ould be
intolerable."

Alban had lived too long in a world of mean cynics that this talk should
either surprise or entertain him. Men in Union Street spoke of women
much as this careless fellow did, rarely generous to them and often
exceedingly unjust. His own ideals he had confessed wholly to none, not
even to Anna Gessner in the moment of their greatest intimacy. That fine
old-world notion of the perfect womanhood, developed to the point of
idolatry by the Celts of the West, but standing none the less as a
witness to the whole world's desire, might remain but as a memory of his
youth--he would neither surrender it nor admit that it was unworthy of
men's homage. When Sergius spoke of his own countrywomen, Alban could
forgive him all other estimates. And this was as much as to say that the
image of Lois was with him even in that splendid place, and that some
sentiment of her humble faith and sacrifice had touched him to the
quick.

They went to the opera as the Count had promised and there heard an
indifferent rendering of the _Huguenots_. A veritable sisterhood of
blondes, willing to show off Count Sergius to some advantage, came from
time to time to his box and was by him visited in turn. Officers in
uniform crowded the foyers and talked in loud tones during the finest
passages. A general sense of unrest made itself felt everywhere as
though all understood the danger which threatened the city and the
precarious existence its defenders must lead. When they quitted the
theatre and turned into one of the military clubs for supper, the common
excitement was even more marked and ubiquitous enough to arrest the
attention even of such a _flaneur_ as Sergius.

"These fellows are sitting down to supper with bombs under their
chairs," he said _sotto voce_. "That is to say, each thinks that a bomb
is there and hopes that it will kill his neighbor. We have no sympathy
in our public life here--the conditions are altogether against it.
Imagine five hundred men upon the deck of a ship which has struck a
rock, and consider what opportunities there would be to deplore the
drowned. In Russia each plays for his own safety and does not care a
rouble what becomes of the man next door. Such a fact is both our
strength and our weakness--our strength because opportunities make men,
and our weakness because we have no unity of plan which will enable us
to fight such a combination as is now being pitted against us. I myself
believe that th