The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-20
CHAPTER XXTV.
The Dawn of the Day.


 the chief of inc police. and the subse- onent hours found him exceedingly pleased with himself. An artist in his nrofession, he flattered himself that it had all come about in the manner of his own anticipations and that he would be able to carry back to London a story which would not only win upon rich mans gratitude. but advance him considerably in the favor of those who could well re- ward his labors
 This was an amiable reflection and one that ministered greatly to his self-content. No cloud stood upon the horizon of his self-esteem nor did shadows darken his glowing hopes. He had promised Rich ard Gessner to arrest the girl Lois Boris koff and arrested she would be before P o'clock tomorrow As for this amiable English lad so full of fine resolutions, so defiant so self-willed. it would be a good jest enough to clap him in a police sta ton for four-and-twenty hours and to bow him out again, with profuse apologies, when the girl was on her way to Peters, burg to join her amiable father in the Schlusselburg.
 For Alban personally he had a warm regard The very honesty of his charac ter his habit of saying just what he meant (so foreign to the count s own practice his ingenious delight in all that he saw, his modern knight-errantry based upon an absurdly old-tashiOned notion of right and wrong and justice and all such stuff as that these were the very qual- ties to win the admiration of a man of the world who possessed none of them. Count Sergius said that the lad must suffer nothing. His intrigues with the daughter of Polish anarchist were both dangerous and foolish. And was he not already the acknowledged lover of Anna Gessner, whom he must marry upon his return to London. Certainly, it would be very wrong not to lock him up, and he, Sergius. was not going to take the re- sponsibility of any other course upon his already over -burdened shoulders.
 These being his ideas, he found it amus- ing enough to meet Alban at the dinner table and to speak of tomorrow and it's programme. The reply to the cable they had dispatched to London lay already warm in his pocket, sent straight to him from the postoffice as the police had di- reoted. It was fitting that he should open the ball with a lie about this and add thereto any other pleasant fancy which a fertile imagination dictated
 "Gessner does not cable us,' he said at that moment of the repast when the glasses are first filled and the tongue Is loosed. "I suppose he has gone over to Paris again as he hinted might be the case. If there is no news tomorrow we must reconsider the arguments and see how we stand. You know that I am per fectly willing to be guided by him and will do nothing of my own initiative. If he can procure the old mans freedom, will be the first to congratulate him. Meanwhile I am not to forget that we have a box at the opera and that Hugue- nots is on the bill. When 1 am not Tn musical circles I confess my enjoyment of Huguenots. Meyerbeer always seemed to me a grand old charlatan who should have run a modern show in New York. He wrote one masterpiece and some five miles of rubbish-but why decry a great work because there are also those which are not great Besides. I am not musi- ( elan enough really to enjoy the Ring. IT it were not for tho pretty women who 4come to my box to escape ennui, l would Find Wagner intolerable."
 Alban, very quiet and not little eX- kciten tonight. differed from this opinion altogether.
 . My father was a musician" he said. 1T believe that If he had not been parson he would have been great musi- elan. don't know very much about music myself, but the first time that MT. Gessner took me to hear one of Wag- ners operas I seemed to live in new world It could not have been just the desire to like it, for had made up my mind that it would be very dry. There is something in such music as that which is better than all argument. I shall never forget the curious sensation which came to me when first heard the overture to Tannhauser played by big orchestra You will not deny that it is splendid%
 Undoubtedly it's fine-especialy where the clarinets came in and you seem 10 alave 800 mice running up your back. 1 am not going to be drawn into an argu- ment on the pont-these likes and dls- likes are purely individual. To me II seems perfectly ridiculous that one man should quarrel with another because a third person has said or written some thing about which they disagree. In pol itics, of course, there Is justification. The Have-Nots want to get money out or the Hayes and the pockets supply the adJec- tiyes But in the arts which exist Tor our pleasure-why, l might as well fall foul of you because you do not like caviar and are more partial to brunettes than to blondes. My taste is all the other way-I dote upon caviar; golden-halred women are to me just a little more at tractive than the angels. But of course, that does not speak for their tempers.
 He laughed at the candor of it, and looking round the brilliant restaurant where they dined tonight, he began 10 speak in a low tone of Russian and Polish women generally
 "The Polish ladies are old-fashioned enough to love one man at 8 time--in their own country, at any rate The Russians. on the contrary. are less selfish. A Russian woman is often tue victim of three centuries of suppressed female ambitions She has large ideas, fierce passions, an excellent political sense and all these must be cooled by the wet blanket of a very ordinary domesticty. In reality, she is not domesticated at all and would far sooner be following her iover-the one chosen for the day-doWn the street with flag. Here you have the reason why a Russian woman ap- peals to us She is rarely beautiful- some of them would themselves admit the deficiency--but she is never an em- harrassment. Tell her that you are tired of her and you will discover that she was about to stagger your vanity Dy similar confidence. In these days of rev. olution she is seen at her best. Fear neither of God nor of man will restrain her. We have more of the show of re- ligion and less of the spirit fin Russia than in any country in the world. Here in Poland it is little different Some of our women are as the ideallsts would have them to be. But there are others Or the city would be intolerable."
 Alban lived too long in a world of mean cynics that this talk should either sur prise or entertain him. Men in Union street spoke of women much as this care- less fellow did, rarely generous to them and often exceedingly unjust. His own ideals he had confessed wholly to none, not even to Anna Gessner in the moment of their greatest intimacy. That fine old
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