was greatly troubled, for the accusation was very just. The
impossibility of making the whole truth plain to her had stared him in
the face since the moment of her pathetic confession when he met her on
the barge. Impossible to say to her, "I had an ideal and pursued it,
looking to the right and the left for the figure of the vision and
suffering it to escape me all the time." This he could not tell her or
even hint at. The lie cried for a hearing, and the lie was detestable to
him.

"There was a time, yes, Lois," he said, turning his face from her, "I am
ashamed to remember it now, since you have spoken. If you love me, you
would understand what all the wonders of Mr. Gessner's house meant to a
poor devil, brought up as I had been. It was another world with strange
people everywhere. I thought they were more than human and found them
just like the rest of us. Oh, that's the truth of it, and I know it now.
Our preachers are always calling upon the rich to do fine things for the
poor, but the rich man is deaf as often as not, because some little puny
thing in their own lives is dinning in their ears and will shut out all
other sounds. I know that it must be so. The man who has millions
doesn't think about humanity at all. He wages war upon trifles, his
money-books are his library, he has blinded himself by reading them and
lost his outlook upon the world. I thought it would all be so different,
and then somebody touches me upon the shoulder and I look up and see
that my vision is no vision at all, and that the true heart of it is my
own all the time. Can you understand that, Lois, is it hidden from you
also?"

"It is not hidden, Alban, it is just as I said it would be."

"And you did not love me less because of it?"

"I should never have loved you less, whatever you had done."

"I shall remind you of that when we are in England together."

"That will never be, Alban dear, unless my father is free."

She repeated it again and again. Her manner of speaking had now become
that of one who understood that this was a last farewell.

"You cannot help us," she said, "why should you suffer because we must?
In England there's a great future before you as Mr. Gessner's adopted
son. I shall never hear of it, but I shall be proud because I know the
world will talk about you. That will be something to take with me, dear,
something they can never rob me of, whatever happens. When you remember
who Lois was, say that she is thin