"But at any rate one should be thankful that one was not hit by an obus," said Odette. "I nearly died of fright."
"It wasn't the fault of the Turks that we weren't hit," Armand grumbled. "They did their best."
"Luckily the shells didn't travel so fast as you," Sylvia put in.
Flora laughed at this; but when everybody began to tease Armand about his cowardice she got angry, and invited any girl present to produce a man that would have behaved differently.
At last the flotsam that had been stirred up by the alarm of the bombardment drifted together again and stayed idly in what was, after all, still a backwater to the general European unrest. The manager of the cabaret was glad enough to keep his company together for as long as they would stay. It was getting more difficult all the time to import new attractions; and since as much money was being made out of human misery in Odessa as everywhere else, the champagne flowed not much less freely because, since the Imperial edict, some bribery of the police was required in order to procure it. Sylvia was puzzled to find what was fate's intention in thus keeping her from moving farther south: it seemed a tame end to all her expectation to be stranded here, lost to everything except the petty life of her fellow-players. However, she sang her songs every night; somehow her personality attracted the frequenters of the cabaret, and when after a month she informed the manager that she must leave and go north again, he begged her to stay at any rate for another two months—after that he would arrange for her to travel north and sing at Kieff, Warsaw, and Petrograd, whence she could make her way back to England.
"Or you might go to Siberia," he suggested.
"Siberia?" she echoed.
That any one should propose a tour in Siberia seemed a joke at first; when Sylvia found the suggestion was serious, she plunged back with a shiver into the warmer backwater of Odessa. Deciding that with a comfortable pension, a friendly management, and an appreciative audience, it would be foolish to risk her health by moving about too much, she settled down to read Russian novels and study the characters of her associates.
"You are a funny girl," Ruby said. "Don't you care about fellows?"
"Why should I?" Sylvia countered.