d 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?"

CHAPTER XVI

The walls of the Hippodrome were no longer adorned with gaudy posters
whereon flared a travestied portrait of "_The beautiful English
equestrienne_." No longer for Arithelli were showered roses, the
tribute of head-lines in the weekly journals, and the welcome of many
voices. She had been absent for nearly a month, therefore she might as
well have been dead as far as the Spanish public was concerned.

The Manager had known this and had been careful to provide his patrons
with a new toy, who had come, even as Arithelli herself, from Paris.
This was a female contortionist with a serpent's grace, and a serpent's
flat head, and wicked slit eyes. She had proved a success, so he could
afford to exult, and Estelle dangled in triumph a new pair of diamond
earrings. He had lost nothing and the once famous Arithelli, the
"_She-wolf_" who had been mad enough to defy him, was now simply one of
the crowd. Her name did not appear on the programme. She was not even
Madame Mignonne now, but merely a unit among the many other women who
were grouped in the grand spectacle, or a rider in a procession with
twenty others. He had reduced her salary to a third of what it had
been formerly, and every Saturday she was required to assist with the
correspondence and weekly accounts. If she did not like this
arrangement, he explained, she could fight ou