THE STREET OF SEVEN STARS

By Mary Roberts Rinehart

CHAPTER I

The old stucco house sat back in a garden, or what must once have beena garden, when that part of the Austrian city had been a royal gamepreserve. Tradition had it that the Empress Maria Theresa had used thebuilding as a hunting-lodge, and undoubtedly there was something royalin the proportions of the salon. With all the candles lighted in thegreat glass chandelier, and no sidelights, so that the broken panelingwas mercifully obscured by gloom, it was easy to believe that the greatempress herself had sat in one of the tall old chairs and listened toanecdotes of questionable character; even, if tradition may be believed, related not a few herself. 

The chandelier was not lighted on this rainy November night. Outsidein the garden the trees creaked and bent before the wind, and theheavy barred gate, left open by the last comer, a piano student namedScatchett and dubbed "Scatch"--the gate slammed to and fro monotonously, giving now and then just enough pause for a hope that it had latcheditself, a hope that was always destroyed by the next gust. 

One candle burned in the salon. Originally lighted for the purpose ofenabling Miss Scatchett to locate the score of a Tschaikowsky concerto, it had been moved to the small center table, and had served to givelight if not festivity to the afternoon coffee and cakes. It stillburned, a gnarled and stubby fragment, in its china holder; round it thedisorder of the recent refreshment, three empty cups, a half of asmall cake, a crumpled napkin or two, --there were never enough to goround, --and on the floor the score of the concerto, clearly abandonedfor the things of the flesh. 

The room was cold. The long casement windows creaked in time with theslamming of the gate and the candle flickered in response to a draftunder the doors. The concerto flapped and slid along the uneven oldfloor. At the sound a girl in a black dress, who had been huddlednear the tile stove, rose impatiently and picked it up. There was noimpatience, however, in the way she handled the loose sheets. She putthem together carefully, almost tenderly, and placed them on the top ofthe grand piano, anchoring them against the draft with a china dog fromthe stand. 

The room was very bare--a long mirror between two of the windows, halfa dozen chairs, a stand or two, and in a corner the grand piano. Therewere no rugs--the bare floor stretched bleakly into dim corners andwas lost. The crystal pendants of the great chandelier looked likestalactites in a cave. The girl touched the piano keys; they were iceunder her fingers. 

In a sort of desperation she drew a chair underneath the chandelier, andarmed with a handful of matches proceeded to the unheard-of extravaganceof lighting it, not here and there, but throughout as high as she couldreach, standing perilously on her tiptoes on the chair. 

The resulting illumination revealed a number of things: It showed thatthe girl was young and comely and that she had been crying; it revealedthe fact that the coal-pail was empty and the stove almost so; it letthe initiated into the secret that the blackish fluid in the cups hadbeen made with coffee extract that had been made of Heaven knows what;and it revealed in the cavernous corner near the door a number oftrunks. The girl, having lighted all the candles, stood on the chair andlooked at the trunks. She was very young, very tragic, very feminine. Adoor slammed down the hall and she stopped crying instantly. Diving intoone of those receptacles that are a part of the mystery of the sex, sherubbed a chamois skin over her nose and her reddened eyelids. 

The situation was a difficult one, but hardly, except to Harmony Wells, a tragedy. Few of us are so constructed that the Suite "Arlesienne"will serve as a luncheon, or a faulty fingering of the Waldweben from"Siegfried" will keep us awake at night. Harmony had lain awake morethan once over some crime against her namesake, had paid penances ofearly rising and two hours of scales before breakfast, working withstiffened fingers in her cold little room where there was no room for astove, and sitting on the edge of the bed in a faded kimono where oncepink butterflies sported in a once blue-silk garden. Then coffee, rolls, and honey, and back again to work, with little Scatchett at the piano inthe salon beyond the partition, wearing a sweater and fingerless glovesand holding a hot-water bottle on her knees. Three rooms beyond, downthe stone hall, the Big Soprano, doing Madama Butterfly in bad German, helped to make an encircling wall of sound in the center of which onemight practice peacefully. 

Only the Portier objected. Morning after morning, crawling out at dawnfrom under his featherbed in the lodge below, he opened his door andlistened to Harmony doing penance above; and morning after morning heshook his fist up the stone staircase. 

"Gott im Himmel!" he would say to his wife, fumbling with the knot ofhis mustache bandage, "what a people, these Americans! So much noise andno music!"

"And mad!" grumbled his wife. "All the day coal, coal to heat; and atnight the windows open! Karl the milkboy has seen it. "

And now the little colony was breaking up. The Big Soprano was goingback to her church, grand opera having found no place for her. Scatchwas returning to be married, her heart full, indeed, of music, but herhead much occupied with the trousseau in her trunks. The Harmar sistershad gone two weeks before, their funds having given out. Indeed, fundswere very low with all of them. The "Bitte zum speisen" of the littleGerman maid often called them to nothing more opulent than a stew ofbeef and carrots. 

Not that all had been sordid. The butter had gone for opera tickets, andnever was butter better spent. And there had been gala days--a fruitcakefrom Harmony's mother, a venison steak at Christmas, and once or twiceon birthdays real American ice cream at a fabulous price and worth it. Harmony had bought a suit, too, a marvel of tailoring and cheapness, anda willow plume that would have cost treble its price in New York. Oh, yes, gala days, indeed, to offset the butter and the rainy winter andthe faltering technic and the anxiety about money. For that they allhad always, the old tragedy of the American music student abroad--theexpensive lessons, the delays in getting to the Master himself, thecontention against German greed or Austrian whim. And always back inone's mind the home people, to whom one dares not confess that afternine months of waiting, or a year, one has seen the Master once or notat all. 

Or--and one of the Harmar girls had carried back this scar in hersoul--to go back rejected, as one of the unfit, on whom even theundermasters refuse to waste time. That has been, and often. Harmonystood on her chair and looked at the trunks. The Big Soprano was callingdown the hall. 

"Scatch, " she was shouting briskly, "where is my hairbrush?"

A wail from Scatch from behind a closed door. 

"I packed it, Heaven knows where! Do you need it really? Haven't you gota comb?"

"As soon as I get something on I'm coming to shake you. Half the teethare out of my comb. I don't believe you packed it. Look under the bed. "

Silence for a moment, while Scatch obeyed for the next moment. 

"Here it is, " she called joyously. "And here are Harmony's bedroomslippers. Oh, Harry, I found your slippers!" The girl got down off thechair and went to the door. 

"Thanks, dear, " she said. "I'm coming in a minute. "

She went to the mirror, which had reflected the Empress Maria Theresa, and looked at her eyes. They were still red. Perhaps if she opened thewindow the air would brighten them. 

Armed with the brush, little Scatchett hurried to the Big Soprano'sroom. She flung the brush on the bed and closed the door. She held hershabby wrapper about her and listened just inside the door. There wereno footsteps, only the banging of the gate in the wind. She turned tothe Big Soprano, heating a curling iron in the flame of a candle, andheld out her hand. 

"Look!" she said. "Under my bed! Ten kronen!"

Without a word the Big Soprano put down her curling-iron, andponderously getting down on her knees, candle in hand, inspected thedusty floor beneath her bed. It revealed nothing but a cigarette, onwhich she pounced. Still squatting, she lighted the cigarette in thecandle flame and sat solemnly puffing it. 

"The first for a week, " she said. "Pull out the wardrobe, Scatch; theremay be another relic of my prosperous days. "

But little Scatchett was not interested in Austrian cigarettes with agovernment monopoly and gilt tips. She was looking at the ten-kronenpiece. 

"Where is the other?" she asked in a whisper. 

"In my powder-box. "

Little Scatchett lifted the china lid and dropped the tiny gold-piece. 

"Every little bit, " she said flippantly, but still in a whisper, "addedto what she's got, makes just a little bit more. "

"Have you thought of a place to leave it for her? If Rosa finds it, it's good-bye. Heaven knows it was hard enough to get together, withoutlosing it now. I'll have to jump overboard and swim ashore at NewYork--I haven't even a dollar for tips. "

"New York!" said little Scatchett with her eyes glowing. "If Henry meetsme I know he will--"

"Tut!" The Big Soprano got up cumbrously and stood looking down. "Youand your Henry! Scatchy, child, has it occurred to your maudlin youngmind that money isn't the only thing Harmony is going to need? She'sgoing to be alone--and this is a bad town to be alone in. And she is notlike us. You have your Henry. I'm a beefy person who has a stomach, andI'm thankful for it. But she is different--she's got the thing that youare as well without, the thing that my lack of is sending me back tofight in a church choir instead of grand opera. "

Little Scatchett was rather puzzled. 

"Temperament?" she asked. It had always been accepted in the littlecolony that Harmony was a real musician, a star in their lesserfirmament. 

The Big Soprano sniffed. 

"If you like, " she said. "Soul is a better word. Only the rich ought tohave souls, Scatchy, dear. "

This was over the younger girl's head, and anyhow Harmony was comingdown the hall. 

"I thought, under her pillow, " she whispered. "She'll find it--"

Harmony came in, to find the Big Soprano heating a curler in the flameof a candle. 

CHAPTER II

Harmony found the little hoard under her pillow that night when, havingseen Scatch and the Big Soprano off at the station, she had come backalone to the apartment on the Siebensternstrasse. The trunks weregone now. Only the concerto score still lay on the piano, where littleScatchett, mentally on the dock at New York with Henry's arms about her, had forgotten it. The candles in the great chandelier had died in tearsof paraffin that spattered the floor beneath. One or two of the socketswere still smoking, and the sharp odor of burning wickends filled theroom. 

Harmony had come through the garden quickly. She had had an uneasy senseof being followed, and the garden, with its moaning trees and slamminggate and the great dark house in the background, was a forbidding placeat best. She had rung the bell and had stood, her back against the door, eyes and ears strained in the darkness. She had fancied that a figurehad stopped outside the gate and stood looking in, but the next momentthe gate had swung to and the Portier was fumbling at the lock behindher. 

The Portier had put on his trousers over his night garments, and hismustache bandage gave him a sinister expression, rather augmentedwhen he smiled at her. The Portier liked Harmony in spite of the earlymorning practicing; she looked like a singer at the opera for whom hecherished a hidden attachment. The singer had never seen him, but it wasfor her he wore the mustache bandage. Perhaps some day--hopefully! Onemust be ready!

The Portier gave Harmony a tiny candle and Harmony held out his tip, thefive Hellers of custom. But the Portier was keen, and Rosa was a nieceof his wife and talked more than she should. He refused the tip with agesture. 

"Bitte, Fraulein!" he said through the bandage. "It is for me a pleasureto admit you. And perhaps if the Fraulein is cold, a basin of soup. "

The Portier was not pleasant to the eye. His nightshirt was open overhis hairy chest and his feet were bare to the stone floor. But toHarmony that lonely night he was beautiful. She tried to speak and couldnot but she held out her hand in impulsive gratitude, and the Portier inhis best manner bent over and kissed it. As she reached the curve of thestone staircase, carrying her tiny candle, the Portier was following herwith his eyes. She was very like the girl of the opera. 

The clang of the door below and the rattle of the chain were comfortingto Harmony's ears. From the safety of the darkened salon she peered outinto the garden again, but no skulking figure detached itself from theshadows, and the gate remained, for a marvel, closed. 

It was when--having picked up her violin in a very passion ofloneliness, only to put it down when she found that the familiar soundsechoed and reechoed sadly through the silent rooms--it was when she wasready for bed that she found the money under her pillow, and a scrawlfrom Scatchy, a breathless, apologetic scrawl, little Scatchett havingadored her from afar, as the plain adore the beautiful, the mediocre thegifted:--

DEAREST HARRY [here a large blot, Scatchy being addicted to blots]: I amhonestly frightened when I think what we are doing. But, oh, my dear, ifyou could know how pleased we are with ourselves you'd not deny us thispleasure. Harry, you have it--the real thing, you know, whatever itis--and I haven't. None of the rest of us had. And you must stay. To gonow, just when lessons would mean everything--well, you must not thinkof it. We have scads to take us home, more than we need, both of us, orat least--well, I'm lying, and you know it. But we have enough, by beingcareful, and we want you to have this. It isn't much, but it may help. Ten Kronen of it I found to-night under my bed, and it may be yoursanyhow. 

"Sadie [Sadie was the Big Soprano] keeps saying awful things about ourleaving you here, and she has rather terrified me. You are so beautiful, Harry, --although you never let us tell you so. And Sadie says you havea soul and I haven't, and that souls are deadly things to have. I feelto-night that in urging you to stay I am taking the burden of your soulon me! Do be careful, Harry. If any one you do not know speaks to youcall a policeman. And be sure you get into a respectable pension. Thereare queer ones. 

"Sadie and I think that if you can get along on what you get fromhome--you said your mother would get insurance, didn't you?--and willkeep this as a sort of fund to take you home if anything should gowrong--. But perhaps we are needlessly worried. In any case, of courseit's a loan, and you can preserve that magnificent independence of yoursby sending it back when you get to work to make your fortune. And if youare doubtful at all, just remember that hopeful little mother of yourswho sent you over to get what she had never been able to have forherself, and who planned this for you from the time you were a kiddy andshe named you Harmony. 

"I'm not saying good-bye. I can't. 

"SCATCH. "

That night, while the Portier and his wife slept under their crimsonfeather beds and the crystals of the chandelier in the salon shook inthe draft as if the old Austrian court still danced beneath, Harmonyfought her battle. And a battle it was. Scatchy and the Big Soprano hadnot known everything. There had been no insurance on her father's life;the little mother was penniless. A married sister would care for her, but what then? Harmony had enough remaining of her letter of credit totake her home, and she had--the hoard under the pillow. To go back andteach the violin; or to stay and finish under the master, be presented, as he had promised her, at a special concert in Vienna, with all theprestige at home that that would mean, and its resulting possibility offame and fortune--which?

She decided to stay. There might be a concert or so, and she couldteach English. The Viennese were crazy about English. Some of the storesadvertised "English Spoken. " That would be something to fall back on, aclerkship during the day. 

Toward dawn she discovered that she was very cold, and she went into theBig Soprano's deserted and disordered room. The tile stove was warm andcomfortable, but on the toilet table there lay a disreputable comb withmost of the teeth gone. Harmony kissed this unromantic object! Whichreveals the fact that, genius or not, she was only a young and ratherfrightened girl, and that every atom of her ached with loneliness. 

She did not sleep at all, but sat curled up on the bed with her feetunder her and thought things out. At dawn the Portier, crawling outinto the cold from under his feathers, opened the door into the halland listened. She was playing, not practicing, and the music was thebarcarolle from the "Tales" of Hoffmann. Standing in the doorway inhis night attire, his chest open to the frigid morning air, his faceupraised to the floor above, he hummed the melody in a throaty tenor. 

When the music had died away he went in and closed the door sheepishly. His wife stood over the stove, a stick of firewood in her hand. She eyedhim. 

"So! It is the American Fraulein now!"

"I did but hum a little. She drags out my heart with her music. " Hefumbled with his mustache bandage, which was knotted behind, keeping oneeye on his wife, whose morning pleasure it was to untie it for him. 

"She leaves to-day, " she announced, ignoring the knot. 

"Why? She is alone. Rosa says--"

"She leaves to-day!"

The knot was hopeless now, double-tied and pulled to smooth compactness. The Portier jerked at it. 

"No Fraulein stays here alone. It is not respectable. And what saw Ilast night, after she entered and you stood moon-gazing up the stairafter her! A man in the gateway!"

The Portier was angry. He snarled something through the bandage, whichhad slipped down over his mouth, and picked up a great knife. 

"She will stay if she so desire, " he muttered furiously, and, raisingthe knife, he cut the knotted string. His mustache, faintly gray andsweetly up-curled, stood revealed. 

"She will stay!" he repeated. "And when you see men at the gate, let meknow. She is an angel!"

"And she looks like the angel at the opera, hein?"

This was a crushing blow. The Portier wilted. Such things come fromtelling one's cousin, who keeps a brushshop, what is in one's heart. Yesterday his wife had needed a brush, and to-day--Himmel, the girl mustgo!

Harmony knew also that she must go. The apartment was large andexpensive; Rosa ate much and wasted more. She must find somewhere a tinyroom with board, a humble little room but with a stove. It is follyto practice with stiffened fingers. A room where her playing would notannoy people, that was important. 

She paid Rosa off that morning out of money left for that purpose. Rosawept. She said she would stay with the Fraulein for her keep, because itwas not the custom for young ladies to be alone in the city--young girlsof the people, of course; but beautiful young ladies, no!

Harmony gave her an extra krone or two out of sheer gratitude, but shecould not keep her. And at noon, having packed her trunk, she went downto interview the Portier and his wife, who were agents under the ownerfor the old house. 

The Portier, entirely subdued, was sweeping out the hallway. He lookedpast the girl, not at her, and observed impassively that the lease wasup and it was her privilege to go. In the daylight she was not so likethe angel, and after all she could only play the violin. The angel hada voice, such a voice! And besides, there was an eye at the crack of thedoor. 

The bit of cheer of the night before was gone; it was with a heavy heartthat Harmony started on her quest for cheaper quarters. 

Winter, which had threatened for a month, had come at last. Thecobblestones glittered with ice and the small puddles in the gutterswere frozen. Across the street a spotted deer, shot in the mountains theday before and hanging from a hook before a wild-game shop, was frozenquite stiff. It was a pretty creature. The girl turned her eyes away. Ayoung man, buying cheese and tinned fish in the shop, watched after her. 

"That's an American girl, isn't it?" he asked in American-German. 

The shopkeeper was voluble. Also Rosa had bought much from him, and Rosatalked. When the American left the shop he knew everything of Harmonythat Rosa knew except her name. Rosa called her "The Beautiful One. "Also he was short one krone four beliers in his change, which is readilydone when a customer is plainly thinking of a "beautiful one. "

Harmony searched all day for the little room with board and a stove andno objection to practicing. There were plenty--but the rates! Thewillow plume looked prosperous, and she had a way of making the plainestgarments appear costly. Landladies looked at the plume and the suit andheard the soft swish of silk beneath, which marks only self-respect inthe American woman but is extravagance in Europe, and added to theirregular terms until poor Harmony's heart almost stood still. And thenat last toward evening she happened on a gloomy little pension near thecorner of the Alserstrasse, and it being dark and the plume not showing, and the landlady missing the rustle owing to cotton in her ears forearache, Harmony found terms that she could meet for a time. 

A mean little room enough, but with a stove. The bed sagged in thecenter, and the toilet table had a mirror that made one eye appearhigher than the other and twisted one's nose. But there was an odorof stewing cabbage in the air. Also, alas, there was the odor of manyprevious stewed cabbages, and of dusty carpets and stale tobacco. Harmony had had no lunch; she turned rather faint. 

She arranged to come at once, and got out into the comparative purityof the staircase atmosphere and felt her way down. She reeled once ortwice. At the bottom of the dark stairs she stood for a moment with hereyes closed, to the dismay of a young man who had just come in with acheese and some tinned fish under his arm. 

He put down his packages on the stone floor and caught her arm. 

"Not ill, are you?" he asked in English, and then remembering. "Bist dukrank?" He colored violently at that, recalling too late the familiarityof the "du. "

Harmony smiled faintly. 

"Only tired, " she said in English. "And the odor of cabbage--". 

Her color had come back and she freed herself from his supporting hand. He whistled softly. He had recognized her. 

"Cabbage, of course!" he said. "The pension upstairs is full of it. I live there, and I've eaten so much of it I could be served up withpork. "

"I am going to live there. Is it as bad as that?"

He waved a hand toward the parcels on the floor. 

"So bad, " he observed, "that I keep body and soul together by buyingstrong and odorous food at the delicatessens--odorous, because onlyrugged flavors rise above the atmosphere up there. Cheese is the onlything that really knocks out the cabbage, and once or twice even cheesehas retired defeated. "

"But I don't like cheese. " In sheer relief from the loneliness of theday her spirits were rising. 

"Then coffee! But not there. Coffee at the coffee-house on the corner. Isay--" He hesitated. 

"Yes?"

"Would you--don't you think a cup of coffee would set you up a bit?"

"It sounds attractive, "--uncertainly. 

"Coffee with whipped cream and some little cakes?"

Harmony hesitated. In the gloom of the hall she could hardly seethis brisk young American--young, she knew by his voice, tall by hissilhouette, strong by the way he had caught her. She could not see hisface, but she liked his voice. 

"Do you mean--with you?"

"I'm a doctor. I am going to fill my own prescription. "

That sounded reassuring. Doctors were not as other men; they werelegitimate friends in need. 

"I am sure it is not proper, but--"

"Proper! Of course it is. I shall send you a bill for professionalservices. Besides, won't we be formally introduced to-night by thelandlady? Come now--to the coffee-house and the Paris edition of the'Herald'!" But the next moment he paused and ran his hand over his chin. "I'm pretty disreputable, " he explained. "I have been in a clinic allday, and, hang it all, I'm not shaved. "

"What difference does that make?"

"My dear young lady, " he explained gravely, picking up the cheese andthe tinned fish, "it makes a difference in me that I wish you to realizebefore you see me in a strong light. "

He rapped at the Portier's door, with the intention of leaving hisparcels there, but receiving no reply tucked them under his arm. Amoment later Harmony was in the open air, rather dazed, a bit excited, and lovely with the color the adventure brought into her face. Hercompanion walked beside her, tall, slightly stooped. She essayed afugitive little side-glance up at him, and meeting his eyes hastilyaverted hers. 

They passed a policeman, and suddenly there flashed into the girl's mindlittle Scatchett's letter. 

"Do be careful, Harry. If any one you do not know speaks to you, call apoliceman. "

CHAPTER III

The coffee-house was warm and bright. Round its small tables weregathered miscellaneous groups, here and there a woman, but mostlymen--uniformed officers, who made of the neighborhood coffee-house asort of club, where under their breath they criticized the Governmentand retailed small regimental gossip; professors from the university, still wearing under the beards of middle life the fine horizontal scarsof student days; elderly doctors from the general hospital across thestreet; even a Hofrath or two, drinking beer and reading the "FliegendeBlaetter" and "Simplicissimus"; and in an alcove round a billiard tablea group of noisy Korps students. Over all a permeating odor of coffee, strong black coffee, made with a fig or two to give it color. It roseeven above the blue tobacco haze and dominated the atmosphere withits spicy and stimulating richness. A bustle of waiters, a hum ofconversation, the rattle of newspapers and the click of billiardballs--this was the coffee-house. 

Harmony had never been inside one before. The little music colony hadbeen a tight-closed corporation, retaining its American integrity, inspite of the salon of Maria Theresa and three expensive lessons a weekin German. Harmony knew the art galleries and the churches, which werefree, and the opera, thanks to no butter at supper. But of that backboneof Austrian life, the coffee-house, she was profoundly ignorant. 

Her companion found her a seat in a corner near a heater and disappearedfor an instant on the search for the Paris edition of the "Herald. " Thegirl followed him with her eyes. Seen under the bright electric lights, he was not handsome, hardly good-looking. His mouth was wide, his noseirregular, his hair a nondescript brown, --but the mouth had humor, thenose character, and, thank Heaven, there was plenty of hair. Not thatHarmony saw all this at once. As he tacked to and fro round the tables, with a nod here and a word there, she got a sort of ensemble effect--atall man, possibly thirty, broadshouldered, somewhat stooped, as tallmen are apt to be. And shabby, undeniably shabby!

The shabbiness was a shock. A much-braided officer, trim from the pointsof his mustache to the points of his shoes, rose to speak to him. Theshabbiness was accentuated by the contrast. Possibly the revelationwas an easement to the girl's nervousness. This smiling and unpressedindividual, blithely waving aloft the Paris edition of the "Herald" andequally blithely ignoring the maledictions of the student from whomhe had taken it--even Scatchy could not have called him a vulture orthreatened him with the police. 

He placed the paper before her and sat down at her side, not tointerfere with her outlook over the room. 

"Warmer?" he asked. 

"Very much. "

"Coffee is coming. And cinnamon cakes with plenty of sugar. They know mehere and they know where I live. They save the sugariest cakes for me. Don't let me bother you; go on and read. See which of the smart set isgetting a divorce--or is it always the same one? And who's Presidentback home. "

"I'd rather look round. It's curious, isn't it?"

"Curious? It's heavenly! It's the one thing I am going to take backto America with me--one coffee-house, one dozen military men for localcolor, one dozen students ditto, and one proprietor's wife to sit in thecage and shortchange the unsuspecting. I'll grow wealthy. "

"But what about the medical practice?"

He leaned over toward her; his dark-gray eyes fulfilled the humorouspromise of his mouth. 

"Why, it will work out perfectly, " he said whimsically. "The greatAmerican public will eat cinnamon cakes and drink coffee until thefeeble American nervous system will be shattered. I shall have an officeacross the street!"

After that, having seen how tired she looked, he forbade conversationuntil she had had her coffee. She ate the cakes, too, and he watched herwith comfortable satisfaction. 

"Nod your head but don't speak, " he said. "Remember, I am prescribing, and there's to be no conversation until the coffee is down. Shall I orshall I not open the cheese?"

But Harmony did not wish the cheese, and so signified. Somethinginherently delicate in the unknown kept him from more than an occasionalswift glance at her. He read aloud, as she ate, bits of news from thepaper, pausing to sip his own coffee and to cast an eye over the crowdedroom. Here and there an officer, gazing with too open admiration onHarmony's lovely face, found himself fixed by a pair of steel-gray eyesthat were anything but humorous at that instant, and thought best toshift his gaze. 

The coffee finished, the girl began to gather up her wraps. But theunknown protested. 

"The function of a coffee-house, " he explained gravely, "is twofold. Coffee is only the first half. The second half is conversation. "

"I converse very badly. "

"So do I. Suppose we talk about ourselves. We are sure to do that well. Shall I commence?"

Harmony was in no mood to protest. Having swallowed coffee, why chokeover conversation? Besides, she was very comfortable. It was warmthere, with the heater at her back; better than the little room with thesagging bed and the doors covered with wall paper. Her feet had stoppedaching, too, She could have sat there for hours. And--why evade it?--shewas interested. This whimsical and respectful young man with his absurdtalk and his shabby clothes had roused her curiosity. 

"Please, " she assented. 

"Then, first of all, my name. I'm getting that over early, because itisn't much, as names go. Peter Byrne it is. Don't shudder. "

"Certainly I'm not shuddering. "

"I have another name, put in by my Irish father to conciliate a Germanuncle of my mother's. Augustus! It's rather a mess. What shall I put onmy professional brassplate? If I put P. Augustus Byrne nobody's fooled. They know my wretched first name is Peter. "

"Or Patrick. "

"I rather like Patrick--if I thought it might pass as Patrick! Patrickhas possibilities. The diminutive is Pat, and that's not bad. ButPeter!"

"Do you know, " Harmony confessed half shyly, "I like Peter as a name. "

"Peter it shall be, then. I go down to posterity and fame as PeterByrne. The rest doesn't amount to much, but I want you to know it, sinceyou have been good enough to accept me on faith. I'm here alone, froma little town in eastern Ohio; worked my way through a coeducationalcollege in the West and escaped unmarried; did two years in a drygoodsstore until, by saving and working in my vacations, I got throughmedical college and tried general practice. Didn't like it--alwayswanted to do surgery. A little legacy from the German uncle, trying toatone for the 'Augustus, ' gave me enough money to come here. I've got achance with the Days--surgeons, you know--when I go back, if I can hangon long enough. That's all. Here's a traveler's check with my name onit, to vouch for the truth of this thrilling narrative. Gaze on it withawe; there are only a few of them left!"

Harmony was as delicately strung, as vibratingly responsive as thestrings of her own violin, and under the even lightness of his tone shefelt many things that met a response in her--loneliness and struggle, and the ever-present anxiety about money, grim determination, hope andfear, and even occasional despair. He was still young, but there werelines in his face and a hint of gray in his hair. Even had he been lessfrank, she would have known soon enough--the dingy little pension, theshabby clothes--

She held out her hand. 

"Thank you for telling me, " she said simply. "I think I understand verywell because--it's music with me: violin. And my friends have gone, so Iam alone, too. "

He leaned his elbows on the table and looked out over the crowd withoutseeing it. 

"It's curious, isn't it?" he said. "Here we are, you and I, meetingin the center of Europe, both lonely as the mischief, both working ourheads off for an idea that may never pan out! Why aren't you at hometo-night, eating a civilized beefsteak and running upstairs to get readyfor a nice young man to bring you a box of chocolates? Why am I notmeasuring out calico in Shipley & West's? Instead, we are going toFrau Schwarz', to listen to cold ham and scorched compote eaten in sixdifferent languages. "

Harmony made no immediate reply. He seemed to expect none. She wasdrawing on her gloves, her eyes, like his, roving over the crowd. 

Far back among the tables a young man rose and yawned. Then, seeing Byrne, he waved a greeting to him. Byrne's eyes, from beingintrospective, became watchful. 

The young man was handsome in a florid, red-checked way, with black hairand blue eyes. Unlike Byrne, he was foppishly neat. He was not alone. Aslim little Austrian girl, exceedingly chic, rose when he did and threwaway the end of a cigarette. 

"Why do we go so soon?" she demanded fretfully in German. "It is earlystill. "

He replied in English. It was a curious way they had, and eminentlysatisfactory, each understanding better than he spoke the other'slanguage. 

"Because, my beloved, " he said lightly, "you are smoking a great manypoisonous and highly expensive cigarettes. Also I wish to speak toPeter. "

The girl followed his eyes and stiffened jealously. 

"Who is that with Peter?"

"We are going over to find out, little one. Old Peter with a woman atlast!"

The little Austrian walked delicately, swaying her slim body with a slowand sensuous grace. She touched an officer as she passed him, and pausedto apologize, to the officer's delight and her escort's irritation. AndPeter Byrne watched and waited, a line of annoyance between his brows. The girl was ahead; that complicated things. 

When she was within a dozen feet of the table he rose hastily, with aword of apology, and met the couple. It was adroitly done. He had takenthe little Austrian's arm and led her by the table while he was stillgreeting her. He held her in conversation in his absurd German untilthey had reached the swinging doors, while her companion followedhelplessly. And he bowed her out, protesting his undying admiration forher eyes, while the florid youth alternately raged behind him and staredback at Harmony, interested and unconscious behind her table. 

The little Austrian was on the pavement when Byrne turned, unsmiling, tothe other man. 

"That won't do, you know, Stewart, " he said, grave but not unfriendly. 

"The Kid wouldn't bite her. "

"We'll not argue about it. "

After a second's awkward pause Stewart smiled. 

"Certainly not, " he agreed cheerfully. "That is up to you, of course. Ididn't know. We're looking for you to-night. "

A sudden repulsion for the evening's engagement rose in Byrne, but thesituation following his ungraciousness was delicate. 

"I'll be round, " he said. "I have a lecture and I may be late, but I'llcome. "

The "Kid" was not stupid. She moved off into the night, chin in air, angrily flushed. 

"You saw!" she choked, when Stewart had overtaken her and slipped a handthrough her arm. "He protects her from me! It is because of you. BeforeI knew you--"

"Before you knew me, little one, " he said cheerfully, "you were exactlywhat you are now. "

She paused on the curb and raised her voice. 

"So! And what is that?"

"Beautiful as the stars, only--not so remote. "

In their curious bi-lingual talk there was little room for subtlety. The"beautiful" calmed her, but the second part of the sentence roused hersuspicion. 

"Remote? What is that?"

"I was thinking of Worthington. "

The name was a signal for war. Stewart repented, but too late. 

In the cold evening air, to the amusement of a passing detail ofsoldiers trundling a breadwagon by a rope, Stewart stood on the pavementand dodged verbal brickbats of Viennese idioms and German epithets. Hedrew his chin into the up-turned collar of his overcoat and waited, anabsurdly patient figure, until the hail of consonants had subsidedinto a rain of tears. Then he took the girl's elbow again and led her, childishly weeping, into a narrow side street beyond the prying ears andeyes of the Alserstrasse. 

Byrne went back to Harmony. The incident of Stewart and the girl wasclosed and he dismissed it instantly. That situation was not his, orof his making. But here in the coffee-house, lovely, alluring, ratherpuzzled at this moment, was also a situation. For there was a situation. He had suspected it that morning, listening to the delicatessen-seller'snarrative of Rosa's account of the disrupted colony across in the oldlodge; he had been certain of it that evening, finding Harmony in thedark entrance to his own rather sordid pension. Now, in the brightlight of the coffee-house, surmising her poverty, seeing her beauty, theemotional coming and going of her color, her frank loneliness, and Godsave the mark!--her trust in him, he accepted the situation and adoptedit: his responsibility, if you please. 

He straightened under it. He knew the old city fairly well--enough tolove it and to loathe it in one breath. He had seen its tragedies andpassed them by, or had, in his haphazard way, thrown a greeting to them, or even a glass of native wine. And he knew the musical temperament;the all or nothing of its insistent demands; its heights that are higherthan others, its wretchednesses that are hell. Once in the HofstadtTheater, where he had bought standing room, he had seen a girl he hadknown in Berlin, where he was taking clinics and where she was cookingher own meals. She had been studying singing. In the Hofstadt Theatershe had worn a sable coat and had avoided his eyes. 

Perhaps the old coffee-house had seen nothing more absurd, in its yearsof coffee and billiards and Munchener beer, than Peter's new resolutionthat night: this poverty adopting poverty, this youth adopting youth, with the altruistic purpose of saving it from itself. 

And this, mind you, before Peter Byrne had heard Harmony's story or knewher name, Rosa having called her "The Beautiful One" in her narrative, and the delicatessen-seller being literal in his repetition. 

Back to "The Beautiful One" went Peter Byrne, and, true to his new partof protector and guardian, squared his shoulders and tried to look mucholder than he really was, and responsible. The result was a grimnessthat alarmed Harmony back to the forgotten proprieties. 

"I think I must go, " she said hurriedly, after a glance at hisdeterminedly altruistic profile. "I must finish packing my things. ThePortier has promised--"

"Go! Why, you haven't even told me your name!"

"Frau Schwarz will present you to-night, " primly and rising. 

Peter Byrne rose, too. 

"I am going back with you. You should not go through that lonely yardalone after dark. "

"Yard! How do you know that?"

Byrne was picking up the cheese, which he had thoughtlessly set on theheater, and which proved to be in an alarming state of dissolution. Ittook a moment to rewrap, and incidentally furnished an inspiration. Heindicated it airily. 

"Saw you this morning coming out--delicatessen shop across the street, "he said glibly. And then, in an outburst of honesty which the girl'seyes seemed somehow to compel: "That's true, but it's not all the truth. I was on the bus last night, and when you got off alone I--I saw youwere an American, and that's not a good neighborhood. I took the libertyof following you to your gate!"

He need not have been alarmed. Harmony was only grateful, and said so. And in her gratitude she made no objection to his suggestion that he seeher safely to the old lodge and help her carry her hand-luggage and herviolin to the pension. He paid the trifling score, and followed by manyeyes in the room they went out into the crisp night together. 

At the lodge the doors stood wide, and a vigorous sound of scrubbingshowed that the Portier's wife was preparing for the inspection ofpossible new tenants. She was cleaning down the stairs by the light ofa candle, and the steam of the hot water on the cold marble invested herlike an aura. She stood aside to let them pass, and then went cumbrouslydown the stairs to where, a fork in one hand and a pipe in the other, the Portier was frying chops for the evening meal. 

"What have I said?" she demanded from the doorway. "Your angel is here. "

"So!"

"She with whom you sing, old cracked voice! Whose money you refuse, because she reminds you of your opera singer! She is again here, andwith a man!"

"It is the way of the young and beautiful--there is always a man, " saidthe Portier, turning a chop. 

His wife wiped her steaming hands on her apron and turned away, exasperated. 

"It is the same man whom I last night saw at the gate, " she threw backover her shoulder. "I knew it from the first; but you, great booby, cansee nothing but red lips. Bah!"

Upstairs in the salon of Maria Theresa, lighted by one candle andfreezing cold, in a stiff chair under the great chandelier Peter Byrnesat and waited and blew on his fingers. Down below, in the Street ofSeven Stars, the arc lights swung in the wind. 

CHAPTER IV

The supper that evening was even unusually bad. Frau Schwarz, muchcrimped and clad in frayed black satin, presided at the head of the longtable. There were few, almost no Americans, the Americans flocking togood food at reckless prices in more fashionable pensions; to the FrauGallitzenstein's, for instance, in the Kochgasse, where there was tobe had real beefsteak, where turkeys were served at Thanksgiving andChristmas, and where, were one so minded, one might revel in whippedcream. 

The Pension Schwarz, however, was not without adornment. In the centerof the table was a large bunch of red cotton roses with wire stems andgreen paper leaves, and over the side-table, with its luxury of compotein tall glass dishes and its wealth of small hard cakes, there hunga framed motto which said, "Nicht Rauchen, " "No Smoking, "--and whichlooked suspiciously as if it had once adorned a compartment of arailroad train. 

