"It's a pity you look so unlike an English girl," he said to Sylvia in an aggrieved voice. "The public will be disappointed. They expect an English girl to look English. You'll have to sing at the beginning of the evening, and I can't pay you more than three hundred _lei_--three hundred francs, that is." "I was getting eight hundred in Russia," Sylvia objected. "I dare say you were, but girls are scarcer there. We've got thousands of them in Bucharest." Sylvia was furious at being offered so little, but Queenie promptly asked six hundred, and when the manager objected, suggested that he might engage them both for twelve hundred: it was strange to find Queenie so sharp at business. In the end Sylvia was offered three hundred and fifty _lei_ and Queenie seven hundred and fifty, which they accepted. "You can have a band rehearsal to-morrow," he said, "and open on Monday week." Sylvia explained about the loss of her music; and the manager began to curse, demanding how she expected an orchestra to accompany her without band parts. "I'll accompany myself," she answered. "Oh, well," he agreed, "being the first item on the program, it doesn't really matter what you do." It was impossible for the moment not feel the sting of this when Sylvia remembered herself a year ago, fresh from her success at the Pierian and inclined to wonder if she were not dimming her effulgence as a moderately large star by appearing at English music-halls. Now here she was being engaged for the sake of another girl and allowed on sufferance to entertain the meager, listless audience at the beginning of a cabaret performance--for the sake of another girl who owed to her the fare to Bucharest and whom all the way in the train she had been pitying while she made plans to rescue her from a degrading existence. There was a brief moment of bitterness and jealousy; but it passed almost at once, and she began to laugh at herself. "There's no doubt you'll have to establish your English nationality," she told Queenie, as they left the manager's office. "I really believe he thought it was I who was pretending." "It's what I was saying you," Queenie answered. "They was all thinking that I was English." "Well, now we must decide about our relationship. Of course, you don't look the least like my sister, but I think the best way will be for you to pass as my sister. My name isn't really Sylvia Scarlett, but Sylvia Snow; so what I suggest is that you shall go on calling yourself Queenie Walters on the stage, though when we try to get your passport you must be Queenie Snow. Trust me to get round the English authorities here, if it's necessary. We can always go back to England through Bulgaria and Greece, but we must save up enough money, and it 'll that might befall her more acutely than she would have feared for herself.