ary. 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--abso