Peter Byrne was early in the dining-room. He had made, for him, acareful toilet, which consisted of a shave and clean linen. But he hadgone further: He had discovered, for the first time in the three monthsof its defection, a button missing from his coat, and had set about toreplace it. He had cut a button from another coat, by the easy methodof amputating it with a surgical bistoury, and had sewed it in its newposition with a curved surgical needle and a few inches of sterilizedcatgut. The operation was slow and painful, and accomplished only withthe aid of two cigarettes and an artery clip. When it was over he tiedthe ends in a surgeon's knot underneath and stood back to consider theresult. It seemed neat enough, but conspicuous. After a moment or two oftroubled thought he blacked the white catgut with a dot of ink and wenton his way rejoicing. 

Peter Byrne was entirely untroubled as to the wisdom of the course hehad laid out for himself. He followed no consecutive line of thought ashe dressed. When he was not smoking he was whistling, and when he wasdoing neither, and the needle proved refractory in his cold fingers, he was swearing to himself. For there was no fire in the room. Thematerials for a fire were there, and a white tile stove, as cozy as anobelisk in a cemetery, stood in the corner. But fires are expensive, and hardly necessary when one sleeps with all one's windows open--onewindow, to be exact, the room being very small--and spends most of theday in a warm and comfortable shambles called a hospital. 

To tell the truth he was not thinking of Harmony at all, exceptsubconsciously, as instance the button. He was going over, step bystep, the technic of an operation he had seen that afternoon, weighing, considering, even criticizing. His conclusion, reached as he brushedback his hair and put away his sewing implements, was somewhat to theeffect that he could have done a better piece of work with his eyesshut and his hands tied behind his back; and that if it were not for thewealth of material to work on he'd pack up and go home. Which broughthim back to Harmony and his new responsibility. He took off the necktiehe had absently put on and hunted out a better one. 

He was late at supper--an offense that brought a scowl from the headof the table, a scowl that he met with a cheerful smile. Harmony wasalready in her place. Seated between a little Bulgarian and a Jewishstudent from Galicia, she was almost immediately struggling in a sea oflanguage, into which she struck out now and then tentatively, only tobe again submerged. Byrne had bowed to her conventionally, even coldly, aware of the sharp eyes and tongues round the table, but Harmony didnot understand. She had expected moral support from his presence, andfailing that she sank back into the loneliness and depression of theday. Her bright color faded; her eyes looked tragic and rather aloof. She ate almost nothing, and left the table before the others hadfinished. 

What curious little dramas of the table are played under unseeing eyes!What small tragedies begin with the soup and end with dessert! Whatheartaches with a salad! Small tragedies of averted eyes, lookingaway from appealing ones; lips that tremble with wretchedness nibblingdaintily at a morsel; smiles that sear; foolish bits of talk that meannothing except to one, and to that one everything! Harmony, freezing atPeter's formal bow and gazing obstinately ahead during the rest of themeal, or no nearer Peter than the red-paper roses, and Peter, showeringthe little Bulgarian next to her with detestable German in the hope of aglance. And over all the odor of cabbage salad, and the "Nicht Rauchen"sign, and an acrimonious discussion on eugenics between an Americanwoman doctor named Gates and a German matron who had had fifteenchildren, and who reduced every general statement to a personal insult. 

Peter followed Harmony as soon as he dared. Her door was closed, and shewas playing very softly, so as to disturb no one. Defiantly, too, had heonly known it, her small chin up and her color high again; playing the"Humoresque, " of all things, in the hope, of course, that he wouldhear it and guess from her choice the wild merriment of her mood. Peterrapped once or twice, but obtained no answer, save that the "Humoresque"rose a bit higher; and, Dr. Gates coming along the hall just then, hewas forced to light a cigarette to cover his pausing. 

Dr. Gates, however, was not suspicious. She was a smallish woman offorty or thereabout, with keen eyes behind glasses and a masculinedisregard of clothes, and she paused by Byrne to let him help her intoher ulster. 

"New girl, eh?" she said, with a birdlike nod toward the door. "Verygay, isn't she, to have just finished a supper like that! Honestly, Peter, what are we going to do?"

"Growl and stay on, as we have for six months. There is better food, butnot for our terms. "

Dr. Gates sighed, and picking a soft felt hat from the table put it onwith a single jerk down over her hair. 

"Oh, darn money, anyhow!" she said. "Come and walk to the corner withme. I have a lecture. "

Peter promised to follow in a moment, and hurried back to his room. There, on a page from one of his lecture notebooks, he wrote--

"Are you ill? Or have I done anything?"

"P. B. "

This with great care he was pushing under Harmony's door when the littleBulgarian came along and stopped, smiling. He said nothing, nor didPeter, who rose and dusted his knees. The little Bulgarian spoke noEnglish and little German. Between them was the wall of language. Buthigher than this barrier was the understanding of their common sex. Heheld out his hand, still smiling, and Peter, grinning sheepishly, tookit. Then he followed the woman doctor down the stairs. 

To say that Peter Byrne was already in love with Harmony would beabsurd. She attracted him, as any beautiful and helpless girl attractsan unattracted man. He was much more concerned, now that he feared hehad offended her, than he would have been without this fillip to hisinterest. But even his concern did not prevent his taking copious andintelligent notes at his lecture that night, or interfere with hisenjoyment of the Stein of beer with which, after it was over, he washeddown its involved German. 

The engagement at Stewart's irked him somewhat. He did not approve ofStewart exactly, not from any dislike of the man, but from a lack offineness in the man himself--an intangible thing that seems to be amatter of that unfashionable essence, the soul, as against the clay; ofthe thing contained, by an inverse metonymy, for the container. 

Boyer, a nerve man from Texas, met him on the street, and they walkedto Stewart's apartment together. The frosty air and the rapid exercisecombined to drive away Byrne's irritation; that, and the recollectionthat it was Saturday night and that to-morrow there would be no clinics, no lectures, no operations; that the great shambles would be closed downand that priests would read mass to convalescents in the chapels. He waswhistling as he walked along. 

Boyer, a much older man, whose wife had come over with him, stoppedunder a street light to consult his watch. 

"Almost ten!" he said. "I hope you don't mind, Byrne; but I told JennieI was going to your pension. She detests Stewart. "

"Oh, that's all right. She knows you're playing poker?"

"Yes. She doesn't object to poker. It's the other. You can't make a goodwoman understand that sort of thing. "

"Thank God for that!"

After a moment of silence Byrne took up his whistling again. It was the"Humoresque. "

Stewart's apartment was on the third floor. Admission at that hour wasto be gained only by ringing, and Boyer touched the bell. The lightswere still on, however, in the hallways, revealing not overclean stairsand, for a wonder, an electric elevator. This, however, a card announcedas out of order. Boyer stopped and examined the card grimly. 

"'Out of order'!" he observed. "Out of order since last spring, judgingby that card. Vorwarts!"

They climbed easily, deliberately. At home in God's country Boyer playedgolf, as became the leading specialist of his county. Byrne, with adriving-arm like the rod of a locomotive, had been obliged toforswear the more expensive game for tennis, with a resulting musculardevelopment that his slight stoop belied. He was as hard as nails, without an ounce of fat, and he climbed the long steep flights with anelasticity that left even Boyer a step or so behind. 

Stewart opened the door himself, long German pipe in hand, his coatreplaced by a worn smoking-jacket. The little apartment was thick withsmoke, and from a room on the right came the click of chips and thesound of beer mugs on wood. 

Marie, restored to good humor, came out to greet them, and both menbowed ceremoniously over her hand, clicking their heels together andbowing from the waist. Byrne sniffed. 

"What do I smell, Marie?" he demanded. "Surely not sausages!"

Marie dimpled. It was an old joke, to be greeted as one greets an oldfriend. It was always sausages. 

"Sausages, of a truth--fat ones. '

"But surely not with mustard?"

"Ach, ja--englisch mustard. "

Stewart and Boyer had gone on ahead. Marie laid a detaining hand onByrne's arm. 

"I was very angry with you to-day. "

"With me?"

Like the others who occasionally gathered in Stewart's unconventionalmenage, Byrne had adopted Stewart's custom of addressing Marie inEnglish, while she replied in her own tongue. 

"Ja. I wished but to see nearer the American Fraulein's hat, andyou--She is rich, so?"

"I really don't know. I think not. "

"And good?"

"Yes, of course. "

Marie was small; she stood, her head back, her eyes narrowed, lookingup at Byrne. There was nothing evil in her face, it was not even hard. Rather, there was a sort of weariness, as of age and experience. Shehad put on a white dress, cut out at the neck, and above her collarboneswere small, cuplike hollows. She was very thin. 

"I was sad to-night, " she said plaintively. "I wished to jump out thewindow. "

Byrne was startled, but the girl was smiling at the recollection. 

"And I made you feel like that?"

"Not you--the other Fraulein. I was dirt to her. I--" She stoppedtragically, then sniffled. 

"The sausages!" she cried, and gathering up her skirts ran toward thekitchen. Byrne went on into the sitting-room. 

Stewart was a single man spending two years in post-graduate work inGermany and Austria, not so much because the Germans and Austrians couldteach what could not be taught at home, but because of the wealth ofclinical material. The great European hospitals, filled to overflowing, offered unlimited choice of cases. The contempt for human life ofoverpopulated cities, coupled with the extreme poverty and helplessnessof the masses, combined to form that tragic part of the world which diesthat others may live. 

Stewart, like Byrne, was doing surgery, and the very lack of finenesswhich Byrne felt in the man promised something in his work, a sort ofruthlessness, a singleness of purpose, good or bad, an overwhelmingegotism that in his profession might only be a necessary self-reliance. 

His singleness of purpose had, at the beginning of his residence inVienna, devoted itself to making him comfortable. With the narrow meansat his control he had the choice of two alternatives: To live, as Byrnewas living, in a third-class pension, stewing in summer, freezing inwinter, starving always; or the alternative he had chosen. 

The Stewart apartment had only three rooms, but it possessed that luxuryof luxuries, a bath. It was not a bath in the usual sense of wateron tap, and shining nickel plate, but a bath for all that, where withpremeditation and forethought one might bathe. The room had once beena fuel and store room, but now boasted a tin tub and a stove with areservoir on top, where water might be heated to the boiling point, atthe same time bringing up the atmosphere to a point where the tin tubsizzled if one touched it. 

Behind the bathroom a tiny kitchen with a brick stove; next, a bedroom;the whole incredibly neat. Along one side of the wall a clothespress, which the combined wardrobes of two did not fill. And beyond that again, opening through an arch with a dingy chenille curtain, the sitting-room, now in chaotic disorder. 

Byrne went directly to the sitting-room. There were four men alreadythere: Stewart and Boyer, a pathology man named Wallace Hunter, doingresearch work at the general hospital, and a young piano student fromTennessee named MacLean. The cards had been already dealt, and Byrnestood by waiting for the hand to be played. 

The game was a small one, as befitted the means of the majority. It wasa regular Saturday night affair, as much a custom as the beer that satin Steins on the floor beside each man, or as Marie's boiled Wienersausages. 

The blue chips represented a Krone, the white ones five Hellers. MacLean, who was hardly more than a boy, was winning, drawing in chipswith quick gestures of his long pianist's fingers. 

Byrne sat down and picked up his cards. Stewart was staying out, and so, after a glance, did he. The other three drew cards and fell to betting. Stewart leaned back and filled his long pipe, and after a second'shesitation Byrne turned to him. 

"I don't know just what to say, Stewart, " he began in an undertone. "I'msorry. I didn't want to hurt Marie, but--"

"Oh, that's all right. " Stewart drew at his pipe and bent forward towatch the game with an air of ending the discussion. 

"Not at all. I did hurt her and I want to explain. Marie has been kindto me, and I like her. You know that. "

"Don't be an ass!" Stewart turned on him sharply. "Marie is a littlefool, that's all. I didn't know it was an American girl. "

Byrne played in bad luck. His mind was not on the cards. He stayedout of the last hand, and with a cigarette wandered about the room. Heglanced into the tidy bedroom and beyond, to where Marie hovered overthe stove. 

She turned and saw him. 

"Come, " she called. "Watch the supper for me while I go down for morebeer. "

"But no, " he replied, imitating her tone. "Watch the supper for me whileI go down for more beer. "

"I love thee, " she called merrily. "Tell the Herr Doktor I love thee. And here is the pitcher. "

When he returned the supper was already laid in the little kitchen. Thecards were put away, and young MacLean and Wallace Hunter were replacingthe cover and the lamp on the card-table. Stewart was orating from apinnacle of proprietorship. 

"Exactly, " he was saying, in reply to something gone before; "I usedto come here Saturday nights--used to come early and take a bath. Worthington had rented it furnished for a song. Used to sit in a cornerand envy Worthington his bathtub, and that lamp there, and decent food, and a bed that didn't suffer from necrosis in the center. Then when hewas called home I took it. "

"Girl and all, wasn't it?"

"Girl and all. Old Worth said she was straight, and, by Jove, she is. Hecame back last fall on his wedding trip--he married a wealthy girl andcame to see us. I was out, but Marie was here. There was the deuce topay. "

He lowered his voice. The men had gathered about him in a group. 

"Jealous, eh?" from Hunter. 

"Jealous? No! He tried to kiss her and she hit him--said he didn'trespect her!"

"It's a curious code of honor, " said Boyer thoughtfully. And indeed tonone but Stewart did it seem amusing. This little girl of the streets, driven by God knows what necessity to make her own code and, having madeit, living up to it with every fiber of her. 

"Bitte zum speisen!" called Marie gayly from her brick stove, and themen trooped out to the kitchen. 

The supper was spread on the table, with the pitcher of beer in thecenter. There were Swiss cheese and cold ham and rolls, and above allsausages and mustard. Peter drank a great deal of beer, as did theothers, and sang German songs with a frightful accent and much vigor andsentiment, as also did the others. 

Then he went back to the cold room in the Pension Schwarz, and toldhimself he was a fool to live alone when one could live like a princefor the same sum properly laid out. He dropped into the hollow center ofhis bed, where his big figure fitted as comfortably as though it lay ina washtub, and before his eyes there came a vision of Stewart's flat andthe slippers by the fire--which was eminently human. 

However, a moment later he yawned, and said aloud, with considerablevigor, that he'd be damned if he would--which was eminently Peter Byrne. Almost immediately, with the bed coverings, augmented by his overcoat, drawn snug to his chin, and the better necktie swinging from the gasjetin the air from the opened window, Peter was asleep. For four hours hehad entirely forgotten Harmony. 

CHAPTER V

The peace of a gray Sunday morning hung like a cloud over the littlePension Schwarz. In the kitchen the elderly maid, with a shawl over hershoulders and stiffened fingers, made the fire, while in the dining-roomthe little chambermaid cut butter and divided it sparingly among a dozenbreakfast trays--on each tray two hard rolls, a butter pat, a plate, a cup. On two trays Olga, with a glance over her shoulder, placed twobutter pats. The mistress yet slept, but in the kitchen Katrina had akeen eye for butter--and a hard heart. 

Katrina came to the door. 

"The hot water is ready, " she announced. "And the coffee also. Hast thoubeen to mass?"

"Ja. "

"That is a lie. " This quite on general principle, it being one of thecook's small tyrannies to exact religious observance from her underling, and one of Olga's Sunday morning's indulgences to oversleep and avoidthe mass. Olga took the accusation meekly and without reply, beingoccupied at that moment in standing between Katrina and the extra patsof butter. 

"For the lie, " said Katrina calmly, "thou shalt have no butter thismorning. There, the Herr Doktor rings for water. Get it, wicked one!"

Katrina turned slowly in the doorway. 

"The new Fraulein is American?"

"Ja. "

Katrina shrugged her shoulders. 

"Then I shall put more water to heat, " she said resignedly. "TheAmericans use much water. God knows it cannot be healthy!"

Olga filled her pitcher from the great copper kettle and stood with itpoised in her thin young arms. 

"The new Fraulein is very beautiful, " she continued aloud. "Thinkestthou it is the hot water?"

"Is an egg more beautiful for being boiled?" demanded Katrina. "Go, andbe less foolish. See, it is not the Herr Doktor who rings, but the newAmerican. "

Olga carried her pitcher to Harmony's door, and being bidden, entered. The room was frigid and Harmony, at the window in her nightgown, wasclosing the outer casement. The inner still swung open. Olga, having putdown her pitcher, shivered. 

"Surely the Fraulein has not slept with open windows?"

"Always with open windows. " Harmony having secured the inner casement, was wrapping herself in the blue silk kimono with the faded butterflies. Merely to look at it made Olga shiver afresh. She shook her head. 

"But the air of the night, " she said, "it is full of mists andillnesses! Will you have breakfast now?"

"In ten minutes, after I have bathed. "

Olga having put a match to the stove went back to the kitchen, shakingher head. 

"They are strange, the Americans!" she said to latrine. "And if to belovely one must bathe daily, and sleep with open windows--"

Harmony had slept soundly after all. Her pique at Byrne had passedwith the reading of his note, and the sensation of his protection andnearness had been almost physical. In the virginal little apartment inthe lodge of Maria Theresa the only masculine presence had been thatof the Portier, carrying up coals at ninety Hellers a bucket, or of theaccompanist who each alternate day had played for the Big Soprano topractice. And they had felt no deprivation, except for those occasionaltimes when Scatchy developed a reckless wish to see the interior of adancing-hall or one of the little theaters that opened after the opera. 

But, as calmly as though she had never argued alone with a cabman ordisputed the bill at the delicatessen shop, Harmony had thrown herselfon the protection of this shabby big American whom she had met butonce, and, having done so, slept like a baby. Not, of course, thatshe realized her dependence. She had felt very old and experienced andexceedingly courageous as she put out her light the night before andtook a flying leap into the bed. She was still old and experienced, if atrifle less courageous, that Sunday morning. 

Promptly in ten minutes Olga brought the breakfast, two rolls, two patsof butter--shades of the sleeping mistress and Katrina the thrifty--anda cup of coffee. On the tray was a bit of paper torn from a notebook:--

"Part of the prescription is an occasional walk in good company. Willyou walk with me this afternoon? I would come in person to ask you, butam spending the morning in my bathrobe, while my one remaining Americansuit is being pressed. 

"P. B. "

Harmony got the ink and her pen from her trunk and wrote below:--

"You are very kind to me. Yes, indeed. 

"H. W. "

When frequent slamming of doors and steps along the passageway toldHarmony that the pension was fully awake, she got out her violin. The idea of work obsessed her. To-morrow there would be the hunt forsomething to do to supplement her resources, this afternoon she hadrashly promised to walk. The morning, then, must be given up to work. But after all she did little. 

For an hour, perhaps, she practiced. The little Bulgarian paused outsideher door and listened, rapt, his eyes closed. Peter Byrne, listeningwhile he sorted lecture memoranda at his little table in bathrobe andslippers, absently filed the little note with the others--where he cameacross it months later--next to a lecture on McBurney's Point, and spenta sad hour or so over it. Over all the sordid little pension, with itsodors of food and stale air, its spotted napery and dusty artificialflowers, the music hovered, and made for the time all things lovely. 

In her room across from Harmony's, Anna Gates was sewing, or preparingto sew. Her hair in a knob, her sleeves rolled up, the room in violentdisorder, she was bending over the bed, cutting savagely at a roll ofpink flannel. Because she was working with curved surgeon's scissors, borrowed from Peter, the cut edges were strangely scalloped. Her methodas well as her tools was unique. Clearly she was intent on a bodygarment, for now and then she picked up the flannel and held it to her. Having thus, as one may say, got the line of the thing, she proceeded tocut again, jaw tight set, small veins on her forehead swelling, a smallreplica of Peter Byrne sewing a button on his coat. 

After a time it became clear to her that her method was wrong. Sherolled up the flannel viciously and flung it into a corner, andproceeded to her Sunday morning occupation of putting away the garmentsshe had worn during the week, a vast and motley collection. 

On the irritability of her mood Harmony's music had a late but certaineffect. She made a toilet, a trifle less casual than usual, seeing thatshe put on her stays, and rather sheepishly picked up the bundle fromthe corner. She hunted about for a thimble, being certain she hadbrought one from home a year before, but failed to find it. And finally, bundle under her arm and smiling, she knocked at Harmony's door. 

"Would you mind letting me sit with you?" she asked. "I'll not stir. Iwant to sew, and my room is such a mess!"

Harmony threw the door wide. "You will make me very happy, if only mypracticing does not disturb you. "

Dr. Gates came in and closed the door. 

"I'll probably be the disturbing element, " she said. "I'm a noisysewer. "

Harmony's immaculate room and radiant person put her in good humorimmediately. She borrowed a thimble--not because she cared whethershe had one or not, but because she knew a thimble was a part of thegame--and settled herself in a corner, her ragged pieces in her lap. Foran hour she plodded along and Harmony played. Then the girl put down herbow and turned to the corner. The little doctor was jerking at a knot inher thread. 

"It's in the most damnable knot!" she said, and Harmony was suddenlyaware that she was crying, and heartily ashamed of it. 

"Please don't pay any attention to me, " she implored. "I hate to sew. That's the trouble. Or perhaps it's not all the trouble. I'm a foolabout music. "

"Perhaps, if you hate to sew--"

"I hate a good many things, my dear, when you play like that. I hatebeing over here in this place, and I hate fleas and German cooking andclinics, and I hate being forty years old and as poor as a church-mouseand as ugly as sin, and I hate never having had any children!"

Harmony was very uncomfortable and just a little shocked. But the nextmoment Dr. Gates had wiped her eyes with a scrap of the flannel and wassmiling up through her glasses. 

"The plain truth really is that I have indigestion. I dare say I'mreally weeping in anticipation over the Sunday dinner! The food's badand I can't afford to live anywhere else. I'd take a room and do my owncooking, but what time have I?" She spread out the pieces of flannel onher knee. "Does this look like anything to you?"

"A petticoat, isn't it?"

"I didn't intend it as a petticoat. "

"I thought, on account of the scallops--"

"Scallops!" Dr. Gates gazed at the painfully cut pink edges and fromthem to Harmony. Then she laughed, peal after peal of joyous mirth. 

"Scallops!" she gasped at last. "Oh, my dear, if you'd seen me cutting'em! And with Peter Byrne's scissors!"

Now here at last they were on common ground. Harmony, delicatelyflushed, repeated the name, clung to it conversationally, using littleadroitnesses to bring the talk back to him. All roads of talk led toPeter--Peter's future, Peter's poverty, Peter's refusing to have hishair cut, Peter's encounter with a major of the guards, and the duelPeter almost fought. It developed that Peter, as the challenged, had hadthe choice of weapons, and had chosen fists, and that the major had beencarried away. Dr. Gates grew rather weary of Peter at last and fell backon the pink flannel. She confided to Harmony that the various pieces, united, were to make a dressing-gown for a little American boy at thehospital. "Although, " she commented, "it looks more like a chair cover. "

Harmony offered to help her, and got out a sewing-box that was linedwith a piece of her mother's wedding dress. And as she straightened thecrooked edges she told the doctor about the wedding dress, and about themother who had called her Harmony because of the hope in her heart. And soon, by dint of skillful listening, which is always better thanquestioning, the faded little woman doctor knew all the story. 

She was rather aghast. 

"But suppose you cannot find anything to do?"

"I must, " simply. 

"It's such a terrible city for a girl alone. "

"I'm not really alone. I know you now. "

"An impoverished spinster! Much help I shall be!"

"And there is Peter Byrne. "

"Peter!" Dr. Gates sniffed. "Peter is poorer than I am, if there is anycomparison in destitution!"

Harmony stiffened a trifle. 

"Of course I do not mean money, " she said. "There are such things asencouragement, and--and friendliness. "

"One cannot eat encouragement, " retorted Dr. Gates sagely. "Andfriendliness between you and any man--bah! Even Peter is only human, mydear. "

"I am sure he is very good. "

"So he is. He is very poor. But you are very attractive. There, I'm askeptic about men, but you can trust Peter. Only don't fall in love withhim. It will be years before he can marry. And don't let him fall inlove with you. He probably will. "

Whereupon Dr. Gates taking herself and her pink flannel off to preparefor lunch, Harmony sent a formal note to Peter Byrne, regretting thata headache kept her from taking the afternoon walk as she had promised. Also, to avoid meeting him, she did without dinner, and spent theafternoon crying herself into a headache that was real enough. 

Anna Gates was no fool. While she made her few preparations for dinnershe repented bitterly what she had said to Harmony. It is difficult forthe sophistry of forty to remember and cherish the innocence of twenty. For illusions it is apt to substitute facts, the material for thespiritual, the body against the soul. Dr. Gates, from her school ofgeneral practice, had come to view life along physiological lines. 

With her customary frankness she approached Peter after the meal. 

"I've been making mischief, Peter. I been talking too much, as usual. "

"Certainly not about me, Doctor. Out of my blameless life--"

"About you, as a representative member of your sex. I'm a fool. "

Peter looked serious. He had put on the newly pressed suit and his besttie, and was looking distinguished and just now rather stern. 

"To whom?"

"To the young Wells person. Frankly, Peter, I dare say at this momentshe thinks you are everything you shouldn't be, because I said you wereonly human. Why it should be evil to be human, or human to be evil--"

"I cannot imagine, " said Peter slowly, "the reason for any conversationabout me. "

"Nor I, when I look back. We seemed to talk about other things, but italways ended with you. Perhaps you were our one subject in common. Thenshe irritated me by her calm confidence. The world was good, everybodywas good. She would find a safe occupation and all would be well. "

"So you warned her against me, " said Peter grimly. 

"I told her you were human and that she was attractive. Shall I make'way with myself?"

"Cui bono?" demanded Peter, smiling in spite of himself. "The mischiefis done. "

Dr. Gates looked up at him. 

"I'm in love with you myself, Peter!" she said gratefully. "Perhaps itis the tie. Did you ever eat such a meal?"

CHAPTER VI

A very pale and dispirited Harmony it was who bathed her eyes in coldwater that evening and obeyed little Olga's "Bitte sum speisen. " Thechairs round the dining-table were only half occupied--a free concerthad taken some, Sunday excursions others. The little Bulgarian, secretlyconsidered to be a political spy, was never about on this one evening ofthe week. Rumor had it that on these evenings, secreted in an attic roomfar off in the sixteenth district, he wrote and sent off reports of whathe had learned during the week--his gleanings from near-by tables incoffee-houses or from the indiscreet hours after midnight in the cafe, where the Austrian military was wont to gather and drink. 

Into the empty chair beside Harmony Peter slid his long figure, and meta tremulous bow and silence. From the head of the table Frau Schwarz wastalking volubly--as if, by mere sound, to distract attention from thescantiness of the meal. Under cover of the Babel Peter spoke to thegirl. Having had his warning his tone was friendly, without a hint ofthe intimacy of the day before. 

"Better?"

"Not entirely. Somewhat. "

"I wish you had sent Olga to me for some tablets. No one needs to sufferfrom headache, when five grains or so of powder will help them. "

"I am afraid of headache tablets. "

"Not when your physician prescribes them, I hope!"

This was the right note. Harmony brightened a little. After all, whathad she to do with the man himself? He had constituted himself herphysician. That was all. 

"The next time I shall send Olga. "

"Good!" he responded heartily; and proceeded to make such a meal ashe might, talking little, and nursing, by a careful indifference, hernew-growing confidence. 

It was when he had pushed his plate away and lighted acigarette--according to the custom of the pension, which accorded the"Nicht Rauchen" sign the same attention that it did to the portrait ofthe deceased Herr Schwarz--that he turned to her again. 

"I am sorry you are not able to walk. It promises a nice night. "

Peter was clever. Harmony, expecting an invitation to walk, had nervedherself to a cool refusal. This took her off guard. 

"Then you do not prescribe air?"

"That's up to how you feel. If you care to go out and don't mind mygoing along as a sort of Old Dog Tray I haven't anything else to do. "

Dr. Gates, eating stewed fruit across the table, gave Peter a swiftglance of admiration, which he caught and acknowledged. He was ratherexultant himself; certainly he had been adroit. 

"I'd rather like a short walk. It will make me sleep, " said Harmony, who had missed the by-play. "And Old Dog Tray would be a very nicecompanion, I'm sure. "

It is doubtful, however, if Anna Gates would have applauded Peterhad she followed the two in their rambling walk that night. Directionmattering little and companionship everything, they wandered on, talkingof immaterial things--of the rough pavements, of the shop windows, ofthe gray medieval buildings. They came to a full stop in front of theVotivkirche, and discussed gravely the twin Gothic spires and theBenk sculptures on the facade. And there in the open square, castingdiplomacy to the winds, Peter Byrne turned to Harmony and blurted outwhat was in his heart. 

"Look here, " he said, "you don't care a rap about spires. I don'tbelieve you know anything about them. I don't. What did that idiot of awoman doctor say to you to-day?"

"I don't know what you mean. "

"You do very well. And I'm going to set you right. She starts out withtwo premises: I'm a man, and you're young and attractive. Then she drawssome sort of fool deduction. You know what I mean?"

"I don't see why we need discuss it, " said poor Harmony. "Or how youknow--"

"I know because she told me. She knew she had been a fool, and shecame to me. I don't know whether it makes any difference to you or not, but--we'd started out so well, and then to have it spoiled! My deargirl, you are beautiful and I know it. That's all the more reason why, if you'll stand for it, you need some one to look after you--I'll notsay like a brother, because all the ones I ever knew were darned poorbrothers to their sisters, but some one who will keep an eye on you andwho isn't going to fall in love with you. "

"I didn't think you were falling in love with me; nor did I wish youto. "

"Certainly not. Besides, I--" Here Peter Byrne had another inspiration, not so good as the first--"Besides, there is somebody at home, youunderstand? That makes it all right, doesn't it?"

"A girl at home?"

"A girl, " said Peter, lying manfully. 

"How very nice!" said Harmony, and put out her hand. Peter, feeling allsorts of a cheat, took it, and got his reward in a complete restoral oftheir former comradely relations. From abstractions of church towersand street paving they went, with the directness of the young, tothemselves. Thereafter, during that memorable walk, they talkedblissful personalities, Harmony's future, Peter's career, money--orits lack--their ambitions, their hopes, even--and here was intimacy, indeed!--their disappointments, their failures of courage, theiroccasional loss of faith in themselves. 

The first real snow of the year was falling as they turned back towardthe Pension Schwarz, a damp snow that stuck fast and melted with achilly cold that had in it nothing but depression. The upper spires ofthe Votivkirche were hidden in a gray mist; the trees in the park tookon, against the gloom of the city hall, a snowy luminosity. Save foran occasional pedestrian, making his way home under an umbrella, thestreets were deserted. Byrne and Harmony had no umbrella, but the girlrejected his offer of a taxicab. 

"We should be home too quickly, " she observed naively. "And we haveso much to say about me. Now I thought that perhaps by giving Englishlessons in the afternoon and working all morning at my music--"

And so on and on, square after square, with Peter listening gravely, his head bent. And square after square it was borne in on him whata precarious future stretched before this girl beside him, how veryslender her resources, how more than dubious the outcome. 

Poverty, which had only stimulated Peter Byrne in the past, ate deepinto his soul that night. 

Epochmaking as the walk had been, seeing that it had reestablished afriendship and made a working basis for future comradely relations, theywere back at the corner of the Alserstrasse before ten. As they turnedin at the little street, a man, lurching somewhat, almost collidedwith Harmony. He was a short, heavy-set person with a carefully curledmustache, and he was singing, not loudly, but with all his maudlinheart in his voice, the barcarolle from the "Tales" of Hoffmann. He sawHarmony, and still singing planted himself in her path. When Byrne wouldhave pushed him aside Harmony caught his arm. 

"It is only the Portier from the lodge, " she said. 

The Portier, having come to rest on a throaty and rather wavering note, stood before Harmony, bowing. 

"The Fraulein has gone and I am very sad, " he said thickly. "There is nomore music, and Rosa has run away with a soldier from Salzburg who hasonly one lung. "

"But think!" Harmony said in German. "No more practicing in the earlydawn, no young ladies bringing mud into your newscrubbed hall! It isbetter, is it not? All day you may rest and smoke!"

Byrne led Harmony past the drunken Portier, who turned with caution andbowed after them. 

"Gute Nacht, " he called. "Kuss die Hand, Fraulein. Four rooms and thesalon and a bath of the finest. "

As they went up the Hirschengasse they could hear him pursuing hisunsteady way down the street and singing lustily. At the door of thePension Schwarz Harmony paused. 

"Do you mind if I ask one question?"

"You honor me, madam. "

"Then--what is the name of the girl back home?"

Peter Byrne was suddenly conscious of a complete void as to femininenames. He offered, in a sort of panic, the first one he recalled:--

"Emma. "

"Emma! What a nice, old-fashioned name!" But there was a touch ofdisappointment in her voice. 

Harmony had a lesson the next day. She was a favorite pupil with themaster. Out of so much musical chaff he winnowed only now and then agrain of real ability. And Harmony had that. Scatchy and the Big Sopranohad been right--she had the real thing. 

The short half-hour lesson had a way with Harmony of lengthening itselfto an hour or more, much to the disgust of the lady secretary in theanteroom. On that Monday Harmony had pleased the old man to one of hisrare enthusiasms. 

"Six months, " he said, "and you will go back to your America and showthem how over here we teach violin. I will a letter--letters--give you, and you shall put on the programme, of your concerts that you are mypupil, is it not so?"

Harmony was drawing on her worn gloves; her hands trembled a little withthe praise and excitement. 

"If I can stay so long, " she answered unsteadily. 

"You must stay. Have I so long labored, and now before it is finishedyou talk of going! Gott im Himmel!"

"It is a matter of money. My father is dead. And unless I find somethingto do I shall have to go back. "

The master had heard many such statements. They never ceased to rousehis ire against a world that had money for everything but music. Hespent five minutes in indignant protest, then:--

"But you are clever and young, child. You will find a way to stay. Perhaps I can now and then find a concert for you. " It was a lure hehad thrown out before, a hook without a bait. It needed no bait, beingalways eagerly swallowed. "And no more talk of going away. I refuse toallow. You shall not go. "

Harmony paid the lady secretary on her way out. The master wasinterested. He liked Harmony and he believed in her. But fifty Kronenis fifty Kronen, and South American beef is high of price. He followedHarmony into the outer room and bowed her out of his studio. 

"The Fraulein has paid?" he demanded, turning sharply to the ladysecretary. 

"Always. "

"After the lesson?"

"Ja, Herr Professor. "

"It is better, " said the master, "that she pay hereafter before thelesson. "

"Ja, Herr Professor. "

Whereupon the lady secretary put a red-ink cross before Harmony's name. There were many such crosses on the ledger. 

CHAPTER VII

For three days Byrne hardly saw Harmony. He was off early in themorning, hurried back to the midday meal and was gone again the momentit was over. He had lectures in the evenings, too, and although helingered for an hour or so after supper it was to find Harmony takenpossession of by the little Bulgarian, seized with a sudden thirst forthings American. 

On the evening of the second day he had left Harmony, enmeshed andhelpless in a tangle of language, trying to explain to the littleBulgarian the reason American women wished to vote. Byrne flung down thestairs and out into the street, almost colliding with Stewart. 

They walked on together, Stewart with the comfortably rolling gait ofthe man who has just dined well, Byrne with his heavy, rather solidtread. The two men were not congenial, and the frequent intervalswithout speech between them were rather for lack of understanding thanfor that completeness of it which often fathers long silences. Byrne wasthe first to speak after their greeting. 

"Marie all right?"

"Fine. Said if I saw you to ask you to supper some night this week. "

"Thanks. Does it matter which night?"

"Any but Thursday. We're hearing 'La Boheme. '"

"Say Friday, then. "

Byrne's tone lacked enthusiasm, but Stewart in his after-dinner moodfailed to notice it. 

"Have you thought any more about our conversation of the other night?"

"What was that?"

Stewart poked him playfully in the ribs. 

"Wake up, Byrne!" he said. "You remember well enough. Neither the Daysnor any one else is going to have the benefit of your assistance if yougo on living the way you have been. I was at Schwarz's. It is the doubledrain there that tells on one--eating little and being eaten much. Thoseold walls are full of vermin. Why don't you take our apartment?"

"Yours?"

"Yes, for a couple of months. I'm through with Schleich and Breidaucan't take me for two months. It's Marie's off season and we're going toSemmering for the winter sports. We're ahead enough to take a holiday. And if you want the flat for the same amount you are spending now, orless, you can have it, and--a home, old man. "

Byrne was irritated, the more so that he realized that the offer temptedhim. To his resentment was added a contempt of himself. 

"Thanks, " he said. "I think not. "

"Oh, all right. " Stewart was rather offended. "I can't do more than giveyou a chance. "

They separated shortly after and Byrne went on alone. The snow of Sundayhad turned to a fine rain which had lasted all of Monday and Tuesday. The sidewalks were slimy; wagons slid in the ooze of the streets; andthe smoke from the little stoves in the street-cars followed them indepressing horizontal clouds. Cabmen sat and smoked in the interior ofmusty cabs. The women hod-carriers on a new building steamed like horsesas they worked. 

Byrne walked along, his head thrust down into his up-turned collar;moisture gathered on his face like dew, condensed rather thanprecipitated. And as he walked there came before him a vision of thelittle flat on the Hochgasse, with the lamp on the table, and thegeneral air of warmth and cheer, and a figure presiding over the brickstove in the kitchen. Byrne shook himself like a great dog and turned inat the gate of the hospital. He was thoroughly ashamed of himself. 

That week was full of disappointments for Harmony. Wherever she turnedshe faced a wall of indifference or, what was worse, an interest thatfrightened her. Like a bird in a cage she beat helplessly againstbarriers of language, of strange customs, of stolidity that were not farfrom absolute cruelty. 

