‘I think, however, that she came mostly to exercise her fascinations upon Sevrin, and to receive his homage in her queenly and condescending way. She was aware of both—fascination and homage—and enjoyed them with, I dare say, complete innocence. And we have no ground in expediency or morals to quarrel with her on that account. Charm in woman and exceptional intelligence in man are a law unto themselves. Is it not so?’

I refrained from expressing my abhorrence of that licentious doctrine because of my curiosity.

‘But what happened then?’ I hastened to ask.

X went on crumbling slowly a small piece of bread with a careless left hand.

‘What happened, in effect,’ he confessed, ‘is that she saved the situation.’

‘She gave you an opportunity to end your rather sinister farce,’ I suggested.

‘Yes,’ he said, preserving his impassive bearing. ‘The farce was bound to end soon. And it ended in a very few minutes. And it ended well. It might have ended badly had she not come in. Her brother, of course, did not count. They had slipped into the house quietly some time before. The printing-cellar had an entrance of its own. Not finding any one there, she sat down to her proofs, expecting Sevrin to return to his work at any moment. He did not do so. She grew impatient, heard through the door the sounds of a commotion, and naturally went to see.

‘Sevrin had been with us. At first he had seemed to me the most amazed of the whole raided lot. He appeared for an instant as if paralysed with astonishment. He stood rooted to the spot. He never moved a limb. A solitary gas-jet flared near his head; all the other lights had been put out at the first alarm. And presently, from my dark corner, I observed on his shaven actor’s face an expression of puzzled, vexed watchfulness, with a knitting of his heavy eyebrows. The corners of his mouth dropped scornfully. He was angry. Most likely he had seen through the game, and I regretted I had not taken him from the first into my complete confidence.

‘But with the appearance of the girl he became obviously alarmed. It was plain. I could see it grow. The change of his expression was swift and startling. All other sensations and emotions were swept away by a wave of sheer terror. And I did not know why. The reason never occurred to me. I was merely astonished at the extreme alteration of the man’s face. Of course he had not been aware of her presence in the other cellar. But that did not explain the shock her advent had given him. For a moment he seemed to have been scared into imbecility. He opened his mouth as if to shout, or perhaps only to gasp. At any rate, it was somebody else who shouted. This somebody else was the heroic comrade whom I had detected swallowing a piece of paper. With laudable presence of mind he let out a warning yell.

‘ “It’s the police! Back! Back! Run back, and bolt the door behind you.”

‘It was an excellent hint; but instead of retreating, the girl for whom it was meant continued to advance, followed by her long-faced brother in his knickerbocker suit,^* in which he had been singing comic songs for the entertainment of a joyless proletariat. She advanced not as if she had failed to understand—the word “police” has an unmistakable sound—but rather as if she could not help herself. She did not advance with the free gait and expanding presence of a distinguished amateur anarchist amongst poor, struggling professionals, but with slightly raised shoulders, and her elbows pressed close to her body, as if trying to shrink within herself. Her eyes were fixed immovably upon Sevrin. Sevrin the man, I fancy; not Sevrin the anarchist. But she advanced. And that was natural. For all their assumption of independence, girls of that class are used to the feeling of being specially protected, as, in fact, they are. This feeling accounts for nine-tenths of their audacious gestures. Her face had gone completely colourless. Ghastly. Fancy having it brought home to her so brutally that she was the sort of person who must run away from the police! I believe she was pale with indignation, mostly, though there was, of course, also the concern for her intact personality, a vague dread of some sort of rudeness. And, naturally, she turned