She looked up, as he entered, with the haunting sea-green eyes that showed larger than ever in contrast to her hollowed cheeks. Something in her pose, in the arrangement of her hair, reminded Emile vividly of her first morning in Barcelona, when he had come in early in the morning to find her dazed with sleep. He remembered also how she had asked him to repeat his remarks, and how carelessly nonchalant had been her manner.
"You look like a witch sitting crouched up there, Fatalité," he snapped.
"What's the matter? You don't seem very cheerful."
"I don't feel very cheerful," the girl responded. She spoke with grave deliberation, and without moving a muscle. Emile grunted and sat down.
"There has been another explosion of bombs on the Rambla," he said. "A market woman killed and two work people injured—I believe one has since died. Of course a got-up affair of the Government. They hope by doing this sort of thing often enough to make the populace take vengeance on us."
"Then the Anarchists didn't do it?"
"My dear Fatalité, we don't blow up harmless people simply pour passer le temps. I've told you that before, and being inside the movement yourself you ought to know. It is a favourite trick of the officials to excite public feeling against us. They have been doing it now for the last three years, letting off bombs in various parts of the city. They take care always to choose the most frequented places and to kill someone who doesn't matter, and then all the Republican journals have four columns of indignation with large head-lines, 'LATEST ANARCHIST OUTRAGE.' They like to get their exploits well talked about. Everything seems to be against us now. Sobrenski will have it that there is treachery inside our circle as well as outside. You know whom he suspects?"
"No."
"Vardri."
"That is my fault," Arithelli said quietly. "Sobrenski has felt like that since the night Vardri made a scene about my being lowered down from the window. He just stood up for me because I'm a woman. I'm only a machine to the rest of you."
She spoke without a touch of resentment. It was purely a statement of fact.