She held to her determination, however, at first with hope, then, asthe pension in advance and the lessons at fifty Kronen--also inadvance, --went on, recklessly. She played marvelously those days, cryingout through her violin the despair she had sealed her lips against. OnThursday, playing for the master, she turned to find him flourishinghis handkerchief, and went home in a sort of daze, incredulous that shecould have moved him to tears. 

The little Bulgarian was frankly her slave now. He had given up thecoffee-houses that he might spend that hour near her, on the chance ofseeing her or, failing that, of hearing her play. At night in the CafeHungaria he sat for hours at a time, his elbows on the table, a bottleof native wine before him, and dreamed of her. He was very fat, thelittle Georgiev, very swarthy, very pathetic. The Balkan kettle wassimmering in those days, and he had been set to watch the fire. Butinstead he had kindled a flame of his own, and was feeding it with straywords, odd glances, a bit of music, the curve of a woman's hair behindher ears. For reports he wrote verses in modern Greek, and through oneof those inadvertences which make tragedy, the Minister of War down introubled Bulgaria once received between the pages of a report in cipheron the fortifications of the Danube a verse in fervid hexameter thatmade even that grim official smile. 

Harmony was quite unconscious. She went on her way methodically: somany hours of work, so many lessons at fifty Kronen, so many afternoonssearching for something to do, making rounds of shops where her Englishmight be valuable. 

And after a few weeks Peter Byrne found time to help. After oneexperience, when Harmony left a shop with flaming face and tears in hereyes, he had thought it best to go with her. The first interview, under Peter's grim eyes, was a failure. The shopkeeper was obviouslysuspicious of Peter. After that, whenever he could escape from clinics, Peter went along, but stayed outside, smoking his eternal cigarette, andkeeping a watchful eye on things inside the shop. 

Only once was he needed. At that time, suspecting that all was notwell, from the girl's eyes and the leer on the shopkeeper's face, hehad opened the door in time to hear enough. He had lifted the proprietorbodily and flung him with a crash into a glass showcase of ornamentsfor the hair. Then, entirely cheerful and happy, and unmolested by thefrightened clerks, he led Harmony outside and in a sort of atavistictriumph bought her a bunch of valley lilies. 

Nevertheless, in his sane moments, Peter knew that things were verybad, indeed. He was still not in love with the girl. He analyzed his ownfeeling very carefully, and that was his conclusion. Nevertheless he dida quixotic thing--which was Peter, of course, all over. 

He took supper with Stewart and Marie on Friday, and the idea came tohim there. Hardly came to him, being Marie's originally. The little flatwas cozy and bright. Marie, having straightened her kitchen, brought ina waist she was making and sat sewing while the two men talked. Theirconversation was technical, a new extirpation of the thyroid gland, arecent nephrectomy. 

In her curious way Marie liked Peter and respected him. She struggledwith the technicalities of their talk as she sewed, finding here andthere a comprehensive bit. At those times she sat, needle poised, intelligent eyes on the speakers, until she lost herself again in themazes of their English. 

At ten o'clock she rose and put away her sewing. Peter saw her get thestone pitcher and knew she was on her way for the evening beer. He tookadvantage of her absence to broach the matter of Harmony. 

"She's up against it, as a matter of fact, " he finished. "It ought to beeasy enough for her to find something, but it isn't. "

"I hardly saw her that day in the coffee-house; but she's ratherhandsome, isn't she?"

"That's one of the difficulties. Yes. "

Stewart smoked and reflected. "No friends here at all?"

"None. There were three girls at first. Two have gone home. "

"Could she teach violin?"

"I should think so. "

"Aren't there any kids in the American colony who want lessons? There'susually some sort of infant prodigy ready to play at any entertainmentsof the Doctors' Club. "

"They don't want an American teacher, I fancy; but I suppose I could puta card up in the club rooms. Damn it all!" cried Peter with a burst ofhonest resentment, "why do I have to be poor?"

"If you were rolling in gold you could hardly offer her money, couldyou?"

Peter had not thought of that before. It was the only comfort he foundin his poverty. Marie had brought in the beer and was carefully fillingthe mugs. "Why do you not marry her?" she asked unexpectedly. "Then youcould take this flat. We are going to Semmering for the winter sports. Iwould show her about the stove. "

"Marry her, of course!" said Peter gravely. "Just pick her up and carryher to church! The trifling fact that she does not wish to marry me needhave nothing to do with it. "

"Ah, but does she not wish it?" demanded Marie. "Are you so certain, stupid big one? Do not women always love you?"

Ridiculous as the thought was, Peter pondered it as he went back to thePension Schwarz. About himself he was absurdly modest, almost humble. Ithad never occurred to him that women might care for him for himself. In his struggling life there had been little time for women. But abouthimself as the solution of a problem--that was different. 

He argued the thing over. In the unlikely contingency of the girl'sbeing willing, was Stewart right--could two people live as cheaply asone? Marie was an Austrian and knew how to manage--that was different. And another thing troubled him. He dreaded to disturb the delicateadjustment of their relationship; the terra incognita of a younggirl's mind daunted him. There was another consideration which he putresolutely in the back of his mind--his career. He had seen many apromising one killed by early marriage, men driven to the hack work ofthe profession by the scourge of financial necessity. But that was amatter of the future; the necessity was immediate. 

The night was very cold. Gusts of wind from the snow-covered Schneebergdrove along the streets, making each corner a fortress defended by theelements, a battlement to be seized, lost, seized again. Peter Byrnebattled valiantly but mechanically. And as he fought he made hisdecision. 

He acted with characteristic promptness. Possibly, too, he was afraid ofthe strength of his own resolution. By morning sanity might prevail, andin cold daylight he would see the absurdity of his position. He almostran up the winding staircase. At the top his cold fingers fumbled thekey and he swore under his breath. He slammed the door behind him. Peteralways slammed doors, and had an apologetic way of opening the dooragain and closing it gently, as if to show that he could. Harmony's roomwas dark, but he had surprised her once into a confession that whenshe was very downhearted she liked to sit in the dark and be very blueindeed. So he stopped and knocked. There was no reply, but from Dr. Gates's room across there came a hum of conversation. He knew at oncethat Harmony was there. 

Peter hardly hesitated. He took off his soft hat and ran a hand over hishair, and he straightened his tie. These preliminaries to a proposal ofmarriage being disposed of, he rapped at the door. 

Anna Gates opened it. She wore a hideous red-flannel wrapper, and indeference to Harmony a thimble. Her flat breast was stuck with pins, andpinkish threads revealed the fact that the bathrobe was still under way. 

"Peter!" she cried. "Come in and get warm. "

Harmony, in the blue kimono, gave a little gasp, and flung round hershoulders the mass of pink on which she had been working. 

"Please go out!" she said. "I am not dressed. "

"You are covered, " returned Anna Gates. "That's all that any sort ofclothing can do. Don't mind her, Peter, and sit on the bed. Look out forpins!"

Peter, however, did not sit down. He stood just inside the closed doorand stared at Harmony--Harmony in the red light from the littleopen door of the stove; Harmony in blue and pink and a bit of whitepetticoat; Harmony with her hair over her shoulders and tied out of hereyes with an encircling band of rosy flannel. 

"Do sit!" cried Anna Gates. "You fill the room so. Bless you, Peter, what a collar!"

No man likes to know his collar is soiled, especially on the eve ofproposing marriage to a pink and blue and white vision. Peter, seatednow on the bed, writhed. 

"I rapped at Miss Wells's door, " he said. "You were not there. "

This last, of course, to Harmony. 

Anna Gates sniffed. 

"Naturally!"

"I had something to say to you. I--I dare say it is hardly pensionetiquette for you to go over to your room and let me say it there?"

Harmony smiled above the flannel. 

"Could you call it through the door?"

"Hardly. "

"Fiddlesticks!" said Dr. Gates, rising. "I'll go over, of course, butnot for long. There's no fire. "

With her hand on the knob, however, Harmony interfered. 

"Please!" she implored. "I am not dressed and I'd rather not. " Sheturned to Peter. "You can say it before her, can't you? She--I have toldher all about things. "

Peter hesitated. He felt ridiculous for the second time that night. Then:--

"It was merely an idea I had. I saw a little apartment furnished--youcould learn to use the stove, unless, of course, you don't likehousekeeping--and food is really awfully cheap. Why, at thesedelicatessen places and bakeshops--"

Here he paused for breath and found Dr. Gates's quizzical glance fixedon him, and Harmony's startled eyes. 

"What I am trying to say, " he exploded, "is that I believe if you wouldmarry me it would solve some of your troubles anyhow. " He was talkingfor time now, against Harmony's incredulous face. "You'd be taking onothers, of course. I'm not much and I'm as poor--well, you know. It--itwas the apartment that gave me the idea--"

"And the stove!" said Harmony; and suddenly burst into joyous laughter. After a rather shocked instant Dr. Gates joined her. It was real mirthwith Harmony, the first laugh of days, that curious laughter of womenthat is not far from tears. 

Peter sat on the bed uncomfortably. He grinned sheepishly and made alast feeble attempt to stick to his guns. 

"I mean it. You know I'm not in love with you or you with me, of course. But we are such a pair of waifs, and I thought we might get along. Lordknows I need some one to look after me!"

"And Emma?"

"There is no Emma. I made her up. "

Harmony sobered at that. 

"It is only"--she gasped a little for breath--"it is only your--yourtransparency, Peter. " It was the first time she had called him Peter. "You know how things are with me and you want to help me, and out ofyour generosity you are willing to take on another burden. Oh, Peter!"

And here, Harmony being an emotional young person, the tears beat thelaughter to the surface and had to be wiped away under the cover ofmirth. 

Anna Gates, having recovered herself, sat back and surveyed them bothsternly through her glasses. 

"Once for all, " she said brusquely, "let such foolishness end. Peter, I am ashamed of you. Marriage is not for you--not yet, not for a dozenyears. Any man can saddle himself with a wife; not every man can be whatyou may be if you keep your senses and stay single. And the same is truefor you, girl. To tide over a bad six months you would sacrifice thevery thing you are both struggling for?"

"I'm sure we don't intend to do it, " replied Harmony meekly. 

"Not now. Some day you may be tempted. When that time comes, rememberwhat I say. Matrimonially speaking, each of you is fatal to the other. Now go away and let me alone. I'm not accustomed to proposals ofmarriage. "

It was in some confusion of mind that Peter Byrne took himself offto the bedroom with the cold tiled stove and the bed that was ascomfortable as a washtub. Undeniably he was relieved. Also Harmony'sproblem was yet unsolved. Also she had called him Peter. 

Also he had said he was not in love with her. Was he so sure of that?

At midnight, just as Peter, rolled in the bedclothing, had managed towarm the cold concavity of his bed and had dozed off, Anna Gates knockedat his door. 

"Yes?" said Peter, still comfortably asleep. 

"It is Dr. Gates. "

"Sorry, Doctor--have to 'xcuse me, " mumbled Peter from the blanket. 

"Peter!"

Peter roused to a chilled and indignant consciousness and sat up in bed. 

"Well?"

"Open the door just a crack. "

Resignedly Peter crawled out of bed, carefully turning the coverings upto retain as much heat as possible. An icy blast from the open windowblew round him, setting everything movable in the little room toquivering. He fumbled in the dark for his slippers, failed to find them, and yawning noisily went to the door. 

Anna Gates, with a candle, was outside. Her short, graying hair was outof its hard knot, and hung in an equally uncompromising six-inch plaitdown her back. She had no glasses, and over the candle-frame she peeredshortsightedly at Peter. 

"It's about Jimmy, " she said. "I don't know what's got into me, but I'veforgotten for three days. It's a good bit more than time for a letter. "

"Great Scott!"

"Both yesterday and to-day he asked for it and to-day he fretted alittle. The nurse found him crying. "

"The poor little devil!" said Peter contritely. "Overdue, is it? I'llfix it to-night. "

"Leave it under the door where I can get it in the morning. I'm off atseven. "

"The envelope?"

"Here it is. And take my candle. I'm going to bed. "

That was at midnight or shortly after. Half after one struck from thetwin clocks of the Votivkirche and echoed from the Stephansplatz acrossthe city. It found Peter with the window closed, sitting up in bed, acandle balanced on one knee, a writing-tablet on the other. 

He was writing a spirited narrative of a chamois hunt in which he hadtaken part that day, including a detailed description of the quarry, which weighed, according to Peter, two hundred and fifty pounds, Peterbeing strong on imagination and short on facts as regards the Alpinechamois. Then, trying to read the letter from a small boy's point ofview and deciding that it lacked snap, he added by way of postscript aharrowing incident of avalanche, rope, guide, and ice axe. He ended in asort of glow of authorship, and after some thought took fifty pounds offthe chamois. 

The letter finished, he put it in a much-used envelope addressed toJimmy Conroy--an envelope that stamped the whole episode as authentic, bearing as it did an undecipherable date and the postmark of a tinyvillage in the Austrian Tyrol. 

It was almost two when Peter put out the candle and settled himself tosleep. 

It was just two o'clock when the night nurse, making rounds in herward in the general hospital, found a small boy very much awake on hispillow, and taking off her felt slipper shook it at him in pretendedfury. 

"Now, thou bad one!" she said. "Awake, when the Herr Doktor orderssleep! Shall I use the slipper?"

The boy replied in German with a strong English accent. 

"I cannot sleep. Yesterday the Fraulein Elisabet said that in themountains there are accidents, and that sometimes--"

"The Fraulein Elisabet is a great fool. Tomorrow comes thy letter of acertainty. The post has been delayed with great snows. Thy father hasperhaps captured a great boar, or a--a chamois, and he writes of it. "

"Do chamois have horns?"

"Ja. Great horns--so. "

"He will send them to me! And there are no accidents?"

"None. Now sleep, or--the slipper. "

CHAPTER VIII

So far Harmony's small world in the old city had consisted of Scatchyand the Big Soprano, Peter, and Anna Gates, with far off in thefirmament the master. Scatchy and the Big Soprano had gone, weepinganxious postcards from every way station it is true, but neverthelessgone. Peter and Anna Gates remained, and the master as long as her fundsheld out. To them now she was about to add Jimmy. 

The bathrobe was finished. Out of the little doctor's chaos of pinkflannel Harmony had brought order. The result, masculine and completeeven to its tassels and cord of pink yarn, was ready to be presented. Itwas with mingled emotions that Anna Gates wrapped it up and gave it toHarmony the next morning. 

"He hasn't been so well the last day or two, " she said. "He doesn'tsleep much--that's the worst of those heart conditions. Sometimes, whileI've been working on this thing, I've wondered--Well, we're making afight anyhow. And better take the letter, too, Harry. I might forget andmake lecture notes on it, and if I spoil that envelope--"

Harmony had arranged to carry the bathrobe to the hospital, meeting thedoctor there after her early clinic. She knew Jimmy's little story quitewell. Anna Gates had told it to her in detail. 

"Just one of the tragedies of the world, my dear, " she had finished. "You think you have a tragedy, but you have youth and hope; I think Ihave my own little tragedy, because I have to go through the rest oflife alone, when taken in time I'd have been a good wife and mother. Still I have my work. But this little chap, brought over here by afather who hoped to see him cured, and spent all he had to bring himhere, and then--died. It gets me by the throat. "

"And the boy does not know?" Harmony had asked, her eyes wide. 

"No, thanks to Peter. He thinks his father is still in the mountains. When we heard about it Peter went up and saw that he was buried. It tookabout all the money there was. He wrote home about it, too, to the placethey came from. There has never been any reply. Then ever since Peterhas written these letters. Jimmy lives for them. "

Peter! It was always Peter. Peter did this. Peter said that. Peterthought thus. A very large part of Harmony's life was Peter in thosedays. 

She was thinking of him as she waited at the gate of the hospital forAnna Gates, thinking of his shabby gray suit and unkempt hair, of hisletter that she carried to Jimmy Conroy, of his quixotic proposal ofthe night before. Of the proposal, most of all--it was so eminentlycharacteristic of Peter, from the conception of the plan to itsexecution. Harmony's thought of Peter was very tender that morningas she stood in the arched gateway out of reach of the wind from theSchneeberg. The tenderness and the bright color brought by the wind madeher very beautiful. Little Marie, waiting across the Alserstrasse fora bus, and stamping from one foot to the other to keep warm, recognizedand admired her. After all, the American women were chic, she decided, although some of the doctors had wives of a dowdiness--Himmel! And shecould copy the Fraulein's hat for two Kronen and a bit of ribbon shepossessed. 

The presentation of the bathrobe was a success. Six nurses and a Dozentwith a red beard stood about and watched Jimmy put into it, and theDozent, who had been engaged for five years and could not marry becausethe hospital board forbade it, made a speech for Jimmy in awe-inspiringGerman, ending up with a poem that was intended to be funny, but thatmade the nurses cry. From which it will be seen that Jimmy was a greatfavorite. 

During the ceremony, for such it was, the Germans loving a ceremony, Jimmy kept his eyes on the letter in Anna Gates's hand and waited. Thatthe letter had come was enough. He lay back in anticipatory joy, andlet himself be talked over, and bathrobed, and his hair parted Austrianfashion and turned up over a finger, which is very Austrian indeed. He liked Harmony. The girl caught his eyes on her more than once. Heinterrupted the speech once to ask her just what part of the robe shehad made, and whether she had made the tassel. When she admitted thetassel, his admiration became mixed with respect. 

It was a bright day, for a marvel. Sunlight came through the barredwindow behind Jimmy's bed, and brought into dazzling radiance the pinkbathrobe, and Harmony's eyes, and fat Nurse Elisabet's white apron. Itlay on the bedspread in great squares, outlined by the shadows of thewindow bars. Now and then the sentry, pacing outside, would advance asfar as Jimmy's window, and a warlike silhouette of military cap andthe upper end of a carbine would appear on the coverlet. These events, however, were rare, the sentry preferring the shelter of the gateway andthe odor of boiling onions from the lodge just inside. 

The Dozent retired to his room for the second breakfast; the nurses wentabout the business of the ward; Dr. Anna Gates drew a hairpin from herhair and made a great show of opening the many times opened envelope. 

"The letter at last!" she said. "Shall I read it or will you?"

"You read it. It takes me so long. I'll read it all day, after you aregone. I always do. "

Anna Gates read the letter. She read aloud poor Peter's first haltinglines, when he was struggling against sleep and cold. They were mainlyan apology for the delay. Then forgetting discomfort in the joy ofcreation, he became more comfortable. The account of the near-accidentwas wonderfully graphic; the description of the chamois was fervid, ifnot accurate. But consternation came with the end. 

The letter apparently finished, there was yet another sheet. The doctorread on. 

"For Heaven's sake, " said Peter's frantic postscript, "find out how mucha medium-sized chamois--"

Dr. Gates stopped "--ought to weigh, " was the rest of it, "and fix itright in the letter. The kid's too smart to be fooled and I never saw achamois outside of a drug store. They have horns, haven't they?"

"That's funny!" said Jimmy Conway. 

"That was one of my papers slipped in by mistake, " remarked Dr. Gates, with dignity, and flashing a wild appeal for help to Harmony. 

"How did one of your papers get in when it was sealed?"

"I think, " observed Harmony, leaning forward, "that little boys mustnot ask too many questions, especially when Christmas is only six weeksoff. "

"I know! He wants to send me the horns the way he sent me the boar'stusks. "

For Peter, having in one letter unwisely recorded the slaughter of aboar, had been obliged to ransack Vienna for a pair of tusks. The tuskshad not been so difficult. But horns!

Jimmy was contented with his solution and asked no more questions. Themorning's excitement had tired him, and he lay back. Dr. Gates went tohold a whispered consultation with the nurse, and came back, lookinggrave. 

The boy was asleep, holding the letter in his thin hands. 

The visit to the hospital was a good thing for Harmony--to find some oneworse off than she was, to satisfy that eternal desire of women to dosomething, however small, for some one else. Her own troubles lookedvery small to her that day as she left the hospital and stepped out intothe bright sunshine. 

She passed the impassive sentry, then turned and went back to him. 

"Do you wish to do a very kind thing?" she asked in German. 

Now the conversation of an Austrian sentry consists of yea, yea, andnay, nay, and not always that. But Harmony was lovely and the sun wasmoderating the wind. The sentry looked round; no one was near. 

"What do you wish?"

"Inside that third window is a small boy and he is very ill. I do notthink--perhaps he will never be well again. Could you not, now and then, pass the window? It pleases him. "

"Pass the window! But why?"

"In America we see few of our soldiers. He likes to see you and thegun. "

"Ah, the gun!" He smiled and nodded in comprehension, then, as anofficer appeared in the door of a coffee-house across the street, hestiffened into immobility and stared past Harmony into space. But thegirl knew he would do as she had desired. 

That day brought good luck to Harmony. The wife of one of the professorsat the hospital desired English conversation at two Kronen an hour. 

Peter brought the news home at noon, and that afternoon Harmony wasengaged. It was little enough, but it was something. It did much morethan offer her two Kronen an hour; it gave her back her self-confidence, although the immediate result was rather tragic. 

The Frau Professor Bergmeister, infatuated with English and withHarmony, engaged her, and took her first two Kronen worth thatafternoon. It was the day for a music-lesson. Harmony arrived fiveminutes late, panting, hat awry, and so full of the Frau ProfessorBergmeister that she could think of nothing else. 

Obedient to orders she had placed the envelope containing her fiftyKronen before the secretary as she went in. The master was out of humor. Should he, the teacher of the great Koert, be kept waiting for a chitof a girl--only, of course, he said "das Kindchen" or some other Germanequivalent for chit--and then have her come into the sacred presencebreathless, and salute him between gasps as the Frau ProfessorBergmeister?

Being excited and now confused by her error, and being also rathertremulous with three flights of stairs at top speed, Harmony droppedher bow. In point of heinousness this classes with dropping one's infantchild from an upper window, or sitting on the wrong side of a carriagewhen with a lady. 

The master, thus thrice outraged, rose slowly and glared at Harmony. Then with a lordly gesture to her to follow he stalked to the outerroom, and picking up the envelope with the fifty Kronen held it out toher without a word. 

Harmony's world came crashing about her ears. She stared stupidly at theenvelope in her hand, at the master's retreating back. 

Two girl students waiting their turn, envelopes in hand, giggledtogether. Harmony saw them and flushed scarlet. But the lady secretarytouched her arm. 

"It does not matter, Fraulein. He does so sometimes. Always he is sorry. You will come for your next lesson, not so? and all will be well. Youare his well-beloved pupil. To-night he will not eat for grief that hehas hurt you. "

The ring of sincerity in the shabby secretary's voice was unmistakable. Her tense throat relaxed. She looked across at the two students whohad laughed. They were not laughing now. Something of fellowship andunderstanding passed between them in the glance. After all, it was inthe day's work--would come to one of them next, perhaps. And they hadmuch in common--the struggle, their faith, the everlasting loneliness, the little white envelopes, each with its fifty Kronen. 

Vaguely comforted, but with the light gone out of her day of days, Harmony went down the three long flights and out into the brightness ofthe winter day. 

On the Ring she almost ran into Peter. He was striding toward her, giving a definite impression of being bound for some particulardestination and of being behind time. That this was not the case wasshown by the celerity with which, when he saw Harmony, he turned aboutand walked with her. 

"I had an hour or two, " he explained, "and I thought I'd walk. Butwalking is a social habit, like drinking. I hate to walk alone. Howabout the Frau Professor?"

"She has taken me on. I'm very happy. But, Dr. Byrne--"

"You called me Peter last night. "

"That was different. You had just proposed to me. "

"Oh, if that's all that's necessary--" He stopped in the center of thebusy Ring with every evident intention of proposing again. 

"Please, Peter!"

"Aha! Victory! Well, what about the Frau Professor Bergmeister?"

"She asks so many questions about America; and I cannot answer them. "

"For instance?"

"Well, taxes now. She's very much interested in taxes. "

"Never owned anything taxable except a dog--and that wasn't a taxanyhow; it was a license. Can't you switch her on to medicine orsurgery, where I'd be of some use?"

"She says to-morrow we'll talk of the tariff and customs duties. "

"Well, I've got something to say on that. " He pulled from his overcoatpocket a largish bundle--Peter always bulged with packages--and heldit out for her to see. "Tell the Frau Professor Bergmeister with mycompliments, " he said, "that because some idiot at home sent me fivepounds of tobacco, hearing from afar my groans over the tobacco here, I have passed from mere financial stress to destitution. The Austriancustoms have taken from me to-day the equivalent of ten dollars in duty. I offered them the tobacco on bended knee, but they scorned it. "

"Really, Peter?"

"Really. "

Under this lightness Harmony sensed the real anxiety. Ten dollars wasfifty Kronen, and fifty Kronen was a great deal of money. She reachedover and patted his arm. 

"You'll make it up in some way. Can't you cut off some littleextravagance?"

"I might cut down on my tailor bills. " He looked down at himselfwhimsically. "Or on ties. I'm positively reckless about ties!"

They walked on in silence. A detachment of soldiery, busy with thateternal military activity that seems to get nowhere, passed on adog-trot. Peter looked at them critically. 

"Bosnians, " he observed. "Raw, half-fed troops from Bosnia, nine outof ten of them tubercular. It's a rotten game, this military play ofEurope. How's Jimmy?"

"We left him very happy with your letter. "

Peter flushed. "I expect it was pretty poor stuff, " he apologized. "I'venever seen the Alps except from a train window, and as for a chamois--"

"He says his father will surely send him the horns. "

Peter groaned. 

"Of course!" he said. "Why, in Heaven's name, didn't I make it an eagle?One can always buy a feather or two. But horns? He really liked theletter?"

"He adored it. He went to sleep almost at once with it in his hands. "

Peter glowed. The small irritation of the custom-house forgotten, hetalked of Jimmy; of what had been done and might still be done, if onlythere were money; and from Jimmy he talked boy. He had had a boys' clubat home during his short experience in general practice. Boys were hishobby. 

"Scum of the earth, most of them, " he said, his plain face glowing. "Dirty little beggars off the street. At first they stole my tobacco;and one of them pawned a medical book or two! Then they got to playingthe game right. By Jove, Harmony, I wish you could have seen them!Used to line 'em up and make 'em spell, and the two best spellers wereallowed to fight it out with gloves--my own method, and it worked. Spell! They'd spell their heads off to get a chance at the gloves. Gee, how I hated to give them up!"

This was a new Peter, a boyish individual Harmony had never met before. For the first time it struck her that Peter was young. He had alwaysseemed rather old, solid and dependable, the fault of his elder brotherattitude to her, no doubt. She was suddenly rather shy, a bit aloof. Peter felt the change and thought she was bored. He talked of otherthings. 

A surprise was waiting for them in the cold lower hallway of the PensionSchwarz. A trunk was there, locked and roped, and on the trunk, inulster and hat, sat Dr. Gates. Olga, looking rather frightened, wascoming down with a traveling-bag. She put down the bag and scuttled upthe staircase like a scared rabbit. The little doctor was grim. She eyedPeter and Harmony with an impersonal hostility, referable to her humor. 

"I've been waiting for you two, " she flung at them. "I've had a terrificrow upstairs and I'm going. That woman's a devil!"

It had been a bad day for Harmony, and this new development, aftereverything else, assumed the proportions of a crisis. She had clung, at first out of sheer loneliness and recently out of affection, to thesharp little doctor with her mannish affectations, her soft and womanlyheart. 

"Sit down, child. " Anna Gates moved over on the trunk. "You are faggedout. Peter, will you stop looking murderous and listen to me? How muchdid it cost the three of us to live in this abode of virtue?"

It was simple addition. The total was rather appalling. 

"I thought so. Now this is my plan. It may not be conventional, but itwill be respectable enough to satisfy anybody. And it will be cheaper, I'm sure of that: We are all going out to the hunting-lodge of MariaTheresa, and Harmony shall keep house for us!"

CHAPTER IX

It was the middle of November when Anna Gates, sitting on her trunk inthe cold entrance hall on the Hirschengasse, flung the conversationalbomb that left empty three rooms in the Pension Schwarz. 

Mid-December found Harmony back and fully established in the lodge ofMaria Theresa on the Street of Seven Stars--back, but with a difference. True, the gate still swung back and forward on rusty hinges, obedient toevery whim of the December gales; but the casement windows in the salonno longer creaked or admitted drafts, thanks to Peter and a roll ofrubber weather-casing. The grand piano, which had been Scatchy's rentedextravagance, had gone never to return, and in its corner stood abattered but still usable upright. Under the great chandelier sat atable with an oil lamp, and evening and morning the white-tiled stovegleamed warm with fire. On the table by the lamp were the combinedmedical books of Peter and Anna Gates, and an ash-tray which also theyused in common. 

Shabby still, of course, bare, almost denuded, the salon of MariaTheresa. But at night, with the lamp lighted and the little door of thestove open, and perhaps, when the dishes from supper had been washed, with Harmony playing softly, it took resolution on Peter's part toput on his overcoat and face a lecture on the resection of a rib or adiscussion of the function of the pituitary body. 

The new arrangement had proved itself in more ways than one not onlygreater in comfort, but in economy. Food was amazingly cheap. Coal, which had cost ninety Hellers a bucket at the Pension Schwarz, theybought in quantity and could afford to use lavishly. Oil for the lampwas a trifle. They dined on venison now and then, when the shop acrossboasted a deer from the mountains. They had other game occasionally, when Peter, carrying home a mysterious package, would make them guesswhat it might contain. Always on such occasions Harmony guessed rabbits. She knew how to cook rabbits, and some of the other game worried her. 

For Harmony was the cook. It had taken many arguments and much coaxingto make Peter see it that way. In vain Harmony argued the extravaganceof Rosa, now married to the soldier from Salzburg with one lung, or thetendency of the delicatessen seller to weigh short if one did not watchhim. Peter was firm. 

It was Dr. Gates, after all, who found the solution. 

"Don't be too obstinate, Peter, " she admonished him. "The child needsoccupation; she can't practice all day. You and I can keep up thefinancial end well enough, reduced as it is. Let her keep house to herheart's content. That can be her contribution to the general fund. "

And that eventually was the way it settled itself, not without demurfrom Harmony, who feared her part was too small, and who irritated Annaalmost to a frenzy by cleaning the apartment from end to end to makecertain of her usefulness. 

A curious little household surely, one that made the wife of the Portiershake her head, and speak much beneath her breath with the wife ofthe brushmaker about the Americans having queer ways and not as theAustrians. 

The short month had seen a change in all of them. Peter showed it leastof all, perhaps. Men feel physical discomfort less keenly than women, and Peter had been only subconsciously wretched. He had gained a poundor two in flesh, perhaps, and he was unmistakably tidier. Anna Gates wasgrowing round and rosy, and Harmony had trimmed her a hat. But the realchange was in Harmony herself. 

The girl had become a woman. Who knows the curious psychology by whichsuch changes come--not in a month or a year; but in an hour, a breath. One moment Harmony was a shy, tender young creature, all emotion, quivering at a word, aloof at a glance, prone to occasionalintrospection and mysterious daydreams; the next she was a young woman, tender but not shyly so, incredibly poised, almost formidably dignifiedon occasion, but with little girlish lapses into frolic and highspirits. 

The transition moment with Harmony came about in this wise: They hadbeen settled for three weeks. The odor of stewing cabbages at thePension Schwarz had retired into the oblivion of lost scents, to berecalled, along with its accompanying memory of discomfort, with everyodor of stewing cabbages for years to come. At the hospital Jimmy hadhad a bad week again. It had been an anxious time for all of them. Invain the sentry had stopped outside the third window and smiled andnodded through it; in vain--when the street was deserted and therewas none to notice--he went through a bit of the manual of arms on thepavement outside, ending by setting his gun down with a martial andringing clang. 

In vain had Peter exhausted himself in literary efforts, climbingunheard-of peaks, taking walking-tours through such a Switzerland asnever was, shooting animals of various sorts, but all hornless, as hecarefully emphasized. 

And now Jimmy was better again. He was propped up in bed, and with theaid of Nurse Elisabet he had cut out a paper sentry and set it in thebarred window. The real sentry had been very much astonished; he hadalmost fallen over backward. On recovering he went entirely through themanual of arms, and was almost seen by an Oberst-lieutenant. It was allmost exciting. 

Harmony had been to see Jimmy on the day in question. She had takenhim some gelatin, not without apprehension, it being her first essay injelly and Jimmy being frank with the candor of childhood. The jelly hadbeen a great success. 

It was when she was about to go that Jimmy broached a matter very nearhis heart. 

"The horns haven't come, have they?" he asked wistfully. 

"No, not yet. "

"Do you think he got my letter about them?"

"He answered it, didn't he?"

Jimmy drew a long breath. "It's very funny. He's mostly so quick. If Ihad the horns, Sister Elisabet would tie them there at the foot of thebed. And I could pretend I was hunting. "

Harmony had a great piece of luck that day. As she went home she sawhanging in front of the wild-game shop next to the delicatessen storea fresh deer, and this time it was a stag. Like the others it hung headdown, and as it swayed on its hook its great antlers tapped against theshop door as if mutely begging admission. 

She could not buy the antlers. In vain she pleaded, explained, implored. Harmony enlisted the Portier, and took him across with her. Thewild-game seller was obdurate. He would sell the deer entire, or hewould mount head and antlers for his wife's cousin in Galicia as aChristmas gift. 

Harmony went back to the lodge and climbed the stairs. She wasprofoundly depressed. Even the discovery that Peter had come home earlyand was building a fire in the kitchen brought only a fleeting smile. Anna was not yet home. 

Peter built the fire. The winter dusk was falling and Harmony made amovement to light the candles. Peter stopped her. 

"Can't we have the firelight for a little while? You are alwaysbeautiful, but--you are lovely in the firelight, Harmony. "

"That is because you like me. We always think our friends arebeautiful. "

"I am fond of Anna, but I have never thought her beautiful. "

The kitchen was small. Harmony, rolling up her sleeves by the table, and Peter before the stove were very close together. The dusk was fastfading into darkness; to this tiny room at the back of the old house fewstreet sounds penetrated. Round them, shutting them off together fromthe world of shops with lighted windows, rumbling busses and hurryinghumanity, lay the old lodge with its dingy gardens, its whitewashedhalls, its dark and twisting staircases. 

Peter had been very careful. He had cultivated a comradely manner withthe girl that had kept her entirely at her ease with him. But it hadbeen growing increasingly hard. He was only human after all. And he wasvery comfortable. Love, healthy human love, thrives on physical ease. Indigestion is a greater foe to it than poverty. Great love songs arewritten, not by poets starving in hall bedrooms, with insistent hungergnawing and undermining all that is of the spirit, but by full-fedgentlemen who sing out of an overflowing of content and wide fellowship, and who write, no doubt, just after dinner. Love, being a hunger, doesnot thrive on hunger. 

Thus Peter. He had never found women essential, being occupied in thestruggle for other essentials. Women had had little part in his busylife. Once or twice he had seen visions, dreamed dreams, to wakenhimself savagely to the fact that not for many years could he afford theluxury of tender eyes looking up into his, of soft arms about his neck. So he had kept away from women with almost ferocious determination. Andnow!

He drew a chair before the stove and sat down. Standing or sitting, hewas much too large for the kitchen. He sat in the chair, with his handshanging, fingers interlaced between his knees. 

The firelight glowed over his strong, rather irregular features. Harmony, knife poised over the evening's potatoes, looked at him. 

"I think you are sad to-night, Peter. "

"Depressed a bit. That's all. "

"It isn't money again?"

It was generally money with any of the three, and only the week beforePeter had found an error in his bank balance which meant that he was ahundred Kronen or so poorer than he had thought. This discovery had beenvery upsetting. 

"Not more than usual. Don't mind me. I'll probably end in a roaring badtemper and smash something. My moody spells often break up that way!"

Harmony put down the paring-knife, and going over to where he sat resteda hand on his shoulder. Peter drew away from it. 

"I have hurt you in some way?"

"Of course not. "

"Could--could you talk about whatever it is? That helps sometimes. "

"You wouldn't understand. "

"You haven't quarreled with Anna?" Harmony asked, real concern in hervoice. 

"No. Good Lord, Harmony, don't ask me what's wrong! I don't knowmyself. "

He got up almost violently and set the little chair back against thewall. Hurt and astonished, Harmony went back to the table. The kitchenwas entirely dark, save for the firelight, which gleamed on the barefloor and the red legs of the table. She was fumbling with a match andthe candle when she realized that Peter was just behind her, very close. 

"Dearest, " he said huskily. The next moment he had caught her to him, was kissing her lips, her hair. 

Harmony's heart beat wildly. There was no use struggling against him. The gates of his self-control were down: all his loneliness, his starvedsenses rushed forth in tardy assertion. 

After a moment Peter kissed her eyelids very gently and let her go. Harmony was trembling, but with shock and alarm only. The storm that hadtorn him root and branch from his firm ground of self-restraint lefther only shaken. He was still very close to her; she could hear himbreathing. He did not attempt to speak. With every atom of strength thatwas left in him he was fighting a mad desire to take her in his armsagain and keep her there. 

That was the moment when Harmony became a woman. 

She lighted the candle with the match she still held. Then she turnedand faced him. 

