e alarmed.
She was not likely to lose her head, and she knew her way about the
place.

The Colomb was more or less a recognised resort of the many
revolutionaries with whom the city abounded. The proprietor was known
to be in sympathy with their schemes, though he took no active part in
them himself. He was considered trustworthy, for notes and messages
were often left in his charge, and his private room was at the disposal
of those who wished for a few minutes' secret interview. When Emile
entered he was greeted by several of the men who sat in groups of two
and three at little tables, busy with Monte and other card games.

The smoke of many cigarettes obscured their figures, and clouded the
mirrors with which the place was lined from floor to ceiling. Emile
sat down alone and ordered an _absinthe_.

When called upon to join in the play, he refused with a scowl and a
rasping oath in his native tongue, and as the evening grew on towards
midnight he was left to himself and his meditations.

His thoughts were still with Arithelli, the weird witch-girl, whose
eyes were like those of Swinburne's fair woman,

"Coloured like a water-flower,
And deeper than the green sea's glass."

He, who now never opened a book, had once known that most un-English of
all poets by heart.

In her many phases Arithelli passed before him, as he stared moodily at
the shifting opal-coloured liquid in his glass. He thought of her as
he had often seen her, fighting through her work at the Hippodrome, the
little weary head always gallantly carried, and then when she had
dismounted and was in her dressing-room, the rings round her eyes, her
shaking hands and utter weariness. He remembered her consideration for
her horses, her loathing of the ill-treatment of all dumb things so
common here. Once he had found her in the market-place, remonstrating
in her broken Spanish with the country women for the inhuman manner in
which they carried away their purchases of live fowl, tied neck to
neck, and slung across a mule, to die of slow strangulation under the
blazing sun. All the animals at the Hippodrome had been better treated
since she had been there. It was characteristic of the man that he
laughed at her to her face for her campaign against the national
cruelty, and in secret thought of her with admiration.

In many ways sexless, in others purely a woman, to every mood she
brought the charm of individuality.

_Tiens_! He was falli