Sylvia could have screamed aloud her rejection of such a course.
"What, after keeping you away from men for six months, to let you go back to them on account of my carelessness? Child, you must be mad to think of it."
"Yes, but I have been thinking, Sylvia. I have been thinking very much. When I was going to be English and you were saying to me that I should have a passport and be going to England and be English myself, it was good for me to care nothing at all for men; but now what does it matter? I am nothing. I am just being somebody lost, and if I am going with men or not going with men I am still nothing. Why to be worried for money? I shall show you how easy it is for me to have money. It is true what I am speaking. You could be having no idea how much money I can have. And if I am nothing, always nothing, why must I be worrying any more about money? You are so sweet to me, Sylvia, so kind. No one was ever being so kind to me before. So I must be kind to you now. Yes, I think? Are you crying about that money? I think you are stupid to cry for such a little thing as money."
"There are things, my rose, that must not, that shall not happen," Sylvia cried, clasping the child in her arms. "And that you should ever again sell yourself to a man is one of them."
"But I am nothing."
"Ah," thought Sylvia, "here is the moment when I should be able to say that every one to God is everything; but if I say it she will not understand. What hope is there for this child?" Then aloud she added, "Are you nothing to me?"
"No, to you I am something, and if my brother was here I would be something to him."
"Very well, then, you must not think of selling yourself. I lost the money. I shall find a way of getting more money. I have a friend in Bucharest. I will telegraph to him to-morrow and he will send us money." And to herself she thought: "This is indeed the ultimate irony, that I should ask a favor of Philip. Yet perhaps I am glad, for if I did him the least injury years ago, no priest could have imagined a more appropriate penance. Yes, perhaps I deserve this."
The next morning, when Sylvia ordered coffee, the waiter presented the bill for it at the same time, and when she tore it up he seemed inclined to take away the coffee; he retreated finally with a threat that in future nothing should be served to them that was not paid for in advance.
"They are being nasty with us," Queenie solemnly enunciated.