"That sort of thing is not for you and me, Peter, " she said quietly. 

"Why not?"

"There isn't any question about it. "

He was still reckless, even argumentative; the crying need of her stillobsessed him. "Why not? Why should I not take you in my arms? Ifthere is a moment of happiness to be had in this grind of work andloneliness--"

"It has not made me happy. "

Perhaps nothing else she could have said would have been so effectual. Love demands reciprocation; he could read no passion in her voice. Heknew then that he had left her unstirred. He dropped his outstretchedarms. 

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it. "

"I would rather not talk about it, please. "

The banging of a door far off told them that Anna Gates had arrived andwas taking off her galoshes in the entry. Peter drew a long breath, and, after his habit, shook himself. 

"Very well, we'll not talk of it. But, for Heaven's sake, Harmony, don'tavoid me. I'm not a cad. I'll let you alone. "

There was only time for a glance of understanding between them, ofpromise from Peter, of acceptance from the girl. When Anna Gates enteredthe kitchen she found Harmony peeling potatoes and Peter filling up analready overfed stove. 

That night, during that darkest hour before the dawn when the thriftycity fathers of the old town had shut off the street lights because twohours later the sun would rise and furnish light that cost the taxpayersnothing, the Portier's wife awakened. 

The room was very silent, too silent. On those rare occasions when thePortier's wife awakened in the night and heard the twin clocks of theVotivkirche strike three, and listened, perhaps, while the delicatessenseller ambled home from the Schubert Society, singing beerily as heambled, she was wont to hear from the bed beside hers the rhythmicrespiration that told her how safe from Schubert Societies and such likeevils was her lord. There was no sound at all. 

The Portier's wife raised herself on her elbow and reached over. Owingto the width of the table that stood between the beds and to a sweepingthat day which had left the beds far apart she met nothing but emptyair. Words had small effect on the Portier, who slept fathoms deep inunconsciousness. Also she did not wish to get up--the floor was coldand a wind blowing. Could she not hear it and the creaking of the deeracross the street, as it swung on its hook?

The wife of the Portier was a person of resource. She took the ironcandlestick from the table and flung it into the darkness at thePortier's pillow. No startled yell followed. 

Suspicion thus confirmed, the Portier's wife forgot the cold floor andthe wind, and barefoot felt her way into the hall. 

Suspicion was doubly confirmed. The chain was off the door; it evenstood open an inch or two. 

Armed with a second candlestick she stationed herself inside the doorand waited. The stone floor was icy, but the fury of a woman scornedkept her warm. The Votivkirche struck one, two, three quarters of anhour. The candlestick in her hand changed from iron to ice, from iceto red-hot fire. Still the Portier had not come back and the door chainswung in the wind. 

At four o'clock she retired to the bedroom again. Indignation hadchanged to fear, coupled with sneezing. Surely even the SchubertSociety--What was that?

From the Portier's bed was coming a rhythmic respiration!

She roused him, standing over him with the iron candlestick, nowlighted, and gazing at him with eyes in which alarm struggled withsuspicion. 

"Thou hast been out of thy bed!"

"But no!"

"An hour since the bed was empty. "

"Thou dreamest. "

"The chain is off the door. "

"Let it remain so and sleep. What have we to steal or the Americansabove? Sleep and keep peace. "

He yawned and was instantly asleep again. The Portier's wife crawledinto her bed and warmed her aching feet under the crimson feathercomfort. But her soul was shaken. 

The Devil had been known to come at night and take innocent ones out todo his evil. The innocent ones knew it not, but it might be told by thesoles of the feet, which were always soiled. 

At dawn the Portier's wife cautiously uncovered the soles of hersleeping lord's feet, and fell back gasping. They were quite black, asof one who had tramped in garden mould. 

Early the next morning Harmony, after a restless night, opened the doorfrom the salon of Maria Theresa into the hall and set out a pitcher forthe milk. 

On the floor, just outside, lay the antlers from the deer across thestreet. Tied to them was a bit of paper, and on it was written the oneword, "Still!"

CHAPTER X

In looking back after a catastrophe it is easy to trace the steps bywhich the inevitable advanced. Destiny marches, not by great leaps butwith a thousand small and painful steps, and here and there it leavesits mark, a footprint on a naked soul. We trace a life by its scars, asa tree by its rings. 

Anna Gates was not the best possible companion for Harmony, and thiswith every allowance for her real kindliness, her genuine affection forthe girl. Life had destroyed her illusions, and it was of illusionsthat Harmony's veil had been woven. To Anna Gates, worn with a thousandsleepless nights, a thousand thankless days, withered before her timewith the struggling routine of medical practice, sapped with endlesscalls for sympathy and aid, existence ceased to be spiritual and becamephysiological. 

Life and birth and death had lost their mysteries. The veil was rent. 

To fit this existence of hers she had built herself a curious creed, a philosophy of individualism, from behind which she flung strangebombshells of theories, shafts of distorted moralities, personalliberties, irresponsibilities, a supreme scorn for modern law and theprophets. Nature, she claimed, was her law and her prophet. 

In her hard-working, virginal life her theories had wrought no mischief. Temptation had been lacking to exploit them, and even in the event ofthe opportunity it was doubtful whether she would have had the strengthof her convictions. Men love theories, but seldom have the courage ofthem, and Anna Gates was largely masculine. Women, being literal, areapt to absorb dangerous doctrine and put it to the test. When it isfalse doctrine they discover it too late. 

Harmony was now a woman. 

Anna would have cut off her hand sooner than have brought the girl toharm; but she loved to generalize. It amused her to see Harmony's eyeswiden with horror at one of her radical beliefs. Nothing pleasedher more than to pit her individualism against the girl's rigid andconventional morality, and down her by some apparently unanswerableargument. 

On the day after the incident in the kitchen such an argument tookplace--hardly an argument, for Harmony knew nothing of mental fencing. Anna had taken a heavy cold, and remained at home. Harmony had beenpracticing, and at the end she played a little winter song by somemodern composer. It breathed all the purity of a white winter's day; itwas as chaste as ice and as cold; and yet throughout was the thought ofgreen things hiding beneath the snow and the hope of spring. 

Harmony, having finished, voiced some such feeling. She was ratherashamed of her thought. 

"It seems that way to me, " she finished apologetically. "It soundsrather silly. I always think I can tell the sort of person who composescertain things. "

"And this gentleman who writes of winter?"

"I think he is very reserved. And that he has never loved any one. "

"Indeed!"

"When there is any love in music, any heart, one always feels it, exactly as in books--the difference between a love story and--and--"

"--a dictionary!"

"You always laugh, " Harmony complained

"That's better than weeping. When I think of the rotten way things go inthis world I want to weep always. "

"I don't find it a bad world. Of course there are bad people, but thereare good ones. "

"Where? Peter and you and I, I suppose. "

"There are plenty of good men. "

"What do you call a good man?"

Harmony hesitated, then went on bravely:--

"Honorable men. "

Anna smiled. "My dear child, " she said, "you substitute the code of agentleman for the Mosaic Law. Of course your good man is a monogamist?"

Harmony nodded, puzzled eyes on Anna. 

"Then there are no 'good' people in the polygamous countries, I suppose!When there were twelve women to every man, a man took a dozen wives. To-day in our part of the globe there is one woman--and a fifthover--for every man. Each man gets one woman, and for every five couplesthere is a derelict like myself, mateless. "

Anna's amazing frankness about herself often confused Harmony. Herresentment at her single condition, because it left her childless, brought forth theories that shocked and alarmed the girl. In theatmosphere in which Harmony had been reared single women were alwayspresumed to be thus by choice and to regard with certain tolerance thoseweaker sisters who had married. Anna, on the contrary, was franklya derelict, frankly regretted her maiden condition and railed withbitterness against her enforced childlessness. The near approach ofChristmas had for years found her morose and resentful. There are, hereand there, such women, essentially mothers but not necessarily wives, their sole passion that of maternity. 

Anna, argumentative and reckless, talked on. She tore away, in herresentment, every theory of existence the girl had ever known, andoffered her instead an incredible liberty in the name of the freedom ofthe individual. Harmony found all her foundations of living shaken, andthough refusing to accept Anna's theories, found her faith in her ownweakened. She sat back, pale and silent, listening, while Anna built upout of her discontent a new heaven and a new earth, with liberty writtenhigh in its firmament. 

When her reckless mood had passed Anna was regretful enough at thegirl's stricken face. 

"I'm a fool!" she said contritely. "If Peter had been here he'd havethrottled me. I deserve it. I'm a theorist, pure and simple, andtheorists are the anarchists of society. There's only one comfort aboutus--we never live up to our convictions. Now forget all this rot I'vebeen talking. "

Peter brought up the mail that afternoon, a Christmas card or two forAnna, depressingly early, and a letter from the Big Soprano for Harmonyfrom New York. The Big Soprano was very glad to be back and spent twopages over her chances for concert work. 

". .. I could have done as well had I stayed at home. If I had had themoney they wanted, to go to Geneva and sing 'Brunnhilde, ' it would havehelped a lot. I could have said I'd sung in opera in Europe and at leasthave had a hearing at the Met. But I didn't, and I'm back at the churchagain and glad to get my old salary. If it's at all possible, stay untilthe master has presented you in a concert. He's quite right, you haven'ta chance unless he does. And now I'll quit grumbling. 

"Scatchy met her Henry at the dock and looked quite lovely, flushed withexcitement and having been up since dawn curling her hair. He was rathera disappointment--small and blond, with light blue eyes, and almostdapper. But oh, my dear, I wouldn't care how pale a man's eyes were ifhe looked at me the way Henry looked at her. 

"They asked me to luncheon with them, but I knew they wanted to be alonetogether, and so I ate a bite or two, all I could swallow for the lumpin my throat, by myself. I was homesick enough in old Wien, but I amjust as homesick now that I am here, for we are really homesick only forpeople, not places. And no one really cared whether I came back or not. "

Peter had been miserable all day, not with regret for the day before, but with fear. What if Harmony should decide that the situation wasunpleasant and decide to leave? What if a reckless impulse, recklesslycarried out, were to break up an arrangement that had made a green oasisof happiness and content for all of them in the desert of their commondespair?

If he had only let her go and apologized! But no, he had had to argue, to justify himself, to make an idiot of himself generally. He almostgroaned aloud as he opened the gate end crossed the wintry garden. 

He need not have feared. Harmony had taken him entirely at his word. "I am not a beast. I'll let you alone, " he had said. She had had a badnight, as nights go. She had gone through the painful introspectionwhich, in a thoroughly good girl, always follows such an outburst asPeter's. Had she said or done anything to make him think--Surely she hadnot! Had she been wrong about Peter after all? Surely not again. 

While the Portier's wife, waked, as may happen, by an unaccustomedsilence, was standing guard in the hall below, iron candlestick inhand, Harmony, having read the Litany through in the not particularlyreligious hope of getting to sleep, was dreaming placidly. It was Peterwho tossed and turned almost all night. Truly there had been littlesleep that night in the old hunting-lodge of Maria Theresa. 

Peter, still not quite at ease, that evening kept out of the kitchenwhile supper was preparing. Anna, radical theories forgotten and wearinga knitted shawl against drafts, was making a salad, and Harmony, allanxiety and flushed with heat, was broiling a steak. 

Steak was an extravagance, to be cooked with clear hot coals and prayer. 

"Peter, " she called, "you may set the table. And try to lay the clothstraight. "

Peter, exiled in the salon, came joyously. Obviously the wretchedbusiness of yesterday was forgiven. He came to the door, pipe in mouth. 

"Suppose I refuse?" he questioned. "You--you haven't been very friendlywith me to-day, Harry. "

"I?"

"Don't quarrel, you children, " cried Anna, beating eggs vigorously. "Harmony is always friendly, too friendly. The Portier loves her. "

"I'm sure I said good-evening to you. "

"You usually say, 'Good-evening, Peter. '"

"And I did not?"

"You did not. "

"Then--Good-evening, Peter. "

"Thank you. "

His steady eyes met hers. In them there was a renewal of his yesterday'spromise, abasement, regret. Harmony met him with forgiveness andrestoration. 

"Sometimes, " said Peter humbly, "when I am in very great favor, you say, 'Good-evening, Peter, dear. '"

"Good-evening, Peter, dear, " said Harmony. 

CHAPTER XI

The affairs of young Stewart and Marie Jedlicka were not movingsmoothly. Having rented their apartment to the Boyers, and throughMarie's frugality and the extra month's wages at Christmas, which wasMarie's annual perquisite, being temporarily in funds the sky seemedclear enough, and Walter Stewart started on his holiday with acomfortable sense of financial security. 

Mrs. Boyer, shown over the flat by Stewart during Marie's temporaryexile in the apartment across the hall, was captivated by the comfort ofthe little suite and by its order. Her housewifely mind, restless withlong inactivity in a pension, seized on the bright pans of Marie'skitchen and the promise of the brick-and-sheetiron stove. Shedisapproved of Stewart, having heard strange stories of him, but therewas nothing bacchanal or suspicious about this orderly establishment. Mrs. Boyer was a placid, motherly looking woman, torn from her churchand her card club, her grown children, her household gods of thirtyyears' accumulation, that "Frank" might catch up with his profession. 

She had explained it rather tremulously at home. 

"Father wants to go, " she said. "You children are big enough now to beleft. He's always wanted to do it, but we couldn't go while you werelittle. "

"But, mother!" expostulated the oldest girl. "When you are so afraid ofthe ocean! And a year!"

"What is to be will be, " she had replied. "If I'm going to be drownedI'll be drowned, whether it's in the sea or in a bathtub. And I'll notlet father go alone. "

Fatalism being their mother's last argument and always final, thechildren gave up. They let her go. More, they prepared for her soelaborate a wardrobe that the poor soul had had no excuse to purchaseanything abroad. She had gone through Paris looking straight ahead lesther eyes lead her into the temptation of the shops. In Vienna she woreher home-town outfit with determination, vaguely conscious that thewomen about her had more style, were different. She priced unsuitablegarments wistfully, and went home to her trunks full of best materialsthat would never wear out. The children, knowing her, had bought thebest. 

To this couple, then, Stewart had rented his apartment. It is hard tosay by what psychology he found their respectability so satisfactory. Itwas as though his own status gained by it. He had much the same feelingabout the order and decency with which Marie managed the apartment, asif irregularity were thus regularized. 

Marie had met him once for a walk along the Graben. She had worn anexperimental touch of rouge under a veil, and fine lines were drawnunder her blue eyes, darkening them. She had looked very pretty, ratherfrightened. Stewart had sent her home and had sulked for an entireevening. 

So curious a thing is the mind masculine, such an order of disorder, soconventional its defiance of convention. Stewart breaking the law andtrying to keep the letter!

On the day they left for Semmering Marie was up at dawn. There wasmuch to do. The house must be left clean and shining. There must be nofeminine gewgaws to reveal to the Frau Doktor that it was not a purelymasculine establishment. At the last moment, so late that it sent herheart into her mouth, she happened on the box of rouge hidden fromStewart's watchful eyes. She gave it to the milk girl. 

Finally she folded her meager wardrobe and placed it in the HerrDoktor's American trunk: a marvel, that trunk, so firm, so heavy, bound with iron. And with her own clothing she packed Stewart's, thedress-suit he had worn once to the Embassy, a hat that folded, strangeAmerican shoes, and books--always books. The Herr Doktor would studyat Semmering. When all was in readiness and Stewart was taking a finalsurvey, Marie ran downstairs and summoned a cab. It did not occur to herto ask him to do it. Marie's small life was one of service, and besidesthere was an element in their relationship that no one but Mariesuspected, and that she hid even from herself. She was very much inlove with this indifferent American, this captious temporary god of herdomestic altar. Such a contingency had never occurred to Stewart; butPeter, smoking gravely in the little apartment, had more than oncecaught a look in Marie's eyes as she turned them on the other man, andhad surmised it. It made him uncomfortable. 

When the train was well under way, however, and he found no disturbingelement among the three others in the compartment, Stewart relaxed. Semmering was a favorite resort with the American colony, but not untillater in the winter. In December there were rains in the mountains, andlow-lying clouds that invested some of the chalets in constant fog. It was not until the middle of January that the little mountain trainbecame crowded with tourists, knickerbockered men with knapsacks, andjaunty feathers in their soft hats, boys carrying ski, women with Alpinecloaks and iron-pointed sticks. 

Marie was childishly happy. It was the first real vacation of her life, and more than that she was going to Semmering, in the very shadow of theRaxalpe, the beloved mountain of the Viennese. 

Marie had seen the Rax all her life, as it towered thirty miles orso away above the plain. On peaceful Sundays, having climbed the cograilroad, she had seen its white head turn rosy in the setting sun, andonce when a German tourist from Munich had handed her his fieldglass shehad even made out some of the crosses that showed where travelers hadmet their deaths. Now she would be very close. If the weather were good, she might even say a prayer in the chapel on its crest for the souls ofthose who had died. It was of a marvel, truly; so far may one go whenone has money and leisure. 

The small single-trucked railway carriages bumped and rattled up themountain sides, always rising, always winding. There were moments whenthe track held to the cliffs only by gigantic fingers of steel, whilefar below were peaceful valleys and pink-and-blue houses and churcheswith gilded spires. There were vistas of snow-peak and avalanche shed, and always there were tunnels. Marie, so wise in some things, was achild in others; she slid close to Stewart in the darkness and touchedhim for comfort. 

"It is so dark, " she apologized, "and it frightens me, the mountainheart. In your America, have you so great mountains?"

Stewart patted her hand, a patronizing touch that sent her blood racing. 

"Much larger, " he said magnificently. "I haven't seen a hill in EuropeI'd exchange for the Rockies. And when we cross the mountains there weuse railway coaches. These toy railroads are a joke. At home we'd use'em as street-cars. "

"Really! I should like to see America. "

"So should I. "

The conversation was taking a dangerous trend. Mention of America wasapt to put the Herr Doktor in a bad humor or to depress him, which waseven worse. Marie, her hand still on his arm and not repulsed, becamesilent. 

At a small way station the three Germans in the compartment left thetrain. Stewart, lowering a window, bought from a boy on the platformbeer and sausages and a bag of pretzels. As the train resumed itsclanking progress they ate luncheon, drinking the beer from the bottlesand slicing the sausage with a penknife. It was a joyous trip, ared-letter day in the girl's rather sordid if not uneventful life. TheHerr Doktor was pleased with her. He liked her hat, and when sheflushed with pleasure demanded proof that she was not rouged. Proof wasforthcoming. She rubbed her cheeks vigorously with a handkerchief andproduced in triumph its unreddened purity. 

"Thou suspicious one!" she pouted. "I must take off the skin to assurethee! When the Herr Doktor says no rouge, I use none. "

"You're a good child. " He stooped over and kissed one scarlet cheek andthen being very comfortable and the beer having made him drowsy, he puthis head in her lap and slept. 

When he awakened they were still higher. The snow-peak towered aboveand the valleys were dizzying! Semmering was getting near. They werefrequently in darkness; and between the tunnels were long lines ofgranite avalanche sheds. The little passage of the car was full oftourists looking down. 

"We are very close, I am sure, " an American girl was saying just outsidethe doorway. "See, isn't that the Kurhaus? There, it is lost again. "

The tourists in the passage were Americans and the girl who had spokenwas young and attractive. Stewart noticed them for the first time andmoved to a more decorous distance from Marie. 

Marie Jedlicka took her cue and lapsed into silence, but her thoughtswere busy. Perhaps this girl was going to Semmering also and the HerrDoktor would meet her. But that was foolish! There were other resortsbesides Semmering, and in the little villa to which they went therewould be no Americans. It was childish to worry about a girl whose backand profile only she had seen. Also profiles were deceptive; there wasthe matter of the ears. Marie's ears were small and set close to herhead. If the American Fraulein's ears stuck out or her face were onlyshort and wide! But no. The American Fraulein turned and glanced onceswiftly into the compartment. She was quite lovely. 

Stewart thought so, too. He got up with a great show of stretching andyawning and lounged into the passage. He did not speak to the girl;Marie noted that with some comfort. But shortly after she saw himconversing easily with a male member of the party. Her heart sank again. Life was moving very fast for Marie Jedlicka that afternoon on thetrain. 

Stewart was duly presented to the party of Americans and offered his owncards, bowing from the waist and clicking his heels together, a Germancustom he had picked up. The girl was impressed; Marie saw that. Whenthey drew into the station at Semmering Stewart helped the Americanparty off first and then came back for Marie. Less keen eyes thanthe little Austrian's would have seen his nervous anxiety to escapeattention, once they were out of the train and moving toward the gateof the station. He stopped to light a cigarette, he put down thehand-luggage and picked it up again, as though it weighed heavily, whereas it was both small and light. He loitered through the gate andpaused to exchange a word with the gateman. 

The result was, of course, that the Americans were in a sleigh and wellup the mountainside before Stewart and Marie were seated side by side ina straw-lined sledge, their luggage about them, a robe over their knees, and a noisy driver high above them on the driving-seat. Stewart spoke toher then, the first time for half an hour. 

Marie found some comfort. The villas at Semmering were scattered wideover the mountain breast, set in dense clumps of evergreens, hiddenfrom the roads and from each other by trees and shrubbery separated byvalleys. One might live in one part of Semmering for a month and neversuspect the existence of other parts, or wander over steep roads andpaths for days and never pass twice over the same one. The Herr Doktormight not see the American girl again--and if he did! Did he not seeAmerican girls wherever he went?

The sleigh climbed on. It seemed they would never stop climbing. Belowin the valley twilight already reigned, a twilight of blue shadows, ofcows with bells wandering home over frosty fields, of houses with darkfaces that opened an eye of lamplight as one looked. 

Across the valley and far above--Marie pointed without words. Her smallheart was very full. Greater than she had ever dreamed it, steeper, morebeautiful, more deadly, and crowned with its sunset hue of rose was theRax. Even Stewart lost his look of irritation as he gazed with her. Hereached over and covered both her hands with his large one under therobe. 

The sleigh climbed steadily. Marie Jedlicka, in a sort of ecstasy, leaned back and watched the mountain; its crown faded from rose to gold, from gold to purple with a thread of black. There was a shadow on theside that looked like a cross. Marie stopped the sleigh at a waysideshrine, and getting out knelt to say a prayer for the travelers who haddied on the Rax. They had taken a room at a small villa where board wascheap, and where the guests were usually Germans of the thriftiersort from Bavaria. Both the season and the modest character of theestablishment promised them quiet and seclusion. 

To Marie the house seemed the epitome of elegance, even luxury. It clungto a steep hillside. Their room, on the third floor, looked out from theback of the building over the valley, which fell away almost sheer frombeneath their windows. A tiny balcony outside, with access to it by adoor from the bedroom, looked far down on the tops of tall pines. Itmade Marie dizzy. 

She was cheerful again and busy. The American trunk was to be unpackedand the Herr Doktor's things put away, his shoes in rows, as he likedthem, and his shaving materials laid out on the washstand. Then therewas a new dress to put on, that she might do him credit at supper. 

Stewart's bad humor had returned. He complained of the room and thedraft under the balcony door; the light was wrong for shaving. But thetruth came out at last and found Marie not unprepared. 

"The fact is, " he said, "I'm not going to eat with you to-night, dear. I'm going to the hotel. "

"With the Americans?"

"Yes. I know a chap who went to college with the brother--with the youngman you saw. "

Marie glanced down at her gala toilet. Then she began slowly to takeoff the dress, reaching behind her for a hook he had just fastened andfighting back tears as she struggled with it. 

"Now, remember, Marie, I will have no sulking. "

"I am not sulking. "

"Why should you change your clothes?"

"Because the dress was for you. If you are not here I do not wish towear it. "

Stewart went out in a bad humor, which left him before he had walked forfive minutes in the clear mountain air. At the hotel he found the partywaiting for him, the women in evening gowns. The girl, whose name wasAnita, was bewitching in pale green. 

That was a memorable night for Walter Stewart, with his own kind oncemore--a perfect dinner, brisk and clever conversation, enlivened by abit of sweet champagne, an hour or two on the terrace afterward with thewomen in furs, and stars making a jeweled crown for the Rax. 

He entirely forgot Marie until he returned to the villa and opening thedoor of the room found her missing. 

She had not gone far. At the sound of his steps she moved on the balconyand came in slowly. She was pale and pinched with cold, but she was wisewith the wisdom of her kind. She smiled. 

"Didst thou have a fine evening?"

"Wonderful!"

"I am sorry if I was unpleasant. I was tired, now I am rested. "

"Good, little Marie!"

CHAPTER XII

The card in the American Doctors' Club brought a response finally. It was just in time. Harmony's funds were low, and the Frau ProfessorBergmeister had gone to St. Moritz for the winter. She regretted theEnglish lessons, but there were always English at St. Moritz and it costnothing to talk with them. Before she left she made Harmony a present. "For Christmas, " she explained. It was a glass pin-tray, decoratedbeneath with labels from the Herr Professor's cigars and in the center apicture of the Emperor. 

The response came in this wise. Harmony struggling home against an eastwind and holding the pin-tray and her violin case, opened the oldgarden gate by the simple expedient of leaning against it. It flew backviolently, almost overthrowing a stout woman in process of egress downthe walk. The stout woman was Mrs. Boyer, clad as usual in the bestbroadcloth and wearing her old sable cape, made over according to heroldest daughter's ideas into a staid stole and muff. The muff lay on thepath now and Mrs. Boyer was gasping for breath. 

"I'm so sorry!" Harmony exclaimed. "It was stupid of me; but thewind--Is this your muff?"

Mrs. Boyer took the muff coldly. From its depths she proceeded toextract a handkerchief and with the handkerchief she brushed down thebroadcloth. Harmony stood apologetically by. It is explanatory of Mrs. Boyer's face, attitude, and costume that the girl addressed her inEnglish. 

"I backed in, " she explained. "So few people come, and no Americans. "

Mrs. Boyer, having finished her brushing and responded to this humbleapology in her own tongue, condescended to look at Harmony. 

"It really is no matter, " she said, still coolly but with indications ofthawing. "I am only glad it did not strike my nose. I dare say it wouldhave, but I was looking up to see if it were going to snow. " Here shesaw the violin case and became almost affable. 

"There was a card in the Doctors' Club, and I called--" She hesitated. 

"I am Miss Wells. The card is mine. "

"One of the women here has a small boy who wishes to take violin lessonsand I offered to come. The mother is very busy. "

"I see. Will you come in? I can make you a cup of tea and we can talkabout it. "

Mrs. Boyer was very willing, although she had doubts about the tea. She had had no good tea since she had left England, and was inclined tosuspect all of it. 

They went in together, Harmony chatting gayly as she ran ahead, explaining this bit of the old staircase, that walled-up door, herean ancient bit of furniture not considered worthy of salvage, therea closed and locked room, home of ghosts and legends. To Harmony thiselderly woman, climbing slowly behind her, was a bit of home. Therehad been many such in her life; women no longer young, friends of hermother's who were friends of hers; women to whom she had been wont topay the courtesy of a potted hyacinth at Easter or a wreath at Christmasor a bit of custard during an illness. She had missed them all cruelly, as she had missed many things--her mother, her church, her smallgayeties. She had thought at first that Frau Professor Bergmeistermight allay her longing for these comfortable, middle-aged, placid-eyedfriends of hers. But the Frau Professor Bergmeister had proved to be afrivolous and garrulous old woman, who substituted ease for comfort, and who burned a candle on the name-day of her first husband while hersecond was safely out of the house. 

So it was with something of excitement that Harmony led the way up thestairs and into the salon of Maria Theresa. 

Peter was there. He was sitting with his back to the door, busilyengaged in polishing the horns of the deer. Whatever scruples Harmonyhad had about the horns, Peter had none whatever, save to get themsafely out of the place and to the hospital. So Peter was polishing thehorns. Harmony had not expected to find him home, and paused, ratherstartled. 

"Oh, I didn't know you were home. "

Peter spoke without turning. 

"Try to bear up under it, " he said. "I'm home and hungry, sweetheart!"

"Peter, please!"

Peter turned at that and rose instantly. It was rather dark in the salonand he did not immediately recognize Mrs. Boyer. But that keen-eyedlady had known him before he turned, had taken in the domesticity of thescene and Peter's part in it, and had drawn the swift conclusion of thepure of heart. 

"I'll come again, " she said hurriedly. "I--I must really get home. Dr. Boyer will be there, and wondering--"

"Mrs. Boyer!" Peter knew her. 

"Oh, Dr. Byrne, isn't it? How unexpected to find you here!"

"I live here. "

"So I surmised. "

"Three of us, " said Peter. "You know Anna Gates, don't you?"

"I'm afraid not. Really I--"

Peter was determined to explain. His very eagerness was almost damning. 

"She and Miss Wells are keeping house here and have kindly taken me inas a boarder. Please sit down. "

Harmony found nothing strange in the situation and was frankly puzzledat Peter. The fact that there was anything unusual in two single womenand one unmarried man, unrelated and comparative strangers, setting uphousekeeping together had never occurred to her. Many a single womanwhom she knew at home took a gentleman into the house as a roomer, andthereafter referred to him as "he" and spent hours airing the curtainsof smoke and even, as "he" became a member of the family, in sewing onhis buttons. There was nothing indecorous about such an arrangement;merely a concession to economic pressure. 

She made tea, taking off her jacket and gloves to do it, but bustlingabout cheerfully, with her hat rather awry and her cheeks flushed withexcitement and hope. Just now, when the Frau Professor had gone, theprospect of a music pupil meant everything. An American child, too!Fond as Harmony was of children, the sedate and dignified youngsters whowalked the parks daily with a governess, or sat with folded hands andfixed eyes through hours of heavy music at the opera, rather dauntedher. They were never alone, those Austrian children--always undersurveillance, always restrained, always prepared to kiss the hand ofwhatever relative might be near and to take themselves of to anywhere soit were somewhere else. 

"I am so glad you are going to talk to me about an American child, " saidHarmony, bringing in the tea. 

But Mrs. Boyer was not so sure she was going to talk about the Americanchild. She was not sure of anything, except that the household lookedmost irregular, and that Peter Byrne was trying to cover a difficultsituation with much conversation. He was almost glib, was Peter. The teawas good; that was one thing. 

She sat back with her muff on her knee, having refused the concessionof putting it on a chair as savoring too much of acceptance if notapproval, and sipped her tea out of a spoon as becomes a tea-lover. Peter, who loathed tea, lounged about the room, clearly in the way, butfearful to leave Harmony alone with her. She was quite likely, at thefirst opportunity, to read her a lesson on the conventions, if nothingworse; to upset the delicate balance of the little household he wasguarding. So he stayed, praying for Anna to come and bear out his story, while Harmony toyed with her spoon and waited for some mention of thelessons. None came. Mrs. Boyer, having finished her tea, rose and putdown her cup. 

"That was very refreshing, " she said. "Where shall I find thestreet-car? I walked out, but it is late. "

"I'll take you to the car. " Peter picked up his old hat. 

"Thank you. I am always lost in this wretched town. I give theconductors double tips to put me down where I want to go; but how canthey when it is the wrong car?" She bowed to Harmony without shakinghands. "Thank you for the tea. It was really good. Where do you get it?"

"There is a tea-shop a door or two from the Grand Hotel. "

"I must remember that. Thank you again. Good-bye. "

Not a word about the lessons or the American child!

"You said something about my card in the Doctors' Club--"

Something wistful in the girl's eyes caught and held Mrs. Boyer. 

After all she was the mother of daughters. She held out her hand and hervoice was not so hard. 

"That will have to wait until another time. I have made a social visitand we'll not spoil it with business. "

"But--"

"I really think the boy's mother must attend to that herself. But Ishall tell her where to find you, and"--here she glanced at Peter--"allabout it. "

"Thank you, " said Harmony gratefully. 

Peter had no finesse. He escorted Mrs. Boyer across the yard and throughthe gate with hardly a word. With the gate closed behind them he turnedand faced her:--

"You are going away with a wrong impression, Mrs. Boyer. "

Mrs. Boyer had been thinking hard as she crossed the yard. The resultwas a resolution to give Peter a piece of her mind. She drew her ampleproportions into a dignity that was almost majesty. 

"Yes?"

"I--I can understand why you think as you do. It is quite withoutfoundation. "

"I am glad of that. " There was no conviction in her voice. 

"Of course, " went on Peter, humbling himself for Harmony's sake, "Isuppose it has been rather unconventional, but Dr. Gates is not a youngwoman by any means, and she takes very good care of Miss Wells. Therewere reasons why this seemed the best thing to do. Miss Wells was aloneand--"

"There is a Dr. Gates?"

"Of course. If you will come back and wait she'll be along very soon. "

Mrs. Boyer was convinced and defrauded in one breath; convinced thatthere might be a Dr. Gates, but equally convinced that the situation wasanomalous and certainly suspicious; defrauded in that she had lost theanticipated pleasure of giving Peter a piece of her mind. She walkedalong beside him without speaking until they reached the street-carline. Then she turned. 

"You called her--you spoke to her very affectionately, young man, " sheaccused him. 

Peter smiled. The car was close. Some imp of recklessness, someperversion of humor seized him. 

"My dear Mrs. Boyer, " he said, "that was in jest purely. Besides, I didnot know that you were there!"

Mrs. Boyer was a literal person without humor. It was outraged Americanwomanhood incarnate that got into the street-car and settled itsbroadcloth of the best quality indignantly on the cane seat. It wasoutraged American womanhood that flung open the door of Marie Jedlicka'sflat, and stalking into Marie Jedlicka's sitting room confronted herhusband as he read a month-old newspaper from home. 

"Did you ever hear of a woman doctor named Gates?" she demanded. 

Boyer was not unaccustomed to such verbal attacks. He had learned tomeet domestic broadsides with a shield of impenetrable good humor, or atthe most with a return fire of mild sarcasm. 

"I never hear of a woman doctor if it can be avoided. "

"Dr. Gates--Anna Gates?"

"There are a number here. I meet them in the hospital, but I don't knowtheir names. "

"Where does Peter Byrne live?"

"In a pension, I believe, my dear. Are we going to have anything to eator do we sup of Peter Byrne?"

Mrs. Boyer made no immediate reply. She repaired to the bedroom of MarieJedlicka, and placed her hat, coat and furs on one of the beds with thecrocheted coverlets. It is a curious thing about rooms. There was nochange in the bedroom apparent to the eye, save that for Marie's tinyslippers at the foot of the wardrobe there were Mrs. Boyer's substantialhouse shoes. But in some indefinable way the room had changed. About ithung an atmosphere of solid respectability, of impeccable purity thatsoothed Mrs. Boyer's ruffled virtue into peace. Is it any wonder thatthere is a theory to the effect that things take on the essentialqualities of people who use them, and that we are haunted by things, notpeople? That when grandfather's wraith is seen in his old armchair itis the chair that produces it, while grandfather himself serenely hauntsthe shades of some vast wilderness of departed spirits?

Not that Mrs. Boyer troubled herself about such things. She wasexceedingly orthodox, even in the matter of a hereafter, where the mostorthodox are apt to stretch a point, finding no attraction whatever inthe thing they are asked to believe. Mrs. Boyer, who would have regardedit as heterodox to substitute any other instrument for the harp of herexpectation, tied on her gingham apron before Marie Jedlicka's mirror, and thought of Harmony and of the girls at home. 

She told her husband over the supper-table and found him less shockedthan she had expected. 

"It's not your affair or mine, " he said. "It's Byrne's business. "

"Think of the girl!"

"Even if you are right it's rather late, isn't it?"

"You could tell him what you think of him. "

Dr. Boyer sighed over a cup of very excellent coffee. Much living with arepresentative male had never taught his wife the reserves among membersof the sex masculine. 

"I might, but I don't intend to, " he said. "And if you listen to meyou'll keep the thing to yourself. "

"I'll take precious good care that the girl gets no pupils, " snappedMrs. Boyer. And she did with great thoroughness. 

We trace a life by its scars. Destiny, marching on by a thousand painfulsteps, had left its usual mark, a footprint on a naked soul. The soulwas Harmony's; the foot--was it not encased at that moment in Mrs. Boyer's comfortable house shoes?

Anna was very late that night. Peter, having put Mrs. Boyer on her car, went back quickly. He had come out without his overcoat, and with thesunset a bitter wind had risen, but he was too indignant to be cold. Heran up the staircase, hearing on all sides the creaking and banging withwhich the old house resented a gale, and burst into the salon of MariaTheresa. 

Harmony was sitting sidewise in a chair by the tea-table with her facehidden against its worn red velvet. She did not look up when he entered. Peter went over and put a hand on her shoulder. She quivered under itand he took it away. 

"Crying?"

"A little, " very smothered. "Just dis-disappointment. Don't mind me, Peter. "

"You mean about the pupil?"

Harmony sat up and looked at him. She still wore her hat, now more thanever askew, and some of the dye from the velvet had stained her cheek. She looked rather hectic, very lovely. 

"Why did she change so when she saw you?"

Peter hesitated. Afterward he thought of a dozen things he might havesaid, safe things. Not one came to him. 

"She--she is an evil-thinking old woman, Harry, " he said gravely. 

"She did not approve of the way we are living here, is that it?"

"Yes. "

"But Anna?"

