"I am here, Alb dear, just waiting for you. Won't you kiss me, Alb dear?"
He put his arms about her neck and kissed her at her wish—just as a brother might have kissed a sister in the hour of her peril.
"I came at once, Lois," he said, "of course I did not understand that it would be like this. Why are you here? Whatever has happened—what does it all mean? Will you not teach me to understand, Lois?"
"Sit by my side, Alb dear, sit down and listen to me. I want you to know what your friends have been doing. Oh, I have been so lonely, so frightened, and I don't deserve that. You know that my father is in prison, Alb—the Count told you that?"
"I heard it before I left England, Lois. You did not answer my letters?"
"I was ashamed to, dear. That was the first thing they taught me at the school—to be ashamed to write to you until you would not be ashamed to read my letters. Can't you understand, Alb? Wasn't I right to be ashamed?"
She buried her head upon his breast and put a little hot hand into his own. A great tenderness toward her filled his whole being and brought a sense of happiness very foreign to him lately. How gentle and kindly this little waif of fortune had ever been. And how even those few weeks of a better schooling had improved her. She had shed all the old vulgarities—she was just a simple schoolgirl as he would have wished her to be.
"We are never right to be ashamed before those who love us," Alban said kindly; "you did not write to me and how was I to know what had happened? Of course, your father told you what I had been doing and why I went away from Union Street? It was all his kindness. I know it now and I have come to Russia to thank him—when he is free. That won't be very long now that I have found you. They were frightened of you, Lois—they thought you were going to betray their secrets to the Revolutionary party. I knew that you would not do so—I said so all along."
She looked up at him with glowing eyes, and putting her lips very close to his ear she said: