Another man drew up his chair to their table, first taking off his wide cap and saying gravely: "Con permiso de ustedes." His broad, slightly flabby face was very pale; the eyes under his sparse blonde eyelashes were large and grey. He put his two hands on their shoulders so as to draw their heads together and said in a whisper:
"You aren't deserters, are you?"
"No."
"I hoped you were. I might have helped you. I escaped from prison in Barcelona a week ago. I am a syndicalist."
"Have a drink," cried Lyaeus. "Another glass.... And we can let you have some money if you need it, too, if you want to get out of the country."
The padrón brought the wine and retired discreetly to a chair beside the bar from which he beamed at them with almost religious approbation.
"You are comrades?"
"Of those who break out," said Lyaeus flushing. "What about the progress of events? When do you think the pot will boil over?"
"Soon or never," said the syndicalist.... "That is never in our lifetime. We are being buried under industrialism like the rest of Europe. Our people, our comrades even, are fast getting the bourgeois mentality. There is danger that we shall lose everything we have fought for.... You see, if we could only have captured the means of production when the system was young and weak, we could have developed it slowly for our benefit, made the machine the slave of man. Every day we wait makes it more difficult. It is a race as to whether this peninsula will be captured by communism or capitalism. It is still neither one nor the other, in its soul." He thumped his clenched fist against his chest.
"How long were you in prison?"