"She did not believe there was an Anna. Not that it matters, " he addedhastily. "I'll make Anna go to her and explain. It's her infernaljumping to a conclusion that makes me crazy. "

"She will talk, Peter. I am frightened. "

"I'll take Anna to-night and we'll go to Boyer's. I'll make that womanget down on her knees to you. I'll--"

"You'll make bad very much worse, " said Harmony dejectedly. "When athing has to be explained it does no good to explain it. "

The salon was growing dark. Peter was very close to her again. As in thedusky kitchen only a few days before, he felt the compelling influenceof her nearness. He wanted, as he had never wanted anything in his lifebefore, to take her in his arms, to hold her close and bid defiance toevil tongues. He was afraid of himself. To gain a moment he put a chairbetween them and stood, strong hands gripping its back, looking down ather. 

"There is one thing we could do. "

"What, Peter?"

"We could marry. If you cared for me even a little it--it might not beso bad for you. "

"But I am not in love with you. I care for you, of course, but--not thatway, Peter. And I do not wish to marry. "

"Not even if I wish it very much?"

"No. "

"If you are thinking of my future--"

"I'm thinking for both of us. And although just now you think you carea little for me, you do not care enough, Peter. You are lonely and Iam the only person you see much, so you think you want to marry me. Youdon't really. You want to help me. "

Few motives are unmixed. Poor Peter, thus accused, could not deny hisaltruism. 

And in the face of his poverty and the little he could offer, comparedwith what she must lose, he did not urge what was the compelling motiveafter all, his need of her. 

"It would be a rotten match for you, " he agreed. "I only thought, perhaps--You are right, of course; you ought not to marry. "

"And what about you?"

"I ought not, of course. "

Harmony rose, smiling a little. 

"Then that's settled. And for goodness' sake, Peter, stop proposing tome every time things go wrong. " Her voice changed, grew grave and older, much older than Peter's. "We must not marry, either of us, Peter. Annais right. There might be an excuse if we were very much in love: but weare not. And loneliness is not a reason. "

"I am very lonely, " said Peter wistfully. 

CHAPTER XIII

Peter took the polished horns to the hospital the next morning andapproached Jimmy with his hands behind him and an atmosphere of mysterythat enshrouded him like a cloak. Jimmy, having had a good night andhaving taken the morning's medicine without argument, had been allowedup in a roller chair. It struck Peter with a pang that the boy lookedmore frail day by day, more transparent. 

"I have brought you, " said Peter gravely, "the cod-liver oil. "

"I've had it!"

"Then guess. "

"Dad's letter?"

"You've just had one. Don't be a piggy. "

"Animal, vegetable, or mineral?"

"Vegetable, " said Peter shamelessly. 

"Soft or hard!"

"Soft. "

This was plainly a disappointment. A pair of horns might be vegetable;they could hardly be soft. 

"A kitten?"

"A kitten is not vegetable, James. "

"I know. A bowl of gelatin from Harry!" For by this time Harmony was hisvery good friend, admitted to the Jimmy club, which consisted of NurseElisabet, the Dozent with the red beard, Anna and Peter, and of coursethe sentry, who did not know that he belonged. 

"Gelatin, to be sure, " replied Peter, and produced the horns. 

It was a joyous moment in the long low ward, with its triple row ofbeds, its barred windows, its clean, uneven old floor. As if to add atouch of completeness the sentry outside, peering in, saw the wheeledchair with its occupant, and celebrated this advance along the road torecovery by placing on the window-ledge a wooden replica of himself, bayonet and all, carved from a bit of cigar box. 

"Everybody is very nice to me, " said Jimmy contentedly. "When my fathercomes back I shall tell him. He is very fond of people who are kind tome. There was a woman on the ship--What is bulging your pocket, Peter?"

"My handkerchief. "

"That is not where you mostly carry your handkerchief. "

Peter was injured. He scowled ferociously at being doubted and stoodup before the wheeled chair to be searched. The ward watched joyously, while from pocket after pocket of Peter's old gray suit came Jimmy'ssalvage--two nuts, a packet of figs, a postcard that represented a stoutcolonel of hussars on his back on a frozen lake, with a private soldierwaiting to go through the various salutations due his rank beforeassisting him. A gala day, indeed, if one could forget the grave in thelittle mountain town with only a name on the cross at its head, and ifone did not notice that the boy was thinner than ever, that his handssoon tired of playing and lay in his lap, that Nurse Elisabet, who wasmuch inured to death and lived her days with tragedy, caught him to heralmost fiercely as she lifted him back from the chair into the smoothwhite bed. 

He fell asleep with Peter's arm under his head and the horns of the deerbeside him. On the bedside stand stood the wooden sentry, keepingguard. As Peter drew his arm away he became aware of the Nurse Elisabetbeckoning to him from a door at the end of the ward Peter left thesentinel on guard and tiptoed down the room. Just outside, round acorner, was the Dozent's laboratory, and beyond the tiny closet wherehe slept, where on a stand was the photograph of the lady he would marrywhen he had become a professor and required no one's consent. 

The Dozent was waiting for Peter. In the amiable conspiracy whichkept the boy happy he was arch-plotter. His familiarity with Austrianintrigue had made him invaluable. He it was who had originated the ideaof making Jimmy responsible for the order of the ward, so that a burlyTrager quarreling over his daily tobacco with the nurse in charge, orbrawling over his soup with another patient, was likely to be hailed ina thin soprano, and to stand, grinning sheepishly, while Jimmy, inmixed English and German, restored the decorum of the ward. They were aquarrelsome lot, the convalescents. Jimmy was so busy some days settlingdisputes and awarding decisions that he slept almost all night. This wasas it should be. 

The Dozent waited for Peter. His red beard twitched and his white coat, stained from the laboratory table, looked quite villainous. He held outa letter. 

"This has come for the child, " he said in quite good English. He wasobliged to speak English. Day by day he taught in the clinics Americanswho scorned his native tongue, and who brought him the money withwhich some day he would marry. He liked the English language; he likedAmericans because they learned quickly. He held out an envelope with ablack border and Peter took it. 

"From Paris!" he said. "Who in the world--I suppose I'd better open it. "

"So I thought. It appears a letter of--how you say it? Ah, yes, condolence. "

Peter opened the letter and read it. Then without a word he gave it opento the Dozent. There was silence in the laboratory while the Dozentread it, silence except for his canary, which was chipping at a lump ofsugar. Peter's face was very sober. 

"So. A mother! You knew nothing of a mother?"

"Something from the papers I found. She left when the boy was ababy--went on the stage, I think. He has no recollection of her, whichis a good thing. She seems to have been a bad lot. "

"She comes to take him away. That is impossible. "

"Of course it is impossible, " said Peter savagely. "She's not goingto see the child if I can help it. She left because--she's the boy'smother, but that's the best you can say of her. This letter--Well, you've read it. "

"She is as a stranger to him?"

"Absolutely. She will come in mourning--look at that black border--andtell him his father is dead, and kill him. I know the type. "

The canary chipped at his sugar; the red beard of the Dozent twitched, as does the beard of one who plots. Peter re-read the gushing letter inhis hand and thought fiercely. 

"She is on her way here, " said the Dozent. "That is bad. Paris to Wienis two days and a night. She may hourly arrive. "

"We might send him away--to another hospital. "

The Dozent shrugged his shoulders. 

"Had I a home--" he said, and glanced through the door to the portraiton the stand. "It would be possible to hide the boy, at least for atime. In the interval the mother might be watched, and if she proved afit person the boy could be given to her. It is, of course, an affair ofpolice. "

This gave Peter pause. He had no money for fines, no time forimprisonment, and he shared the common horror of the great jail. He readthe letter again, and tried to read into the lines Jimmy's mother, and failed. He glanced into the ward. Still Jimmy slept. A burlyconvalescent, with a saber cut from temple to ear and the generalappearance of an assassin, had stopped beside the bed and was drawing upthe blanket round the small shoulders. 

"I can give orders that the woman be not admitted to-day, " said theDozent. "That gives us a few hours. She will go to the police, andto-morrow she will be admitted. In the mean time--"

"In the mean time, " Peter replied, "I'll try to think of something. If Ithought she could be warned and would leave him here--"

"She will not. She will buy him garments and she will travel with himthrough the Riviera and to Nice. She says Nice. She wishes to be therefor carnival, and the boy will die. "

Peter took the letter and went home. He rode, that he might read itagain in the bus. But no scrap of comfort could he get from it. It spokeof the dead father coldly, and the father had been the boy's idol. Nogood woman could have been so heartless. It offered the boy a seat inone of the least reputable of the Paris theaters to hear his mothersing. And in the envelope, overlooked before, Peter found a cuttingfrom a French newspaper, a picture of the music-hall type that made himgroan. It was indorsed "Mamma. "

Harmony had had a busy morning. First she had put her house in order, working deftly, her pretty hair pinned up in a towel--all in order butPeter's room. That was to have a special cleaning later. Next, stillwith her hair tied up, she had spent two hours with her violin, standingvery close to the stove to save fuel and keep her fingers warm. Sheplayed well that morning: even her own critical ears were satisfied, and the Portier, repairing a window lock in an empty room below, wasentranced. He sat on the window sill in the biting cold and listened. Many music students had lived in the apartment with the great salon;there had been much music of one sort and another, but none like this. 

"She tears my heart from my bosom, " muttered the Portier, sighing, andalmost swallowed a screw that he held in his teeth. 

After the practicing Harmony cleaned Peter's room. She felt very tendertoward Peter that day. The hurt left by Mrs. Boyer's visit had diedaway, but there remained a clear vision of Peter standing behind thechair and offering himself humbly in marriage, so that a bad situationmight be made better. And as with a man tenderness expresses itself inthe giving of gifts, so with a woman it means giving of service. Harmonycleaned Peter's room. 

It was really rather tidy. Peter's few belongings did not spread to anyextent and years of bachelorhood had taught him the rudiments of order. Harmony took the covers from washstand and dressing table and washed andironed them. She cleaned Peter's worn brushes and brought a pincushionof her own for his one extra scarfpin. Finally she brought her ownsteamer rug and folded it across the foot of the bed. There was no stovein the room; it had been Harmony's room once, and she knew to the fullhow cold it could be. 

Having made all comfortable for the outer man she prepared for theinner. She was in the kitchen, still with her hair tied up, when Annacame home. 

Anna was preoccupied. Instead of her cheery greeting she came somberlyback to the kitchen, a letter in her hand. History was making fast thatday. 

"Hello, Harry, " she said. "I'm going to take a bite and hurry off. Don'tbother, I'll attend to myself. " She stuffed the letter in her belt andgot a plate from a shelf. "How pretty you look with your head tied up!If stupid Peter saw you now he would fall in love with you. "

"Then I shall take it off. Peter must be saved!"

Anna sat down at the tiny table and drank her tea. She felt ratherbetter after the tea. Harmony, having taken the towel off, was busy overthe brick stove. There was nothing said for a moment. Then:--

"I am out of patience with Peter, " said Anna. 

"Why?"

"Because he hasn't fallen in love with you. Where are his eyes?"

"Please, Anna!"

"It's better as it is, no doubt, for both of you. But it's superhuman ofPeter. I wonder--"

"Yes?"

"I think I'll not tell you what I wonder. "

And Harmony, rather afraid of Anna's frank speech, did not insist. 

As she drank her tea and made a pretense at eating, Anna's thoughtswandered from Peter to Harmony to the letter in her belt and back againto Peter and Harmony. For some time she had been suspicious of Peter. From her dozen years of advantage in age and experience she looked downon Peter's thirty years of youth, and thought she knew something thatPeter himself did not suspect. Peter being unintrospective, Anna did hisheart-searching for him. She believed he was madly in love with Harmonyand did not himself suspect it. As she watched the girl over her teacup, revealing herself in a thousand unposed gestures of youth and grace, athousand lovelinesses, something of the responsibility she and Peter hadassumed came over her. She sighed and felt for her letter. 

"I've had rather bad news, " she said at last. 

"From home?"

"Yes. My father--did you know I have a father?"

"You hadn't spoken of him. "

"I never do. As a father he hasn't amounted to much. But he's very ill, and--I 've a conscience. "

Harmony turned a startled face to her. 

"You are not going back to America?"

"Oh, no, not now, anyhow. If I become hag ridden with remorse and do goI'll find some one to take my place. Don't worry. "

The lunch was a silent meal. Anna was hurrying off as Peter came in, andthere was no time to discuss Peter's new complication with her. Harmonyand Peter ate together, Harmony rather silent. Anna's unfortunatecomment about Peter had made her constrained. After the meal Peter, pipein mouth, carried the dishes to the kitchen, and there it was that hegave her the letter. What Peter's slower mind had been a perceptibletime in grasping Harmony comprehended at once--and not only thesituation, but its solution. 

"Don't let her have him!" she said, putting down the letter. "Bring himhere. Oh, Peter, how good we must be to him!"

And that after all was how the thing was settled. So simple, so obviouswas it that these three expatriates, these waifs and estrays, bandedtogether against a common poverty, a common loneliness, should sharewithout question whatever was theirs to divide. Peter and Anna gavecheerfully of their substance, Harmony of her labor, that a small boyshould be saved a tragic knowledge until he was well enough to bear it, or until, if God so willed, he might learn it himself without pain. 

The friendly sentry on duty again that night proved singularly blind. Thus it happened that, although the night was clear when the twin dialsof the Votivkirche showed nine o'clock, he did not notice a cab thathalted across the street from the hospital. 

Still more strange that, although Peter passed within a dozen feet ofhim, carrying a wriggling and excited figure wrapped in a blanket andinsisting on uncovering its feet, the sentry was able the next day tosay that he had observed such a person carrying a bundle, but thatit was a short stocky person, quite lame, and that the bundle wasundoubtedly clothing going to the laundry. 

Perhaps--it is just possible--the sentry had his suspicions. It isundeniable that as Jimmy in the cab on Peter's knee, with Peter's armclose about him, looked back at the hospital, the sentry was goingthrough the manual of arms very solemnly under the stars and facingtoward the carriage. 

CHAPTER XIV

For two days at Semmering it rained. The Raxalpe and the Schneebergsulked behind walls of mist. From the little balcony of the PensionWaldheim one looked out over a sea of cloud, pierced here and thereby islands that were crags or by the tops of sunken masts that wereevergreen trees. The roads were masses of slippery mud, up which thehorses steamed and sweated. The gray cloud fog hung over everything; thebarking of a dog loomed out of it near at hand where no dog was to beseen. Children cried and wild birds squawked; one saw them not. 

During the second night a landslide occurred on the side of the mountainwith a rumble like the noise of fifty trains. In the morning, the rainclouds lifting for a moment, Marie saw the narrow yellow line of theslip. 

Everything was saturated with moisture. It did no good to close theheavy wooden shutters at night: in the morning the air of the room wassticky and clothing was moist to the touch. Stewart, confined to thehouse, grew irritable. 

Marie watched him anxiously. She knew quite well by what slendertenure she held her man. They had nothing in common, neither speech northought. And the little Marie's love for Stewart, grown to be a part ofher, was largely maternal. She held him by mothering him, by keeping himcomfortable, not by a great reciprocal passion that might in time havebrought him to her in chains. 

And now he was uncomfortable. He chafed against the confinement; heresented the food, the weather. Even Marie's content at her unusualleisure irked him. He accused her of purring like a cat by the fire, and stamped out more than once, only to be driven in by the curiousthunderstorms of early Alpine winter. 

On the night of the second day the weather changed. Marie, awakeningearly, stepped out on to the balcony and closed the door carefullybehind her. A new world lay beneath her, a marvel of glitteringbranches, of white plain far below; the snowy mane of the Raxalpe wasbecome a garment. And from behind the villa came the cheerful sound ofsleigh-bells, of horses' feet on crisp snow, of runners sliding easilyalong frozen roads. Even the barking of the dog in the next yard hadceased rumbling and become sharp staccato. 

The balcony extended round the corner of the house. Marie, eagerlydiscovering her new world, peered about, and seeing no one near venturedso far. The road was in view, and a small girl on ski was struggling toprevent a collision between two plump feet. Even as Marie saw her theinevitable happened and she went headlong into a drift. A governess whohad been kneeling before a shrine by the road hastily crossed herselfand ran to the rescue. 

It was a marvelous morning, a day of days. The governess and the childwent on out of vision. Marie stood still, looking at the shrine. A drifthad piled about its foot, where the governess had placed a bunch ofAlpine flowers. Down on her knees on the balcony went the littleMarie, regardless of the snow, and prayed to the shrine of the Virginbelow--for what? For forgiveness? For a better life? Not at all. Sheprayed that the heels of the American girl would keep her in out of thesnow. 

The prayer of the wicked availeth nothing; even the godly at times mustsuffer disappointment. And when one prays of heels, who can know ofthe yearning back of the praying? Marie, rising and dusting her chilledknees, saw the party of Americans on the road, clad in stout bootsand swinging along gayly. Marie shrugged her shoulders resignedly. Sheshould have gone to the shrine itself; a balcony was not a holyplace. But one thing she determined--the Americans went toward theSonnwendstein. She would advise against the Sonnwendstein for that day. 

Marie's day of days had begun wrong after all. For Stewart rose with theSonnwendstein in his mind, and no suggestion of Marie's that in anotherday a path would be broken had any effect on him. He was eager to beoff, committed the extravagance of ordering an egg apiece for breakfast, and finally proclaimed that if Marie feared the climb he would go alone. 

Marie made many delays: she dressed slowly, and must run back to seeif the balcony door was securely closed. At a little shop where theystopped to buy mountain sticks she must purchase postcards and send themat once. Stewart was fairly patient: air and exercise were having theireffect. 

It was eleven o'clock when, having crossed the valley, they commenced tomount the slope of the Sonnwendstein. The climb was easy; the road woundback and forward on itself so that one ascended with hardly an effort. Stewart gave Marie a hand here and there, and even paused to let hersit on a boulder and rest. The snow was not heavy; he showed her thefootprints of a party that had gone ahead, and to amuse her triedto count the number of people. When he found it was five he grewthoughtful. There were five in Anita's party. Thanks to Marie's delaysthey met the Americans coming down. The meeting was a short one: theparty went on down, gayly talking. Marie and Stewart climbed silently. Marie's day was spoiled; Stewart had promised to dine at the hotel. 

Even the view at the tourist house did not restore Marie's fallenspirits. What were the Vienna plain and the Styrian Alps to her, withthis impatient and frowning man beside her consulting his watch andcomputing the time until he might see the American again? What wasprayer, if this were its answer?

They descended rapidly, Stewart always in the lead and setting a pacethat Marie struggled in vain to meet. To her tentative and breathlessremarks he made brief answer, and only once in all that time did hevolunteer a remark. They had reached the Hotel Erzherzog in the valley. The hotel was still closed, and Marie, panting, sat down on an edge ofthe terrace. 

"We have been very foolish, " he said. 

"Why?"

"Being seen together like that. "

"But why? Could you not walk with any woman?"

"It's not that, " said Stewart hastily. "I suppose once does not matter. But we can't be seen together all the time. "

Marie turned white. The time had gone by when an incident of the sortcould have been met with scorn or with threats; things had changedfor Marie Jedlicka since the day Peter had refused to introduce her toHarmony. Then it had been vanity; now it was life itself. 

"What you mean, " she said with pale lips, "is that we must not be seentogether at all. Must I--do you wish me to remain a prisoner whileyou--" she choked. 

"For Heaven's sake, " he broke out brutally, "don't make a scene. Thereare men cutting ice over there. Of course you are not a prisoner. Youmay go where you like. "

Marie rose and picked up her muff. 

Marie's sordid little tragedy played itself out in Semmering. Stewartneglected her almost completely; he took fewer and fewer meals at thevilla. In two weeks he spent one evening with the girl, and was soirritable that she went to bed crying. The little mountain resort wasfilling up; there were more and more Americans. Christmas was drawingnear and a dozen or so American doctors came up, bringing their familiesfor the holidays. It was difficult to enter a shop without encounteringsome of them. To add to the difficulty, the party at the hotel, findingit crowded there, decided to go into a pension and suggested moving tothe Waldheim. 

Stewart himself was wretchedly uncomfortable. Marie's tragedy was hispredicament. He disliked himself very cordially, loathing himself andhis situation with the new-born humility of the lover. For Stewart wasin love for the first time in his life. Marie knew it. She had not livedwith him for months without knowing his every thought, every mood. Shegrew bitter and hard those days, sitting alone by the green stove inthe Pension Waldheim, or leaning, elbows on the rail, looking from thebalcony over the valley far below. Bitter and hard, that is, during hisabsences; he had but to enter the room and her rage died, to bereplaced with yearning and little, shy, tentative advances that he onlytolerated. Wild thoughts came to Marie, especially at night, when thestars made a crown over the Rax, and in the hotel an orchestra played, while people dined and laughed and loved. 

She grew obstinate, too. When in his desperation Stewart suggested thatthey go back to Vienna she openly scoffed. 

"Why?" she demanded. "That you may come back here to her, leaving methere?"

"My dear girl, " he flung back exasperated, "this affair was not apermanent one. You knew that at the start. "

"You have taken me away from my work. I have two months' vacation. It isbut one month. "

"Go back and let me pay--"

"No!"

In pursuance of the plan to leave the hotel the American party came tosee the Waldheim, and catastrophe almost ensued. Luckily Marie was onthe balcony when the landlady flung open the door, and announced it asStewart's apartment. But Stewart had a bad five minutes and took it out, manlike, on the girl. 

Stewart had another reason for not wishing to leave Semmering. Anitawas beautiful, a bit of a coquette, too; as are most pretty women. AndStewart was not alone in his devotion. A member of the party, a NewYorker named Adam, was much in love with the girl and indifferent whoknew it. Stewart detested him. 

In his despair Stewart wrote to Peter Byrne. It was characteristic ofPeter that, however indifferent people might be in prosperity, theyalways turned to him in trouble. Stewart's letter concluded:--

"I have made out a poor case for myself; but I'm in a hole, as you cansee. I would like to chuck everything here and sail for home with thesepeople who go in January. But, confound it, Byrne, what am I to do withMarie? And that brings me to what I 've been wanting to say all along, and haven't had the courage to. Marie likes you and you rather likedher, didn't you? You could talk her into reason if anybody could. Nowthat you know how things are, can't you come up over Sunday? It's askinga lot, and I know it; but things are pretty bad. "

Peter received the letter on the morning of the day before Christmas. Heread it several times and, recalling the look he had seen more than oncein Marie Jedlicka's eyes, he knew that things were very bad, indeed. 

But Peter was a man of family in those days, and Christmas is a familyfestival not to be lightly ignored. He wired to Stewart that he wouldcome up as soon as possible after Christmas. Then, because of the lookin Marie's eyes and because he feared for her a sad Christmas, full ofheartaches and God knows what loneliness, he bought her a most hideousbrooch, which he thought admirable in every way and highly ornamentaland which he could not afford at all. This he mailed, with a cheerygreeting, and feeling happier and much poorer made his way homeward. 

CHAPTER XV

Christmas-Eve in the saloon of Maria Theresa! Christmas-Eve, with thegreat chandelier recklessly ablaze and a pig's head with cranberry eyesfor supper! Christmas-Eve, with a two-foot tree gleaming with candles onthe stand, and beside the stand, in a huge chair, Jimmy!

It had been a busy day for Harmony. In the morning there had beenshopping and marketing, and such a temptation to be reckless, with theshops full of ecstasies and the old flower women fairly overburdened. There had been anxieties, too, such as the pig's head, which must bedone a certain way, and Jimmy, who must be left with the Portier's wifeas nurse while all of them went to the hospital. The house revolvedaround Jimmy now, Jimmy, who seemed the better for the moving, and whosemother as yet had failed to materialize. 

In the afternoon Harmony played at the hospital. Peter took her as theearly twilight was falling in through the gate where the sentry keptguard and so to the great courtyard. In this grim playground menwandered about, smoking their daily allowance of tobacco and moving tokeep warm, offscourings of the barracks, derelicts of the slums, withhere and there an honest citizen lamenting a Christmas away from home. The hospital was always pathetic to Harmony; on this Christmas-Eve shefound it harrowing. Its very size shocked her, that there should be somuch suffering, so much that was appalling, frightful, insupportable. Peter felt her quiver under his hand. A hospital in festivity is veryaffecting. It smiles through its tears. And in every assemblage thereare sharply defined lines of difference. There are those who are goinghome soon, God willing; there are those who will go home some time afterlong days and longer nights. And there are those who will never go homeand who know it. And because of this the ones who are never going homeare most festively clad, as if, by way of compensation, the nursesmean to give them all future Christmasses in one. They receive anextra orange, or a pair of gloves, perhaps, --and they are not the lessgrateful because they understand. And when everything is over they layaway in the bedside stand the gloves they will never wear, and dividethe extra orange with a less fortunate one who is almost recovered. Their last Christmas is past. 

"How beautiful the tree was!" they say. Or, "Did you hear how thechildren sang? So little, to sing like that! It made me think--ofangels. "

Peter led Harmony across the courtyard, through many twisting corridors, and up and down more twisting staircases to the room where she was toplay. There were many Christmas trees in the hospital that afternoon;no one hall could have held the thousands of patients, the doctors, thenurses. Sometimes a single ward had its own tree, its own entertainment. Occasionally two or three joined forces, preempted a lecture-room, andwheeled or hobbled or carried in their convalescents. In such case animposing audience was the result. 

Into such a room Peter led Harmony. It was an amphitheater, the seatsrising in tiers, half circle above half circle, to the dusk of theroof. In the pit stood the tree, candle-lighted. There was no otherillumination in the room. The semi-darkness, the blazing tree, therows of hopeful, hoping, hopeless, rising above, white faces over whitegowns, the soft rustle of expectancy, the silence when the Dozent withthe red beard stepped out and began to read an address--all caughtHarmony by the throat. Peter, keenly alive to everything she did, feltrather than heard her soft sob. 

Peter saw the hospital anew that dark afternoon, saw it throughHarmony's eyes. Layer after layer his professional callus fell away, leaving him quick again. He had lived so long close to the heart ofhumanity that he had reduced its throbbing to beats that might becounted. Now, once more, Peter was back in the early days, when a heartwas not a pump, but a thing that ached or thrilled or struggled, thatloved or hated or yearned. 

The orchestra, insisting on sadly sentimental music, was fast turningfestivity into gloom. It played Handel's "Largo"; it threw its wholesoul into the assurance that the world, after all, was only a poorplace, that Heaven was a better. It preached resignation with every deepvibration of the cello. Harmony fidgeted. 

"How terrible!" she whispered. "To turn their Christmas-Eve intomourning! Stop them!"

"Stop a German orchestra?"

"They are crying, some of them. Oh, Peter!"

The music came to an end at last. Tears were dried. Followedrecitations, gifts, a speech of thanks from Nurse Elisabet for thepatients. Then--Harmony. 

Harmony never remembered afterward what she had played. It was joyous, she knew, for the whole atmosphere changed. Laughter came; even thecandles burned more cheerfully. When she had finished, a student in awhite coat asked her to play a German Volkspiel, and roared it out toher accompaniment with much vigor and humor. The audience joined in, atfirst timidly, then lustily. 

Harmony stood alone by the tree, violin poised, smiling at the applause. Her eyes, running along the dim amphitheater, sought Peter's, andfinding them dwelt there a moment. Then she began to play softly and assoftly the others sang. 

"Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht, "--they sang, with upturned eyes. 

"Alles schlaeft, einsam wacht. .. "

Visions came to Peter that afternoon in the darkness, visions inwhich his poverty was forgotten or mattered not at all. Visions of aChristmas-Eve in a home that he had earned, of a tree, of a girl-woman, of a still and holy night, of a child. 

"Nur das traute, hoch heilige Paar Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar Schlaf'in himmlischer Ruh', Schlaf' in himmlischer Ruh', " they sang. 

There was real festivity at the old lodge of Maria Theresa that night. 

Jimmy had taken his full place in the household. The best room, whichhad been Anna's, had been given up to him. Here, carefully tended, witha fire all day in the stove, Jimmy reigned from the bed. To him Harmonybrought her small puzzles and together they solved them. 

"Shall it be a steak to-night?" thus Harmony humbly. "Or chops?"

"With tomato sauce?"

"If Peter allows, yes. "

Much thinking on Jimmy's part, and then:--

"Fish, " he would decide. "Fish with egg dressing. "

They would argue for a time, and compromise on fish. 

The boy was better. Peter shook his head over any permanent improvement, but Anna fiercely seized each crumb of hope. Many and bitter were thebattles she and Peter fought at night over his treatment, frightful thelitter of authorities Harmony put straight every morning. 

The extra expense was not much, but it told. Peter's carefullycalculated expenditures felt the strain. He gave up a course in X-ray onwhich he had set his heart and cut off his hour in the coffee-house asa luxury. There was no hardship about the latter renunciation. Life forPeter was spelling itself very much in terms of Harmony and Jimmy thosedays. He resented anything that took him from them. 

There were anxieties of a different sort also. Anna's father wasfailing. He had written her a feeble, half-senile appeal to let bygonesbe bygones and come back to see him before he died. Anna was Peter'sgreat prop. What would he do should she decide to go home? He had builthis house on the sand, indeed. 

So far the threatened danger of a mother to Jimmy had not materialized. Peter was puzzled, but satisfied. He still wrote letters of marvelousadventure; Jimmy still watched for them, listened breathless, treasuredthem under his pillow. But he spoke less of his father. The open page ofhis childish mind was being written over with new impressions. "Dad" wasalready a memory; Peter and Harmony and Anna were realities. Sometimeshe called Peter "Dad. " At those times Peter caught the boy to him in anagony of tenderness. 

And as the little apartment revolved round Jimmy, so was thisChristmas-Eve given up to him. All day he had stayed in bed for theprivilege of an extra hour propped up among pillows in the salon. Allday he had strung little red berries that looked like cranberries forthe tree, or fastened threads to the tiny cakes that were for trimmingonly, and sternly forbidden to eat. 

A marvelous day that for Jimmy. Late in the afternoon the Portier, witha collar on, had mounted the stairs and sheepishly presented him with apair of white mice in a wooden cage. Jimmy was thrilled. The cage wason his knees all evening, and one of the mice was clearly ill of a cakewith pink icing. The Portier's gift was a stealthy one, while his wifewas having coffee with her cousin, the brushmaker. But the spirit OfChristmas does strange things. That very evening, while the Portier wasroistering in a beer hall preparatory to the midnight mass, came thePortier's wife, puffing from the stairs, and brought a puzzle book thatonly the initiated could open, and when one succeeded at last there wasa picture of the Christ-Child within. 

Young McLean came to call that evening--came to call and remained toworship. It was the first time since Mrs. Boyer that a visitor hadcome. McLean, interested with everything and palpably not shocked, wasa comforting caller. He seemed to Harmony, who had had bad moments sincethe day of Mrs. Boyer's visit, to put the hallmark of respectability onthe household, to restore it to something it had lost or had never had. 

She was quite unconscious of McLean's admiration. She and Anna put Jimmyto bed. The tree candles were burned out; Peter was extinguishingthe dying remnants when Harmony came back. McLean was at the piano, thrumming softly. Peter, turning round suddenly, surprised an expressionon the younger man's face that startled him. 

For that one night Harmony had laid aside her mourning, and wore white, soft white, tucked in at the neck, short-sleeved, trailing. Peter hadnever seen her in white before. 

It was Peter's way to sit back and listen: his steady eyes were alwaysalert, good-humored, but he talked very little. That night he wasunusually silent. He sat in the shadow away from the lamp and watchedthe two at the piano: McLean playing a bit of this or that, the girlbending over a string of her violin. Anna came in and sat down near him. 

"The boy is quite fascinated, " she whispered. "Watch his eyes!"

"He is a nice boy. " This from Peter, as if he argued with himself. 

"As men go!" This was a challenge Peter was usually quick to accept. That night he only smiled. "It would be a good thing for her: his peopleare wealthy. "

Money, always money! Peter ground his teeth over his pipestem. Eminentlyit would be a good thing for Harmony, this nice boy in his well-madeevening clothes, who spoke Harmony's own language of music, who wasalmost speechless over her playing, and who looked up at her with eyesin which admiration was not unmixed with adoration. 

Peter was restless. As the music went on he tiptoed out of the room andtook to pacing up and down the little corridor. Each time as he passedthe door he tried not to glance in; each time he paused involuntarily. Jealousy had her will of him that night, jealousy, when he had neveracknowledged even to himself how much the girl was to him. 

Jimmy was restless. Usually Harmony's music put him to sleep; but thatnight he lay awake, even after Peter had closed all the doors. Petercame in and sat with him in the dark, going over now and then to coverhim, or to give him a drink, or to pick up the cage of mice which Jimmyinsisted on having beside him and which constantly slipped off on to thefloor. After a time Peter lighted the night-light, a bit of wick on acork floating in a saucer of lard oil, and set it on the bedside table. Then round it he arranged Jimmy's treasures, the deer antlers, the cageof mice, the box, the wooden sentry. The boy fell asleep. Peter sat inthe room, his dead pipe in his teeth, and thought of many things. 

It was very late when young McLean left. The two had played until theystopped for very weariness. Anna had yawned herself off to bed. FromJimmy's room Peter could hear the soft hum of their voices. 

"You have been awfully good to me, " McLean said as he finally rose togo. "I--I want you to know that I'll never forget this evening, never. "

"It has been splendid, hasn't it? Since little Scatchy left there hasbeen no one for the piano. I have been lonely sometimes for some one totalk music to. "

Lonely! Poor Peter!

"Then you will let me come back?"

"Will I, indeed! I--I'll be grateful. "

"How soon would be proper? I dare say to-morrow you'll bebusy--Christmas and all that. "

"Do you mean you would like to come to-morrow?"

"If old Peter wouldn't be fussed. He might think--"

"Peter always wants every one to be happy. So if you really care--"

"And I'll not bore you?"

"Rather not!"

"How--about what time?"

"In the afternoon would be pleasant, I think. And then Jimmy can listen. He loves music. "

McLean, having found his fur-lined coat, got into it as slowly aspossible. Then he missed a glove, and it must be searched for in allthe dark corners of the salon until found in his pocket. Even then hehesitated, lingered, loath to break up this little world of two. 

"You play wonderfully, " he said. 

"So do you. "

"If only something comes of it! It's curious, isn't it, when you thinkof it? You and I meeting here in the center of Europe and both of usworking our heads off for something that may never pan out. "

There was something reminiscent about that to Harmony. It was not untilafter young McLean had gone that she recalled. It was almost word forword what Peter had said to her in the coffee-house the night they met. She thought it very curious, the coincidence, and pondered it, beingignorant of the fact that it is always a matter for wonder when theman meets the woman, no matter where. Nothing is less curious, moreinevitable, more amazing. "You and I, " forsooth, said Peter!

"You and I, " cried young McLean!

CHAPTER XVI

Quite suddenly Peter's house, built on the sand, collapsed. The shockcame on Christmas-Day, after young McLean, now frankly infatuated, hadbeen driven home by Peter. 

Peter did it after his own fashion. Harmony, with unflagging enthusiasm, was looking tired. Suggestions to this effect rolled off McLean's backlike rain off a roof. Finally Peter gathered up the fur-lined coat, thevelours hat, gloves, and stick, and placed them on the piano in front ofthe younger man. 

"I'm sorry you must go, " said Peter calmly, "but, as you say, Miss Wellsis tired and there is supper to be eaten. Don't let me hurry you. "

The Portier was at the door as McLean, laughing and protesting, wentout. He brought a cablegram for Anna. Peter took it to her door andwaited uneasily while she read it. 

It was an urgent summons home; the old father was very low. He wascalling for her, and a few days or week' would see the end. There werethings that must be looked after. The need of her was imperative. With the death the old man's pension would cease and Anna was thebread-winner. 

Anna held the paper out to Peter and sat down. Her nervous strengthseemed to have deserted her. All at once she was a stricken, elderlywoman, with hope wiped out of her face and something nearer resentmentthan grief in its place. 

"It has come, Peter, " she said dully. "I always knew it couldn't last. They've always hung about my neck, and now--"

"Do you think you must go? Isn't there some way? If things are so badyou could hardly get there in time, and--you must think of yourself alittle, Anna. "

"I am not thinking of anything else. Peter, I'm an uncommonly selfishwoman, but I--"

Quite without warning she burst out crying, unlovely, audible weepingthat shook her narrow shoulders. Harmony heard the sound and joinedthem. After a look at Anna she sat down beside her and put a whitearm over her shoulders. She did not try to speak. Anna's noisy griefsubsided as suddenly as it came. She patted Harmony's hand in muteacknowledgment and dried her eyes. 

"I'm not grieving, child, " she said; "I'm only realizing what a selfishold maid I am. I'm crying because I'm a disappointment to myself. Harry, I'm going back to America. "

And that, after hours of discussion, was where they ended. Anna must goat once. Peter must keep the apartment, having Jimmy to look after andto hide. What was a frightful dilemma to him and to Harmony Anna tookrather lightly. 

"You'll find some one else to take my place, " she said. "If I had a dayI could find a dozen. "

"And in the interval?" Harmony asked, without looking at Peter. 

"The interval! Tut! Peter is your brother, to all intents and purposes. And if you are thinking of scandal-mongers, who will know?"

