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, and the comrades get news privately. The men do little in risking their lives compared to the women, and some of them are so young. An article in 'Les temps Nouveaux' of last week said that, 'beside the men these young girls are as artistes beside artisans.' The last case was Sophia Pervesky. She was arrested for being in charge of a secret printing-press. Before the police seized her she nearly found time to put her lighted cigarette down on a pile of explosives. They wounded her in two places, threw her down, and stamped on her injuries. Then they took her to the hospital and kept her there till she had recovered. She waited two months for death and then they brought her out one morning in the dawn and hanged her.
"'You shall see how a Russian woman dies,' she told them as she ran up the ladder and flung herself into space.
"You women shame us with your courage. Now every time I hear of a thing like that, I think of you. You may have to run some great risk here for a caprice of Sobrenski's."
"Vardri, Vardri, I wonder what will be the end of it all?"
CHAPTER XVI
The walls of the Hippodrome were no longer adorned with gaudy posters whereon flared a travestied portrait of "The beautiful English equestrienne." No longer for Arithelli were showered roses, the tribute of head-lines in the weekly journals, and the welcome of many voices. She had been absent for nearly a month, therefore she might as well have been dead as far as the Spanish public was concerned.
The Manager had known this and had been careful to provide his patrons with a new toy, who had come, even as Arithelli herself, from Paris. This was a female contortionist with a serpent's grace, and a serpent's flat head, and wicked slit eyes. She had proved a success, so he could afford to exult, and Estelle dangled in triumph a new pair of diamond earrings. He had lost nothing and the once famous Arithelli, the "She-wolf" who had been mad enough to defy him, was now simply one of the crowd. Her name did not appear on the programme. She was not even Madame Mignonne now, but merely a unit among the many other women who were grouped in the grand spectacle, or a rider in a procession with twenty others. He had reduced her salary to a third of what it had been formerly, and every Saturday she was required to assist with the correspondence and weekly accounts. If she did not like this arrangement, he explained, she could fight out the terms of her contract in the courts. Doubtless she had a great opinion of her own capabilities, but as she could see for herself her place had been easily filled. The world was large, and there were plenty of women—sacré, too many!