I remember how sometimes when we were starting
off in the early morning for a boar hunt in the forest, they would come
begging and whining round the horses' heels.

"They seldom got anything except a kick or a curse. They looked
scarcely human, yet it was ourselves who were the brutes really.

"Well, Guerchouni spoke and I went and listened to him. A friend with
whom I had gone to the meetings gave me an introduction to him. I was
mad on the Cause long before the interview was over. He was a man
that! If he had looked at me twice, I would have walked through flames
to please him. Oh, I wasn't the only one! We all felt like that more
or less with Guerchouni. I couldn't describe him. He was not a tall
man, but he carried himself well, and he was dark and pale with
wonderful blazing eyes. One knew him at once, and talked as if one had
known him for years.

"Of course I accepted all his theories and doctrines except two. I
don't believe in '_L'Union fibre_.' (They all do, you know, or nearly
all) and I never was an atheist.

"A Catholic and an Anarchist! It sounds impossible, doesn't it,
but"--he flushed boyishly--"I believe in _Le bon Dieu_, and the _union
libre_ is hard on women. Yes, I adored Guerchouni. He worked day and
night, he feared nothing, he did impossibilities himself and he made us
do impossibilities."

"He was like Sobrenski."

"Yes, he was like Sobrenski in some ways. He will be a loss to the
Cause."

For a few moments there was silence, and then Arithelli spoke. "Tell
me one more thing. Now we are alone, we can speak the truth to each
other, you and I. Vardri, do you still care for the Cause--in the same
way you did before?" She whispered the question fearfully, yet knowing
well what the answer must be.

"I don't feel the same about it since I have known you."

"I have not tried to make you a traitor, have I? Sobrenski always
suspects me of that."

"My sweet, you have done nothing. I love you, therefore I must feel
differently about the Cause. Why? Because I'm afraid of it for you.
Because these men have no consideration for you as a woman, because
they always make you take the greatest risks. It is always so in this
work. Look what happens to the women in Russia. When there is a
political 'Execution' there, nine times out of ten it is a woman who
throws the bomb. Look at the things they have done lately. At the
printing office we see all the anarchist journals, an