voice.




CHAPTER V


So the step was taken, and two souls, drawn together from different
countries, different races, touched in a first subtle fusion. With an
ease kindled by the fine and stinging air, stimulated by the crisp
summons of the flutes and the martial rattle of the drums, they bridged
the thousand preliminaries that usually hedge a friendship, and arrived
in a moment of intuition at that consciousness of fellowship that is the
most divine of human gifts.

As though the affair had been prearranged through countless ages, they
turned by one accord and forced a way through the crowd that still
encompassed them. Across the Place de la Concorde they went, past the
white statues, past the open space through which the soldiers were still
defiling like a dark stream in a snowbound country. Each was drawn
instinctively toward the Cours la Reine--the point from whence the
stream was pouring, the point where the crowd of loiterers was sparsest,
where the bare and frosted trees caught the sun in a million dancing
facets. Reaching it, the boy looked up into the stranger's face with his
fascinating look of question and interest.

"Monsieur, tell me something! How did you know me again? And why did you
speak to me?"