They were very poor people, these Albanians and Italians who knelt round her in this church; and Sylvia bowed before the thought that all over the world in all the warring nations somewhere about this hour poor people were crying out to God the same words in the same grave Latin. The helplessness of humanity raged through her like a strong wind, and her self-reliance became as the dust that was scattered before it. When the priest held the monstrance aloft, and gave the Benediction it seemed that the wind died away; upon her soul the company of God was shed like a gentle rain, which left behind it faith blossoming like a flower, and hope singing like a bird, and above them both love shining like a sun. Sylvia went out of the church that afternoon with a sense of having been personally comforted; she was intensely aware of having made more spiritual progress in the last hour than in all the years that had gone by since the first revelation of God. "Without Him I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing," she murmured. That evening--an evening that she had dreaded indescribably--she sat by the window of her bedroom, happier than she could remember that she had ever been; when the chambermaid, on her way to bed, came to ask her if she wanted anything, Sylvia nearly kissed her in order that perhaps so she might express a little of her love toward all those who in this world serve. "For such a girl, with the eyes of a nymph, to be serving you, and for you to have presumed to consider yourself above all service that did not gratify your egotism," she exclaimed aloud to her reflection in the glass. The next morning Sylvia sold her golden bag for fifteen hundred francs. On the way to the station she felt very faint, and finding, when she arrived, that she would have to wait an hour for the train to Avereshti, she drank some coffee. She told herself that it was only the weakness caused by fasting which made her regard so seriously this second breach of her promise to Queenie; nevertheless, nothing could put out of her head the superstitious dread that the surrender caused her. The drinking of coffee while her friend was still hungry took on a significance quite out of proportion to what it actually possessed; she felt like the heroine of a fairy story who disobeys the warnings of her fairy godmother. While she was waiting in the _salle d'attente_ and reproaching herself for what she had done, she heard a familiar voice behind her, and, looking round, saw Philidor in uniform. He was traveling to Bralatz on military duty, and she was glad of his company as far as Avereshti, for all sorts of fears about what might have happened to Queenie during her absence were assailing her fancy. Philidor was surprised to find her still in Rumania and spoke seriously to her about the necessity of leaving at once if she did not want to travel home by Russia.