Aladdin of London, or The Lodestar

Alban did not demur for he was tired out and that was the truth of it. In his own room he recalled the question the Count had put to him and wondered that it had so distressed him. Why had his cheeks tingled and the words stumbled upon his lips because he had been called Lois Boriskoff's lover? It used not to be so when they walked Union Street together and all the neighbors regarded the engagement as an accomplished fact. He had never resented such a charge then--what had happened that he should resent it now? Was it the long weeks of temptation he had suffered in Anna Gessner's presence? Had the world of riches so changed him that any mention of the old time could make him ashamed? He knew not what to think--the blood rushed to his cheeks again and his heart beat quickly when he remembered that but for Count Sergius's visit to Hampstead, he might have been Anna's betrothed to-day.

In this he was, as ever, entirely candid with himself, neither condoning his faults nor accusing himself blindly. There had been nothing of the humbler realities of love in his relations with Richard Gessner's daughter; none of the superb spirit of self-sacrifice; none of those fine ideals which his boyhood had desired to set up. He had worshipped her beauty--so much he readily admitted; her presence had ever been potent to quicken his blood and claim the homage of his senses; but of that deeper understanding and mutual sympathy by which love is born she had taught him nothing. Why this should have been so, he could not pretend to say. Her father's riches and the glamour of the great house may have had not a little to do with it. Alban had always seemed to stand apart from all which the new world showed to him. He felt that he had no title to a place there, no just claim at all to those very favors his patron thrust upon him so lavishly.

He was as a man escaped from a prison whose bars were of gold--a prison whereof the jailer had been a beautiful and capricious woman. Here in Warsaw he discovered a new world; but one that seemed altogether familiar. All this clamor of the streets, this going to and fro of people, the roar of traffic, the shriek of whistles, the ringing of bells--had he not known them all in London when Lois was his friend and old Paul his neighbor? There had been many Poles by Thrawl Street and the harsh music of their tongue came to him as an old friend. It is true that he was housed luxuriously, in a palace built for millionaires; but he had the notion that he would not long continue there and that a newer and a stranger destiny awaited him. This thought, indeed, he carried to his bedroom and slept upon at last. He would find Lois to-morrow and she would be his messenger.