"Don Juan knows better! You see animals are usually more kind than people."
She was too proud to admit that the long hours, hard work, and want of proper food and sleep had lately given her furious backaches, which were a thing unknown to her before, and a cause of bitter resentment. She had a healthy distaste for illness either in theory or practice. That night she sat Don Juan erect as a lance, passing Emile in his accustomed place in the lower tier of seats with a shrug and scornful eyebrows.
She had felt more than usually inclined to play the coward during the last few weeks. The heat, worry and over-fatigue had begun, as they must have done eventually, to affect her nerves. When she had felt more than usually depressed and listless Emile had taken her to one of the cafés and given her absinthe which had made her feel recklessly well for the moment, and ten times more miserable the next day. He had also advised her to smoke, saying that it was good for people who had whims and fancies, but smoking did not appeal to her, and she never envied the Spanish woman her eternal cigarette.
She felt as if she would like to sleep, sleep for an indefinite period. She was wearied to death of The Cause, and the Brotherhood, with their intrigues and plots and interminable cipher messages.
She had been three months in Barcelona, and now fully justified Emile's name for her. Tragic as a veritable mask of Fate, she looked ten years older than the girl he had met on the station platform.
The longer she worked for the Cause the more she realised that Anarchy was no plaything for spare moments, but a juggling with Life and Death.
At first they had given her but little to do—a few documents to copy, some cipher messages to carry. Then the demands upon her leisure had become more frequent. She found she was expected to make no demur at being sent for miles, and once or twice there had been dreadful midnight excursions to a hut up in the mountains.
The realisation of the folly of trying to escape from the burden that had been laid upon her affected her nerve and seat during her performances in the ring.
For the first time she felt her courage failing her when she entered Sobrenski's house in answer to his summons. When he had given her the despatch she made an objection on the grounds that the time taken in conveying it would absorb her few hours of rest.
"It's too far," she protested. "I can't go there to-day."