you. Has Sobrenski given you anything to do
to-day?"

"I don't know. I can't remember. Oh, yes, I was to go to the Baroni's
at two o'clock."

"I'll see to that. A cipher message?"

"Yes. It's fastened under my hair." She dragged herself into a
sitting position and extracted the little wad of paper with shaking
hands. Emile took it.

"Good! I shall be back at five o'clock. You can get up later and come
round to my rooms. Do you understand?"

"Yes!"

When he had gone she cowered down into the big bed shivering. Every
bone in her body ached as if she had been beaten. She had the
sensation of one who has been awakened from a bad dream. Was it all
real or not?

Last night and its doings seemed centuries ago. She still heard
Emile's voice as if from a distance, telling the story of the lovely
siren woman who had been strangled, and then the room rocked, and the
walls closed in upon her.

His words worked in her brain: "_Go in for the Cause seriously.
Remember it's liberty we are fighting for. A life more or less--what's
that? Yours or mine? What does it matter? Do you wonder we don't
make love to women? It's a goddess and not a woman before whom we burn
incense. Blood and tears, money and life! Is there any sacrifice too
great for her altar?_"

And she had been both frightened and fascinated.

This was what Anarchism made of men like the cynical Emile. It had
never occurred to her before that even Sobrenski, whom she regarded
solely as a brutal task-master, was himself a living sacrifice.

She drowsed and brooded through the day, and having arrived at Emile's
room and finding it empty, she "prowled," as she herself would have
expressed it, among his few belongings, for she possessed a very
feminine curiosity. Under a pile of loose music she found the portrait
of a little blond woman, beautiful of curve and outline, in a lace robe
that could only have been made in Paris or Vienna.

The picture was signed _Marie Roumanoff_, and on the back was written
"_Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse!_" There were songs too scrawled
with love-messages in Emile's handwriting.

She pored over them with a vivid interest quite unmingled with any
thought of jealousy. Emile always said that no revolutionist ever
wasted time or thought on women.

After all, if she were shot to-morrow who would care? She had written
to her people and sent them photographs and newspapers with the
accounts of her triumph