Chapter IV (3)

"Indeed I understand perfectly," Philip interrupted. "This girl was born in Germany."

"Of an Italian father."

"What papers has she?" he asked.

"None at all. That's the whole point. She couldn't get even a German passport if she wanted to. But she doesn't want one. She longs to be English. It's the solitary clear ambition that she has. She was living in England before war broke out, and she only came away to help this girl who was kind to her. Surely the most rigid rule can be unbent to fit a special case?"

"I could not possibly assume the responsibility," Philip declared.

"Then you mean to say you'll condemn this child to damnation--for that's what you're doing with your infernal rules and regulations? You're afraid of what will happen to you."

"Excuse me, even if I were certain that nothing could possibly be known about the circumstances in which this passport was issued, I should still refuse the application. Everybody suffers in this war; I suffer myself in a minor degree by having to abandon my own work and masquerade in this country as what you well call a U.V.W.X.Y.Z."

"But even if we grant that in some cases suffering is inevitable," Sylvia urged, eagerly, "here's a case where it is not. Here's a case where, by applying a touch of humanity, you can save a soul. But I won't put it that way, because I know you have no use for souls. Here's a case where you can save a body for civilization, for that fetish on whose account you find yourself in Bucharest and half Europe is slaughtering the other half. You are not appealing to any divine law when you refuse to grant this passport: you are appealing to a human law. Very well, then. You are in your own way at this moment fighting for England; yet when somebody longs to be English you refuse her. If there is any reality behind your patriotism, if it is not merely the basest truckling to a name, a low and cowardly imitation of your next-door neighbor whose opinion of yourself you fear as much as he fears your opinion of him, if your patriotism is not just this, you'll be glad to give this child the freedom of your country. Philip, you and I made a mess of things. I was to blame for half the mess; but when you married me, though you married me primarily to please yourself, there was another motive behind--the desire to give a lonely little girl a chance to deal with the life that was surging round her more and more dangerously every day. Now you have another opportunity of doing the same thing, and this time without any personal gratification. It isn't as if I were asking you to do something that could possibly hurt England. I tell you I will be responsible for her. If the worst came to the worst and anything were found out, I could always take the blame and you could never be even censured for accepting my word in such a case."

Sylvia could see by Philip's face that her arguments were doing nothing to convince him, yet she went on, desperately:

"And if you refuse this, you don't merely condemn her, you condemn me, too. Nothing will induce me to abandon her to that man. By your bowing down to the letter of the regulation you expose me for the second time to the life that you drove me to before."

Philip made a gesture of protest.

"Very well, then I won't accuse you of being responsible on the first occasion, certainly not wantonly. But this time, if I'm driven to the same life, it _will_ be your fault and your fault alone. I'm not going to bother about my body if I think that by destroying it I can save a soul. I shall stick at nothing to preserve Queenie--at nothing, do you hear? You have the chance to send us both safely back to England. Philip, you won't refuse!"

"I'm sorry. It's terribly painful for me to say 'no.' But it's impossible. Only quite recently the Foreign Office sent round a warning that we were to be specially careful in this part of the world. No papers of naturalization are issued in time of war. Why, I'm sent here to Bucharest for the express purpose of preventing people like your friend obtaining fraudulent passports."

"The Foreign Office!" Sylvia scoffed. "How can you expect people not to be Christians? It was just to redeem mankind from the sin that creates Foreign Offices and War Offices and bureaucrats and shoddy kings and lawyers and politicians that Christ died. Oh, you can sneer! but your belief is condemned out of your own mouth. You puny little U.V.W.X.Y.Z. with your nose buried in your own waste-paper basket, with a red tapeworm gnawing at your vitals, with some damned fool of a narrow-headed general for an idol, you have the impertinence to sneer at Christianity. Do you think that after this war people are going to be content with the kind of criminal state that you represent? Life is not a series of rules, but a set of exceptions. Philip, forgive me if I have been rude, and let this girl have a passport, please, please!"

