When Sylvia came down from the dressing-room for her turn she found that Ruby had prophesied truly. Armand and Flora were dancing together on the stage, but, though their lips were smiling, the eyes of both were sullen and hateful. The performance at the Cabaret de l'Aube could not be said to differ in any particular from that of any other cabaret. Sylvia, when she was brought face to face with such evidences of international bad taste, wondered how the world had ever gone to war. All over Europe people slept in the same kind of wagon-lits (though here in Russia with a broad gauge they slept more comfortably), ate the same kind of food in the same kind of hotel, clapped the same mediocre _artistes_, and drank the same sweet champagne: yet they could talk about the individuality of nations. How remote war seemed here in Odessa: it was perhaps wrong of her to escape from it like this, and she pondered the detached point of view of Armand. Had she the right to despise his point of view? Did she not herself merit equal contempt? "I'm too comfortable," she decided, "while there is so much misery in the distance." However comfortable Sylvia felt when at a quarter past three she let herself into the _Pension Eliane_, she felt extremely uncomfortable about an hour later, when the sound of an explosion and the crash of falling glass made those inmates of the _pension_ who were still gossiping down-stairs in the dining-room drop their cigarettes and stare at one another in astonishment. "Whatever's that?" Ruby cried. "It must be the gas," said Armand, who could not turn paler than he was, but whose lips trembled. Another crash followed; outside in the street rose a moan of frightened voices and the clatter of frightened feet. Two more explosions still nearer drove everybody that was in the _pension_ out of doors, and when it became certain that war-ships were bombarding Odessa there was a rush to join the inhabitants who were fleeing to what they supposed was greater safety in the heart of the town. In vain Sylvia protested that if the town was really being bombarded, they were just as safe in a _pension_ near the sea-front as anywhere else; the mere idea of propinquity to the sea set everybody running faster than ever away from it. She could hear now the shells whinnying like nervous horses, and with every crash she kept saying to herself in a foolish way: "Well, at any rate, there's no more danger from that one."