"I kiss you and the world begins to fade."
W. B. YEATS.

Count Vladimir and Emile met and consulted together, the immediate result of the interview being that Vardri was offered the post of private secretary to the former. Emile had gone out leaving them together, and Vladimir had hardly finished speaking when he found himself faced by an unexpected situation.

"I accept with pleasure," Vardri said, "but on one condition—that it means my remaining in Barcelona."

Vladimir hesitated. "Well, I had not contemplated that. Naturally one requires one's secretary to be—"

"I understand, Monsieur. I hope you will not consider me ungrateful, but there is a reason."

"It's a woman?"

Vardri bowed gravely. "Exactly, Monsieur. It's a woman."

"You are risking a great deal for her. Poleski has told me something of your circumstances, and it appears that if you do not get some appointment very soon, you will starve."

Vardri straightened himself, throwing back his head with a characteristic gesture. He looked the older man in the eyes, his own alight and eloquent under finely drawn brows.

"That's as it may be! I'll take my chance of work. In any case I cannot leave Barcelona. Of course, I regret greatly that it is impossible for me to fall in with your arrangements."

Vladimir smiled and shrugged. He knew the type with which he had to deal. Quixotic and generous to the verge of folly, the type that will sacrifice itself without reserve for an illusion, an ideal; the type that filled monasteries, and Siberian prisons, and made a jest for half the world. Such men were valuable to the Cause, because they gave ungrudgingly, and never counted cost. The Russian was a man of affairs, cautious, cynical and given to analysis, and he was also a student of human nature. He was moreover interested in the unknown woman.

If he had been told that she was Arithelli the circus-rider, who had sat silently upon the deck of his yacht dressed in gaudy raiment, and indifferent almost to stupidity, then his smile would have been contemptuous instead of tolerant. He was interested too in the unknown woman's champion. Something in Vardri's attitude of courteous defiance appealed to him by the law that will attract strongly one man's mind to another, diverse in every way. He could see that Vardri was plainly consumptive, and that the disease was in its advanced stages. Even with the aid of good food and an easier life he could not last more than a year or two, so one might as well make things a little more smooth for him during the time.

"I see you have the illusions of youth, my friend," he said carelessly. "I trust they may remain long unbroken. Myself I am sorry to have lived beyond the age when they content one. Sit down and talk to me." He motioned Vardri towards a chair. "Well, since you have refused to entertain my plan, we must think of something else. I'm at present writing a series of articles on 'Militarism in France,' and should like to have them translated for publication in an English journal. You speak the language well, better even than Poleski, for you have a better accent. I have been a good deal in London and I notice the difference. I suppose you also write it easily?"

"Yes, I had an English tutor."

"Good! Then you will undertake this work, and you shall fix the price of payment. I'm not in the least afraid of your asking more than I care to give. You are the type that gets rid of money, not the type that acquires it. Also I will give you an introduction which will enable you to get on the staff of Le Combat. They want another man there who is a good linguist, as there is a great deal of correspondence with other countries. As I have an interest in the paper, you may consider it settled. No, don't thank me. Your thanks are due to—a woman. She is unknown to me, but perhaps that is the reason I—I also owe you something, Monsieur Vardri. Your example has made me feel young again."

A week later Vardri went swinging quickly down the Calle San Antonio, on his way to Emile's rooms. He was in exuberant spirits, and whistled as he walked keeping step to the dancing gaiety of 'La petite Tonquinoise.' His headgear, which vied in picturesque disorder with Emile's historical sombrero, was pushed to the back of his head, exposing his thick, unruly hair, and over one ear, Spanish fashion, he had stuck a carnation.

There was more money in his pocket than he had possessed since his days of luxury in the Austrian chateau, and for him the sun was shining in a metaphorical as well as a literal sense. During the last few days he had been happier than he could have believed possible. He felt in better health, for he had been able to go to bed at a reasonable time, and though he missed the horses and the free life of the Hippodrome, and found the work of a newspaper office somewhat trying, there were shorter hours and other advantages.

He had also the joy of knowing that Arithelli was almost well again. She had not been out yet, but Michael Furness had declared her to be practically recovered.

One day Vardri hoped to take her along the sea-front towards the old quarter of the town, where the fishermen and sailors lived, and where she could sit on the stone parapet and look across the harbour, and let the sea-air blow strength and vitality into her.

After all he told himself, life was good even if one were a vagabond.
Life with adventure, a little money, and love.

He burst open the door of Emile's sitting-room, and entered headlong. The sun-blinds were all drawn, making everything appear pitch dark after the blinding glare of the streets.

