Part 7 (1/2)

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 pa.s.sion 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.

Arith.e.l.li 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 Arith.e.l.li had a fine sense of the ridiculous.

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

”And what of you?” Emile retorted in great wrath. ”You with your French all soft, soft like oil!”

”Yes, that's the Irish half of me.”

”And your Italian so _rauque_ so hard--!”

”That's the Jewish half of me. Oh, don't let's quarrel! I do want to learn to sing properly.”

”Then don't fold your arms,” her instructor said sharply. ”I suppose you think it looks dramatic, but how can you learn to sing what you call 'properly,' with your chest all crushed up like that?”

CHAPTER VI

”When I look back on the days long fled, The memory grows still dreamier.

Oh! what fantastic lives they led, Far away in Bohemia.

”There were laws that were only made to break, In a world that never seems half awake Till the lamps were lit--there were souls at stake.

Far away in Bohemia.”

DOLF WYLLARDE.