"You must not think," Philip answered, "that because I plead the necessities of war in defense of what strikes you as mere bureaucratic obscurantism that therefore I am defending war itself; I loathe war from the bottom of my heart. But just as painful operations are often necessary in accidents which might easily have been avoided, yet which having happened must be cured in the swiftest way, so in war-time for the good of the majority the wrongs of the nation must take precedence over the wrongs of the individual. I sympathize profoundly with the indignation that you feel on account of this girl, but the authorities in England, after due consideration of the danger likely to accrue to the state from the abuse of British nationality by aliens, have decided to enforce with the greatest strictness the rules about the granting of passports."

"Oh, don't explain the reasons to me as if I were a baby," Sylvia burst in. "The proposition of the Foreign Office is self-evident in its general application. My point is with you personally. You are not a professional bureaucrat who depends for his living on his capacity for dehumanizing himself. In this case you have a special reason to exercise your rights and your duties as an amateur. You are as positive as you can ever hope to be positive about anything, even your absurd positivist creed, that while no harm can result to your country, a great mercy will be conferred upon an individual as the result of enlightened action."

"It is precisely this introduction of the personal element," Philip said, "that confirms me in refusing your request. You are taking advantage of--our--of knowing me to gain your point. As a stranger you would not stand the least chance of doing this, and you have no business to make the matter a personal one. You don't seem to realize what such a proceeding would involve. It is not merely a question of issuing a passport as passports used to be issued before the war on the applicant's bare word. A whole set of searching questions has to be answered in writing, and you ask me to put my name to a tissue of lies. Go back to England yourself. You have done your best for this girl, and you must bow before circumstances. She has reached Rumania, and if she does not try to leave it, she will be perfectly all right."

"But have you appreciated what I told you about this man who has just arrived? He's a German-Swiss, and if he's not a spy, he has all the makings of one. Suppose he gets hold of Queenie again? Can't you see that on the lowest ground of material advantage you are justified--more than justified, you owe it to your country to avoid the risk of creating another enemy?"

"My dear Sylvia," said Philip, more impatiently than he had spoken yet, "it is none of my business to interfere with potential agents of the enemy. I have quite enough to do to keep pace with the complete article. If your little friend is in danger of being turned into a spy, it seems to me that you have stated the final argument against granting your request."

"If she were with me, she could never become a spy; but if I were to leave her helpless here, anything might happen. I am struggling for this child's soul, Philip, more bitterly than I ever struggled for my own. Your mind is occupied with the murder of human bodies: my mind is obsessed with the destruction of human souls."

"Well, if I accept your own definition of your attitude," Philip answered, "perhaps you will admit that logically a passport occupies itself with the body, and that Christians do not consider nationality necessary to salvation. I can't make out your exalted frame of mind. You used to be rather sensible on this subject. But if, as I gather, you have taken refuge in that common weakness of humanity--religion--let me recommend you to find therein the remedy for your friend's future."

"Yes, I suppose logically you've scored," Sylvia said, slowly.

"But please don't think I want to score," Philip went on in a distressed voice. "Please understand that for me to refuse is torture. I've often wondered about a judge's emotions when he puts on the black cap; but since I've faded out of real life into this paper world I've worn myself out with worrying over private griefs and miseries. It's only because I feel that, if every one on our side does not martyr himself for a year or so, the future of the world will be handed over to this kind of thing; and that is an unbearable thought."

"You're very optimistic about the effect upon your own side," Sylvia said. "Have you such faith in humanity as to suppose that this war will cure it more radically than all the wars that have gone before? I doubt it. When I listened to our arguments this afternoon, I began to wonder if either side is fighting for anything but a sterile nominalism. I can't argue any more. It's not your fault, Philip. You lack the creative instinct. I'll fight out this Queenie business by myself without invoking state aid. I am rather ashamed of myself, really. I feel as if I'd been compelled to ask a policeman the way. Perhaps I've got everything out of proportion. Women usually manage to do that, somehow. There must be something very satisfying about personal conflict--bayonet to bayonet, I mean: but even in the trenches I suppose men get taken out and shot for cowardice. Even there you wouldn't escape from the grim abstract heartlessness that hangs like a fog over a generalized humanity--generalized is doubly appropriate in this connection. What a wretched thing man is in the mass and how rare and wonderful in the individual! The mass creates that arch-bureaucrat, God, and the individual seeks the heart of Christ. Good-by, Philip, I'm sorry you look so ill. I'm afraid I've tired you. No, no," she added, seeing that he was bracing himself up to talk about themselves. "This wasn't really the personal intrusion you accuse me of making. We were never very near to one another, and we are more remote than ever now."