"I want some matches, Poleski! By luck, I've got some cigarettes. One never has both matches and cigarettes at the same time." He had come to a dead stop and stood staring.

"FatalitÉ! FatalitÉ! The gods are kind for once! If only I had known you were here sooner."

The half-full box of cigarettes descended to the floor, and its contents went in all directions, and he was kneeling beside her chair and holding both her hands. It was Arithelli not "FatalitÉ" who smiled back at him. The little mask-like face changed and grew soft till she looked more a girl, less an embodied tragedy. Vardri's wild spirits were infectious, and, as on the night of the Hippodrome fiasco, Youth called and Love made answer.

"Mon ami, I am so glad you have come."

"Is this the first time you have been out? Who said you could get up?
The doctor?"

"No, it was Emile."

Vardri nodded towards the communicating door of the bedroom. "Poleski is here then?"

"No, and he doesn't know I'm here. He has gone to SÁria and will not be back till late. I was horribly irritable this morning, so he thinks I'm all right now." A ripple of amusement broke her voice as their eyes met.

"My sweet, you must ask me to believe some other little histoire."

"Oh! but it's true. You should have heard us! I knew that it was funny afterwards, but there was no one to laugh with at the time. It was about that dreadful old coat of Emile's. He threw it on my bed, and—I can't help being a Jewess, can I? and I so loathe dust and dirt, and I said so. Emile was furious. 'Very well,' he said. 'If you are strong enough to grumble, you are strong enough to get up.' So when he had gone I dressed and came here. I was so glad to get away from that room."

"Not as glad as I am to see you here. And I've heard you laugh,
FatalitÉ. You're a little girl today."

"I have moods, dear. I shall depress you sometimes."

Vardri smiled scornfully, and slid down to the floor, his head resting against her knee. "Je suis bien content! What cool hands you have, and how still you keep. No other woman in the world was ever so restful. You love to be quiet, don't you? I know you better to-day than I ever did. You were always in the wrong atmosphere at the Hippodrome."

"And I have to go back to it," the girl said under her breath. "And I may be hissed again. You will not be there now, and we shall miss you. I and Don Juan and Cavaliero, and El Rey, and Don Quixote. Some of the grooms are horrible, and the animals get so badly treated."

"It seems to me that everything gets badly treated here," Vardri muttered. "Women and horses, it's all the same. Don't let us talk about it. It drives me mad to think, I shan't be able to be near you. I was some use to you there."

He jumped up and began to move about the room collecting the scattered cigarettes.

"Shall I play to you, mon ange? I suppose the piano hasn't been tuned yet." He struck a few notes, and made a rueful grimace. "It's worse than ever."

"I'm afraid it never will be tuned now that I've been ill and caused so much expense. Emile always says he will go without cigarettes to afford it, and I say I will go without powder, but neither of us keep our heroic resolutions, and the piano gets worse and worse."

Vardri shut down the lid with a bang.

"Well, anyway it doesn't matter," he said, "I don't want to play or do anything; I just want to be with you."

"Bring up a chair, and sit and smoke, mon camarade." She held out her hand with a gesture of invitation, and Vardri took it and kissed it, and went back to his former position at her feet.

"Shall I read to you?" he asked. "Ah! I'd forgotten there was something I wanted to tell you. I found a poem the other day, a love-song of De Musset. Do you know that you lived in this very city years ago, FatalitÉ, and he saw you and loved you? How else could he have written this?

"Avez-vous vu en Barcelone,
Une Andalouse au sein bruni,
PÂle comme un beau soir d'AutÔmne,
C'est ma maitresse, ma lionne,
La Marchesa d'Amagui."

Arithelli listened, her eyes dilating, and a little flame of colour creeping up under the magnolia skin that made her likeness to the woman of the poem. Her awakening senses thrilled to the eager voice, the riotous challenging words:

"J'ai fait bien de chansons pour elle."

He broke off abruptly and continued: "I hate all the rest of it. The woman isn't like you, further on, and the lover laughs at his own passion, and the whole thing jars. That first verse haunted me for days after I'd read it."—The sentence was finished by a convulsive fit of coughing, which he vainly tried to stifle.

"This is the first time to-day," he gasped, between the paroxysms. "I'm quite well really. It's the cigarette. They often have that effect. Don't look so worried, or I shall think you hate me for being a nuisance."

"If you talk so foolishly I shall go."

She made an attempt to rise, but Vardri caught at her skirts. "You won't go! You don't want to make me worse, do you? Think how sorry you'll be if I cough and worry you all the evening!"

