table with its litter of books and
newspapers, and stared dully round the room which her passing had left
more hopeless and ugly than ever.

Life itself would be more _fade_ and ugly now. As well for him that
after to-day he would have no time to sit and brood. It would be all
stern reality soon, enough to cure him of lovesickness.

First the work and risks of a secret printing press in some cellar or
sordid room behind a shop, and later on the inevitable police-raid, a
trial that would be no trial with the condemnation signed before-hand,
and afterwards the _travaux forces_, the long marches, the agonies of
farewell at the Siberian boundary-post--not for him, for his were said,
but for his companions in misery--the miseries of the sick and dying,
the partial starvation, and the horrors of dirt and vermin. There were
sure to be some women too among the "politicals," and he would be
obliged to watch their sufferings.

There would be no imaginary grievances in that life at all events.

On the floor, as it had dropped from among the music there lay a
photograph, face downwards.

He picked it up and looked back at the childish, smiling face, the
tiny, rounded figure of Marie Roumanoff.

"_Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse_."

His mouth twisted into a cynical smile. She had been a true prophetess
when she had written that.

He tore the picture across, and threw it upon the rest of the _debris_.

The Roumanoff would never haunt his dreams again.

Her portrait was easily destroyed. A flimsy thing of print and paper,
as slight and fragile as herself.

Of Arithelli he possessed no tangible likeness, but he would have her
always with him, for her image was seared deep upon both heart and
brain.

_The Witch_ sailed out of Barcelona harbour with the early morning
tide. Besides Emile and Vladimir, and a small picked crew, she carried
an assortment of strangely-shaped machines, things that looked like the
inside of a clock, and were full of wheels and cogs, firearms, and
ammunition, some copies of a revolutionist manual on street fighting
tactics, and other inflammatory literature.

Their plan was to enter Russia by way of Finland, leaving all the
things there to be smuggled through by degrees.

When they came to the frontier they would part company. Emile would
make his way towards the city that holds its trembling autocrat as
closely guarded in his palace as any convict in the mines, while
Vladimir was to