Sylvia wondered if she were a spy, who from some motive of charity wished to avoid compromising her; but there was no time to think about such problems, because an official was taking her passport and waving her across to the stacked-up heaps of luggage. There was something redolent of old sensational novels in this frontier examination, something theatrically sinister about the attitude of the officials when they commanded everybody to turn everything out of his trunks and bags. The shed took on the appearance of a vast rag-heap, and the accumulated agitation of the travelers was pitiable in its subservience to these machines of the state; it seemed incredible that human beings should consent to be treated thus. Presently it became evident that the object of this relentless search was paper; every scrap of paper, whether it was loose or used for wrapping and packing, was taken away and dropped into the stove. The sense of human ignominy became overwhelming when Sylvia saw men going down on their knees and weeping for permission to keep important documents; yet no appeal moved the officials, and the stove burned fiercely with the mixed records of money, love, and business; with contracts and receipts and title-deeds; even with toilet-paper and old greasy journals. Sylvia fought hard for the right to keep her music, and proclaimed her English nationality so insistently that for a minute or two the officials hesitated and went out to consult the authorities who had taken charge of her passport; but when it was found that she was entered there as a music-hall artiste, the music was flung into the stove at once. Confronted with the proofs of her right to carry music, this filthy spawn of man's will to be enslaved took from her the only tools of her craft: orang-outangs would have been more logical. And all over the world the human mind was being debauched like this by war, or would it be truer to say that war was turning ordinary stupidity into criminal stupidity? Oh, what did it matter? Sylvia clasped her golden bag to reassure herself that nobility still endured in spite of war. Now they were throwing books into the stove! Sylvia sat down and laughed so loudly that two soldiers came across and took her arms to lead her outside: they evidently thought she was going to have hysterics, which would doubtless have been unlawful in the shed. She waved aside their attentions and went across to pick up her luggage.
When Sylvia had finished and was passing out to find the office where she had to receive back her passport inscribed with illegible permits to leave Russia, she saw Lottie being led through a curtained door on the far side of the shed. The sight made her feel sick: it brought back with horrible vividness her emotion when, years ago, she had seen on the French frontier the woman with the lace being led away for smuggling contraband. What were they going to do? She paused, expecting to hear a scream issue from that curtained doorway. She could not bring herself to go away, and, with an excuse of having left something behind in the shed, she went back. The curtain was pulled aside a moment for some one within to call the assistance of some one without, and Sylvia had a brief vision of the fat girl, half undressed, with her arms held, high above her head while two police officers prodded her like a sheep in a fair.
"O God!" Sylvia murmured. "God! God! Grant these people their revenge some day!"
The passengers were at last free to mount another train, and Sylvia saw with relief that Lottie was taking her place with the rest. She avoided speaking to her, because she was suffering herself from the humiliation inflicted upon the fat girl, and felt awed at the idea of any intrusion upon her shame. The train steamed out of the station, crossed a long bridge, and pulled up in Rumanian Ungheny, where everybody had to alight again for the Rumanian officials to look for the old-fashioned contraband of the days before the war. They did this as perfunctorily as in those happy days; and the quiet of the neutral railway station was like the sudden lull that sheltering land gives to the stormiest seas. If only she had not lost all her music, if only she had not seen the fat girl behind that curtain, Sylvia could have clapped her hands for pleasure at this unimpressive little station, which, merely because it belonged to a country at peace, had a kind of innocence and jollity that gave it a real beauty.
"Well, aren't you glad I wouldn't have anything to do with you?" said Lottie, coming up to her with a smile. "You'd have had to go through the same, probably. The Russian police are brutes."
"All policemen are brutes," Sylvia declared.
"I suppose they have their orders, but I think they might have a woman searcher."
"Oh, don't talk about it!" Sylvia cried. "Such things crucify the soul."
"You're very exagérée for an English girl," said Lottie. "Aou yes! Aou yes! I never met an English girl who talked like you."
The train arrived at Jassy about nine o'clock; here they had to change again, and, since the train for Bucharest did not leave till about eleven and she was feeling hungry, Sylvia invited Lottie to have dinner with her. While they were walking along the platform toward the restaurant there was a sound of hurried footsteps behind them, and a moment later a breathless voice called out in English: