The _comitadjis_ had already wrapped themselves in their sheepskins and were lying in the dark corners of the room, exhausted by the long ride on top of the wine. A couple of men, however, prepared a rough meal to which Rakoff invited Sylvia and Michael. They had scarcely sat down when, to their surprise, a young woman dressed in a very short tweed skirt and Norfolk jacket and wearing a Tyrolese hat over two long plaits of flaxen hair came and joined them. She nodded curtly to Rakoff and began to eat without a word. "Ziska disapproves of the English," Rakoff explained. "In fact, the only thing she really cares for is dynamite. But she is one of the great _comitadji_ leaders and acts as my second in command. She understands French, but declines to speak it on patriotic grounds, being half a Prussian." The young woman looked coldly at the two strangers; then she went on eating. Her silent presence was not favorable to conversation; and a sudden jealousy of this self-satisfied and contemptuous creature overcame Sylvia. She remembered how she had told Michael's sister the secret of her love for him, and the thought of meeting her again in England became intolerable. She had a mad fancy to kill the other woman and to take her place in this wild band beside Rakoff, to seize her by those tight flaxen plaits and hold her face downward on the table, while she stabbed her and stabbed her again. Only by such a duel could she assert her own personality, rescuing it from the ignominy of the present and the greater ignominy of the future. She had actually grasped a long knife that lay in front of her, and she might have given expression to the mad notion if at that moment Michael had not collapsed. In a moment her fantastic passions died away; even Ziska's sidelong glance of scorn at the prostrate figure was incapable of rousing the least resentment. "He should sleep," said Rakoff. "To-morrow he will have a long and tiring day." Soon in the shadowy room of the deserted farm-house they were all asleep except Sylvia, who watched for a long time the dusty lantern-light flickering upon Ziska's motionless form; as her thoughts wavered in the twilight between wakefulness and dreams she once more had a longing to grip that smooth pink neck and crack it like the neck of a wax doll. Then it was morning; the room was full of smoke and smell of coffee. Sylvia's forecast of a week's journeying with the comitadjis was too optimistic; as a matter of fact, they were in the saddle for a month, and it was only a day or two before Christmas, new style, when they pitched their camp on the slopes of a valley sheltered from the fierce winds of Rhodope about twenty kilometers from the Bulgarian outposts beyond Xanthi. "We are not far from the sea here," Rakoff said, significantly.