They speculated idly for a while on the cause of the delay, and then gradually under the depression of the silence their voices died away into occasional sighs of impatience. "What about eating?" Sylvia suggested at last. "I'm not hungry, but it will give us something to do." So they struggled with tinned foods, glad of the life that the fussy movement gave to the compartment. "One feels that moments such as these should be devoted to the most intimate confidences," Michael said, when they had finished their dinner and were once more enmeshed by the silence. "There's a sort of portentousness about them, you mean?" "Yes, but as a matter of fact, one can't even talk about commonplace things, because one is all the time fidgeting with the silence." "I know," Sylvia agreed. "One gets a hint of madness in the way one's personality seems to shrink to nothing. I suppose there really is somebody left alive in the world? I'm beginning to feel as if it were just you and I against the universe." "Death must come like that sometimes," he murmured. "Like what?" "Like that thick darkness outside and oneself against the universe." "I'd give anything for a guitar," Sylvia exclaimed. "What would you play first?" he inquired, gravely. She sang gently: _"La donna è mobile qual piuma al vento,_ _Muta d'accento e di pensiero,_ _Sempre un amabile leggiadro viso,_ _In pianto o in riso, è menzognero--_ and that's all I can remember of it," she said, breaking off. "I wonder why you chose to sing that." "It reminds me of my father," she answered. "When he was drunk, fair cousin, he always used to sing that. What a charming son-in-law he would have made for our grandfather! Oh, are we ever going to move again?" she cried, jumping up and pressing her face against the viewless pane. "Hark! I hear horses." Michael rose and joined her. Presently flames leaped up into the darkness, and armed men were visible in silhouette against the bonfire they had kindled, so large a bonfire, indeed, that, in the shadows beyond, the stony outcrop of a rough, steep country seemed in contrast to be the threshold of titanic chasms. A noise of shouting reached the train, and presently Bulgarian regulars, the escort of the prisoners, joined the merrymakers round the fire. Slow music rumbled upon the air, and a circle of men shoulder to shoulder with interwoven arms performed a stately, swaying dance. "Or are they just holding one another up because they're drunk?" Sylvia asked. "No, it's really a dance, though they may be drunk, too. I wish we could get this window open. It looks as if all the soldiers had joined the party." The dance came to an end with shouts of applause, and one or two rifles were fired at the stars. Then the company squatted round the fire, and the wine circulated again. "But where are the officers in charge?" Michael asked.