"Well, of course, there's an instance to hand of sterile professionalism. Naturally, had I been the official in Bucharest, I should have given the girl her passport. At such a moment I should have been too much moved by her desire of England to have done otherwise. Moreover, if her desire of England was not mere lust, I should have been right to do so." Sylvia finished her story by telling him of Queenie's escape with the juggler after the probable theft of Maud's passport. "By Jove!" he exclaimed. "I'll bet they've gone to Salonika. We'll send a telegram to our people there and warn them to keep a lookout." "What a paradox human sympathy is," Sylvia murmured. "Ever since I got to Nish it's been on my conscience that I didn't tell you about this girl before, and yet in Bucharest the notion of doing anything like that was positively disgusting to my sense of decency. And look at you! A moment ago you were abusing the official in Bucharest for his red tape, and now your eyes are flashing with the prospect of hunting her down." "Not even Heraclitus divined quite the rapidity with which everything dissolves in flux," said Hazlewood. "That's another thing that will be brought home to people before the war's over--the intensity and rapidity of change, of course considerably strengthened and accelerated by the impulse that war has given to pure destruction. You can see it even in broad ideas. We began by fighting for a scrap of paper; we shall go on fighting for different ideas until we realize we are fighting for our existence. Then suddenly we shall think we are fighting about nothing, and the war will be over." Hazlewood sat silent; most of the diners had finished and left the room, which accentuated his silence with an answering stillness. "Well, what is to be your reward for listening?" he asked at length. "To stay on in Nish for the present," she answered, firmly. "No, no," he objected, with a sudden fretfulness that was the more conspicuous after his late exuberance. "No, no, we don't want more women than are necessary. You'd better get down to Salonika on Monday. Look here, I must send a telegram about that friend of yours. Come round to my office and give me the details." Sylvia accompanied him in a state of considerable depression; she could not bear the idea of revealing so much of herself as to ask him directly to give her an excuse to remain in Nish because she wanted to see Michael; it was seeming impossible to introduce the personal element in this war-cursed town, and particularly now when she was quenching so utterly the personal element by thus allying herself with Hazlewood against Queenie. She waited while he deciphered a short telegram which had arrived during his absence and while he occupied himself with writing another. "How will this do for their description?" he read: