ng in love, he jeered to himself, cynically. In
love with that tall, silent creature, who was never in a hurry and
never in a temper, and who walked as if she had been bred in Andalusia.

Absurd! He was only interested. She had brains, and she never bored
him.

Besides, she was only twenty-four, and one could hardly allow a girl of
that age to be thrown warm and living to the wolves and vampires of
Barcelona. Perhaps he had been wrong in letting her do some
things--drink _absinthe_, for example. One lost one's sense of mental
and moral perspective in a place like this. At least he had guarded
her well. If he had not met her that day at the station, she might
have fallen into worse hands than his own. Things could not go on
indefinitely as they had been going. What was to be the end of it all?

Eventually she would fall in love, and a woman was no more use to the
Cause once that happened. No vows would be strong enough to keep her
from a man's arms once she cared. She would not love lightly or
easily, and where would she find love, here in Barcelona?

Half unconsciously, he found himself comparing Arithelli with the woman
who had betrayed him. Emile never lied, even to himself, and he knew
now that Marie Roumanoff had almost become a shadow.

A plaything she had been, a child, a doll, a being made for caresses
and admiration. To a woman of her type camaraderie would have been
impossible. He had not wanted it, and it had not been in her nature to
give it.

A man, who had been sitting opposite, got up, gesticulated, put on his
hat at a reckless angle, and, with a noisy farewell to his companions,
swaggered out.

In the mirror that faced him Emile saw the quick furtive glance
bestowed upon him, though he sat apparently unconscious of it.

Something at the back of his brain suggested to him that he knew the
man's face, that he had seen him before. A spy probably. It was
nothing unusual for any of them to be "shadowed," and for their
out-goings and in-comings to be noted.

The highly gilded French clock on the mantel-piece at the far end of
the room announced the hour as being a quarter to twelve. Emile
stooped down to pick up his sombrero which had tumbled off a chair on
to the floor, when he remained with outstretched hand, arrested by the
sound of a woman's voice which came through the partly opened door of
the proprietor's private room and office. A woman's voice? It was
Arithelli's unmistaka