"I have never been ashamed of any of my friends," he exclaimed hotly; "you know that it is not true, Paul Boriskoff. Where are the letters which I wrote to Lois? Why has she not answered them? If I had been ashamed, would they have been written? Cannot you understand that all which has happened to me has been very distracting. I have seen a new life--a new world, and it is not as our world. Perhaps there is no more happiness in it than in these courts and alleys where we have suffered so much. I cannot tell you truly. It is all too new to me and naturally I feel incapable of judging it. When I came to you to-night it was to speak of our old friendship. Should I have done so if I had forgotten?"
Old Paul heard him with patience, but his anger none the less remained. The shaggy eyebrows were at rest now, but the eyes were never turned from Alban's face.
"You are in love with Anna Gessner," he said quietly; "why do you not tell Lois so?"
"I cannot tell her so--it would not be true. She will always be the same little Lois to me, and when she is twenty-one I will marry her."
"Ha--when she is twenty-one. That seems a long time off to one who is your age. You will marry her, you say--a promise to keep her quiet while you make love to this fine lady who befools you. No, Alban Kennedy, I shall not let Lois imagine any such thing; I shall tell her the truth. She will choose another husband--that is my wish and she will obey it."
"You are doing me a great injustice, Paul Boriskoff. I do not love Anna--perhaps for a moment I thought that I did, but I know now that I was deceiving myself. She is not one who is worthy of being loved. I believed her very different when first I went to Hampstead."
"Tell me no such thing. I am an old man and I know men's hearts. What shall my daughter and her rags be to you now that you have fine clothes upon your back? You are as the others--you have knelt down at the shrine of money and there you worship. This woman in her fine clothes--she is your idol. All your past is forgotten immediately you see her. A great gulf is set between you and us. Think not that I do not know, for there are those who bring me the story every day. You worship Anna Gessner, but you live in a fool's paradise, for the father will forbid you to marry her. I say it and I know. Be honest and speak to my daughter as I have spoken to you to-night."