"But what about your own visa?" he asked.

"It's no use to me at present. When I want it, I'll apply in the morning to Mr. Mathers and come for it in the afternoon, most correctly. I promise to attempt no more breaches in the formality of your office. By the way, one favor I would ask: please don't come to the Trianon. You wouldn't understand the argot in my songs, and if you did you wouldn't understand my being able to sing them. Get better."

"Yes, I'm taking Sanatogen," Philip said, hopefully. At this moment Miss Johnstone entered with a cup on a small tray, which, just escaping being lassoed by one of her chains, was set down on his desk.

"I'm afraid I haven't got it quite so smooth as Miss Henson does," said Miss Johnstone.

"Oh, never mind, please. It was so kind of you to remember."

"Well, I didn't think you ought to miss it on Miss Henson's day off."

Sylvia waved her hand and left him with Miss Johnstone; he seemed to be hesitating between the injury to her feelings if he did not take the lumpy mixture and the harm to his digestion if he did.

"Even offices are subject to the clash of temperament on temperament," said Sylvia to herself. "A curious thing really that Philip should be prepared to choke himself over a cup of badly mixed Sanatogen rather than wound that young woman's feelings, and yet that he should be able to refuse me what I asked him to do this afternoon."

She nodded to Mr. Mathers as she passed through the outer office, who jumped up and opened the door for her. He had evidently been impressed by the length of her interview with the O.C.P.T.N.C. in Bucharest.

"I believe I've had the pleasure of hearing you sing," he murmured. "Are you staying long at the Trianon?"

"I hope not," she answered.

"Quite, quite," he murmured, nodding his head with an air of deep comprehension, while he bowed her forth with marked courtesy.

The fog had cleared away when Sylvia started to walk back to her hotel, and though it was still very hot, there was a sparkle in the air that made it seem fresher than it really was. The argument with Philip had braced her point of view to accord with the lightening of the weather; it had thrown her so entirely back upon her own resources that the notion of ever having supposed for an instant that he could help her in the fight for Queenie now appeared ludicrous. Although her arguments had been unavailing, and although at the end Philip had actually defeated her by the very logic on which she prided herself, she nevertheless felt wonderfully elated at the prospect of a struggle with Zozo and no longer in the least sensible of that foreboding dejection which was lying so heavily upon her heart when she left Lottie's house three hours ago.

Poor Philip! He had spoken of his own sufferings in a minor degree from the war. Yet to be rooted up at his age--he was nearly fifty, after all--and to be set down in Rumania to dig for human motives, he who had no instinct to dig for anything but dry bones and ancient pottery, it was surely for him suffering in a major degree. He had been so pathetically proud of being a captain, and at the same time so obviously conscious of the radical absurdity of himself in such a position; it was like a prematurely old child playing with soldiers to gratify his parents. And here in a neutral country he was even debarred from dressing up in uniform. When she first saw him she had been surprised to find that he did not appear much older than thirteen years ago; now, looking back at him in his office, he seemed to her a very old man. Poor Philip, he did not belong to the type that is rejuvenated in war-time by a sense of his official importance. Sylvia had seen illustrations in English newspapers of beaming old gentlemen "doing," as it was called, "their bit," proud of the nuisance they must be making of themselves, incorrigible optimists about the tonic effects of war because they had succeeded in making their belts meet round their fat paunches, pantaloons that should have buried themselves out of sight instead of pirouetting while young men were being killed in a war for which they and their accursed Victorianism were responsible by licking the boots of Prussia for fifty years.

Sylvia found Queenie in a state of agitation at her long absence; she did not tell her anything about Zozo at once, in the hope that he would not come to the Trianon on the first night of his arrival. She did think it advisable, however, to tell Queenie of her failure to secure the passport.

"Then we can't be going to England?" Queenie asked.

