A new excitement, unlike the excitement of the morning, was at work within him; his blood danced, his brain answered to every fleeting picture.

He was in that subtlest of all moods when the mind swings out upon the human tide, comprehending its every ripple with a deep intuition that seems like a retrospective knowledge.
He had never until this moment stood alone in a Paris street at night; he had never before rubbed shoulders with a Parisian night crowd; but the inspiration was there--the exaltation--that made him one with this restless throng of men and women whose antecedents were unknown to him, whose future was veiled to his gaze.
The sensation culminated when, out of the crowd, a hand was laid upon his shoulder and a familiar voice rose above the babble of sound.
"Well, and are we girded for the heights ?" It came at the right moment, it lilted absolutely with his thoughts--the soft, pleasant tones, the easy friendliness that seemed to accept all things as they came.

His instant answer was to smile into the Irishman's face and to press the arm that had been slipped through his.
"It's too early for anything very characteristic, but there are always impressions to be got." Again the boy replied by a pressure of the arm, and together he and Blake began to walk.

The strange pleasure of yielding himself to this man's will filtered through Max's being again, as it had done that morning, painting the world in rosy tints.

The situation was anomalous, but he ignored the anomaly.