body of their mother? Yet what business have I to be abusing lawyer and politician when I lack the strength of mind to persevere in a task which I set myself with my eyes open? Unless I suffer in achieving it, it will not be worth the achievement. Surely the human soul that has suffered deeply can never again acknowledge futility? O England, perhaps it is a poor little pain to be away from you now, a mean little egotistical ache at the best, but away from you I see your faults so much more clearly and love you for them all the more." The train entered the station, and Sylvia perceived that there was nothing beautiful about Avereshti in the way she had fancied. Yet she was ashamed now of the temptation to desert Queenie; therefore, though the train was going on to Bucharest, she hurried her out on the platform, and when they reached the Hotel Moldavia she took a room for two weeks, paying for it in advance lest she should be tempted by her disappointment with Avereshti to hurry back to Bucharest again, the inevitable result of which in her present mood would be to abandon her friend. Avereshti, instead of being situated amid the romantic scenery that one expected from a celebrated summer resort, was surrounded by oil-fields which disfigured still more the flat environment. It was too large for genuine rusticity, too small for its assumption of European civilization, and too commercial for gaiety. Possibly during the season the shareholders and owners of the oil-fields came here to gloat for a week upon the sources of their prosperity; if they did, they had all of them left by the middle of September; the Variétés Alcazar was closed and the playbills were already beginning to peel off the walls. Whatever life there was in Avereshti displayed itself in the Piatza Carol I, the pavement of which was planted with trees clipped out of any capacity to cast a pleasant shade. The Hotel Moldavia, flanked by cafés, occupied one side of it, a row of respectable shops another, a large municipal hall of the crudest Germanic architecture fronted the hotel, and along the remaining side ran a row of market booths, the insult of which to the progress of Avereshti was greatly resented by the inhabitants and always apologized for and explained in the first few minutes of conversation.