He had bribed one of the "strappers" to finish his work, and slipped out, only arriving a few minutes before her.
He had risked dismissal, but that was no great matter.
The Cause came first, and he feared danger for Arithelli, knowing that if there was anything specially risky to be done she would be the one chosen.
Sobrenski was always harder on her than on the others.
He watched her with the hungry, faithful eyes of an animal, and got up from his seat with instinctive courtesy. Like all the rest he wore the Anarchist badge, a red tie, and the hot, vivid colour showed up the lines of ill-health and suffering about his eyes and mouth.
In spite of his disreputable clothes and wild hair, there still remained in him the indefinable signs of breeding, in the thin, shapely hands that rested on his knee, and in the modulations of his boyish and eager voice.
None of the others took the least notice of the girl's entrance.
Nearly all of them were as well-born as the young Austrian, but to them she was simply a comrade, a fellow, worker, not a woman.
She gave him a little friendly gesture and went quietly to a seat against the wall, where she sat in one of her characteristic attitudes, her feet crossed, and showing under her short dark blue skirt.
Emile had made her buy this one plain and unnoticeable garment for use on these occasions.