There was nothing
left to him now but the Cause.
He would see Sobrenski to-morrow, and hurry on all arrangements for
departure.
After all, as he had once told Arithelli, in any venture it is only the
first step that counts.
CHAPTER XVIII
"Would I lose you now? Would I take you then?
If I lose you now that my heart has need,
And come what may after death to men,
What thing worth this will the dead years breed?"
THE TRIUMPH OF TIME.
Three days later the early morning post brought Arithelli a letter.
She sat up in bed eagerly to receive it, and with the heaviness of
sleep still upon her eyes. As she read, the lace at her throat
trembled with her quickened breathing, and her heart called back an
answer to the tender, reckless phrases.
Vardri was idealist as well as lover, and graceful turns of expression
came to his pen readily and without effort. In many pages of
characteristic, hurried, irregular writing he set forth wild and
unpractical schemes for their future.
He urged her to take the dangerous step of leaving Barcelona and
cutting herself free of the bonds of her allegiance to the Cause.
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