"Can't I get you anything? If only I were not so stupid about illness.
Don't try to talk if it makes you worse."

"I won't—if you'll stay."

To Arithelli caresses did not come easily, but during the last few weeks she had learnt many things. She stroked the dark head that rested against her knee, wondering how it was that she had never before noticed till to-day how feverishly brilliant Vardri's eyes were, and how his skin burnt. She had often heard him coughing before, but he had always gone away and left her when an attack came on, with some laughing excuse about the horrible noise he made. After a while he shifted his position, and smiled up at her.

"You're getting tired, FatalitÉ!"

"No. Tell me, have you anything important to do to-night?"

"No, dear, and if I had I shouldn't do it. Do you feel well enough to come out and have dinner with me somewhere? I'll take you to some place where it's quiet."

"Why not let us stay here all the evening, and have supper together?" Arithelli suggested. "We'll take Emile's things. He loves cooking cochonneries, and there is sure to be a quelque chose somewhere in the cupboard."

Vardri scrambled to his feet. "Bon! Sit still, and I'll go and acheter les—things! We'll leave Emile's cochonneries alone. I'm rich now, so we will have luxuries."

"Yes, and I'll hunt for plates and dishes, and wash them properly (not like the Gentiles do) while you go and acheter les—things!" Arithelli mocked. "What a dreadful mixture of languages we all use! I used to speak German quite well when I was at the convent, but now I have forgotten nearly all of it. This place is bad for both one's French and English, and Emile says that when I try and speak Spanish it sounds like someone sawing wood."

Vardri went out still coughing, and came back flushed and excitable, laden with various untidy parcels, from which some of the contents were protruding. Long rolls, the materials for a salad, a pÂtÉ, flowers, and an enormous cluster of grapes. They pledged each other in the yellow wine of the country, and presently Vardri set about the manufacture of what he inaccurately described as Turkish coffee. That the result of his efforts was half cold and evil-tasting mattered not to either of them.

Arithelli's red hair was crowned with vine leaves that he had stripped from the grape-cluster and twisted into a Bacchante wreath. She leant her elbow on the table, resting her chin upon her hand. Her eyes glowed jewel-like, almost the same colour as her garland. The flame of love had melted into warmth her statue-like coldness, and given her the one thing she had lacked—expression. Yet the mystery, the charm that surrounded her clung to her even when she appeared most womanly. To the boy lover gazing with devouring eyes she seemed that night more than a woman. He thought of the tales he had heard as a child from the peasants on winter nights in his own country. Tales of the forests and legends of the Hartz Mountains, of lonely places haunted by nixies and wood maidens, fairy shapes with streaming hair and vaporous robes, seeing which a man would become for ever after mad with longing, and desire no mortal woman.

Arithelli's long limbs appeared nymphlike in her plain blue high-waisted gown of Emile's choosing, that had no superfluous bow or trimming, and left free her beauty of outline. She possessed no jewellery now wherewith to deck herself, and there was no trace of artificial red on face and lips.

The candles on the table flickered to and fro in the draught from the open window and she shivered in the midst of some laughing speech and glanced over her shoulder at the door behind her.

Vardri, reading her thoughts, said, "You're afraid of something, dear, what is it?"

"Nothing, at least I thought someone was listening, was coming in. We are always talking of spies till one gets absurdly nervous and imagines all sorts of foolish things. I have never said so to anyone else, but there is always the feeling of being watched. It is so difficult to know who is for and who against us, and so easy to give evidence without meaning to be a traitor. Just before I got ill, Sobrenski sent me to a little newspaper shop down in the Parelelo quarter. I was to ask if they sold 'Le Flambeau.' The man looked at me hard and asked if there was any connection between that journal and the one published at number 27 Calle de Pescadores. The sun must have made me feel stupid, and I answered Yes, without thinking. I had taken it for granted that the man was one of us, and then I knew suddenly that he wasn't."

Vardri bent forward across the table. "Did you tell anyone what you had said?"

"Not Sobrenski; I told Emile. He looked me up and down, and said something that I couldn't hear, and then, 'I thought you could hold your tongue, FatalitÉ. It seems, after all, you are a woman and can't!' and then he walked out of the room. Vardri, did you ever feel as I do when you first began to work for the Cause? Perhaps one gets used to it in the end and doesn't care."

"Yes," the boy answered between his teeth, "Yes! One gets used to it. Dear, your hands are trembling. Do you think anyone can hurt you while I'm here? You are nervous because you've been ill, that's all. This is the first time you've been out and you are overtired. I'll take you back soon. You were all right a few minutes ago. You thing of moods!"

