stand," she said.

After a moment she smiled and moved forward, saying:

"How the world tosses us--flinging strangers into each other's arms,
parting brothers, leading enemies across each other's paths! One has a
glimpse of kindly eyes--and never meets them again. Often and often I
have seen a good face in the lamp-lit street that I could call out to,
'Be friends with me!' Then it is gone--and I am gone--Oh, it is
curiously sad, Monsieur Scarlett!"

"Does your creed teach you to care for everybody, madame?"

"Yes--I try to. Some attract me so strongly--some I pity so. I think
that if people only knew that there was no such thing as a stranger in
the world, the world might be a paradise in time."

"It might be, some day, if all the world were as good as you,
madame."

"Oh, I am only a perplexed woman," she said, laughing. "I do so long
for the freedom of all the world, absolute individual liberty and no
law but that best of all laws--the law of the unselfish."

We had stopped, by a mutual impulse, at the head of the stone
stairway.

"Why do you shelter such a man as John Buckhurst?" I asked,
abruptly.

She raised her eyes to me with perfect composure.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I have come here from Paris to arrest him."

She bent her head thoughtfully and laid the tips of her fingers on the
sculptured balustrade.

"To me," she said, "there's no such thing as a political crime."

"It is not for a political crime that we want John Buckhurst," I
said, watching her. "It is for a civil outrage."

Her face was like marble; her hands tightened on the fretted
carving.

"What crime is he charged with?" she asked, without moving.

"He is charged with being a common thief," I said.

Now there was color enough in her face, and to spare, for the
blood-stained neck and cheek, and even the bare shoulder under the
torn crape burned pink.

"It is brutal to make such a charge!" she said. "It is shameful!--"
her voice quivered. "It is not true! Monsieur, give me your word of
honor that the government means what it says and nothing more!"

"Madame," I said, "I give my word of honor that no political crime
is charged against that man."

"Will you pledge me your honor that if he answers satisfactorily to
that false charge of theft, the government will let him go free?"

"I will take it upon myself to do so," said I. "But what in Heaven's
name is this man to you, madame? He is a militant anarchist, whose
creed