her skirt, into the seat of a chair.

"What are you doing that for?" demanded Emile.

"Oh, pardon, I forgot." She extracted the needle. "I don't think I'm
unwomanly but I'm not a good sewer. Emile! don't you think we might
have some music? I really am beginning to sing '_Le Reve_' quite well."

Her education in Anarchy had commenced with the teaching of
revolutionary songs. Emile, who was himself music-mad, had discovered
her to be possessed of a rough contralto voice of a curious mature
quality. It would have been an absurd voice for ballads in a
drawing-room, but it suited fiery declamations in praise of _La
Liberte_!

They were sitting in Emile's room now, for they made use of each
other's lodgings alternately, and there was a battered and rather
out-of-tune piano. Sometimes, after the evening performance, there
would be a gathering of the conspirators, all more or less morose,
unshaven and untidy; and while Emile played for her, Arithelli would
stand in the middle of the room, her green eyes blazing out of her pale
face, her arms folded, singing with a fervour which surprised even her
teacher, the lovely impassioned "_Reve du prisonnier_" of Rubinstein.
She was always pleased with her own performances, and not in the least
troubled with shyness. Also she was invariably eager to practise. She
shook down her skirt, went across to the piano and began to pick out
the notes.

"_S'il faut, ah, prends ma vie.
Mais rends-moi la liberte!_"

Emile was sewing on buttons. Though he did not look in the least
domesticated, he was far more dexterous at such work than the
long-fingered Arithelli. In fact it was only at his suggestion that
she ever mended anything at all.

"Do you ever by chance realise what you are singing about?" he demanded.

"Of course I do. I'm a red hot Socialist. I've read Tolstoi's books
and lots of others. I got in an awful scrape over political things
just the little time I was in Paris. It was when the Dreyfus case was
on. Madame Bertrand was terrified at the way I aired my opinions. You
see politics are so different abroad to what they are in England."

Emile agreed. The girl was developing even more than he had hoped.

"Ah! This is the first time I've ever heard about your political
opinions."

"You've never asked me before. One doesn't know everything about a
person at once."

Again Emile agreed. Then he said abruptly, "Well, if you have all
these ideas you'd