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.