end--you know it is; you put me off 'cause you
think it'll please me, same as you put Chris Denham off when you danced
with her at the Institoot Ball. You won't never love no girl truly,
Alb--it isn't in you, my dear. You're born above us and we never shall
forget it, not none of us as I'm alive to-night."

She turned away her head to hide the tears gathering in her black eyes,
while Alban's only answer to her was a firm pressure upon the little
white hand he held in his own and a quicker step upon the crowded
pavement. Perhaps he understood that the child spoke the truth, but of
this he could not be a wise judge. His father had been a poor East End
parson, his mother was the daughter of an obstinate and flinty Sheffield
steel factor, who first disowned her for marrying a curate and then went
through the bankruptcy court as a protest against American competition.
So far Alban knew himself to be an aristocrat--and yet how could he
forget that among that very company of Revolutionaries he had so lately
quitted there were sons of men whose nobility was older than Russia
herself. That he understood so much singled him out immediately as a
youth of strange gifts and abnormal insight--but such, indeed, he was,
and as such he knew himself to be.

"I won't quarrel with you, Lois, though I see that you wish it, dear,"
he said presently, "you know I don't care for Chris Denham and what's
the good of talking about her. Let's go and cheer up--I'm sure we can do
with a bit and that's the plain truth, now isn't it, Lois?"

He squeezed her arm and drew her closer to him. At the Empire they found
two gallery seats and watched a Japanese acrobat balance himself upon
five hoops and a ladder. A lady in far from immaculate evening dress,
who sang of a flowing river which possessed eternal and immutable
qualities chiefly concerned with love and locks and unswerving fidelity,
appealed to little Lois' sentiment and she looked up at Alb whenever the
refrain recurred as much as to say, "That is how I should love you." So
many other couples about them were squeezing hands and cuddling waists
that no one took any notice of their affability or thought it odd. A
drunken sailor behind them kept asking the company with maudlin
reiteration what time the last train left for Plymouth, but beyond
crying "hush" nobody rebuked him. In truth, the young people had come
there to make love, and when the lights were turned down and the curtain
of the biograph