisely your thoughts at this present moment.”  With a pleasant, meditative action, he drew a cigar from his case.

“Tell me!”

“Well, first of all, there’s the great contentment—­the sense of a definite step.  You’re strong enough to like finality.”

“I hope I am.  I think I am.”

“You are!  Not a doubt of it!  But what I mean is that you’ve left an old world for a new one; and no matter how exciting the voyaging through space may have been, you like to feel your feet on terra firma.”

Max leaned forward eagerly.  “That is quite true!  And I like it because now I can open my eyes, and say to myself, ’not to-morrow, but to-day I live.’  I have put—­how do you say in English?—­my hand upon the plough.”

“Exactly!  The plough—­or the palette—­it’s all the same!  You’re set to it now.”

The boy’s eyes flashed in the candle-light, and for an instant something of the fierce emotion that can lash the Russian calm, as a gale lashes the sea, troubled his young face.

“You comprehend—­absolutely!  I have made my choice; I have come to it out of many situations.  I would die now rather than I would fail.”