"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."