"But if I go back through Russia I may find it is just as hard to get back to England. No, no. I'll risk Bulgaria. To-day's Tuesday the 28th. When can I have my visa?"
"Well, strictly speaking, it's already too late to-day to entertain applications, but as you were a friend of Mr. Iredale, I'll ask Mr. Abernethy to put it through for you. If you come in to-morrow morning at ten, I will give you a letter for the Consulate. There will be the usual fee to pay there. Oh dear me, you haven't brought the four photographs that are necessary. I must have them, I'm afraid. Two for us, one for the Consulate, and one for the French authorities. The Italians don't insist upon a photograph at present. I'm afraid I sha'n't be able to put it through for you to-day. The French are very strict and insist on a minimum of four days. But in view of the Bulgarian crisis I'll get them to relax the rule. Luckily one of the French officers is a friend of mine--a very nice fellow."
Three days elapsed before Sylvia was finally equipped with her passport _visé_ for Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Italy, France, and England. The representatives of the first two nations, who seemed most immediately concerned with her journey, made the least bother; the representative of Italy, the nation that seemed least concerned with it, made the most.
While she was waiting for the result of the accumulated contemplation upon her age, her sex, her lineaments, and her past history, Sylvia bought back her gold bag for eighteen hundred francs, which left her with just over fifteen hundred francs for the journey--none too much, but she should no longer have any scruples in telegraphing to England for help if she found herself stranded.
On Friday afternoon she called for the last time at the passport-office to get a letter of introduction that Mr. Mathers had insisted on writing for her to a friend of his in the American Tobacco Company at Cavalla.
"You're not likely to go there," he said, "but if you do, it may be useful."
The clerk handed her the letter, and there was something magnificently protective in the accompanying gesture; he might have been handing her a personal letter to the Prime Minister and giving her an assurance that the Foreign Secretary would personally meet her at Waterloo and see that she did not get into the wrong tube.