She loved Vardri, or imagined that she did. Emile told himself savagely that he was a fool who deserved no pity, for he had had his own chance and missed it. He had been with her by night and day, and her life had been in his own hands all these months, but he had never made love to her. He had only bullied her, taught her, made her work, looked after her clothes and food, and, he knew it now too late, loved her.
She had never suspected it, and the secret should remain his own. Love and love-making were two very different things. She did not know that now, but later on she would, when she was ten years older, perhaps, and then it would not matter to him, for he would be under two or three feet of snow in a Siberian convict settlement.
He had gone about persuading himself that she was still a child, and this Austrian boy, this wastrel and dreamer, had awakened her.
It was no use wasting time in sentiment and regrets. À la Guerre, comme à la Guerre. The episode was finished.
He would have work enough to divert his mind soon. There was nothing left to him now but the Cause.
He would see Sobrenski to-morrow, and hurry on all arrangements for departure.
After all, as he had once told Arithelli, in any venture it is only the first step that counts.
CHAPTER XVIII
"Would I lose you now? Would I take you then?
If I lose you now that my heart has need,
And come what may after death to men,
What thing worth this will the dead years breed?"
THE TRIUMPH OF TIME.
Three days later the early morning post brought Arithelli a letter.