She listened to please him, and then upon the silence she heard the sound. From a whisper it grew to a sigh, from a sigh it rose to a rustling of many leaves: it was the Bulgarian army marching into Nish, a procession of silent-footed devils, mysterious, remorseless, innumerable. CHAPTER VII TO Sylvia's surprise and relief, the conquerors paid no attention to the house that night. Michael, after he had listened for a while to the dampered progress of that soft-shod army, fell back upon his pillow without comment and slept very tranquilly. Sylvia, who had now not the least doubt of his recovery, busied herself with choosing what she conceived to be absolute necessities for the immediate future and packing them into her valise. In the course of her preparations she put on one side for destruction or abandonment the contents of the golden shawl. Daguerreotypes and photographs; a rambling declaration of the circumstances in which her alleged grandfather had married that ghostly Adèle her grandmother, and a variety of letters that illustrated her mother's early life: all these might as well be burned. She lay down upon her bed of overcoats and skirts piled upon the floor and found the shawl a pleasant addition to the rubber hot-water-bottle she had been using as a pillow. Michael was still sleeping; it seemed wise to blow out the candle and, although it was scarcely seven o'clock, to try to sleep herself. It was the first time for a week that she had been able to feel the delicious and inviting freedom of untrammeled sleep. What did the occupation of a Bulgarian army signify in comparison with the assurance she felt of her patient's convalescence? The brazier glowed before her path toward a divine oblivion. When Sylvia woke up and heard Michael's voice calling to her, it was six o'clock in the morning. She blew up the dull brazier to renewed warmth, set water to boil, and in a real exultation lighted four candles to celebrate with as much gaiety as possible the new atmosphere of joy and hope in the stark room. "It's all very mysterious," Michael was saying. "It's all so delightfully mysterious that I can hardly bear to ask any questions lest I destroy the mystery. I've been lying awake, exquisitely and self-admiringly awake for an hour, trying to work out where I am, why I'm where I am, why you're where you are, and where Stella is." Sylvia told him of the immediate occasion of his sister's departure, and when she had done so had a moment of dismay lest his affection or his pride should be hurt by her willingness to leave him in the care of one who was practically a stranger. "How very kind of you!" he said. "My mother would have been distracted by having to look after her grandson in the whirlpool of war-work upon which she is engaged. So you had typhus, too? It's a rotten business, isn't it? Did you feel very weak after it?" "Of course." "And we're prisoners?" "I suppose so."