.

Success was a sure road to approbation. If she had failed she would
not have written.

The Hippodrome engagement could not last forever. A little
carelessness, a loss of nerve, and her career would be at an end.

Sometimes when she had been singing "_Le Reve_," she had really meant
it all.

"_S'il faut, ah, prends ma vie_!"

Only a few days ago Emile had stormed at her in his rasping French,
because she had, with the vehemence of youth, denounced the Anarchist
leader as a relentless brute.

"You think yourself over-worked and ill-used--you!" he said as he
strode up and down the room twisting his fiercely pointed moustache.
"Look at Sobrenski. He works us all, but does he ever spare himself?
Look at Vardri? Rich, well-born, starving at the Hippodrome on a few
_pesetas_ a week. I thought you had better stuff in you. Are you
going to turn out English milk-and-water? You're _not_ English, you
say? No, I suppose you're not, or you wouldn't talk about 'dirty
Gentiles.' If you think Anarchy is all '_Le Reve_' you'll soon find
yourself mistaken. If some of us dream dreams we have also to face
actions and realities."

Perhaps the episode of Marie Roumanoff belonged to the days before he
joined the Brotherhood and became an exile from his country.

She knew that once upon a time he had owned land and estates in Russia,
and Emile the Anarchist of Barcelona had been known as Count Poleski.

She kept her discoveries to herself, and when Emile returned he found
her crooning over the piano. She appeared to have quite recovered her
boyish good spirits, and demanded a singing lesson, for under his
tuition her passion for music had developed and increased.

"It's so nice to have a change from the heat and dust and those
horrible electric lights," she said. "Let's enjoy ourselves and try
over all your music. What a lot you have, and it all seems to have
been bought in different places. Rome, Paris, Vienna, Dieppe, London!
Fancy your having been in London!"

Emile's collection of songs covered a wide field and ranged from the
gypsy ballad of "The Lost Horse," to "The Bridge," in the performance
of which he revelled.

Arithelli sat in a corner and rocked with inward laughter over his
atrocious English, and evident enjoyment of the morbid sentiments. For
in spite of her face Arithelli had a fine sense of the ridiculous.

"You don't say the words properly," she said. "You make such mouthfuls
out of them!"