Having determined to go, no arguments moved Anna, nor could either ofthe two think of anything to urge beyond a situation she refused tosee, or rather a situation she refused to acknowledge. She was not ascomfortable as she pretended. During all that long night, while snowsifted down into the ugly yard and made it beautiful, while Jimmy sleptand the white mice played, while Harmony tossed and tried to sleep andPeter sat in his cold room and smoked his pipe, Anna packed her untidybelongings and added a name now and then to a list that was meantfor Peter, a list of possible substitutes for herself in the littlehousehold. 

She left early the next morning, a grim little person who bent over thesleeping boy hungrily, and insisted on carrying her own bag down thestairs. Harmony did not go to the station, but stayed at home, pale andsilent, hovering around against Jimmy's awakening and struggling againsta feeling of panic. Not that she feared Peter or herself. But shewas conventional; shielded girls are accustomed to lean for a certainsupport on the proprieties, as bridgeplayers depend on rules. 

Peter came back to breakfast, but ate little. Harmony did not even sitdown, but drank her cup of coffee standing, looking down at the snowbelow. Jimmy still slept. 

"Won't you sit down?" said Peter. 

"I'm not hungry, thank you. "

"You can sit down without eating. "

Peter was nervous. To cover his uneasiness he was distinctly gruff. Hepulled a chair out for her and she sat down. Now that they were faceto face the tension was lessened. Peter laid Anna's list on the tablebetween them and bent over it toward her. 

"You are hurting me very much, Harry, " he said. "Do you know why?"

"I? I am only sorry about Anna. I miss her. I--I was fond of her. "

"So was I. But that isn't it, Harry. It's something else. "

"I'm uncomfortable, Peter. "

"So am I. I'm sorry you don't trust me. For that's it. "

"Not at all. But, Peter, what will people say?"

"A great deal, if they know. Who is to know? How many people know aboutus? A handful, at the most, McLean and Mrs. Boyer and one or two others. Of course I can go away until we get some one to take Anna's place, butyou'd be here alone at night, and if the youngster had an attack--"

"Oh, no, don't leave him!"

"It's holiday time. There are no clinics until next week. If you'll putup with me--"

"Put up with you, when it is your apartment I use, your food I eat!" Shealmost choked. "Peter, I must talk about money. "

"I'm coming to that. Don't you suppose you more than earn everything?Doesn't it humiliate me hourly to see you working here?"

"Peter! Would you rob me of my last vestige of self-respect?"

This being unanswerable, Peter fell back on his major premise. 

"If you'll put up with me for a day or so I'll take this list of Anna'sand hunt up some body. Just describe the person you desire and I'll findher. " He assumed a certainty he was far from feeling, but it reassuredthe girl. "A woman, of course?"

"Of course. And not young. "

"'Not young, '" wrote Peter. "Fat?"

Harmony recalled Mrs. Boyer's ample figure and shook her head. 

"Not too stout. And agreeable. That's most important. "

"'Agreeable, '" wrote Peter. "Although Anna was hardly agreeable, in thestrict sense of the word, was she?"

"She was interesting, and--and human. "

"'Human!'" wrote Peter. "Wanted, a woman, not young, not too stout, agreeable and human. Shall I advertise?"

The strain was quite gone by that time. Harmony was smiling. Jimmy, waking, called for food, and the morning of the first day was under way. 

Peter was well content that morning, in spite of an undercurrent ofuneasiness. Before this Anna had shared his proprietorship with him. Nowthe little household was his. His vicarious domesticity pleased him. Hestrutted about, taking a new view of his domain; he tightened a doorknoband fastened a noisy window. He inspected the coal-supply and grumbledover its quality. He filled the copper kettle on the stove, carriedin the water for Jimmy's morning bath, cleaned the mouse cage. He eveninsisted on peeling the little German potatoes, until Harmony criedaloud at his wastefulness and took the knife from him. 

And afterward, while Harmony in the sickroom read aloud and Jimmy putthe wooden sentry into the cage to keep order, he got out his books andtried to study. But he did little work. His book lay on his knee, hispipe died beside him. The strangeness of the situation came over him, sitting there, and left him rather frightened. He tried to see itfrom the viewpoint of an outsider, and found himself incredulous anddoubting. McLean would resent the situation. Even the Portier was aperson to reckon with. The skepticism of the American colony was a thingto fear and avoid. 

And over all hung the incessant worry about money; he could just managealone. He could not, by any method he knew of, stretch his resourcesto cover a separate arrangement for himself. But he had undertaken toshield a girl-woman and a child, and shield them he would and could. 

Brave thoughts were Peter's that snowy morning in the great salon ofMaria Theresa, with the cat of the Portier purring before the fire;brave thoughts, cool reason, with Harmony practicing scales very softlywhile Jimmy slept, and with Anna speeding through a white world, to theaccompaniment of bitter meditation. 

Peter had meant to go to Semmering that day, but even the urgency ofMarie's need faded before his own situation. He wired Stewart that hewould come as soon as he could, and immediately after lunch departed forthe club, Anna's list in his pocket, Harmony's requirements in mind. Hepaused at Jimmy's door on his way out. 

"What shall it be to-day?" he inquired. "A postcard or a crayon?"

"I wish I could have a dog. "

"We'll have a dog when you are better and can take him walking. Waituntil spring, son. "

"Some more mice?"

"You will have them--but not to-day. "

"What holiday comes next?"

"New Year's Day. Suppose I bring you a New Year's card. "

"That's right, " agreed Jimmy. "One I can send to Dad. Do you think hewill come back this year?" wistfully. 

Peter dropped on his baggy knees beside the bed and drew the littlewasted figure to him. 

"I think you'll surely see him this year, old man, " he said huskily. 

Peter walked to the Doctors' Club. On the way he happened on littleGeorgiev, the Bulgarian, and they went on together. Peter managed tomake out that Georgiev was studying English, and that he desired to knowthe state of health and the abode of the Fraulein Wells. Peter evadedthe latter by the simple expedient of pretending not to understand. Thelittle Bulgarian watched him earnestly, his smouldering eyes not withoutsuspicion. There had been much talk in the Pension Schwarz about thedeparture together of the three Americans. The Jew from Galicia stillraved over Harmony's beauty. 

Georgiev rather hoped, by staying by Peter, to be led toward his star. But Peter left him at the Doctors' Club, still amiable, but absolutelyobtuse to the question nearest the little spy's heart. 

The club was almost deserted. The holidays had taken many of the membersout of town. Other men were taking advantage of the vacation to see thecity, or to make acquaintance again with families they had hardly seenduring the busy weeks before Christmas. The room at the top of thestairs where the wives of the members were apt to meet for chocolate andto exchange the addresses of dressmakers was empty; in the reading roomhe found McLean. Although not a member, McLean was a sort of honoraryhabitue, being allowed the privilege of the club in exchange for adependable willingness to play at entertainments of all sorts. 

It was in Peter's mind to enlist McLean's assistance in hisdifficulties. McLean knew a good many people. He was popular, goodlooking, and in a colony where, unlike London and Paris, the greatmajority were people of moderate means, he was conspicuously welloff. But he was also much younger than Peter and intolerant with theinsolence of youth. Peter was thinking hard as he took off his overcoatand ordered beer. 

The boy was in love with Harmony already; Peter had seen that, as hesaw many things. How far his love might carry him, Peter had no idea. Itseemed to him, as he sat across the reading-table and studied him overhis magazine, that McLean would resent bitterly the girl's position, andthat when he learned it a crisis might be precipitated. 

One of three things might happen: He might bend all his energies tosecond Peter's effort to fill Anna's place, to find the right person; hemight suggest taking Anna's place himself, and insist that his presencein the apartment would be as justifiable as Peter's; or he might do atonce the thing Peter felt he would do eventually, cut the knot ofthe difficulty by asking Harmony to marry him. Peter, greeting himpleasantly, decided not to tell him anything, to keep him away ifpossible until the thing was straightened out, and to wait for an hourat the club in the hope that a solution might stroll in for chocolateand gossip. 

In any event explanation to McLean would have required justification. Peter disliked the idea. He could humble himself, if necessary, to awoman; he could admit his asininity in assuming the responsibility ofJimmy, for instance, and any woman worthy of the name, or worthy ofliving in the house with Harmony, would understand. But McLean wasyoung, intolerant. He was more than that, though Peter, concealing fromhimself just what Harmony meant to him, would not have admitted a rivalfor what he had never claimed. But a rival the boy was. Peter, calmlyreading a magazine and drinking his Munich beer, was in the grip of thefiercest jealousy. He turned pages automatically, to recall nothing ofwhat he had read. 

McLean, sitting across from him, watched him surreptitiously. Big Peter, aggressively masculine, heavy of shoulder, direct of speech and eye, wasto him the embodiment of all that a woman should desire in a man. He, too, was jealous, but humbly so. Unlike Peter he knew his situation, wasyoung enough to glory in it. Shameless love is always young; with yearscomes discretion, perhaps loss of confidence. The Crusaders were youths, pursuing an idea to the ends of the earth and flaunting a lady'sguerdon from spear or saddle-bow. The older men among them tucked thehandkerchief or bit of a gauntleted glove under jerkin and armor nearthe heart, and flung to the air the guerdon of some light o' love. McLean would have shouted Harmony's name from the housetops. Peter didnot acknowledge even to himself that he was in love with her. 

It occurred to McLean after a time that Peter being in the club, andHarmony being in all probability at home, it might be possible to seeher alone for a few minutes. He had not intended to go back to the housein the Siebensternstrasse so soon after being peremptorily put out; hehad come to the club with the intention of clinching his resolution witha game of cribbage. But fate was playing into his hands. There was nocribbage player round, and Peter himself sat across deeply immersed in amagazine. McLean rose, not stealthily, but without unnecessary noise. 

So far so good. Peter turned a page and went on reading. McLeansauntered to a window, hands in pockets. He even whistled a trifle, under his breath, to prove how very casual were his intentions. Stillwhistling, he moved toward the door. Peter turned another page, whichwas curiously soon to have read two columns of small type withoutillustrations. 

Once out in the hall McLean's movements gained aim and precision. He gothis coat, hat and stick, flung the first over his arm and the second onhis head, and--

"Going out?" asked Peter calmly. 

"Yes, nothing to do here. I've read all the infernal old magazines untilI'm sick of them. " Indignant, too, from his tone. 

"Walking?"

"Yes. "

"Mind if I go with you?"

"Not at all. "

Peter, taking down his old overcoat from its hook, turned and caught theboy's eye. It was a swift exchange of glances, but illuminating--Peter'swhimsical, but with a sort of grim determination; McLean's sheepish, butequally determined. 

"Rotten afternoon, " said McLean as they started for the stairs. "Halfrain, half snow. Streets are ankle-deep. "

"I'm not particularly keen about walking, but--I don't care for thistomb alone. "

Nothing was further from McLean's mind than a walk with Peter thatafternoon. He hesitated halfway down the upper flight. 

"You don't care for cribbage, do you?"

"Don't know anything about it. How about pinochle?"

They had both stopped, equally determined, equally hesitating. 

"Pinochle it is, " acquiesced McLean. "I was only going because there wasnothing to do. "

Things went very well for Peter that afternoon--up to a certain point. He beat McLean unmercifully, playing with cold deliberation. McLeanwearied, fidgeted, railed at his luck. Peter played on grimly. 

The club filled up toward the coffee-hour. Two or three women, wives ofmembers, a young girl to whom McLean had been rather attentive beforehe met Harmony and who bridled at the abstracted bow he gave her. And, finally, when hope in Peter was dead, one of the women on Anna's list. 

Peter, laying down pairs and marking up score, went over Harmony'srequirements. Dr. Jennings seemed to fit them all, a woman, not young, not too stout, agreeable and human. She was a large, almost bovinelyplacid person, not at all reminiscent of Anna. She was neat where Annahad been disorderly, well dressed and breezy against Anna's dowdinessand sharpness. Peter, having totaled the score, rose and looked down atMcLean. 

"You're a nice lad, " he said, smiling. "Sometime I shall teach you thegame. "

"How about a lesson to-night in Seven-Star Street?"

"To-night? Why, I'm sorry. We have an engagement for to-night. "

The "we" was deliberate and cruel. McLean writhed. Also the statementwas false, but the boy was spared that knowledge for the moment. 

Things went well. Dr. Jennings was badly off for quarters. She wouldmake a change if she could better herself. Peter drew her off to acorner and stated his case. She listened attentively, albeit not withoutdisapproval. 

She frankly discredited the altruism of Peter's motives when he toldher about Harmony. But as the recital went on she found herself rathertouched. The story of Jimmy appealed to her. She scolded and laudedPeter in one breath, and what was more to the point, she promised tovisit the house in the Siebensternstrasse the next day. 

"So Anna Gates has gone home!" she reflected. "When?"

"This morning. "

"Then the girl is there alone?"

"Yes. She is very young and inexperienced, and the boy--it'smyocarditis. She's afraid to be left with him. "

"Is she quite alone?"

"Absolutely, and without funds, except enough for her lessons. Ourarrangement was that she should keep the house going; that was hershare. "

Dr. Jennings was impressed. It was impossible to talk to Peter and notbelieve him. Women trusted Peter always. 

"You've been very foolish, Dr. Byrne, " she said as she rose; "but you'vebeen disinterested enough to offset that and to put some of us to shame. To-morrow at three, if it suits you. You said the Siebensternstrasse?"

Peter went home exultant. 

CHAPTER XVII

Christmas-Day had had a softening effect on Mrs. Boyer. It had openedbadly. It was the first Christmas she had spent away from her children, and there had been little of the holiday spirit in her attitude as sheprepared the Christmas breakfast. After that, however, things happened. 

In the first place, under her plate she had found a frivolous chain andpendant which she had admired. And when her eyes filled up, as they didwhenever she was emotionally moved, the doctor had come round the tableand put both his arms about her. 

"Too young for you? Not a bit!" he said heartily. "You're better-lookingthen you ever were, Jennie; and if you weren't you're the only woman forme, anyhow. Don't you think I realize what this exile means to you andthat you're doing it for me?"

"I--I don't mind it. "

"Yes, you do. To-night we'll go out and make a night of it, shall we?Supper at the Grand, the theater, and then the Tabarin, eh?"

She loosened herself from his arms. 

"What shall I wear? Those horrible things the children bought me--"

"Throw 'em away. "

"They're not worn at all. "

"Throw them out. Get rid of the things the children got you. Go outto-morrow and buy something you like--not that I don't like you inanything or without--"

"Frank!"

"Be happy, that's the thing. It's the first Christmas without thefamily, and I miss them too. But we're together, dear. That's the bigthing. Merry Christmas. "

An auspicious opening, that, to Christmas-Day. And they had carriedout the program as outlined. Mrs. Boyer had enjoyed it, albeit a bithorrified at the Christmas gayety at the Tabarin. 

The next morning, however, she awakened with a keen reaction. Her headached. She had a sense of taint over her. She was virtue rampantagain, as on the day she had first visited the old lodge in theSiebensternstrasse. 

It is hardly astonishing that by association of ideas Harmony cameinto her mind again, a brand that might even yet be snatched from theburning. She had been a bit hasty before, she admitted to herself. Therewas a woman doctor named Gates, although her address at the club wasgiven as Pension Schwarz. She determined to do her shopping early andthen to visit the house in the Siebensternstrasse. She was not a hardwoman, for all her inflexible morality, and more than once she hadhad an uneasy memory of Harmony's bewildered, almost stricken facethe afternoon of her visit. She had been a watchful mother over a notparticularly handsome family of daughters. This lovely young girl neededmothering and she had refused it. She would go back, and if she foundshe had been wrong and the girl was deserving and honest, she would seewhat could be done. 

The day was wretched. The snow had turned to rain. Mrs. Boyer, shopping, dragged wet skirts and damp feet from store to store. She found nothingthat she cared for after all. The garments that looked chic in thewindows or on manikins in the shops, were absurd on her. Her insistentbosom bulged, straight lines became curves or tortuous zigzags, placketsgaped, collars choked her or shocked her by their absence. In the mirrorof Marie Jedlicka, clad in familiar garments that had accommodatedthemselves to the idiosyncrasies of her figure, Mrs. Boyer was a plump, rather comely matron. Here before the plate glass of the modiste, underthe glare of a hundred lights, side by side with a slim Austrian girlwho looked like a willow wand, Mrs. Boyer was grotesque, ridiculous, monstrous. She shuddered. She almost wept. 

It was bad preparation for a visit to the Siebensternstrasse. Mrs. Boyer, finding her vanity gone, convinced that she was an absurdityphysically, fell back for comfort on her soul. She had been a good wifeand mother; she was chaste, righteous. God had been cruel to her in theflesh, but He had given her the spirit. 

"Madame wishes not the gown? It is beautiful--see the embroidery! Andthe neck may be filled with chiffon. "

"Young woman, " she said grimly, "I see the embroidery; and the neckmay be filled with chiffon, but not for me! And when you have had fivechildren, you will not buy clothes like that either. "

All the kindliness was gone from the visit to the Siebensternstrasse;only the determination remained. Wounded to the heart of herself-esteem, her pride in tatters, she took her way to the old lodge andclimbed the stairs. 

She found a condition of mild excitement. Jimmy had slept long after hisbath. Harmony practiced, cut up a chicken for broth, aired blankets forthe chair into which Peter on his return was to lift the boy. 

She was called to inspect the mouse-cage, which, according to Jimmy, hadstrawberries in it. 

"Far back, " he explained. "There in the cotton, Harry. "

But it was not strawberries. Harmony opened the cage and very tenderlytook out the cotton nest. Eight tiny pink baby mice, clean washed by themother, lay curled in a heap. 

It was a stupendous moment. The joy of vicarious parentage was Jimmy's. He named them all immediately and demanded food for them. On Harmony'sdelicate explanation that this was unnecessary, life took on a newmeaning for Jimmy. He watched the mother lest she slight one. Hisresponsibility weighed on him. Also his inquiring mind was very busy. 

"But how did they get there?" he demanded. 

"God sent them, just as he sends babies of all sorts. "

"Did he send me?"

"Of course. "

"That's a good one on you, Harry. My father found me in a hollow tree. "

"But don't you think God had something to do with it?"

Jimmy pondered this. 

"I suppose, " he reflected, "God sent Daddy to find me so that I would behis little boy. You never happened to see any babies when you were outwalking, did you, Harry?"

"Not in stumps--but I probably wasn't looking. "

Jimmy eyed her with sympathy. 

"You may some day. Would you like to have one?"

"Very much, " said Harmony, and flushed delightfully. 

Jimmy was disposed to press the matter, to urge immediate maternity onher. 

"You could lay it here on the bed, " he offered, "and I'd watch it. Whenthey yell you let 'em suck your finger. I knew a woman once that had ababy and she did that. And it could watch Isabella. " Isabella was themother mouse. "And when I'm better I could take it walking. "

"That, " said Harmony gravely, "is mighty fine of you, Jimmy boy. I--I'llthink about it. " She never denied Jimmy anything, so now she temporized. 

"I'll ask Peter. "

Harmony had a half-hysterical moment; then:

"Wouldn't it be better, " she asked, "to keep anything of that sort asecret? And to surprise Peter?"

The boy loved a secret. He played with it in lieu of other occupation. His uncertain future was sown thick with secrets that would never flowerinto reality. Thus Peter had shamelessly promised him a visit to thecircus when he was able to go, Harmony not to be told until the ticketswere bought. Anna had similarly promised to send him from America apitcher's glove and a baseball bat. To this list of futurities he nowadded Harmony's baby. 

Harmony brought in her violin and played softly to him, not to disturbthe sleeping mice. She sang, too, a verse that the Big Soprano had beenfond of and that Jimmy loved. Not much of a voice was Harmony's, butsweet and low and very true, as became her violinist's ear. 

 "Ah, well! For us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes, "

she sang, her clear eyes luminous. 

 "And in the hereafter, angels may Roll the stone from its grave away!"

Mrs. Boyer mounted the stairs. She was in a very bad humor. She hadsnagged her skirt on a nail in the old gate, and although that verymorning she had detested the suit, her round of shopping had againendeared it to her. She told the Portier in English what she thoughtof him, and climbed ponderously, pausing at each landing to examine thedamage. 

Harmony, having sung Jimmy to sleep, was in the throes of an experiment. She was trying to smoke. 

A very human young person was Harmony, apt to be exceedingly wretchedif her hat were of last year's fashion, anxious to be inconspicuous bydoing what every one else was doing, conventional as are the very young, fearful of being an exception. 

And nearly every one was smoking. Many of the young women whom she metat the master's house had yellowed fingers and smoked in the anteroom;the Big Soprano had smoked; Anna and Scatchy had smoked; in thecoffee-houses milliners' apprentices produced little silver mouth-piecesto prevent soiling their pretty lips and smoked endlessly. Even Peterhad admitted that it was not a vice, but only a comfortable bad habit. And Anna had left a handful of cigarettes. 

Harmony was not smoking; she was experimenting. Peter and Anna hadsmoked together and it had looked comradely. Perhaps, without reasoningit out, Harmony was experimenting toward the end of establishing herrelations with Peter still further on friendly and comradely grounds. Two men might smoke together; a man and a woman might smoke togetheras friends. According to Harmony's ideas, a girl paring potatoes mightinspire sentiment, but smoking a cigarette--never!

She did not like it. She thought, standing before her little mirror, that she looked fast, after all. She tried pursing her lips together, as she had seen Anna do, and blowing out the smoke in a thin line. Shesmoked very hard, so that she stood in the center of a gray nimbus. Shehated it, but she persisted. Perhaps it grew on one; perhaps, also, if she walked about it would choke her less. She practiced holding thething between her first and second fingers, and found that easier thansmoking. Then she went to the salon where there was more air, and triedexhaling through her nose. It made her sneeze. 

On the sneeze came Mrs. Boyer's ring. Harmony thought very fast. Itmight be the bread or the milk, but again--She flung the cigarette intothe stove, shut the door, and answered the bell. 

Mrs. Boyer's greeting was colder than she had intended. It put Harmonyon the defensive at once, made her uncomfortable. Like all the innocentfalsely accused she looked guiltier than the guiltiest. Under Mrs. Boyer's searching eyes the enormity of her situation overwhelmed her. And over all, through salon and passage, hung the damning odor of thecigarette. Harmony, leading the way in, was a sheep before her shearer. 

"I'm calling on all of you, " said Mrs. Boyer, sniping. "I meant to bringDr. Boyer's cards for every one, including Dr. Byrne. "

"I'm sorry. Dr. Byrne is out. "

"And Dr. Gates?"

"She--she is away. "

Mrs. Boyer raised her eyebrows and ostentatiously changed the subject, requesting a needle and thread to draw the rent together. It had been inHarmony's mind to explain the situation, to show Jimmy to Mrs. Boyer, to throw herself on the older woman's sympathy, to ask advice. Butthe visitor's attitude made this difficult. To add to her discomfort, through the grating in the stove door was coming a thin thread of smoke. 

It was, after all, Mrs. Boyer who broached the subject again. She hadhad a cup of tea, and Harmony, sitting on a stool, had mended the rentso that it could hardly be seen. Mrs. Boyer, softened by the tea and bythe proximity of Harmony's lovely head bent over her task, grew slightlymore expansive. 

"I ought to tell you something, Miss Wells, " she said. "You remember myother visit?"

"Perfectly. " Harmony bent still lower. 

"I did you an injustice at that time. I've been sorry ever since. Ithought that there was no Dr. Gates. I'm sorry, but I'm not going todeny it. People do things in this wicked city that they wouldn't do athome. I confess I misjudged Peter Byrne. You can give him my apologies, since he won't see me. "

"But he isn't here or of course he'd see you. "

"Then, " demanded Mrs. Boyer grimly, "if Peter Byrne is not here, who hasbeen smoking cigarettes in this room? There is one still burning in thatstove!"

Harmony's hand was forced. She was white as she cut the brown-silkthread and rose to her feet. 

"I think, " she said, "that I'd better go back a few weeks, Mrs. Boyer, and tell you a story, if you have time to listen. "

"If it is disagreeable--"

"Not at all. It is about Peter Byrne and myself, and--some others. Itis really about Peter. Mrs. Boyer, will you come very quietly across thehall?"

Mrs. Boyer, expecting Heaven knows what, rose with celerity. Harmonyled the way to Jimmy's door and opened it. He was still asleep, a wastedsmall figure on the narrow bed. Beside him the mice frolicked in theircage, the sentry kept guard over Peter's shameless letters from theTyrol, the strawberry babies wriggled in their cotton. 

"We are not going to have him very long, " said Harmony softly. "Peter ismaking him happy for a little while. "

Back in the salon of Maria Theresa she told the whole story. Mrs. Boyerfound it very affecting. Harmony sat beside her on a stool and she kepther hand on the girl's shoulder. When the narrative reached Anna'sgoing away, however, she took it away. From that point on she satuncompromisingly rigid and listened. 

"Then you mean to say, " she exploded when Harmony had finished, "thatyou intend to stay on here, just the two of you?"

"And Jimmy. "

"Bah! What has the child to do with it?"

"We will find some one to take Anna's place. "

"I doubt it. And until you do?"

"There is nothing wicked in what we are doing. Don't you see, Mrs. Boyer, I can't leave the boy. "

"Since Peter is so altruistic, let him hire a nurse. "

Bad as things were, Harmony smiled. 

"A nurse!" she said. "Why, do you realize that he is keeping threepeople now on what is starvation for one?"

"Then he's a fool!" Mrs. Boyer rose in majesty. "I'm not going to leaveyou here. "

"I'm sorry. You must see--"

"I see nothing but a girl deliberately putting herself in a compromisingportion and worse. "

"Mrs. Boyer!"

"Get your things on. I guess Dr. Boyer and I can look after you until wecan send you home. "

"I am not going home--yet, " said poor Harmony, biting her lip to steadyit. 

Back and forth waged the battle, Mrs. Boyer assailing, Harmony offeringlittle defense but standing firm on her refusal to go as long as Peterwould let her remain. 

"It means so much to me, " she ventured, goaded. "And I earn my lodgingand board. I work hard and--I make him comfortable. It costs him verylittle and I give him something in exchange. All men are not alike. Ifthe sort you have known are--are different--"

This was unfortunate. Mrs. Boyer stiffened. She ceased offensivetactics, and retired grimly into the dignity of her high calling ofvirtuous wife and mother. She washed her hands of Harmony and Peter. Shetied on her veil with shaking hands, and prepared to leave Harmony toher fate. 

"Give me your mother's address, " she demanded. 

"Certainly not. "

"You absolutely refuse to save yourself?"

"From what? From Peter? There are many worse people than Peter to savemyself from, Mrs. Boyer--uncharitable people, and--and cruel people. "

Mrs. Boyer shrugged her plump shoulders. 

"Meaning me!" she retorted. "My dear child, people are always cruel whotry to save us from ourselves. "

Unluckily for Harmony, one of Anna's specious arguments must pop intoher head at that instant and demand expression. 

"People are living their own lives these days, Mrs. Boyer; old standardshave gone. It is what one's conscience condemns that is wrong, isn'tit? Not merely breaking laws that were made to fit the average, not theexception. "

Anna! Anna!

Mrs. Boyer flung up her hands. 

"You are impossible!" she snapped. "After all, I believe it is Peter whoneeds protection! I shall speak to him. "

She started down the staircase, but turned for a parting volley. 

"And just a word of advice: Perhaps the old standards have gone. But ifyou really expect to find a respectable woman to chaperon YOU, keep yourviews to yourself. "

Harmony, a bruised and wounded thing, crept into Jimmy's room and sankon her knees beside the bed. One small hand lay on the coverlet; shedared not touch it for fear of waking him--but she laid her cheek closeto it for comfort. When Peter came in, much later, he found the boy wideawake and Harmony asleep, a crumpled heap beside the bed. 

"I think she's been crying, " Jimmy whispered. "She's been sobbing in hersleep. And strike a match, Peter; there may be more mice. "

CHAPTER XVIII

Mrs. Boyer, bursting with indignation, went to the Doctors' Club. It wastypical of the way things were going with Peter that Dr. Boyer was notthere, and that the only woman in the clubrooms should be Dr. Jennings. Young McLean was in the reading room, eating his heart out with jealousyof Peter, vacillating between the desire to see Harmony that night andfear lest Peter forbid him the house permanently if he made the attempt. He had found a picture of the Fraulein Engel, from the opera, in amagazine, and was sitting with it open before him. Very deeply andreally in love was McLean that afternoon, and the Fraulein Engel andHarmony were not unlike. The double doors between the reading room andthe reception room adjoining were open. McLean, lost in a rosy future inwhich he and Harmony sat together for indefinite periods, with no Peterto scowl over his books at them, a future in which life was one longpiano-violin duo, with the candles in the chandelier going out one byone, leaving them at last alone in scented darkness together--McLeanheard nothing until the mention of the Siebensternstrasse roused him. 

After that he listened. He heard that Dr. Jennings was contemplatingtaking Anna's place at the lodge, and he comprehended after a momentthat Anna was already gone. Even then the significance of the situationwas a little time in dawning on him. When it did, however, he rose witha stifled oath. 

Mrs. Boyer was speaking. 

"It is exactly as I tell you, " she was saying. "If Peter Byrne is tryingto protect her reputation he is late doing it. Personally I have beenthere twice. I never saw Anna Gates. And she is registered here at theclub as living in the Pension Schwarz. Whatever the facts may be, onething remains, she is not there now. "

McLean waited to hear no more. He was beside himself with rage. He founda "comfortable" at the curb. The driver was asleep inside the carriage. McLean dragged him out by the shoulder and shouted an address to him. The cab bumped along over the rough streets to an accompaniment ofprotests from its frantic passenger. 

The boy was white-lipped with wrath and fear. Peter's silence thatafternoon as to the state of affairs loomed large and significant. Hehad thought once or twice that Peter was in love with Harmony; he knewit now in the clearer vision of the moment. He recalled things thatmaddened him: the dozen intimacies of the little menage, the caressin Peter's voice when he spoke to the girl, Peter's steady eyes in thesemi-gloom of the salon while Harmony played. 

At a corner they must pause for the inevitable regiment. McLean cursed, bending out to see how long the delay would be. Peter had been gone forhalf an hour, perhaps, but Peter would walk. If he could only see thegirl first, talk to her, tell her what she would be doing by remaining--

He was there at last, flinging across the courtyard like a madman. Peterwas already there; his footprints were fresh in the slush of the path. The house door was closed but not locked. McLean ran up the stairs. Itwas barely twilight outside, but the staircase well was dark. At theupper landing he was compelled to fumble for the bell. 

Peter admitted him. The corridor was unlighted, but from the salon camea glow of lamplight. McLean, out of breath and furious, faced Peter. 

"I want to see Harmony, " he said without preface. 

Peter eyed him. He knew what had happened, had expected it when the bellrang, had anticipated it when Harmony told him of Mrs. Boyer's visit. Inthe second between the peal of the bell and his opening the door he haddecided what to do. 

"Come in. "

McLean stepped inside. He was smaller than Peter, not so much shorter asslenderer. Even Peter winced before the look in his eyes. 

"Where is she?"

"In the kitchen, I think. Come into the salon. "

McLean flung off his coat. Peter closed the door behind him and stoodjust inside. He had his pipe as usual. "I came to see her, not you, Byrne. "

"So I gather. I'll let you see her, of course, but don't you want to seeme first?"

"I want to take her away from here. "

"Why? Are you better able to care for her than I am?"

McLean stood rigid. He had thrust his clenched hands into his pockets. 

"You're a scoundrel, Byrne, " he said steadily. "Why didn't you tell methis this afternoon?"

"Because I knew if I did you'd do just what you are doing. "

"Are you going to keep her here?"

Peter changed color at the thrust, but he kept himself in hand. 

"I'm not keeping her here, " he said patiently. "I'm doing the best I canunder the circumstances. "

"Then your best is pretty bad. "

"Perhaps. If you would try to remember the circumstances, McLean, --thatthe girl has no place else to go, practically no money, and that I--"

"I remember one circumstance, that you are living here alone with herand that you're crazy in love with her. "

"That has nothing to do with you. As long as I treat her--"

"Bah!"

"Will you be good enough to let me finish what I am trying to say? She'ssafe with me. When I say that I mean it. She will not go away fromhere with you or with any one else if I can prevent it. And if you careenough about her to try to keep her happy you'll not let her know youhave been here. I've got a woman coming to take Anna's place. That oughtto satisfy you. "

"Dr. Jennings?"

"Yes. "

"She'll not come. Mrs. Boyer has been talking to her. Inside of an hourthe whole club will have it--every American in Vienna will know about itin a day or so. I tell you, Byrne, you're doing an awful thing. "

Peter drew a long breath. He had had his bad half-hour before McLeancame; had had to stand by, wordless, and see Harmony trying to smile, see her dragging about, languid and white, see her tragic attemptsto greet him on the old familiar footing. Through it all he had beensustained by the thought that a day or two days would see the oldfooting reestablished, another woman in the house, life again worth theliving and Harmony smiling up frankly into his eyes. Now this hope haddeparted. 

"You can't keep me from seeing her, you know, " McLean persisted. "I'vegot to put this thing to her. She's got to choose. "

"What alternative have you to suggest?"

"I'd marry her if she'd have me. "

After all Peter had expected that. And, if she cared for the boywouldn't that be best for her? What had he to offer against that? Hecouldn't marry. He could only offer her shelter, against everythingelse. Even then he did not dislike McLean. He was a man, every slenderinch of him, this boy musician. Peter's heart sank, but he put down hispipe and turned to the door. 

"I'll call her, " he said. "But, since this concerns me very vitally, Ishould like to be here while you put the thing to her. After that if youlike--"

He called Harmony. She had given Jimmy his supper and was carrying out atray that seemed hardly touched. 

"He won't eat to-night, " she said miserably. "Peter, if he stops eating, what can we do? He is so weak!"

Peter, took the tray from her gently. 

"Harry dear, " he said, "I want you to come into the salon. Some onewishes to speak to you. "

"To me?"

"Yes. Harry, do you remember that evening in the kitchen when--Do yourecall what I promised?"

"Yes, Peter. "

"You are sure you know what I mean?"

"Yes. "

"That's all right, then. McLean wants to see you. "

She hesitated, looking up at him. 

"McLean? You look so grave, Peter. What is it?"

"He will tell you. Nothing alarming. "

Peter gave McLean a minute alone after all, while he carried the trayto the kitchen. He had no desire to play watchdog over the girl, he toldhimself savagely; only to keep himself straight with her and to saveher from McLean's impetuosity. He even waited in the kitchen to fill andlight his pipe. 

McLean had worked himself into a very fair passion. He was intense, almost theatrical, as he stood with folded arms waiting for Harmony. Soentirely did the girl fill his existence that he forgot, or did not careto remember, how short a time he had known her. As Harmony she dominatedhis life and his thoughts; as Harmony he addressed her when, ratherstartled, she entered the salon and stood just inside the closed door. 

"Peter said you wanted to speak to me. "

McLean groaned. "Peter!" he said. "It is always Peter. Look here, Harmony, you cannot stay here. "

"It is only for a few hours. To-morrow some one is coming. And, anyhow, Peter is going to Semmering. We know it is unusual, but what can we do?"

"Unusual! It's--it's damnable. It's the appearance of the thing, don'tyou see that?"

"I think it is rather silly to talk of appearance when there is no oneto care. And how can I leave? Jimmy needs me all the time--"

"That's another idiocy of Peter's. What does he mean by putting you inthis position?"

"I am one of Peter's idiocies. "

Peter entered on that. He took in the situation with a glance, andHarmony turned to him; but if she had expected Peter to support her, shewas disappointed. Whatever decision she was to make must be her own, in Peter's troubled mind. He crossed the room and stood at one of thewindows, looking out, a passive participant in the scene. 

The day had been a trying one for Harmony. What she chose to considerPeter's defection was a fresh stab. She glanced from McLean, flushed andexcited, to Peter's impassive back. Then she sat down, rather limp, andthrew out her hands helplessly. 

"What am I to do?" she demanded. "Every one comes with cruel things tosay, but no one tells me what to do. "

Peter turned away from the window. 

"You can leave here, " ventured McLean. "That's the first thing. Afterthat--"

"Yes, and after that, what?"

McLean glanced at Peter. Then he took a step toward the girl. 

"You could marry me, Harmony, " he said unsteadily. "I hadn't expectedto tell you so soon, or before a third person. " He faltered beforeHarmony's eyes, full of bewilderment. "I'd be very happy if you--if youcould see it that way. I care a great deal, you see. "

It seemed hours to Peter before she made any reply, and that her voicecame from miles away. 

"Is it really as bad as that?" she asked. "Have I made such a mess ofthings that some one, either you or Peter, must marry me to straightenthings out? I don't want to marry any one. Do I have to?"

"Certainly you don't have to, " said Peter. There was relief in hisvoice, relief and also something of exultation. "McLean, you mean well, but marriage isn't the solution. We were getting along all right untilour friends stepped in. Let Mrs. Boyer howl all over the colony; therewill be one sensible woman somewhere to come and be comfortable herewith us. In the interval we'll manage, unless Harmony is afraid. In thatcase--"

"Afraid of what?"

The two men exchanged glances, McLean helpless, Peter triumphant. 

"I do not care what Mrs. Boyer says, at least not much. And I am notafraid of anything else at all. "

McLean picked up his overcoat. 