She tried to smile, "I warned you, mon ami."

"I know. It wasn't any use. That wreath makes you look like the statue of Ariadne in Rome."

"I wish you would talk to me about yourself."

"Myself!" Vardri shrugged expressively, "Ma foi!"

"Tell me what made you join the Cause."

"Because of a man I believed in. You have heard of Guerchouni who died early in the year? There was a great funeral in Paris. It was in all the papers."

Arithelli nodded, "Yes, I heard the men talking about it at one of the meetings. I wasn't interested enough to listen then. Was he—?"

"He was one of our greatest leaders. His death meant something to me, because it was really through him that I joined the Red Flag. He had a life sentence in Eastern Siberia and he escaped from there and got to America. For some time none of us knew exactly where he was, and then we heard rumours that he was dangerously ill at Geneva. Then came news of his death and his funeral in Paris. His friends had decided to bring the body there, so that all the comrades might be present, for there are many anarchists in Paris. They gave him a guard of honour of Russian students, men and women surrounding the coffin with linked hands, and there were hundreds of red roses and red carnations, though it was in the winter—there had been snow on the ground a few days before. There was a crown of thorns from those who had been his companions in prison, and the canopy of the hearse was a red flag. If only I could have been there to do him homage!

"There are all sorts of wild stories about his escape from Siberia. I suppose he bewitched the jailers as he bewitched other men. He was the first man I ever heard speak about the Cause. He came to Vienna and held meetings for the propaganda and collected enormous crowds. I had just begun to take life seriously then, to think about things and to hate injustice.

"My father drank and wasted money and treated his servants brutally. My mother was dead, and when she was alive she was an invalid, and could do nothing. Most of the people I knew seemed to think the serfs no better than animals. I remember how sometimes when we were starting off in the early morning for a boar hunt in the forest, they would come begging and whining round the horses' heels.

"They seldom got anything except a kick or a curse. They looked scarcely human, yet it was ourselves who were the brutes really.

"Well, Guerchouni spoke and I went and listened to him. A friend with whom I had gone to the meetings gave me an introduction to him. I was mad on the Cause long before the interview was over. He was a man that! If he had looked at me twice, I would have walked through flames to please him. Oh, I wasn't the only one! We all felt like that more or less with Guerchouni. I couldn't describe him. He was not a tall man, but he carried himself well, and he was dark and pale with wonderful blazing eyes. One knew him at once, and talked as if one had known him for years.

"Of course I accepted all his theories and doctrines except two. I don't believe in 'L'Union fibre.' (They all do, you know, or nearly all) and I never was an atheist.

"A Catholic and an Anarchist! It sounds impossible, doesn't it, but"—he flushed boyishly—"I believe in Le bon Dieu, and the union libre is hard on women. Yes, I adored Guerchouni. He worked day and night, he feared nothing, he did impossibilities himself and he made us do impossibilities."

"He was like Sobrenski."

"Yes, he was like Sobrenski in some ways. He will be a loss to the
Cause."

For a few moments there was silence, and then Arithelli spoke. "Tell me one more thing. Now we are alone, we can speak the truth to each other, you and I. Vardri, do you still care for the Cause—in the same way you did before?" She whispered the question fearfully, yet knowing well what the answer must be.

"I don't feel the same about it since I have known you."

"I have not tried to make you a traitor, have I? Sobrenski always suspects me of that."

"My sweet, you have done nothing. I love you, therefore I must feel differently about the Cause. Why? Because I'm afraid of it for you. Because these men have no consideration for you as a woman, because they always make you take the greatest risks. It is always so in this work. Look what happens to the women in Russia. When there is a political 'Execution' there, nine times out of ten it is a woman who throws the bomb. Look at the things they have done lately. At the printing office we see all the anarchist journals, and the comrades get news privately. The men do little in risking their lives compared to the women, and some of them are so young. An article in 'Les temps Nouveaux' of last week said that, 'beside the men these young girls are as artistes beside artisans.' The last case was Sophia Pervesky. She was arrested for being in charge of a secret printing-press. Before the police seized her she nearly found time to put her lighted cigarette down on a pile of explosives. They wounded her in two places, threw her down, and stamped on her injuries. Then they took her to the hospital and kept her there till she had recovered. She waited two months for death and then they brought her out one morning in the dawn and hanged her.

"'You shall see how a Russian woman dies,' she told them as she ran up the ladder and flung herself into space.

"You women shame us with your courage. Now every time I hear of a thing like that, I think of you. You may have to run some great risk here for a caprice of Sobrenski's."

"Vardri, Vardri, I wonder what will be the end of it all?"