Human life is held of small account, to
join the Cause being equivalent to the signing of one's own death
warrant. One would probably have to die to-morrow if not to-day, and
whether it were sooner or later mattered little. Emile's fierce
devotion to the cause of his oppressed country had been the means of
leaving him stranded in Barcelona at the age of forty, without hopes,
illusions or ideals. His estates in Russia had been confiscated, his
parents were dead, the woman he had loved was married.
Now he lived in a dirty back street, in a single room, on two pounds a
week, morbid, suspicious, cynical, keeping his own counsel, owning no
friends, and occupying body and brain with plots, secret meetings,
ciphers and the usual accompaniments of intrigue. The Brotherhood
consisted of fifteen men, though occasionally the number varied. Two
or three would disappear, another one come. There was no feminine
element. An Anarchist seldom marries. To him a woman is either a
machine or the lightest of light episodes.
Emile had not the least desire to make love to the girl whom he had for
his own purposes befriended.
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