"At least, " he appealed to Peter, "you'll come over to my place?"

"No!" said Peter. 

McLean made a final appeal to Harmony. 

"If this gets out, " he said, "you are going to regret it all your life. "

"I shall have nothing to regret, " she retorted proudly. 

Had Peter not been there McLean would have made a better case, wouldhave pleaded with her, would have made less of a situation that rousedher resentment and more of his love for her. He was very hard hit, veryyoung. He was almost hysterical with rage and helplessness; he wantedto slap her, to take her in his arms. He writhed under the restraint ofPeter's steady eyes. 

He got to the door and turned, furious. 

"Then it's up to you, " he flung at Peter. "You're old enough to knowbetter; she isn't. And don't look so damned superior. You're human, likethe rest of us. And if any harm comes to her--"

Here unexpectedly Peter held out his hand, and after a sheepish momentMcLean took it. 

"Good-night, old man, " said Peter. "And--don't be an ass. "

As was Peter's way, the words meant little, the tone much. McLean knewwhat in his heart he had known all along--that the girl was safe enough;that all that was to fear was the gossip of scandal-lovers. He tookPeter's hand, and then going to Harmony stood before her very erect. 

"I suppose I've said too much; I always do, " he said contritely. "Butyou know the reason. Don't forget the reason, will you?"

"I am only sorry. "

He bent over and kissed her hand lingeringly. It was a tragic moment forhim, poor lad! He turned and went blindly out the door and down the darkstone staircase. It was rather anticlimax, after all that, to have Peterdiscover he had gone without his hat and toss it down to him a flightbelow. 

All the frankness had gone out of the relationship between Harmony andPeter. They made painful efforts at ease, talked during the meal ofcareful abstractions, such as Jimmy, and Peter's proposed trip toSemmering, avoided each other's eyes, ate little or nothing. Once whenHarmony passed Peter his coffee-cup their fingers touched, and betweenthem they dropped the cup. Harmony was flushed and pallid by turns, Peter wretched and silent. 

Out of the darkness came one ray of light. Stewart had wired fromSemmering, urging Peter to come. He would be away for two days. In twodays much might happen; Dr. Jennings might come or some one else. In twodays some of the restraint would have worn off. Things would never bethe same, but they would be forty-eight hours better. 

Peter spent the early part of the evening with Jimmy, reading aloud tohim. After the child had dropped to sleep he packed a valise for thenext day's journey and counted out into an envelope half of the money hehad with him. This he labeled "Household Expenses" and set it up onhis table, leaning against his collar-box. There was no sign of Harmonyabout. The salon was dark except for the study lamp turned down. 

Peter was restless. He put on his shabby dressing-gown and worn slippersand wandered about. The Portier had brought coal to the landing; Petercarried it in. He inspected the medicine bottles on Jimmy's standand wrote full directions for every emergency he could imagine. Then, finding it still only nine o'clock, he turned up the lamp in the salonand wrote an exciting letter from Jimmy's father, in which a lost lamb, wandering on the mountain-side, had been picked up by an avalanche andcarried down into the fold and the arms of the shepherd. And becausehe stood so in loco parentis, and because it seemed so inevitable thatbefore long Jimmy would be in the arms of the Shepherd, and, of course, because it had been a trying day all through, Peter's lips were none toosteady as he folded up the letter. 

The fire was dead in the stove; Peter put out the salon lamp and closedthe shutters. In the warm darkness he put out his hand to feel his waythrough the room. It touched a little sweater coat of Harmony's, hangingover the back of a chair. Peter picked it up in a very passion oftenderness and held it to him. 

"Little girl!" he choked. "My little girl! God help me!"

He was rather ashamed, considerably startled. It alarmed him to findthat the mere unexpected touch of a familiar garment could rouse such astorm in him. It made him pause. He put down the coat and pulled himselfup sharply. McLean was right; he was only human stuff, very poor humanstuff. He put the little coat down hastily, only to lift it again gentlyto his lips. 

"Good-night, dear, " he whispered. "Goodnight, Harmony. "

Frau Schwarz had had two visitors between the hours of coffee andsupper that day. The reason of their call proved to be neither rooms norpension. They came to make inquiries. 

The Frau Schwarz made this out at last, and sat down on the edge ofthe bed in the room that had once been Peter's and that still lacked anoccupant. 

Mrs. Boyer had no German; Dr. Jennings very little and that chieflymedical. There is, however, a sort of code that answers instead oflanguage frequently, when two or three women of later middle lifeare gathered together, a code born of mutual understanding, mutualdisillusion, mutual distrust, a language of outspread hands, raisedeyebrows, portentous shakings of the head. Frau Schwarz, on the edge ofPeter's tub-shaped bed, needed no English to convey the fact that Peterwas a bad lot. Not that she resorted only to the sign language. 

"The women were also wicked, " she said. "Of a man what does one expect?But of a woman! And the younger one looked--Herr Gott! She had the eyesof a saint! The little Georgiev was mad for her. When the three of themleft, disgraced, as one may say, he came to me, he threatened me. TheHerr Schwarz, God rest his soul, was a violent man, but never spoke heso to me!"

"She says, " interpreted Dr. Jennings, "that they were a bad lot--thatthe younger one made eyes at the Herr Schwarz!"

Mrs. Boyer drew her ancient sables about her and put a tremulous hand onthe other woman's arm. 

"What an escape for you!" she said. "If you had gone there to live andthen found the establishment--queer!"

From the kitchen of the pension, Olga was listening, an ear to the door. Behind her, also listening, but less advantageously, was Katrina. 

"American ladies!" said Olga. "Two, old and fat. "

"More hot water!" growled Katrina. "Why do not the Americans stay intheir own country, where the water, I have learned, comes hot from theearth. "

Olga, bending forward, opened the door a crack wider. 

"Sh! They do not come for rooms. They inquire for the Herr Doktor Byrneand the others!"

"No!"

"Of a certainty. "

"Then let me to the door!"

"A moment. She tells them everything and more. She says--how she iswicked, Katrina! She says the Fraulein Harmony was not good, that shesent them all away. Here, take the door!"

Thus it happened that Dr. Jennings and Mrs. Boyer, having shaken off thedust of a pension that had once harbored three malefactors, and havingretired Peter and Anna and Harmony into the limbo of things bestforgotten or ignored, found themselves, at the corner, confronted by aslovenly girl in heelless slippers and wearing a knitted shawl over herhead. "The Frau Schwarz is wrong, " cried Olga passionately in Viennadialect. "They were good, all of them!"

"What in the world--"

"And, please, tell me where lives the Fraulein Harmony. The HerrGeorgiev eats not nor sleeps that he cannot find her. "

Dr. Jennings was puzzled. 

"She wishes to know where the girl lives, " she interpreted to Mrs. Boyer. "A man wishes to know. "

"Naturally!" said Mrs. Boyer. "Well, don't tell her. "

Olga gathered from the tone rather than the words that she was not tobe told. She burst into a despairing appeal in which the Herr Georgiev, Peter, a necktie Peter had forgotten, open windows, and hot water wereinextricably confused. Dr. Jennings listened, then waved her back with agesture. 

"She says, " she interpreted as they walked on, "that Dr. Peter--by whichI suppose she means Dr. Byrne--has left a necktie, and that she'll be inhot water if she does not return it. "

Mrs. Boyer sniffed. 

"In love with him, probably, like the others!" she said. 

CHAPTER XIX

Peter went to Semmering the next morning, tiptoeing out very early andwithout breakfast. He went in to cover Jimmy, lying diagonally acrosshis small bed amid a riot of tossed blankets. The communicating doorinto Harmony's room was open. Peter kept his eyes carefully from it, but his ears were less under control. He could hear her soft breathing. There were days coming when Peter would stand where he stood then andlisten, and find only silence. 

He tore himself away at last, closing the outer door carefully behindhim and lighting a match to find his way down the staircase. The Portierwas not awake. Peter had to rouse him, and to stand by while he donnedthe trousers which he deemed necessary to the dignity of his positionbefore he opened the street door. 

Reluctant as he had been to go, the change was good for Peter. The dawngrew rosy, promised sunshine, fulfilled its promise. The hurrying crowdsat the depot interested him: he enjoyed his coffee, taken from a baretable in the station. The horizontal morning sunlight, shining inthrough marvelously clean windows, warmed the marble of the floor, madeblack shadows beside the heaps of hand luggage everywhere, turned intogold the hair of a toddling baby venturing on a tour of discovery. Thesame morning light, alas! revealed to Peter a break across the toe ofone of his shoes. Peter sighed, then smiled. The baby was catching atthe bits of dust that floated in the sunshine. 

Suddenly a great wave of happiness overwhelmed Peter. It was a passingthing, born of nothing, but for the instant that it lasted Peter was aking. Everything was well. The world was his oyster. Life was his, to make it what he would--youth and hope and joy. Under the beatificinfluence he expanded, grew, almost shone. Youth and hope and joy--thatcometh in the morning. 

The ecstasy passed away, but without reaction. Peter no longer shone;he still glowed. He picked up the golden-haired baby and hugged it. Hehunted out a beggar he had passed and gave him five Hellers. He helped asuspicious old lady with an oilcloth-covered bundle; he called the guardon the train "son" and forced a grin out of that dignitary. 

Peter traveled third-class, which was quite comfortable, and no botherabout "Nicht Rauchen" signs. His unreasonable cheerfulness persisted asfar as Gloggnitz. There, with the increasing ruggedness of the sceneryand his first view of the Raxalpe, came recollection of the urgency ofStewart's last message, of Marie Jedlicka, of the sordid little tragedythat awaited him at the end of his journey. 

Peter sobered. Life was rather a mess, after all, he reflected. Lovewas a blessing, but it was also a curse. After that he sat back inhis corner and let the mountain scenery take care of itself, while herecalled the look he had surprised once or twice in Marie's eyes whenshe looked at Stewart. It was sad, pitiful. Marie was a clever littlething. If only she'd had a chance!--Why wasn't he rich enough to helpthe ones who needed help. Marie could start again in America, with noone the wiser, and make her way. 

"Smart as the devil, these Austrian girls!" Peter reflected. "Poorlittle guttersnipe!"

The weather was beautiful. The sleet of the previous day in Vienna hadbeen a deep snowfall on the mountains. The Schwarza was frozen, thecastle of Liechtenstein was gray against a white world. A littlepilgrimage church far below seemed snowed in against the faithful. Thethird-class compartment filled with noisy skiing parties. The old womanopened her oilcloth bundle, and taking a cat out of a box inside fed ita sausage. 

Up and up, past the Weinzettelwand and the Station Breitenstein, acrossthe highest viaduct, the Kalte Rinne, and so at last to Semmering. 

The glow had died at last for Peter. He did not like his errand, wasvery vague, indeed, as to just what that errand might be. He was stiffand rather cold. Also he thought the cat might stifle in the oilcloth, but the old woman too clearly distrusted him to make it possibleto interfere. Anyhow, he did not know the German for either cat oroilcloth. 

He had wired Stewart; but the latter was not at the station. This madehim vaguely uneasy, he hardly knew why. He did not know Stewart wellenough to know whether he was punctilious in such matters or not: as amatter of fact he hardly knew him at all. It was because he had appealedto him that Peter was there, it being only necessary to Peter to beneeded, and he was anywhere. 

The Pension Waldheim was well up the mountains. He shouldered his valiseand started up--first long flights of steps through the pines, then asteep road. Peter climbed easily. Here and there he met groups comingdown, men that he thought probably American, pretty women in "tams" andsweaters. He watched for Marie, but there was no sign of her. 

He was half an hour, perhaps, in reaching the Waldheim. As he turnedin at the gate he noticed a sledge, with a dozen people following it, coming toward him. It was a singularly silent party. Peter, with hishand on the door-knocker, watched its approach with some curiosity. 

It stopped, and the men who had been following closed up round it. Even then Peter did not understand. He did not understand until hesaw Stewart, limp and unconscious, lifted out of the straw and carriedtoward him. 

Suicide may be moral cowardice; but it requires physical bravery. And Marie was not brave. The balcony had attracted her: it openedpossibilities of escape, of unceasing regret and repentance for Stewart, of publicity that would mean an end to the situation. But every inch ofher soul was craven at the thought. She crept out often and looked down, and as often drew back, shuddering. To fall down, down on to the treetops, to be dropped from branch to branch, a broken thing, and perhapseven not yet dead--that was the unthinkable thing, to live for a timeand suffer!

Stewart was not ignorant of all that went on in her mind. She hadthreatened him with the balcony, just as, earlier in the winter, it hadbeen a window-ledge with which she had frightened him. But there wasthis difference, whereas before he had drawn her back from the windowand clapped her into sanity, now he let her alone. At the end of one oftheir quarrels she had flung out on to the balcony, and then had watchedhim through the opening in the shutter. He had lighted a cigarette!

Stewart spent every daylight hour at the hotel, or walking over themountain roads, seldom alone with Anita, but always near her. He leftMarie sulking or sewing, as the case might be. He returned in theevening to find her still sulking, still sewing. 

But Marie did not sulk all day, or sew. She too was out, never far fromStewart, always watching. Many times she escaped discovery only by amiracle, as when she stooped behind an oxcart, pretending to tie hershoe, or once when they all met face to face, and although she loweredher veil Stewart must have known her instantly had he not been so intenton helping Anita over a slippery gutter. 

She planned a dozen forms of revenge and found them impossible ofexecution. Stewart himself was frightfully unhappy. For the firsttime in his life he was really in love, with all the humility of thecondition. There were days when he would not touch Anita's hand, whenhe hardly spoke, when the girl herself would have been outraged athis conduct had she not now and then caught him watching her, seen thewretchedness in his eyes. 

The form of Marie's revenge was unpremeditated, after all. The lightmountain snow was augmented by a storm; roads were ploughed throughearly in the morning, leaving great banks on either side. Sleigh-bellswere everywhere. Coasting parties made the steep roads a menace tothe pedestrian; every up-climbing sleigh carried behind it a string ofsleds, going back to the starting-point. 

Below the hotel was the Serpentine Coast, a long and dangerous course, full of high-banked curves, of sudden descents, of long straightawaydashes through the woodland. Two miles, perhaps three, it wound itstortuous way down the mountain. Up by the highroad to the crest again, only a mile or less. Thus it happened that the track was always clear, except for speeding sleds. No coasters, dragging sleds back up theslide, interfered. 

The track was crowded. Every minute a sled set out, sped down thestraightaway, dipped, turned, disappeared. A dozen would be lined up, waiting for the interval and the signal. And here, watching from theporch of the church, in the very shadow of the saints, Marie found herrevenge. 

Stewart had given her a little wrist watch. Stewart and Anitawere twelfth in line. By the watch, then, twelve minutes down themountain-side, straight down through the trees to a curve that Marieknew well, a bad curve, only to be taken by running well up on thesnowbank. Beyond the snowbank there was a drop, fifteen feet, perhapsmore, into the yard of a Russian villa. Stewart and Anita were twelfth;a man in a green stocking-cap was eleventh. The hillside was steep. Marie negotiated it by running from tree to tree, catching herself, steadying for a second, then down again. Once she fell and rolled alittle distance. There was no time to think; perhaps had she thought shewould have weakened. She had no real courage, only desperation. 

As she reached the track the man in the green stocking-cap was insight. A minute and a half she had then, not more. She looked about herhastily. A stone might serve her purpose, almost anything that wouldthrow the sled out of its course. She saw a tree branch just above thetrack and dragged at it frantically. Some one was shouting at her froman upper window of the Russian villa. She did not hear. Stewart andAnita had made the curve above and were coming down at frantic speed. Marie stood, her back to the oncoming rush of the sled, swayingslightly. When she could hear the singing of the runners she stooped andslid the tree branch out against the track. 

She had acted almost by instinct, but with devilish skill. The sledswung to one side up the snowbank, and launched itself into the air. Marie heard the thud and the silence that followed it. Then she turnedand scuttled like a hunted thing up the mountain side. 

Peter put in a bad day. Marie was not about, could not be located. Stewart, suffering from concussion, lay insensible all day and all ofthe night. Peter could find no fracture, but felt it wise to get anotheropinion. In the afternoon he sent for a doctor from the Kurhaus andlearned for the first time that Anita had also been hurt--a broken arm. "Not serious, " said the Kurhaus man. "She is brave, very brave, theyoung woman. I believe they are engaged?" Peter said he did not know andthought very hard. Where was Marie? Not gone surely. Here about him layall her belongings, even her purse. 

Toward evening Stewart showed some improvement. He was not conscious, but he swallowed better and began to toss about. Peter, who had had along day and very little sleep the night before, began to look jaded. Hewould have sent for a nurse from the Kurhaus, but he doubted Stewart'sability to stand any extra financial strain, and Peter could not helpany. 

The time for supper passed, and no Marie. 

The landlady sent up a tray to Peter, stewed meat and potatoes, asalad, coffee. Peter sat in a corner with his back to Stewart and ateravenously. He had had nothing since the morning's coffee. After that hesat down again by the bed to watch. There was little to do but watch. 

The meal had made him drowsy. He thought of his pipe. Perhaps if he gotsome fresh air and a smoke! He remembered the balcony. 

It was there on the balcony that he found Marie, a cowering thing thatpushed his hands away when he would have caught her and broke intopassionate crying. 

"I cannot! I cannot!"

"Cannot what?" demanded Peter gently, watching her. So near was thebalcony rail!

"Throw myself over. I've tried, Peter. I cannot!"

"I should think not!" said Peter sternly. "Just now when we need you, too! Come in and don't be a foolish child. "

But Marie would not go in. She held back, clinging tight to Peter's bighand, moaning out in the dialect of the people that always confused himher story of the day, of what she had done, of watching Stewart broughtback, of stealing into the house and through an adjacent room to thebalcony, of her desperation and her cowardice. 

She was numb with cold, exhaustion, and hunger, quite childish, helpless. Peter stood out on the balcony with his arm round her, whilethe night wind beat about them, and pondered what was best to do. Hethought she might come in and care for Stewart, at least, until he wasconscious. He could get her some supper. 

"How can I?" she asked. "I was seen. They are searching for me now. Oh, Peter! Peter!"

"Who is searching for you? Who saw you?"

"The people in the Russian villa. "

"Did they see your face?"

"I wore a veil. I think not. "

"Then come in and change your clothes. There is a train down atmidnight. You can take it. "

"I have no money. "

This raised a delicate question. Marie absolutely refused to takeStewart's money. She had almost none of her own. And there were othercomplications--where was she to go? The family of the injured girl didnot suspect her since they did not know of her existence. She might getaway without trouble. But after that, what?

Peter pondered this on the balcony, while Marie in the bedroom waschanging her clothing, soaked with a day in the snow. He came to theinevitable decision, the decision he knew at the beginning that he wasgoing to make. 

"If I could only put it up to Harmony first!" he reflected. "But shewill understand when I tell her. She always understands. "

Standing there on the little balcony, with tragedy the thickness ofa pine board beyond him, Peter experienced a bit of the glow of themorning, as of one who stumbling along in a dark place puts a hand on afriend. 

He went into the room. Stewart was lying very still and breathingeasily. On her knees beside the bed knelt Marie. At Peter's step sherose and faced him. 

"I am leaving him, Peter, for always. "

"Good!" said Peter heartily. "Better for you and better for him. "

Marie drew a long breath. "The night train, " she said listlessly, "is anexpress. I had forgotten. It is double fare. "

"What of that, little sister?" said Peter. "What is a double fare whenit means life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? And there will behappiness, little sister. "

He put his hand in his pocket. 

CHAPTER XX

The Portier was almost happy that morning. For one thing, he had wonhonorable mention at the Schubert Society the night before; for another, that night the Engel was to sing Mignon, and the Portier had spent hisChristmas tips for a ticket. All day long he had been poring over thescore. 

"'Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bluhen?'" he sang with feelingwhile he polished the floors. He polished them with his feet, wearingfelt boots for the purpose, and executing in the doing a sort ofungainly dance--a sprinkle of wax, right foot forward and back, leftfoot forward and back, both feet forward and back in a sort of doubleshuffle; more wax, more vigorous polishing, more singing, with longerpauses for breath. "'Knowest thou the land where the lemon treesbloom?'" he bellowed--sprinkle of wax, right foot, left foot, any footat all. Now and then he took the score from his pocket and pored overit, humming the air, raising his eyebrows over the high notes, droppinghis chin to the low ones. It was a wonderful morning. Between greetingsto neighbors he sang--a bit of talk, a bit of song. 

"'Kennst du das Land'--Good-morning, sir--the old Rax wears a crown. Itwill snow soon. 'Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen'--Ah, madam the milkFrau, and are the cows frozen up to-day like the pump? No? Marvelous!Dost thou know that to-night is Mignon at the Opera, and that the Engelsings? 'Kennst du das Land'--"

At eleven came Rosa with her husband, the soldier from Salzburg with onelung. He was having a holiday from his sentry duty at the hospital, and the one lung seemed to be a libel, for while the women had coffeetogether and a bit of mackerel he sang a very fair bass to the Portier'stenor. Together they pored over the score, and even on their way to thebeer hall hummed together such bits as they recalled. 

On one point they differed. The score was old and soiled with muchthumbing. At one point, destroyed long since, the sentry sang A sharp:the Portier insisted on A natural. They argued together over threeSteins of beer; the waiter, referred to, decided for A flat. It was aserious matter to have one's teeth set, as one may say, for a naturaland then to be shocked with an unexpected half-tone up or down! Itdestroyed the illusion; it disappointed; it hurt. 

The sentry stuck to the sharp--it was sung so at the Salzburg opera. The Portier snapped his thumb at the Salzburg opera. Things were lookingserious; they walked back to the locale in silence. The sentry coughed. Possibly there was something, after all, in the one-lung rumor. 

It was then that the Portier remembered Harmony. She would know; perhapsshe had the score. 

Harmony was having a bad morning. She had slept little until dawn, andPeter's stealthy closing of the outer door had wakened her by its verycaution. After that there had been no more sleep. She had sat up in bedwith her chin in her hands and thought. 

In the pitiless dawn, with no Peter to restore her to cheerfulness, things looked black, indeed. To what had she fallen, that first one manand then another must propose marriage to her to save her. To save herfrom what? From what people thought, or--each from the other?

Were men so evil that they never trusted each other? McLean had franklydistrusted Peter, had said so. Or could it be that there was somethingabout her, something light and frivolous? She had been frivolous. Shealways laughed at Peter's foolishnesses. Perhaps that was it. Thatwas it. They were afraid for her. She had thrown herself on Peter'shands--almost into his arms. She had made this situation. 

She must get away, of course. If only she had some one to care for Jimmyuntil Peter returned! But there was no one. The Portier's wife was fondof Jimmy, but not skillful. And suppose he were to wake in the night andcall for her and she would not come. She cried a little over this. Aftera time she pattered across the room in her bare feet and got from abureau drawer the money she had left. There was not half enough to takeher home. She could write; the little mother might get some for her, butat infinite cost, infinite humiliation. That would have to be a final, desperate resort. 

She felt a little more cheerful when she had had a cup of coffee. Jimmywakened about that time, and she went through the details of his morningtoilet with all the brightness she could assume--bath blankets, warmbath, toenails, finger-nails, fresh nightgown, fresh sheets, and--finaltouch of all--a real barber's part straight from crown to brow. Afterthat ten minutes under extra comforters while the room aired. 

She hung over the boy that morning in an agony of tenderness--he was solittle, so frail, and she must leave him. Only one thing sustained her. The boy loved her, but it was Peter he idolized. When he had Peter heneeded nothing else. In some curious process of his childish mind Peterand Daddy mingled in inextricable confusion. More than once he hadrecalled events in the roving life he and his father had led. 

"You remember that, don't you?" he would say. 

"Certainly I remember, " Peter would reply heartily. 

"That evening on the steamer when I ate so many raisins. "

"Of course. And were ill. "

"Not ill--not that time. But you said I'd make a good pudding! Youremember that, don't you?"

And Peter would recall it all. 

Peter would be left. That was the girl's comfort. 

She made a beginning at gathering her things together that morning, while the boy dozed and the white mice scurried about the little cage. She could not take her trunk, or Peter would trace it. She would haveto carry her belongings, a few at a time, to wherever she found a room. Then when Peter came back she could slip away and he would never findher. 

At noon came the Portier and the sentry, now no longer friends, and rangthe doorbell. Harmony was rather startled. McLean and Mrs. Boyer hadbeen her only callers, and she did not wish to see either of them. Butafter a second ring she gathered her courage in her hands and opened thedoor. 

She turned pale when she saw the sentry in his belted blue-gray tunicand high cap. She thought, of course, that Jimmy had been traced andthat now he would be taken away. If the sentry knew her, however, hekept his face impassive and merely touched his cap. The Portier statedtheir errand. Harmony's face cleared. She even smiled as the Portierextended to her the thumbed score with its missing corner. What, after all, does it matter which was right--whether it was A sharp or Anatural? What really matters is that Harmony, having settled the disputeand clinched the decision by running over the score for a page or two, turned to find the Portier, ecstatic eyes upturned, hands folded onpaunch, enjoying a delirium of pleasure, and the sentry nowhere insight. 

He was discovered a moment later in the doorway of Jimmy's room, where, taciturn as ever, severe, martial, he stood at attention, shouldersback, arms at his sides, thumbs in. In this position he was making, withamazing rapidity, a series of hideous grimaces for the benefit of thelittle boy in the bed: marvelous faces they were, in which nose, mouth, and eyes seemed interchangeable, where features played leapfrog withone another. When all was over--perhaps when his repertoire wasexhausted--the sentry returned his nose to the center of his face, replaced eyes and mouth, and wiped the ensemble with a blue cottonhandkerchief. Then, still in silence, he saluted and withdrew, leavingthe youngster enraptured, staring at the doorway. 

Harmony had decided the approximate location of her room. In thehigher part of the city, in the sixteenth district, there were manyunpretentious buildings. She had hunted board there and she knew. Itwas far from the Stadt, far from the fashionable part of town, aneighborhood of small shops, of frank indigence. There surely she couldfind a room, and perhaps in one of the small stores what she failed tosecure in the larger, a position. 

Rosa having taken her soldier away, Harmony secured the Portier's wifeto sit with Jimmy and spent two hours that afternoon looking about fora room. She succeeded finally in finding one, a small and wretchedlyfurnished bedroom, part of the suite of a cheap dressmaker. The approachwas forbidding enough. One entered a cavelike, cobble-paved courtunder the building, filled with wagons, feeding horses, quarrelsome andswearing teamsters. From the side a stone staircase took off and led, twisting from one landing cave to another, to the upper floor. 

Here lived the dressmaker, amid the constant whirring ofsewing-machines, the Babel of workpeople. Harmony, seeking not ahome but a hiding-place, took the room at once. She was asked for noreference. In a sort of agony lest this haven fail her she paid for aweek in advance. The wooden bed, the cracked mirror over the table, eventhe pigeons outside on the windowsill were hers for a week. 

The dressmaker was friendly, almost garrulous. 

"I will have it cleaned, " she explained. "I have been so busy: themasquerade season is on. The Fraulein is American, is she not?"

"Yes. "

"One knows the Americans. They are chic, not like the English. I havesome American customers. "

Harmony started. The dressmaker was shrewd. Many people hid in thesixteenth district. She hastened to reassure the girl. 

"They will not disturb you. And just now I have but one, a dancer. Ishall have the room cleaned. Good-bye, Fraulein. "

So far, good. She had a refuge now, one spot that the venom of scandalcould not poison, where she could study and work--work hard, althoughthere could be no more lessons--one spot where Peter would not have toprotect her, where Peter, indeed, would never find her. This thought, which should have brought comfort, brought only new misery. Peace seemeddearly bought all at once; shabby, wholesome, hearty Peter, with hisrough hair and quiet voice, his bulging pockets and steady eyes--she wasleaving Peter forever, exchanging his companionship for that of a rowof pigeons on a window-sill. He would find some one, of course; but whowould know that he liked toast made hard and plenty of butter, or toleave his bed-clothing loose at the foot, Peter being very long and aptto lop over? The lopping over brought a tear or two. A very teary andtragic young heroine, this Harmony, prone to go about for the last dayor two with a damp little handkerchief tucked in her sleeve. 

She felt her way down the staircase and into the cave below. Fate hangsby a very slender thread sometimes. If a wagon had not lumbered by asshe reached the lowest step, so that she must wait and thus had timeto lower her veil, she would have been recognized at once by the littleGeorgiev, waiting to ascend. But the wagon was there, Harmony loweredher veil, the little Georgiev, passing a veiled young woman in thegloom, went up the staircase with even pulses and calm and judicialbearing, up to the tiny room a floor or two below Harmony's, where hewrote reports to the Minister of War and mixed them with sonnets--toHarmony. 

Harmony went back to the Siebensternstrasse, having accomplished whatshe had set out to do and being very wretched in consequence. Becauseshe was leaving the boy so soon she strove to atone for her comingdefection by making it a gala evening. The child was very happy. Shetucked him up in the salon, lighted all the candles, served him thedaintiest of suppers there. She brought in the mice and tied tiny bowson their necks; she played checkers with him while the supper disheswaited, and went down to defeat in three hilarious games; and last ofall she played to him, joyous music at first, then slower, drowsierairs, until his heavy head dropped on his shoulder and she gathered himup in tender arms and carried him to bed. 

It was dawn when Marie arrived. Harmony was sleeping soundly when thebell rang. Her first thought was that Peter had come back--but Petercarried a key. The bell rang again, and she slipped on the old kimonoand went to the door. 

"Is it Peter?" she called, hand on knob. 

"I come from Peter. I have a letter, " in German. 

"Who is it?"

"You do not know me--Marie Jedlicka. Please let me come in. "

Bewildered, Harmony opened the door, and like a gray ghost Marie slippedby her and into the hall. 

There was a gaslight burning very low; Harmony turned it up and facedher visitor. She recognized her at once--the girl Dr. Stewart had beenwith in the coffee-house. 

"Something has happened to Peter!"

"No. He is well. He sent this to the Fraulein Wells. "

"I am the Fraulein Wells. "

Marie held out the letter and staggered. Harmony put her in a chair; shewas bewildered, almost frightened. Crisis of some sort was written onMarie's face. Harmony felt very young, very incapable. The other girlrefused coffee, would not even go into the salon until Peter's letterhad been read. She was a fugitive, a criminal; the Austrian law issevere to those that harbor criminals. Let Harmony read:--

"DEAR HARRY, --Will you forgive me for this and spread the wings of yoursplendid charity over this poor child? Perhaps I am doing wrong insending her to you, but just now it is all I can think of. If she wantsto talk let her talk. It will probably help her. Also feed her, willyou? And if she cannot sleep, give her one of the blue powders I fixedfor Jimmy. I'll be back later to-day if I can make it. 

"PETER"

Harmony glanced up from the letter. Marie sat drooping in her chair. Hereyes were sunken in her head. She had recognized her at once, but anysurprise she may have felt at finding Harmony in Peter's apartment wassunk in a general apathy, a compound of nervous reaction and fatigue. During the long hours in the express she had worn herself out withfright and remorse: there was nothing left now but exhaustion. 

Harmony was bewildered, but obedient. She went back to the cold kitchenand lighted a fire. She made Marie as comfortable as she could in thesalon, and then went into her room to dress. There she read the letteragain, and wondered if Peter had gone through life like this, picking upwaifs and strays and shouldering their burdens for them. Decidedly, lifewith Peter was full of surprises. 

She remembered, as she hurried into her clothes; the boys' club backin America and the spelling-matches. Decidedly, also, Peter was anoccupation, a state of mind, a career. No musician, hoping for a careerof her own, could possibly marry Peter. 

That was a curious morning in the old lodge of Maria Theresa, whileStewart in the Pension Waldheim struggled back to consciousness, whilePeter sat beside him and figured on an old envelope the problem ofdividing among four enough money to support one, while McLean ate hisheart out in wretchedness in his hotel. 

Marie told her story over the early breakfast, sitting with her thinelbows on the table, her pointed chin in her palms. 

"And now I am sorry, " she finished. "It has done no good. If it had onlykilled her but she was not much hurt. I saw her rise and bend over him. "

Harmony was silent. She had no stock of aphorisms for the situation, noworldly knowledge, only pity. 

"Did Peter say he would recover?"

"Yes. They will both recover and go to America. And he will marry her. "

Perhaps Harmony would have been less comfortable, Marie less frank, hadMarie realized that this establishment of Peter's was not on the samebasis as Stewart's had been, or had Harmony divined her thought. 

The presence of the boy was discovered by his waking. Marie was takenin and presented. She looked stupefied. Certainly the Americans were amarvelous people--to have taken into their house and their hearts thisstrange child--if he were strange. Marie's suspicious little slum mindwas not certain. 

In the safety and comfort of the little apartment the Viennese expanded, cheered. She devoted herself to the boy, telling him strange folk tales, singing snatches of songs for him. The youngster took a liking to her atonce. It seemed to Harmony, going about her morning routine, that Mariewas her solution and Peter's. 

During the afternoon she took a package to the branch post-office andmailed it by parcel-post to the Wollbadgasse. On the way she met Mrs. Boyer face to face. That lady looked severely ahead, and Harmony passedher with her chin well up and the eyes of a wounded animal. 

McLean sent a great box of flowers that day. She put them, for lack of avase, in a pitcher beside Jimmy's bed. 

At dusk a telegram came to say that Stewart was better and that Peterwas on his way down to Vienna. He would arrive at eight. Time wasvery short now--seconds flashed by, minutes galloped. Harmony steweda chicken for supper, and creamed the breast for Jimmy. She fixed thetable, flowers in the center, the best cloth, Peter's favorite cheese. Six o'clock, six-thirty, seven; Marie was telling Jimmy a fairy tale andmaking the fairies out of rosebuds. The studylamp was lighted, the stoveglowing, Peter's slippers were out, his old smoking-coat, his pipe. 

A quarter past seven. Peter would be near Vienna now and hungry. If hecould only eat his supper before he learned--but that was impossible. He would come in, as he always did, and slam the outer door, and open itagain to close it gently, as he always did, and then he would look forher, going from room to room until he found her--only to-night he wouldnot find her. 

She did not say good-bye to Jimmy. She stood in the doorway and said alittle prayer for him. Marie had made the flower fairies on needles, andthey stood about his head on the pillow--pink and yellow and white elveswith fluffy skirts. Then, very silently, she put on her hat and jacketand closed the outer door behind her. In the courtyard she turned andlooked up. The great chandelier in the salon was not lighted, but fromthe casement windows shone out the comfortable glow of Peter's lamp. 

CHAPTER XXI

Peter had had many things to think over during the ride down themountains. He had the third-class compartment to himself, and sat in acorner, soft hat over his eyes. Life had never been particularly simpleto Peter--his own life, yes; a matter of three meals a day--he had hadfewer--a roof, clothing. But other lives had always touched him closely, and at the contact points Peter glowed, fused, amalgamated. Thus he hadbeen many people--good, indifferent, bad, but all needy. Thus, also, Peter had committed vicarious crimes, suffered vicarious illnesses, starved, died, loved--vicariously. 

And now, after years of living for others, Peter was living at last forhimself--and suffering. 

Not that he understood exactly what ailed him. He thought he was tired, which was true enough, having had little sleep for two or threenights. Also he explained to himself that he was smoking too much, andresolutely--lighted another cigarette. 

Two things had revealed Peter's condition to himself: McLean had said:"You are crazy in love with her. " McLean's statement, lacking subtlety, had had a certain quality of directness. Even then Peter, utterlymiserable, had refused to capitulate, when to capitulate would havemeant the surrender of the house in the Siebensternstrasse. And theabsence from Harmony had shown him just where he stood. 

He was in love, crazy in love. Every fiber of his long body glowed withit, ached with it. And every atom of his reason told him what mad follyit was, this love. Even if Harmony cared--and at the mere thought hisheart pounded--what madness for her, what idiocy for him! To ask her toaccept the half of--nothing, to give up a career to share his strugglefor one, to ask her to bury her splendid talent and her beauty under abushel that he might wave aloft his feeble light!

And there was no way out, no royal road to fortune by the route he hadchosen; nothing but grinding work, with a result problematical and yearsahead. There were even no legacies to expect, he thought whimsically. Peter had known a chap once, struggling along in gynecology, who hadhad a fortune left him by a G. P. , which being interpreted is GratefulPatient. Peter's patients had a way of living, and when they did dropout, as happened now and then, had also a way of leaving Peter an unpaidbill in token of appreciation; Peter had even occasionally helped tobury them, by way, he defended himself, of covering up his mistakes. 

Peter, sitting back in his corner, allowed the wonderful scenery to slipby unnoticed. He put Harmony the Desirable out of his mind, and tookto calculating on a scrap of paper what could be done for Harmony theMusician. He could hold out for three months, he calculated, and stillhave enough to send Harmony home and to get home himself on a slow boat. The Canadian lines were cheap. If Jimmy lived perhaps he could take himalong: if not--

He would have to put six months' work in the next three. That was not sohard. He had got along before with less sleep, and thrived on it. Alsothere must be no more idle evenings, with Jimmy in the salon propped ina chair and Harmony playing, the room dark save for the glow from thestove and for the one candle at Harmony's elbow. 

