“Who were ’we’?” I asked, pointedly.

“Some of us in Brussels—­at the centre,” he said, hastily.  “Whatever vigorous action originated in Hermione Street seemed doomed to failure.  Something always happened to baffle the best planned manifestations in every part of Europe.  It was a time of general activity.  You must not imagine that all our failures are of a loud sort, with arrests and trials.  That is not so.  Often the police work quietly, almost secretly, defeating our combinations by clever counter-plotting.  No arrests, no noise, no alarming of the public mind and inflaming the passions.  It is a wise procedure.  But at that time the police were too uniformly successful from the Mediterranean to the Baltic.  It was annoying and began to look dangerous.  At last we came to the conclusion that there must be some untrustworthy elements amongst the London groups.  And I came over to see what could be done quietly.

“My first step was to call upon our young Lady Amateur of anarchism at her private house.  She received me in a flattering way.  I judged that she knew nothing of the chemical and other operations going on at the top of the house in Hermione Street.  The printing of anarchist literature was the only ‘activity’ she seemed to be aware of there.  She was displaying very strikingly the usual signs of severe enthusiasm, and had already written many sentimental articles with ferocious conclusions.  I could see she was enjoying herself hugely, with all the gestures and grimaces of deadly earnestness.  They suited her big-eyed, broad-browed face and the good carriage of her shapely head, crowned by a magnificent lot of brown hair done in an unusual and becoming style.  Her brother was in the room, too, a serious youth, with arched eyebrows and wearing a red necktie, who struck me as being absolutely in the dark about everything in the world, including himself.  By and by a tall young man came in.  He was clean-shaved with a strong bluish jaw and something of the air of a taciturn actor or of a fanatical priest:  the type with thick black eyebrows—­you know.  But he was very presentable indeed.  He shook hands at once vigorously with each of us.  The young lady came up to me and murmured sweetly, ‘Comrade Sevrin.’

“I had never seen him before.  He had little to say to us, but sat down by the side of the girl, and they fell at once into earnest conversation.  She leaned forward in her deep armchair, and took her nicely rounded chin in her beautiful white hand.  He looked attentively into her eyes.  It was the attitude of love-making, serious, intense, as if on the brink of the grave.  I suppose she felt it necessary to round and complete her assumption of advanced ideas, of revolutionary lawlessness, by making believe to be in love with an anarchist.  And this one, I repeat, was extremely presentable, notwithstanding his fanatical black-browed aspect.  After a few stolen glances in their direction, I had no doubt that he was in earnest.  As to the lady, her gestures were unapproachable, better than the very thing itself in the blended suggestion of dignity, sweetness, condescension, fascination, surrender, and reserve.  She interpreted her conception of what that precise sort of love-making should be with consummate art.  And so far, she, too, no doubt, was in earnest.  Gestures—­but so perfect!