In the first elation of escaping from the fulfilment of her intention Sylvia overlooked all the consequences involved in Florilor's withdrawal. Soon in the stillness shed by this bleak room, in the sight of the frozen cakes upon the table, in the creeping obscurity of the afternoon, she was more sharply aware than before of the future, aware of it not as a vague and faintly disturbing horizon too far away still to affect anything except her moods of depression, but as the immediate future in the shape of a chasm at her feet, a future so impassable that she could scarcely think of it in other terms than those of space. It had positively lost the nebulous outlines of time and acquired in their stead the sharp materialism of hostile space. The future! Calculations of how to bridge or leap this gap went whirling through Sylvia's brain, calculations that even included projects of fantastic violence, but never one that envisaged the surrender of a single scruple about Queenie. The resolve she had made that morning, however its practical effect seemed to have been nullified by Florilor's rejection of her sacrifice, had woven each separate strand of her thought and emotion so tightly round the steel wire of her will that nothing could have snapped the result. There was not a bone in her body, not a nerve nor a corpuscle, that did not thrill to the command of her will and wait upon its fresh intention with a loyalty that must endow it with an invincible tenacity of purpose. The sense of an omnipotent force existing in herself was so strong that when Sylvia saw a golden ten-franc piece lying in the very middle of the fiddle-backed armchair on which Florilor had been sitting, she had for a moment the illusion of having created the coin out of air by the alchemy of her own will. "Many miracles have deserved the name less than this," she murmured, picking up the piece of gold. For the second time in her life she was able to enjoy the sensation of illimitable wealth; by a curious coincidence the sum had been the same on both occasions. She preened her nail along the figured edge, taking delight in the faint luxurious vibration. "Misers may get very near to Paradise by fingering their gold," she thought. "But the fingering of gold preparatory to spending it is Paradise indeed." She went back to Queenie, clasping the coin so tightly that even when she had put it in her purse it still seemed to be resting in her palm. "Will you be leaving me here?" Queenie exclaimed, in dismay, when she heard of Sylvia's plan for going to Bucharest to-morrow morning and interviewing Philip. "There's not enough money to take us both there, but I shall come back to-morrow evening; and then we'll flaunt our wealth in the faces of these brutes here." "But I shall be so hungry to-morrow," Queenie complained. "Fool that I am," Sylvia cried. "The cakes!" She rushed away and reached the other room a moment before the waiter arrived with his tray.