"Well, not directly from here," Sylvia answered. "But we'll move on as soon as we can into Bulgaria. We can get down to the Piræus from Dedeagatch. I don't think these neutral countries are very strict about passports. We'll manage somehow to get away from here."

"But if we cannot be going to England why must we be going from Bucharest? Better to stay, I think. Yes?"

"We might want to go," Sylvia said. "We might get tired of the Trianon. It wouldn't be difficult."

"I shall never be going to England now," said Queenie, in a toneless voice. "Never shall I be going! I shall learn a new song and a new dance, yes?"

Sylvia felt tired after her long afternoon and thought she would rest for an hour before getting ready for the evening's work. The mist gathered again at sunset, and the gardens of the theater, though they were unusually full, lacked any kind of gaiety. When they were walking down the narrow laurel-bordered path that screened the actors from the people sitting at their tables under the trees, Sylvia was sure that Zozo would be standing by the stage door at the end of it; but he was nowhere to be seen. After the performance, however, when they came out, as the custom was, to take their seats in the audience, the juggler made a dramatic appearance from behind a tree; Queenie seemed to lose all her fairy charm and become a terrified little animal.

"I don't think there's room at our table for you," Sylvia said.

"There are plenty of chairs," Maud insisted, stridently; she had followed the juggler into the lamplight round the table.

"I'm quite sure there's no room for you," said Sylvia, sharply; and, taking advantage of Queenie's complete limpness, she dragged her away by the wrist and explained quickly to the manager, who was walking up and down by the entrance gate, that Queenie was ill and must go home at once.

"Ill!" he exclaimed, skeptically. "Well, I shall have to fine you both your evening's salary. Why, it's only half past eleven!"

Sylvia did not wait to argue with him, but hurried Queenie to a carriage, in which they drove back immediately to their hotel.

"I said to you that it was going to bring me bad luck when you said to that priest my real name. _Ach!_ what shall I be doing? What shall I be doing now?" Queenie wailed.

"You must pay no attention to him," Sylvia told her; but she found that Queenie did not recover herself as she usually did at the tone of command. "What can he do to you while you're with me?" she continued.

"You don't know him," Queenie moaned. "He's very strong. Look at the mark on my leg where he was shooting me. _Ach_, if we could be going to England, but we cannot. We are here and he is here. You are not strong like he was, Sylvia."

"If you're going to give way like this before he has touched you and frighten yourself to death in advance, of course he'll do what he likes, because I can do nothing without support from you. But if you'll try to be a little bit brave and remember that I can protect you, everything will be all right and we'll get away from Rumania at the first opportunity."

"_Ach_, you have papers. You are English. Nobody will protect me. Any one was being able to do what they was liking to do with me."

Sylvia tried to argue courage into her until early morning; but Queenie adopted an attitude of despair, and it was impossible to convince her that Zozo could not at whatever moment he chose take her away, and, if he wished, murder her without any one's interfering or being able to interfere. In the end Sylvia fell asleep exhausted, resolving that if Queenie was not in a more courageous frame of mind next day she should not move from the hotel. When Sylvia woke up she found that Queenie was already dressed to go out, and for an instant she feared that the juggler's power over her was strong enough to will her to go back to him by the mere sense of his being near at hand. She asked her almost angrily why she had dressed herself so quietly and where she was going.

"To the hairdresser's," Queenie answered, in a normal voice.

Sylvia was puzzled what to do. She did not like to put the idea into Queenie's head of the juggler's being able to mesmerize her into following him apparently of her own accord, and if she really intended to go to the hairdresser's, it might imply that the terror of the night before had burned itself out. Certainly she did not seem very nervous this morning. It was taking a risk, but probably the only way out of the situation was by taking risks, and in the end she decided not to oppose her going out by herself.

Two hours passed; when Queenie had not returned to the hotel Sylvia went out and made inquiries at the hairdresser's. Yes, she had been there earlier that morning and had bought several bottles of scent. Sylvia made a gesture of disapproval; scent was an extravagance of Queenie's, and she was strictly rationed in this regard on account of the urgency of saving all the money they could for their journey. She returned to the hotel; Queenie was still absent, and she opened her bag to look for the address of a girl whom Queenie occasionally visited; she found the card, but the thousand-franc note that she was guarding for her had vanished. Queenie must have joined that infernal Swiss, after all, and the old instinct of propitiating him with money had been too strong for her.

