It was in meditation upon such queer contrasts that Sylvia passed away her time in Odessa, thus and in pondering the more terrifying profundities of the human soul in the novels of Dostoievski and Tolstoi. She was not sorry, however, when the time came to leave; she could never exclude from her imagination the hope of some amazing event immemorially predestinate that should decide the course of the years still to come. It would have been difficult for her to explain or justify her conviction, but it would have been impossible to reject it, and it was with an oddly superstitious misgiving that she found herself traveling north again, so strong had been her original impulse to go south. If anything had been wanting to confirm this belief, her arrival in Warsaw at the beginning of February would have been enough. Sylvia left Kieff on the return visit without any new revelation of human vileness or human virtue, and reached Warsaw to find a mad populace streaming forth at the sound of the German guns. She had positively the sensation of meeting a great dark wave that drove her back, and her interview with the distracted Jew who managed the cabaret for which she had been engaged was like one of those scenes played in a front set of a provincial drama to the sounds of feverish preparation behind the cloth. "Don't talk to me about songs," the manager cried. "Get out! Can't you hear the guns? Everything's closed. Oh, my God! My God! Where have I put it? I had it in my hands a moment ago. Get out, I say." "Where to?" Sylvia demanded. "Anywhere. Listen. Don't you think they sound a little nearer even in these few minutes? Oh, the Germans! They're too strong. What are you waiting for? Can't you understand me when I say that everything's closed?" He wiped the perspiration from his big nose with a duster that left long black streaks in its wake. "But where shall I go?" Sylvia persisted. "Why don't you go to Bucharest? Why in the devil's name does any one want to be anywhere but in a neutral country in these times? Go to the Rumanian consul and get your passport _visé_ for Bucharest, and for the love of God leave me in peace! Can't you see I'm busy this evening?" Sylvia accepted the manager's suggestion and set out to find the consul: by this time it was too late to obtain a _visa_ that night, and she was forced to sleep in Warsaw--a grim experience that remained as a memory of distant guns booming through a penetrating reek of onions. In the morning the guns were quieter, and there was a rumor that for the third time the German thrust for Warsaw had been definitely foiled. Sylvia, however, could not get over the impression of the evening before, and what the manager had suggested to rid himself of an importunate woman she accepted as a clear indication of the direction she ought to follow.