The fog had cleared away when Sylvia started to walk back to her hotel, and though it was still very hot, there was a sparkle in the air that made it seem fresher than it really was. The argument with Philip had braced her point of view to accord with the lightening of the weather; it had thrown her so entirely back upon her own resources that the notion of ever having supposed for an instant that he could help her in the fight for Queenie now appeared ludicrous. Although her arguments had been unavailing, and although at the end Philip had actually defeated her by the very logic on which she prided herself, she nevertheless felt wonderfully elated at the prospect of a struggle with Zozo and no longer in the least sensible of that foreboding dejection which was lying so heavily upon her heart when she left Lottie's house three hours ago.
Poor Philip! He had spoken of his own sufferings in a minor degree from the war. Yet to be rooted up at his age—he was nearly fifty, after all—and to be set down in Rumania to dig for human motives, he who had no instinct to dig for anything but dry bones and ancient pottery, it was surely for him suffering in a major degree. He had been so pathetically proud of being a captain, and at the same time so obviously conscious of the radical absurdity of himself in such a position; it was like a prematurely old child playing with soldiers to gratify his parents. And here in a neutral country he was even debarred from dressing up in uniform. When she first saw him she had been surprised to find that he did not appear much older than thirteen years ago; now, looking back at him in his office, he seemed to her a very old man. Poor Philip, he did not belong to the type that is rejuvenated in war-time by a sense of his official importance. Sylvia had seen illustrations in English newspapers of beaming old gentlemen "doing," as it was called, "their bit," proud of the nuisance they must be making of themselves, incorrigible optimists about the tonic effects of war because they had succeeded in making their belts meet round their fat paunches, pantaloons that should have buried themselves out of sight instead of pirouetting while young men were being killed in a war for which they and their accursed Victorianism were responsible by licking the boots of Prussia for fifty years.
Sylvia found Queenie in a state of agitation at her long absence; she did not tell her anything about Zozo at once, in the hope that he would not come to the Trianon on the first night of his arrival. She did think it advisable, however, to tell Queenie of her failure to secure the passport.
"Then we can't be going to England?" Queenie asked.
"Well, not directly from here," Sylvia answered. "But we'll move on as soon as we can into Bulgaria. We can get down to the Piræus from Dedeagatch. I don't think these neutral countries are very strict about passports. We'll manage somehow to get away from here."
"But if we cannot be going to England why must we be going from Bucharest? Better to stay, I think. Yes?"
"We might want to go," Sylvia said. "We might get tired of the Trianon. It wouldn't be difficult."
"I shall never be going to England now," said Queenie, in a toneless voice. "Never shall I be going! I shall learn a new song and a new dance, yes?"
Sylvia felt tired after her long afternoon and thought she would rest for an hour before getting ready for the evening's work. The mist gathered again at sunset, and the gardens of the theater, though they were unusually full, lacked any kind of gaiety. When they were walking down the narrow laurel-bordered path that screened the actors from the people sitting at their tables under the trees, Sylvia was sure that Zozo would be standing by the stage door at the end of it; but he was nowhere to be seen. After the performance, however, when they came out, as the custom was, to take their seats in the audience, the juggler made a dramatic appearance from behind a tree; Queenie seemed to lose all her fairy charm and become a terrified little animal.
"I don't think there's room at our table for you," Sylvia said.