"Fool that I was to let her go this morning," Sylvia cried. As she spoke, Queenie came in, her cheeks flushed with excitement, her arms full of packages.

"Where have you been and what have you been doing?" she demanded.

"Oh, you must pardon me for taking the money from your bag," Queenie cried. "I was taking it to buy presents for all the girls."

"Presents for the girls?" Sylvia echoed, in amazement.

"Yes, yes, it was the only way to make them on my side against him. To-night in the dressing-room I shall give these beautiful presents. I was spending all of my thousand francs. It was no use any longer, because we cannot be going to England. Better that I was buying these presents to make all the girls be on my side."

Sylvia was between laughter and tears, but she could not bring herself to be angry with the child; at least her action showed that she was taking her own part against the juggler. Queenie spent the rest of the day quite happily, arranging how the presents were to be allotted. Those that were small enough she put into chocolate-boxes that she had bought for this purpose; the larger ones were tied up with additional pink and blue silk ribbons to compensate for the lack of a box. To each present--there were fifteen of them--a picture post-card was tied, on which Sylvia had to write the name of the girl for whom it was intended _with heaps of love and kisses from Queenie_; it was like a child preparing for her Christmas party.

They went down to the Trianon earlier than usual in order that Queenie might get ready in time to sit at the entrance of the dressing-room and hand each girl her present as she came in. Sylvia tried to look as cheerful as possible under the ordeal, for she did not want to confirm the tale that she was living on Queenie's earnings by seeming to grudge her display of generosity. The girls were naturally eager to know the reason of the unexpected entertainment. When Queenie took each of them aside in turn and whispered a long confidence in her ear, Sylvia supposed that she was explaining about the advent of Zozo; but it turned out Queenie was explaining that, having no longer any need for the money since she could not get a passport for England, she was doing now what she had wanted to do before, but had been unable to do on account of saving up for the journey. Sylvia remonstrated with her for this indiscretion, and she said:

"I think it was you that was being silly, not me, yes? If I say to these girls, 'Here is a silver brush, help me against Zozo,' they was thinking that I was buying them to help me. But when he tries to take me, I shall call out to them and they will be loving me for these presents and will be fighting against him, I think, yes?"

Sylvia had her doubts, but she had not the heart to discourage such trust in the grateful appreciation of her companions.

Neither Zozo nor Maud came to the Trianon that evening; nevertheless, outside on the playbill was an announcement that next Sunday would appear Zozo: LE MEILLEUR PRESTIDIGITATEUR DU MONDE.

"It was always so that he was writing himself," said Queenie, when Sylvia read her the announcement; she spoke in a voice of awe as if the playbill had been inscribed by a warning fate. In due course the juggler made a successful first appearance, dressed in green, with a snake of shimmering tinsel wound round him. They watched the performance from the wings; when he came off he asked Queenie with a laugh if she would stand for his dagger act, as in the old days she had stood.

"You've got Maud for that," Sylvia interposed quickly.

"Maud!" he scoffed.

Earlier in the evening she had thundered about the stage in what was described as the world-famous step-dance of the world-famous American cowgirl Maud Moffat, to the authentic and original native melody, which happened this year to be "On the Mississippi," and might just as easily have been "A Life on the Ocean Wave."

