Eventually she would fall in love, and a woman was no more use to the Cause once that happened. No vows would be strong enough to keep her from a man's arms once she cared. She would not love lightly or easily, and where would she find love, here in Barcelona?
Half unconsciously, he found himself comparing Arithelli with the woman who had betrayed him. Emile never lied, even to himself, and he knew now that Marie Roumanoff had almost become a shadow.
A plaything she had been, a child, a doll, a being made for caresses and admiration. To a woman of her type camaraderie would have been impossible. He had not wanted it, and it had not been in her nature to give it.
A man, who had been sitting opposite, got up, gesticulated, put on his hat at a reckless angle, and, with a noisy farewell to his companions, swaggered out.
In the mirror that faced him Emile saw the quick furtive glance bestowed upon him, though he sat apparently unconscious of it.
Something at the back of his brain suggested to him that he knew the man's face, that he had seen him before. A spy probably. It was nothing unusual for any of them to be "shadowed," and for their out-goings and in-comings to be noted.
The highly gilded French clock on the mantel-piece at the far end of the room announced the hour as being a quarter to twelve. Emile stooped down to pick up his sombrero which had tumbled off a chair on to the floor, when he remained with outstretched hand, arrested by the sound of a woman's voice which came through the partly opened door of the proprietor's private room and office. A woman's voice? It was Arithelli's unmistakably.
He recovered himself and the sombrero together, and twisted round in his seat so as to get a view of the door, which was on his left hand, half way down the long room. It had a glass top, across which a dark green curtain was drawn. Emile knew that it was possible to enter this room without passing through the café. There was another door which led into a passage through the kitchen and back part of the house, and from thence into a side-street, or rather a small alley.
He had often been that way, and it was generally used by the frequenters of the place when they had reason to guard their movements.
He listened again.