Part 10 (2/2)

There was a certain episode two years ago--Gaston de Barres and Felise Rivaz--you remember it? Ah, I thought so! Then let it be a warning--in the future you will be suspected and watched. There is no need for me to dilate upon the punishment for treachery, all that you knew when you joined us. You may consider yourself lucky to have escaped so easily to-night. Through the few minutes' delay you have caused, Poleski may have been arrested.”

Vardri shrugged and sat down. Like Arith.e.l.li, he recognized the futility of mere words upon certain occasions.

Moreover, now that the flame of his indignation had died down, he had begun to feel wretchedly ill and spiritless with the reaction that comes after any great excitement.

He sat s.h.i.+vering and coughing till the dawn, while the other men talked in low voices or played cards. One or two slept fitfully in uncomfortable att.i.tudes on the floor.

No one grumbled at the discomfort or weariness of the vigil.

They who looked forward to ultimate prison and perhaps death itself were not wont to quarrel with such minor inconveniences as the loss of sleep.

Sobrenski had pulled the solitary candle in the room towards him and sat writing rapidly and frowning to himself.

His fox-like face framed in its red hair and beard looked more relentless and crafty than ever in the revealing light, and the boy s.h.i.+vered anew, but not from physical cold.

He did not fear the leader of the Brotherhood for himself, but for Arith.e.l.li--Arith.e.l.li, the drudge, the tool, the ”errand boy,” as she had called herself.

Perhaps in time even she would become a heartless machine.

Human life had seemed so cheap and of so little account to him once, but since he had loved her--

She could never live among such people and in such scenes, and still remain unscarred.

Again the little desperate face rose before him.

If they did not succeed in killing her soon by their brutalities, she would commit suicide to escape from the horrors that surrounded her.

It had never occurred to Vardri to be jealous of Emile.

With the curious insight that love gives he had formed a true idea of the relations.h.i.+p between the oddly-a.s.sorted pair. He had never thought of himself as her lover.

To him she was always the Ideal, the divinity enthroned.

He was content to kiss her feet, and to lay before them service and sacrifice.

Yet, though he might build a wall of love around her, he knew it could give her no protection against the realities of her present life.

She had given him dreams, and in them he could forget all other things, the things that the world calls real.

Everything had vanished as a mist--the dirty room, the chill of the dawn, his own physical wretchedness.

He heard only the honey-sweet voice, saw only the outstretched hand of friends.h.i.+p.

”_Mon ami_,” she had called him, he who had never aspired higher than to be known as her servant.

CHAPTER VIII

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