Sylvia was puzzled by the relationship between Zozo and Maud, for there was evidently nothing even in the nature of affection between them, and as far as she could make out they had never met until the day he paid her fare from Galantza to Bucharest. Her first idea had been that he was a German agent and intended to use Maud in that capacity, her patriotism, judging by her loud denunciations of England and everything English, not being very deep. But Sylvia had already outlived the habit of explaining as a spy every one in war-time that is not immediately and blatantly obvious. She could imagine nobody less fitted to be a spy than Maud, who was attractive neither to her compatriots nor to foreigners, and who, even had she possessed attraction, would have had no brains to take advantage of it. Yet she came back to the theory that Zozo was a German agent when she saw with whom he consorted in Bucharest, and she decided that when he had brought Maud here he had done so in the hope of having found a useful recruit, but that on discovering her dull coarseness he had come to the conclusion that her hostility to England was counterbalanced by England's hostility to her. Sylvia decided that if her surmises were at all near to being correct she must be particularly on her guard against any attempt on the part of the Swiss to corrupt Queenie. She had supposed at first that she should only have to contend with his lust or with his desire of personal domination; now it seemed that the argument she had used with Philip to procure Queenie a passport had really been a sound argument. Superficially Queenie might not strike anybody as a valuable agent; knowing her charm for men, her complete malleableness, and her almost painful simplicity, Sylvia could imagine that she might be a practical weapon in the hands of an unscrupulous adventurer like the Swiss, who was finding, like so many other rascals of his type, that in war natural dishonesty is a lucrative asset. She wondered to what extent her ideas about his intentions were based upon his behavior at Granada, and whether, after all, she was not attributing to him all sorts of schemes of which he was entirely innocent. Really he had always been for her a symbol of evil that she was inclined to turn into a crude personification. It was strange the way that one was apt, in changing one's mode of life, to abandon simultaneously the experience one had gathered formerly. Most probably she was giving this juggler with an absurd name an importance quite beyond his power, simply because she herself was giving her present surroundings a permanence far more durable and extensive than they actually possessed. After all, could one but realize it, the way from the Petit Trianon to Mulberry Cottage did exist as a material fact: there was no impassable gulf of space or time between them.

After Zozo had been juggling for about a fortnight in Bucharest without having given the least sign of wanting to interfere with Queenie, Sylvia began to think that she had worked herself up for nothing, though the problem of his relationship to Maud, with whom he remained on terms of contemptuous intimacy, still puzzled her. She thought of making a report on the queer association to Philip, but she was afraid he might think it was an excuse to meet him again; and since Philip himself had made no effort to follow up their interview, she gave up speculating upon Zozo and Maud and took to speculating instead upon Philip's want of curiosity, as she called it. Unreasonable as she admitted to herself that the emotion was, she could not help being piqued by his indifference, and she resented now the compassion she had felt for him when she left the office that afternoon. She could not understand any man, however badly a woman had treated him--and she had not treated Philip badly--being able to contemplate so calmly that woman's existence as a cabaret singer without wanting to know what had brought her to it so short a time after her success. No, certainly she should not trouble Philip with her suspicions of Zozo and Maud; it was inviting a rebuff.

Just when Sylvia was beginning to feel reassured about Queenie and not to worry about anything except the waste of that thousand francs and the continuous difficulties in the way of saving any money, the girls at the Trianon began to whisper among themselves. Queenie's presents had given her a brief popularity that began to fade when it was evident that no more presents were coming; her attempt to secure the friendship of her companions, inasmuch as it seemed a token of weakness, reacted against her and made her in the end less popular than before. The story about the refusal of a passport by the British authorities was soon magnified into a demand for her expulsion from Rumania as a German agent masquerading as an English girl. Hence the whispers. The French girls were naturally the most venomous; but the Austrian girls were nearly as bad, because, having lived for months under the perpetual taunt of being spies, they were anxious to re-establish their own virtue at Queenie's expense. Zozo commiserated with her on the unfairness of the whispers, and one evening, to Sylvia's dismay, Queenie told her that he had offered to secure her a passport and take her with him when he left Bucharest.

"He was really being very nice to me," Queenie said. "Oh, Sylvia, what shall I do? I cannot be staying here with these girls who are so unkind to me."

The following evening Sylvia asked Zozo straight out about the kind of passport he proposed to find for Queenie and where he proposed to take her.

The juggler sneered.

"That's my business, I think. What can you do for her? If the kid's anything, she's German. What the hell's the good of you trying to make her English? Why don't you let her alone instead of stopping her from earning good money?"

Sylvia kept her temper with a great effort and contented herself with denying that Queenie was German and with asking who had first made the assertion. The juggler spat on the floor and walked away without replying.

