Alban understood, but he had no answer ready for her. All that she had told him filled him with unutterable contempt toward the men he had but lately considered as his patrons and his friends. The polished, courtly Sergius, his master Richard Gessner--to what duplicity had they not stooped, nay, to what treachery? For they had sent him into Russia, not to befriend this child, but to put the ultimate shame of a Russian prison upon her--the cell, the lash, the unnamable infamy. As in a flash he detected the whole conspiracy and laid it bare. He, Alban Kennedy, had been chosen as their instrument--he had been sent to Poland to condemn this little friend of the dreadful years to the living death in a Russian prison. The blood raced in his veins at the thought. Perhaps for the first time in his life he knew the meaning of the word anger. "Lois," he exclaimed presently, "if Mr. Gessner does not set your father free, I myself will tell your people. That is the message I am going to send to him to-day. Count Sergius will not lie to me again--I shall tell him so when I return." She started up in wild alarm. "You must not do it--I forbid it," she cried, closing her white arms about his neck as though to protect him already from his enemies. "Oh, my dear, you do not know the Russian people, you do not know what it means to stand against the police here and have them for your enemies. Mr. Gessner is their friend. The Government would do a great deal to serve him--my father says so. If Count Sergius heard that you had met me, we should both be in prison this night--ah, dear God, what a prison, what suffering--and I have seen it myself, the women cowering from the lash, the men beaten so that they cut the flesh from their faces. That's what happens to those who go against the Government, dear Alb--but not to you because you love me." She clung to him hysterically, for this long vigil had tried her nerves and the shadow of discovery lay upon her always. It had been no surprise to her to find Alban in Warsaw, for the Revolutionary Committee in London had informed her friends by cable on the very day that Count Sergius had left. She knew exactly how he had come, where he had stopped, and when to seek him out. But now that his arms were about her, she dreaded a new separation and was almost afraid to release his hand from hers. "You will not leave me, Alban," she said--a new dignity coming to her suddenly as though some lesson, not of the school, but of life, had taught it to her--"you will take me to London with you--yes, yes, dear, as your servant. That is what my friends wish, they have thought it all out. I am to go as your servant and you must get a passport for me--for Lois Werner, and then if you call me by my own name no one will know. There we can see Mr. Gessner together and speak of my father. I will promise him that his secret shall never be known. He will trust me, Alban, because I promise him." Alban stooped and kissed her upon the lips.