After the performance that night, a hot, thunderous night in August, Zozo, with Maud and two well-known pro-German natives, took the next table to Sylvia and Queenie. Maud was drinking heavily and presently she began to talk in a loud voice:

"Well, I may have spoken against England once or twice, but, thank Gawd, I'm not a bloody little yellow-haired German pretending to be English. I never went and tried to pass off a dirty little German as my sister the same as what some people who's proud of being English does. Yes, I earn my living honestly. I've never heard any one call me a spy, and any---- as did wouldn't do it twice. My name's Maud Moffat, born and bred a cockney, and proud I am when I see some people who think theirselves superior and all the time is dirty German spies betraying their country. Does any one presume to say I'm not English?" she shouted, rising unsteadily to her feet. "And if he does, where is he so as I can show him he's a bloody liar by breaking his head open?"

Her companions made a pretense of restraining her, but it was plain that they were enjoying the scene, and Maud continued to hold forth.

"German! And calls herself English. Goes round giving presents to honest working-girls so as she can carry on her dirty work of spying. Goes round trying to get a girl's boy away from her by low, dirty, mean tricks as she's learnt from the bloody Germans who she belongs to. Yes, it's you I'm talking to," she shrieked at Queenie.

White as paper, she sprang up from her seat and began to answer Maud, notwithstanding Sylvia's efforts to silence her.

"You was being a bad wicked girl," she panted. "You dare to say I was being German! I hate the Germans! I _am_ English. I _am_ English. You dare to say I was being German!"

Upon this an Austrian girl at another table began to revile Queenie from her point of view for abusing the Germans; before ten seconds had passed the gardens were in an uproar.

A fat French Jewess stood on a table and shouted:

"_Oh, les sales boches! Oh, les sales boches!_"

Whereupon an Austrian girl pushed her from behind, and she crashed down into a party of Francophile young Rumanians who instantly began to throw everything within reach at a party of Germanophile young Rumanians. Glasses were shivered; fairy lamps were pulled out of the trees and hurtled through the air like Roman candles; somebody snatched a violin from the orchestra and broke it on the head of his assailant; somebody else climbed on the stage and made a speech in Rumanian, calling upon the country to intervene on behalf of the Entente, until two pro-Germans seized him and flung him down on top of the melancholy dotard who played the double-bass; the manager and the waiters rushed into the street to find the police; everybody argued with everybody else.

"_Tu dis que je suis boche, moi? M--e pour toi!_"

"La ferme! La ferme! Espionne! Type infecte!"

"_Moi, je suis roumaine. Si tu dis que je suis hongroise, je dis que t'es une salope. Tu m'entends?_"

"_Oh, la vache! Elle m'a piquée!_"

"_Elle a bien fait! Elle a bien fait!_"

Some French girls began to sing:

"_Les voyez-vous?
Les hussards! Les dragons! La gar-rrde!
Glorieux fous_...."

and a very shrill little soprano who was probably a German, but declared she was a Dane, sang:

"It's a larway to Tipperary,
It's a larway to go,
It's a larway to Tipperary,
It's a la-a-way to go!
Gooba, Piccadilli,
Farwa lar-sa sca-aa!
It's a lar-lar-way to Tipperary
Ba-ma-ha's ra-tha."

After which somebody hit her on the nose with a vanilla ice: then the police came in and quieted the uproar by arresting several people on the outskirts of the riot.

The next evening, when Sylvia and Queenie presented themselves for the performance, the manager told them that they were dismissed: he could not afford to let the Petit Trianon gain a disorderly reputation. Sylvia was glad that the decision of taking a definite step had been settled over her head. As they were passing out, they met Lottie looking very happy.

"I've been engaged for three hundred francs to play the piano in the orchestra. The accompanist broke his wrist last night in the row," she told them. "So they sent for me in a hurry."

"We've been sacked," Sylvia said.

"Oh, I am sorry!" the fat girl exclaimed, trying to curb her own pleasure. "What will you do?"

Sylvia shrugged her shoulders.

"Why don't you go to Galantza and Bralatz and Avereshti? You ought to be able to get engagements there in the summer-time--especially at Avereshti."

Sylvia nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, that's rather an idea. But, Lottie, don't tell Zozo where we've gone. Good-by! Good luck! I'm glad you've got an engagement."

"Yes, I shall leave that room now. It smells, rather, as the summer gets on."

The next morning Sylvia and Queenie left Bucharest for Galantza.