All roads lead to Rome. Peter's thoughts, having traveled in a circle, were back again to Harmony the Desirable--Harmony playing in thefirelight, Harmony Hushed over the brick stove, Harmony paring potatoesthat night in the kitchen when he--Harmony! Harmony!

Stewart knew all about the accident and its cause. Peter had surmised asmuch when the injured man failed to ask for Marie. 

He tested him finally by bringing Marie's name into the conversation. Stewart ignored it, accepted her absence, refused to be drawn. 

That was at first. During the day, however, as he gained strength, hegrew restless and uneasy. As the time approached for Peter to leave, hewas clearly struggling with himself. The landlady had agreed to carefor him and was bustling about the room. During one of her absences heturned to Peter. 

"I suppose Marie hasn't been round?"

"She came back last night. "

"Did she tell you?"

"Yes, poor child. "

"She's a devil!" Stewart said, and lay silent. Then: "I saw her shootthat thing out in front of us, but there was no time--Where is she now?"

"Marie? I sent her to Vienna. "

Stewart fell back, relieved, not even curious. 

"Thank Heaven for that!" he said. "I don't want to see her again. I'd dosomething I'd be sorry for. The kindest thing to say for her is that shewas not sane. "

"No, " said Peter gravely, "she was hardly sane. "

Stewart caught his steady gaze and glanced away. For him Marie's littletragedy had been written and erased. He would forget it magnanimously. He had divided what he had with her, and she had repaid him byattempting his life. And not only his life, but Anita's. Peter followedhis line of reasoning easily. 

"It's quite a frequent complication, Stewart, " he said, "but every manto whom it happens regards himself more or less as a victim. She fell inlove with you, that's all. Her conduct is contrary to the ethics of thegame, but she's been playing poor cards all along. "

"Where is she?"

"That doesn't matter, does it?"

Stewart had lain back and closed his eyes. No, it didn't matter. A senseof great relief overwhelmed him. Marie was gone, frightened into hiding. It was as if a band that had been about him was suddenly loosed: hebreathed deep, he threw out his arms and laughed from sheer reaction. Then, catching Peter's not particularly approving eyes, he colored. 

"Good Lord, Peter!" he said, "you don't know what I've gone through withthat little devil. And now she's gone!" He glanced round the disorderedroom, where bandages and medicines crowded toilet articles on thedressing-table, where one of Marie's small slippers still lay where ithad fallen under the foot of the bed, where her rosary still hung overthe corner of the table. "Ring for the maid, Peter, will you! I've gotto get this junk out of here. Some of Anita's people may come. "

During that afternoon ride, while the train clump-clumped down themountains, Peter thought of all this. Some of Marie's "junk" was in hisbag; her rosary lay in his breastpocket, along with the pin he had senther at Christmas. Peter happened on it, still in its box, which lookedas if it had been cried over. He had brought it with him. He admired itvery much, and it had cost money he could ill afford to spend. 

It was late when the train drew into the station. Peter, encumbered withMarie's luggage and his own, lowered his window and added his voiceto the chorus of plaintive calls: "Portier! Portier!" they shouted. "Portier!" bawled Peter. 

He was obliged to resort to the extravagance of a taxicab. Possiblya fiacre would have done as well, but it cost almost as much and wasslower. Moments counted now: a second was an hour, an hour a decade. Forhe was on his way to Harmony. Extravagance became recklessness. As soondie for a sheep as a lamb! He stopped the taxicab and bought a bunch ofviolets, stopped again and bought lilies of the valley to combine withthe violets, went out of his way to the American grocery and bought ajar of preserved fruit. 

By that time he was laden. The jar of preserves hung in one shabbypocket, Marie's rosary dangled from another; the violets were buttonedunder his overcoat against the cold. 

At the very last he held the taxi an extra moment and darted into thedelicatessen shop across the Siebensternstrasse. From there, standinginside the doorway, he could see the lights in the salon across the way, the glow of his lamp, the flicker that was the fire. Peter whistled, stamped his cold feet, quite neglected--in spite of repeated warningsfrom Harmony--to watch the Herr Schenkenkaufer weigh the cheese, accepted without a glance a ten-Kronen piece with a hole in it. 

"And how is the child to-day?" asked the Herr Schenkenkaufer, coveringthe defective gold piece with conversation. 

"I do not know; I have been away, " said Peter. He almost sang it. 

"All is well or I would have heard. Wilhelm the Portier was but just nowhere. "

"All well, of course, " sang Peter, eyes on the comfortable Floor ofhis lamp, the flicker that was the fire. "Auf wiedersehen, HerrSchenkenkaufer. "

"Auf wiedersehen, Herr Doktor. "

Violets, lilies-of-the-valley, cheese, rosary, luggage--thus Peterclimbed the stairs. The Portier wished to assist him, but Peterdeclined. The Portier was noisy. There was to be a moment when Peter, having admitted himself with extreme caution, would present himselfwithout so much as a creak to betray him, would stand in a doorway untilsome one, Harmony perhaps--ah, Peter!--would turn and see him. She had away of putting one slender hand over her heart when she was startled. 

Peter put down the jar of preserved peaches outside. It was to be asecond surprise. Also he put down the flowers; they were to be broughtin last of all. One surprise after another is a cumulative happiness. Peter did not wish to swallow all his cake in one bite. 

For once he did not slam the outer door, although he very nearly did, and only caught it at the cost of a bruised finger. Inside he listened. There was no clatter of dishes, no scurrying back and forth from tableto stove in the final excitement of dishing up. There was, however, a highly agreeable odor of stewing chicken, a crisp smell of bakingbiscuit. 

In the darkened hall Peter had to pause to steady himself. For he hada sudden mad impulse to shout Harmony's name, to hold out his arms, tocall her to him there in the warm darkness, and when she had come, tocatch her to him, to tell his love in one long embrace, his arms abouther, his rough cheek against her soft one. No wonder he grew somewhatdizzy and had to pull himself together. 

The silence rather surprised him, until he recalled that Harmony wasprobably sewing in the salon, as she did sometimes when dinner was readyto serve. The boy was asleep, no doubt. He stole along on tiptoe, hardlybreathing, to the first doorway, which was Jimmy's. 

Jimmy was asleep. Round him were the pink and yellow and white flowerfairies with violet heads. Peter saw them and smiled. Then, his eyesgrowing accustomed to the light, he saw Marie, face down on the floor, her head on her arms. Still as she was, Peter knew she was not sleeping, only fighting her battle over again and losing. 

Some of the joyousness of his return fled from Peter, never to comeback. The two silent figures were too close to tragedy. Peter, with along breath, stole past the door and on to the salon. No Harmony there, but the great room was warm and cheery. The table was drawn near thestove and laid for Abendessen. The white porcelain coffee-pot hadboiled and extinguished itself, according to its method, and now gentlysteamed. 

On to the kitchen. Much odor of food here, two candles lightedbut burning low, a small platter with money on it, quite a littlemoney--almost all he had left Harmony when he went away. 

Peter was dazed at first. Even when Marie, hastily summoned, haddiscovered that Harmony's clothing was gone, when a search of the roomsrevealed the absence of her violin and her music, when at last the factstared them, incontestable, in the face, Peter refused to accept it. Hesat for a half-hour or even more by the fire in the salon, obstinatelyrefusing to believe she was gone, keeping the supper warm against herreturn. He did not think or reason, he sat and waited, saying nothing, hardly moving, save when a gust of wind slammed the garden gate. Then hewas all alive, sat erect, ears straining for her hand on the knob of theouter door. 

The numbness of the shock passed at last, to be succeeded by alarm. During all the time that followed, that condition persisted, fright, almost terror. Harmony alone in the city, helpless, dependent, poverty-stricken. Harmony seeking employment under conditions Peter knewtoo well. But with his alarm came rage. 

Marie had never seen Peter angry. She shrank from this gaunt andgray-faced man who raved up and down the salon, questioning thefrightened Portier, swearing fierce oaths, bringing accusation afteraccusation against some unnamed woman to whom he applied epithets thatMarie's English luckily did not comprehend. Not a particularly heroicfigure was Peter that night: a frantic, disheveled individual, beforewhom the Portier cowered, who struggled back to sanity through a berserkhaze and was liable to swift relapses into fury again. 

To this succeeded at last the mental condition that was to be Peter'sfor many days, hopelessness and alarm and a grim determination to keepon searching. 

There were no clues. The Portier made inquiries of all the cabstands inthe neighborhood. Harmony had not taken a cab. The delicatessen sellerhad seen her go out that afternoon with a bundle and return without it. She had been gone only an hour or so. That gave Peter a ray of hope thatshe might have found a haven in the neighborhood--until he recalled theparcel-post. 

One possibility he clung to: Mrs. Boyer had made the mischief, but shehad also offered the girl a home. She might be at the Boyers'. Peter, flinging on a hat and without his overcoat, went to the Boyers'. Timewas valuable, and he had wasted an hour, two hours, in useless rage. Sohe took a taxicab, and being by this time utterly reckless of cost letit stand while he interviewed the Boyers. 

Boyer himself, partially undressed, opened the door to his ring. Peterwas past explanation or ceremonial. 

"Is Harmony here?" he demanded. 

"Harmony?"

"Harmony Wells. She's disappeared, missing. "

"Come in, " said Boyer, alive to the strain in Peter's voice. "I don'tknow, I haven't heard anything. I'll ask Mrs. Boyer. "

During the interval it took for a whispered colloquy in the bedroom, andfor Mrs. Boyer to don her flannel wrapper, Peter suffered the torturesof the damned. Whatever Mrs. Boyer had meant to say by way of protest atthe intrusion on the sacred privacy of eleven o'clock and bedtime diedin her throat. Her plump and terraced chin shook with agitation, perhapswith guilt. Peter, however, had got himself in hand. He told a quietstory; Boyer listened; Mrs. Boyer, clutching her wrapper about herunstayed figure, listened. 

"I thought, " finished Peter, "that since you had offered her arefuge--from me--she might have come here. "

"I offered her a refuge--before I had been to the Pension Schwarz. "

"Ah!" said Peter slowly. "And what about the Pension Schwarz?"

"Need you ask? I learned that you were all put out there. I am obligedto say, Dr. Byrne, that under the circumstances had the girl come here Icould hardly--Frank, I will speak!--I could hardly have taken her in. "

Peter went white and ducked as from a physical blow, stumbling outinto the hall again. There he thought of something to say in reply, repudiation, thought better of it, started down the stairs. 

Boyer followed him helplessly. At the street door, however, he put hishand on Peter's shoulder. "You know, old man, I don't believe that. These women--"

"I know, " said Peter simply. "Thank you. Good-night. "

CHAPTER XXII

Harmony's only thought had been flight, from Peter, from McLean, fromMrs. Boyer. She had devoted all her energies to losing herself, to cutting the threads that bound her to the life in theSiebensternstrasse. She had drawn all her money, as Peter discoveredlater. The discovery caused him even more acute anxiety. The city wasfull of thieves; poverty and its companion, crime, lurked on everyshadowy staircase of the barracklike houses, or peered, red-eyed, fromevery alleyway. 

And into this city of contrasts--of gray women of the night hugginggratings for warmth and accosting passers-by with loathsome gestures, ofsmug civilians hiding sensuous mouths under great mustaches, of dappersoldiers to whom the young girl unattended was potential prey, intothis night city of terror, this day city of frightful contrasts, erminerubbing elbows with frost-nipped flesh, destitution sauntering alongthe fashionable Prater for lack of shelter, gilt wheels of royalty andyellow wheels of courtesans--Harmony had ventured alone for the secondtime. 

And this time there was no Peter Byrne to accost her cheerily in thetwilight and win her by sheer friendliness. She was alone. Her fundswere lower, much lower. And something else had gone--her faith. Mrs. Boyer had seen to that. In the autumn Harmony had faced the cityclear-eyed and unafraid; now she feared it, met it with averted eyes, alas! understood it. 

It was not the Harmony who had bade a brave farewell to Scatchy and theBig Soprano in the station who fled to her refuge on the upper floor ofthe house in the Wollbadgasse. This was a hunted creature, alternatelyflushed and pale, who locked her door behind her before she took offher hat, and who, having taken off her hat and surveyed her hiding-placewith tragic eyes, fell suddenly to trembling, alone there in thegaslight. 

She had had no plans beyond flight. She had meant, once alone, to thinkthe thing out. But the room was cold, she had had nothing to eat, and the single slovenly maid was a Hungarian and spoke no German. Thedressmaker had gone to the Ronacher. Harmony did not know where to finda restaurant, was afraid to trust herself to the streets alone. She wentto bed supperless, with a tiny picture of Peter and Jimmy and the woodensentry under her cheek. 

The pigeons, cooing on the window-sill, wakened her early. She wasconfused at first, got up to see if Jimmy had thrown off his blankets, and wakened to full consciousness with the sickening realization thatJimmy was not there. 

The dressmaker, whose name was Monia Reiff, slept late after her eveningout. Harmony, collapsing with hunger and faintness, waited as long asshe could. Then she put on her things desperately and ventured out. Surely at this hour Peter would not be searching, and even if he were hewould never think of the sixteenth district. He would make inquiries, ofcourse--the Pension Schwarz, Boyers', the master's. 

The breakfast brought back her strength and the morning air gave herconfidence. The district, too, was less formidable than the neighborhoodof the Karntnerstrasse and the Graben. The shops were smaller. Thewindows exhibited cheaper goods. There was a sort of family atmosphereabout many of them; the head of the establishment in the doorway, thewife at the cashier's desk, daughters, cousins, nieces behind thewooden counters. The shopkeepers were approachable, instead of familiar. Harmony met no rebuffs, was respectfully greeted and cheerfully listenedto. In many cases the application ended in a general consultation, shopkeeper, wife, daughters, nieces, slim clerks with tiny mustaches. She got addresses, followed them up, more consultations, more addresses, but no work. The reason dawned on her after a day of tramping, duringwhich she kept carefully away from that part of the city where Petermight be searching for her. 

The fact was, of course, that her knowledge of English was her soleasset as a clerk. And there were few English and no tourists in thesixteenth district. She was marketing a commodity for which there was nodemand. 

She lunched at a Konditorei, more to rest her tired body than becauseshe needed food. The afternoon was as the morning. At six o'clock, long after the midwinter darkness had fallen, she stumbled back to theWollbadgasse and up the whitewashed staircase. 

She had a shock at the second landing. A man had stepped into the angleto let her pass. A gasjet dared over his head, and she recognized theshort heavy figure and ardent eyes of Georgiev. She had her veil downluckily, and he gave no sign of recognition. She passed on, and sheheard him a second later descending. But there had been somethingreminiscent after all in her figure and carriage. The little Georgievpaused, halfway down, and thought a moment. It was impossible, ofcourse. All women reminded him of the American. Had he not, only theday before, followed for two city blocks a woman old enough to behis mother, merely because she carried a violin case? But there wassomething about the girl he had just passed--Bah!

A bad week for Harmony followed, a week of weary days and restlessnights when she slept only to dream of Peter--of his hurt andincredulous eyes when he found she had gone; of Jimmy--that he neededher, was worse, was dying. More than once she heard him sobbing andwakened to the cooing of the pigeons on the window-sill. She grew thinand sunken-eyed; took to dividing her small hoard, half of it with her, half under the carpet, so that in case of accident all would not begone. 

This, as it happened, was serious. One day, the sixth, she came back wetto the skin from an all-day rain, to find that the carpet bank had beenlooted. There was no clue. The stolid Hungarian, startled out of herlethargy, protested innocence; the little dressmaker, who seemed honestand friendly, wept in sheer sympathy. The fact remained--half the smallhoard was gone. 

Two days more, a Sunday and a Monday. On Sunday Harmony played, andGeorgiev in the room below, translating into cipher a recent conferencebetween the Austrian Minister of War and the German Ambassador, putaside his work and listened. She played, as once before she had playedwhen life seemed sad and tragic, the "Humoresque. " Georgiev, handsbehind his head and eyes upturned, was back in the Pension Schwarz thatnight months ago when Harmony played the "Humoresque" and Peter stoopedoutside her door. The little Bulgarian sighed and dreamed. 

Harmony, a little sadder, a little more forlorn each day, pursued herhopeless quest. She ventured into the heart of the Stadt and paid apart of her remaining money to an employment bureau, to teach Englishor violin, whichever offered, or even both. After she had paid they toldher it would be difficult, almost impossible without references. She hadanother narrow escape as she was leaving. She almost collided with Olga, the chambermaid, who, having clashed for the last time with Katrina, wasseeking new employment. On another occasion she saw Marie in the crowdand was obsessed with a longing to call to her, to ask for Peter, forJimmy. That meeting took the heart out of the girl. Marie was white andweary--perhaps the boy was worse. Perhaps Peter--Her heart contracted. But that was absurd, of course, Peter was always well and strong. 

Two things occurred that week, one unexpected, the other inevitable. The unexpected occurrence was that Monia Reiff, finding Harmony beingpressed for work, offered the girl a situation. The wage was small, butshe could live on it. 

The inevitable was that she met Georgiev on the stairs without her veil. 

It was the first day in the workroom. The apprentices were carrying homeboxes for a ball that night. Thread was needed, and quickly. Harmony, who did odds and ends of sewing, was most easily spared. She slipped onher jacket and hat and ran down to the shop near by. 

It was on the return that she met Georgiev coming down. The afternoonwas dark and the staircase unlighted. In the gloom one face was asanother. Georgiev, listening intently, hearing footsteps, drew backinto the embrasure of a window and waited. His swarthy face was tense, expectant. As the steps drew near, were light feminine instead ofstealthy, the little spy relaxed somewhat. But still he waited, crouched. 

It was a second before he recognized Harmony, another instant before herealized his good fortune. She had almost passed. He put out an unsteadyhand. 

"Fraulein!"

"Herr Georgiev!"

The little Bulgarian was profoundly stirred. His fervid eyes gleamed. He struggled against the barrier of language, broke out in passionateBulgar, switched to German punctuated with an English word here andthere. Made intelligible, it was that he had found her at last. Harmonyheld her spools of thread and waited for the storm of languages tosubside. Then:--

"But you are not to say you have seen me, Herr Georgiev. "

"No?"

Harmony colored. 

"I am--am hiding, " she explained. "Something very uncomfortable happenedand I came here. Please don't say you have seen me. "

Georgiev was puzzled at first. She had to explain very slowly, with hisardent eyes on her. But he understood at last and agreed of course. Hisincredulity was turning to certainty. Harmony had actually been in thesame building with him while he sought her everywhere else. 

"Then, " he said at last, "it was you who played Sunday. "

"I surely. "

She made a move to pass him, but he held out an imploring hand. 

"Fraulein, I may see you sometimes?"

"We shall meet again, of course. "

"Fraulein, --with all respect, --sometime perhaps you will walk out withme?"

"I am very busy all day. "

"At night, then? For the exercise? I, with all respect, Fraulein!"

Harmony was touched. 

"Sometime, " she consented. And then impulsively: "I am very lonely, HerrGeorgiev. "

She held out her hand, and the little Bulgarian bent over it and kissedit reverently. The Herr Georgiev's father was a nobleman in his owncountry, and all the little spy's training had been to make of a girlin Harmony's situation lawful prey. But in the spy's glowing heart therewas nothing for Harmony to fear. She knew it. He stood, hat in hand, while she went up the staircase. Then:--

"Fraulein!" anxiously. 

"Yes?"

"Was there below at the entrance a tall man in a green velours hat?"

"I saw no one there. "

"I thank you, Fraulein. "

He watched her slender figure ascend, lose itself in the shadows, listened until she reached the upper floors. Then with a sigh he clappedhis hat on his head and made his cautious way down to the street. Therewas no man in a green velours hat below, but the little spy had anuneasy feeling that eyes watched him, nevertheless. Life was growingcomplicated for the Herr Georgiev. 

Life was pressing very close to Harmony also in those days, a life shehad never touched before. She discovered, after a day or two in thework-room, that Monia Reiff's business lay almost altogether among thedemi-monde. The sewing-girls, of Marie's type many of them, found inthe customers endless topics of conversation. Some things Harmony wasspared, much of the talk being in dialect. But a great deal of it sheunderstood, and she learned much that was not spoken. They talkedfreely of the women, their clothes, and they talked a great deal abouta newcomer, an American dancer, for whom Monia was making an elaborateoutfit. The American's name was Lillian Le Grande. She was dancing atone of the variety theaters. 

Harmony was working on a costume for the Le Grande woman--a gold brocadeslashed to the knee at one side and with a fragment of bodice made ofgilt tissue. On the day after her encounter with Georgiev she met her. 

There was a dispute over the gown, something about the draping. Monia, flushed with irritation, came to the workroom door and glanced over thegirls. She singled out Harmony finally and called her. 

"Come and put on the American's gown, " she ordered. "She wishes--Heavenknows what she wishes!"

Harmony went unwillingly. Nothing she had heard of the Fraulein LeGrande had prepossessed her. Her uneasiness was increased when she foundherself obliged to shed her gown and to stand for one terrible momentbefore the little dressmaker's amused eyes. 

"Thou art very lovely, very chic, " said Monia. The dress added torather than relieved Harmony's discomfiture. She donned it in one of thefitting-rooms, made by the simple expedient of curtaining off a cornerof the large reception room. The slashed skirt embarrassed her; the lowcut made her shrink. Monia was frankly entranced. Above the gold tissueof the bodice rose Harmony's exquisite shoulders. Her hair was gold;even her eyes looked golden. The dressmaker, who worshiped beauty, gavea pull here, a pat there. If only all women were so beautiful in thethings she made!

She had an eye for the theatrical also. She posed Harmony behind thecurtain, arranged lights, drew down the chiffon so that a bit more ofthe girl's rounded bosom was revealed. Then she drew the curtain asideand stood smiling. 

Le Grande paid the picture the tribute of a second's silence. Then:--

"Exquisite!" she said in English. Then in halting German: "Do not changea line. It is perfect. "

Harmony must walk in the gown, turn, sit. Once she caught a glimpse ofherself and was startled. She had been wearing black for so long, andnow this radiant golden creature was herself. She was enchanted andabashed. The slash in the skirt troubled her: her slender leg had a wayof revealing itself. 

The ordeal was over at last. The dancer was pleased. She ordered anothergown. Harmony, behind the curtain, slipped out of the dress and intoher own shabby frock. On the other side of the curtain the dancerwas talking. Her voice was loud, but rather agreeable. She smoked acigarette. Scraps of chatter came to Harmony, and once a laugh. 

"That is too pink--something more delicate. "

"Here is a shade; hold it to your cheek. "

"I am a bad color. I did not sleep last night. "

"Still no news, Fraulein?"

"None. He has disappeared utterly. That isn't so bad, is it? I could usemore rouge. "

"It is being much worn. It is strange, is it not, that a child could bestolen from the hospital and leave no sign!"

The dancer laughed a mirthless laugh. Her voice changed, became nasal, full of venom. 

"Oh, they know well enough, " she snapped. "Those nurses know, andthere's a pig of a red-bearded doctor--I'd like to poison him. Separating mother and child! I'm going to find him, if only to show themthey are not so smart after all. "

In her anger she had lapsed into English. Harmony, behind her curtain, had clutched at her heart. Jimmy's mother!

CHAPTER XXIII

Jimmy was not so well, although Harmony's flight had had nothing to dowith the relapse. He had found Marie a slavishly devoted substitute, andbesides Peter had indicated that Harmony's absence was purely temporary. But the breaking-up was inevitable. All day long the child lay in thewhite bed, apathetic but sleepless. In vain Marie made flower fairiesfor his pillow, in vain the little mice, now quite tame, playedhide-and-seek over the bed, in vain Peter paused long enough in hisfrantic search for Harmony to buy colored postcards and bring them tohim. 

He was contented enough; he did not suffer at all; and he had noapprehension of what was coming. He asked for nothing, tried obedientlyto eat, liked to have Marie in the room. But he did not beg to betaken into the salon, as he once had done. There was a sort of mentalconfusion also. He liked Marie to read his father's letters; but ashe grew weaker the occasional confusing of Peter with his dead fatherbecame a fixed idea. Peter was Daddy. 

Peter took care of him at night. He had moved into Harmony's adjacentroom and dressed there. But he had never slept in the bed. At night heput on his shabby dressing-gown and worn slippers and lay on a hairclothsofa at the foot of Jimmy's bed--lay but hardly slept, so afraid was hethat the slender thread of life might snap when it was drawn out to itsslenderest during the darkest hours before the dawn. More than once inevery night Peter rose and stood, hardly breathing, with the tiny lampin his hand, watching for the rise and fall of the boy's thin littlechest. Peter grew old these days. He turned gray over the ears anddeveloped lines about his mouth that never left him again. He felt grayand old, and sometimes bitter and hard also. The boy's condition couldnot be helped: it was inevitable, hopeless. But the thing that waseating his heart out had been unnecessary and cruel. 

Where was Harmony? When it stormed, as it did almost steadily, hewondered how she was sheltered; when the occasional sun shone he hopedit was bringing her a bit of cheer. Now and then, in the night, when thelamp burned low and gusts of wind shook the old house, fearful thoughtscame to him--the canal, with its filthy depths. Daylight brought reason, however. Harmony had been too rational, too sane for such an end. 

McLean was Peter's great support in those terrible days. He was youngand hopeful. Also he had money. Peter could not afford to grease themachinery of the police service; McLean could and did. In Berlin Harmonycould not have remained hidden for two days. In Vienna, however, itwas different. Returns were made to the department, but irregularly. An American music student was missing. There were thousands of Americanmusic students in the city: one fell over them in the coffee-houses. McLean offered a reward and followed up innumerable music students. 

The alternating hope and despair was most trying. Peter became old andhaggard; the boy grew thin and white. But there was this difference, that with Peter the strain was cumulative, hour on hour, day on day. With McLean each night found him worn and exhausted, but each followingmorning he went to work with renewed strength and energy. Perhaps, afterall, the iron had not struck so deep into his soul. With Peter it was alife-and-death matter. 

Clinics and lectures had begun again, but he had no heart for work. Thelittle household went on methodically. Marie remained; there had seemednothing else to do. She cooked Peter's food--what little he would eat;she nursed Jimmy while Peter was out on the long search; and she keptthe apartment neat. She was never intrusive, never talkative. Indeed, she seemed to have lapsed into definite silence. She deferred absolutelyto Peter, adored him, indeed, from afar. She never ate with him, inspite of his protests. 

The little apartment was very quiet. Where formerly had been music andHarmony's soft laughter, where Anna Gates had been wont to argue withPeter in loud, incisive tones, where even the prisms of the chandelierhad once vibrated in response to Harmony's violin, almost absolutesilence now reigned. Even the gate, having been repaired, no longercreaked, and the loud altercations between the Portier and his wife hadbeen silenced out of deference to the sick child. 

On the day that Harmony, in the gold dress, had discovered Jimmy'smother in the American dancer Peter had had an unusually bad day. McLeanhad sent him a note by messenger early in the morning, to the effectthat a young girl answering Harmony's description had been seen in thepark at Schonbrunn and traced to an apartment near by. 

Harmony had liked Schonbrunn, and it seemed possible. They had gone outtogether, McLean optimistic, Peter afraid to hope. And it had been as hefeared--a pretty little violin student, indeed, who had been washing herhair, and only opened the door an inch or two. 

McLean made a lame apology, Peter too sick with disappointment to speak. Then back to the city again. 

He had taken to making a daily round, to the master's, to the FrauProfessor Bergmeister's, along the Graben and the Karntnerstrasse, ending up at the Doctors' Club in the faint hope of a letter. Wrathstill smouldered deep in Peter; he would not enter a room at the clubif Mrs. Boyer sat within. He had had a long hour with Dr. Jennings, and left that cheerful person writhing in abasement. And he had helda stormy interview with the Frau Schwarz, which left her humble fora week, and exceedingly nervous, being of the impression from Peter'smanner that in the event of Harmony not turning up an American gunboatwould sail up the right arm of the Danube and bombard the PensionSchwarz. 

Schonbrunn having failed them, McLean and, Peter went back to the cityin the street-car, neither one saying much. Even McLean's elasticity wasdeserting him. His eyes, from much peering into crowds, had taken on astrained, concentrated look. 

Peter was shabbier than ever beside the other man's ultrafashionabledress. He sat, bent forward, his long arms dangling between his knees, his head down. Their common trouble had drawn the two together, or haddrawn McLean close to Peter, as if he recognized that there were degreesin grief and that Peter had received almost a death-wound. His oldrage at Peter had died. Harmony's flight had proved the situation as noamount of protestation would have done. The thing now was to find thegirl; then he and Peter would start even, and the battle to the bestman. 

They had the car almost to themselves. Peter had not spoken since he satdown. McLean was busy over a notebook, in which he jotted down from dayto day such details of their search as might be worth keeping. Now andthen he glanced at Peter as if he wished to say something, hesitated, fell to work again over the notebook. Finally he ventured. 

"How's the boy?"

"Not so well to-day. I'm having a couple of men in to see him to-night. He doesn't sleep. "

"Do you sleep?"

"Not much. He's on my mind, of course. "

That and other things, Peter. 

"Don't you think--wouldn't it be better to have a nurse. You can't golike this all day and be up all night, you know. And Marie has him mostof the day. " McLean, of course, had known Marie before. "The boy oughtto have a nurse, I think. "

"He doesn't move without my hearing him. "

"That's an argument for me. Do you want to get sick?"

Peter turned a white face toward McLean, a face in which exasperationstruggled with fatigue. 

"Good Lord, boy, " he rasped, "don't you suppose I'd have a nurse if Icould afford it?"

"Would you let me help? I'd like to do something. I'm a useless cub ina sick-room, but I could do that. Who's the woman he liked in thehospital?"

"Nurse Elisabet. I don't know, Mac. There's no reason why I shouldn'tlet you help, I suppose. It hurts, of course, but--if he would behappier--"

"That's settled, then, " said McLean. "Nurse Elisabet, if she can come. And--look here, old man. I 've been trying to say this for a week andhaven't had the nerve. Let me help you out for a while. You can send itback when you get it, any time, a year or ten years. I'll not miss it. "

But Peter refused. He tempered the refusal in his kindly way. 

"I can't take anything now, " he said. "But I'll remember it, and ifthings get very bad I'll come to you. It isn't costing much to live. Marie is a good manager, almost as good as--Harmony was. " This withdifficulty. He found it always hard to speak of Harmony. His throatseemed to close on the name. 

That was the best McLean could do, but he made a mental reservation tosee Marie that night and slip her a little money. Peter need never know, would never notice. 

At a cross-street the car stopped, and the little Bulgarian, Georgiev, got on. He inspected the car carefully before he came in from theplatform, and sat down unobtrusively in a corner. Things were not goingwell with him either. His small black eyes darted from face to facesuspiciously, until they came to a rest on Peter. 

It was Georgiev's business to read men. Quickly he put together the bitshe had gathered from Harmony on the staircase, added to them Peter'sdespondent attitude, his strained face, the abstraction which required atouch on the arm from his companion when they reached their destination, recalled Peter outside the door of Harmony's room in the PensionSchwarz--and built him a little story that was not far from the truth. 

Peter left the car without seeing him. It was the hour of the promenade, when the Ring and the larger business streets were full of people, when Demel's was thronged with pretty women eating American ices, withmilitary men drinking tea and nibbling Austrian pastry, the hour whenthe flower women along the Stephansplatz did a rousing business inroses, when sterile women burned candles before the Madonna in theCathedral, when the lottery did the record business of the day. 

It was Peter's forlorn hope that somewhere among the crowd he mighthappen on Harmony. For some reason he thought of her always as in acrowd, with people close, touching her, men staring at her, followingher. He had spent a frightful night in the Opera, scanning seat afterseat, not so much because he hoped to find her as because inaction wasintolerable. 

And so, on that afternoon, he made his slow progress along theKarntnerstrasse, halting now and then to scrutinize the crowd. He evenpeered through the doors of shops here and there, hoping while he fearedthat the girl might be seeking employment within, as she had before inthe early days of the winter. 

Because of his stature and powerful physique, and perhaps, too, becauseof the wretchedness in his eyes, people noticed him. There was one placewhere Peter lingered, where a new building was being erected, and wherebecause of the narrowness of the passage the dense crowd was thinned asit passed. He stood by choice outside a hairdresser's window, where abrilliant light shone on each face that passed. 

Inside the clerks had noticed him. Two of them standing together by thedesk spoke of him: "He is there again, the gray man!"

"Ah, so! But, yes, there is his back!"

"Poor one, it is the Fraulein Engel he waits to see, perhaps. "

"More likely Le Grande, the American. He is American. "

"He is Russian. Look at his size. "

"But his shoes!" triumphantly. "They are American, little one. "

The third girl had not spoken; she was wrapping in tissue a great goldenrose made for the hair. She placed it in a box carefully. 

"I think he is of the police, " she said, "or a spy. There is much talkof war. "

"Foolishness! Does a police officer sigh always? Or a spy have suchsadness in his face? And he grows thin and white. "

"The rose, Fraulein. "

The clerk who had wrapped up the flower held it out to the customer. The customer, however, was not looking. She was gazing with strangeintentness at the back of a worn gray overcoat. Then with a curiousclutch at her heart she went white. Harmony, of course, Harmony come tofetch the golden rose that was to complete Le Grande's costume. 

She recovered almost at once and made an excuse to leave by anotherexit. 

She took a final look at the gray sleeve that was all she could see ofPeter, who had shifted a bit, and stumbled out into the crowd, walkingalong with her lip trembling under her veil, and with the slow andsteady ache at her heart that she had thought she had stilled for good. 

It had never occurred to Harmony that Peter loved her. He had proposedto her twice, but that had been in each case to solve a difficulty forher. And once he had taken her in his arms, but that was different. Eventhen he had not said he loved her--had not even known it, to be exact. Nor had Harmony realized what Peter meant to her until she had put himout of her life. 

The sight of the familiar gray coat, the scrap of conversation, soenlightening as to poor Peter's quest, that Peter was growing thin andwhite, made her almost reel. She had been too occupied with her ownposition to realize Peter's. With the glimpse of him came a greatlonging for the house on the Siebensternstrasse, for Jimmy's arms abouther neck, for the salon with the lamp lighted and the sleet beatingharmlessly against the casement windows, for the little kitchen with thebrick stove, for Peter. 

Doubts of the wisdom of her course assailed her. But to go back meant, at the best, adding to Peter's burden of Jimmy and Marie, meant theold situation again, too, for Marie most certainly did not add to therespectability of the establishment. And other doubts assailed her. Whatif Jimmy were not so well, should die, as was possible, and she had notlet his mother see him!

Monia Reiff was very busy that day. Harmony did not leave the workroomuntil eight o'clock. During all that time, while her slim fingers workedover fragile laces and soft chiffons, she was seeing Jimmy as she hadseen him last, with the flower fairies on his pillow, and Peter, keepingwatch over the crowd in the Karntnerstrasse, looking with his steadyeyes for her. 

No part of the city was safe for a young girl after night, she knew; thesixteenth district was no better than the rest, rather worse in places. But the longing to see the house on the Siebensternstrasse grew on her, became from an ache a sharp and insistent pain. She must go, must seeonce again the comfortable glow of Peter's lamp, the flicker that wasthe fire. 

She ate no supper. She was too tired to eat, and there was the pain. Sheput on her wraps and crept down the whitewashed staircase. 

The paved courtyard below was to be crossed and it was poorly lighted. She achieved the street, however, without molestation. To the street-carwas only a block, but during that block she was accosted twice. She waswhite and frightened when she reached the car. 

The Siebensternstrasse at last. The street was always dark; thedelicatessen shop was closed, but in the wild-game store next a lightwas burning low, and a flame flickered before the little shrine over themoney drawer. The gameseller was a religious man. 

The old stucco house dominated the neighborhood. From the time she leftthe car Harmony saw it, its long flat roof black against the dark sky, its rows of unlighted windows, its long wall broken in the center bythe gate. Now from across the street its whole facade lay before her. Peter's lamp was not lighted, but there was a glow of soft firelightfrom the salon windows. The light was not regular--it disappeared atregular intervals, was blotted out. Harmony knew what that meant. Someone beyond range of where she stood was pacing the floor, back andforward, back and forward. When he was worried or anxious Peter alwayspaced the door. 

She did not know how long she stood there. One of the soft rains wasfalling, or more accurately, condensing. The saturated air was hardlycold. She stood on the pavement unmolested, while the glow died lowerand lower, until at last it was impossible to trace the pacing figure. No one came to any of the windows. The little lamp before the shrine inthe wild-game shop burned itself out; the Portier across the way came tothe door, glanced up at the sky and went in. Harmony heard the rattle ofthe chain as it was stretched across the door inside. 

Not all the windows of the suite opened on the street. Jimmy'swindows--and Peter's--opened toward the back of the house, where ina brick-paved courtyard the wife of the Portier hung her washing, andwhere the Portier himself kept a hutch of rabbits. A wild and recklessdesire to see at least the light from the child's room possessedHarmony. Even the light would be something; to go like this, to carrywith her only the memory of a dark looming house without cheer wasunthinkable. The gate was never locked. If she but went into the gardenand round by the spruce tree to the back of the house, it would besomething. 

She knew the garden quite well. Even the darkness had no horror forher. Little Scatchy had had a habit of leaving various articles on herwindow-sill and of instigating searches for them at untimely hoursof night. Once they had found her hairbrush in the rabbit hutch! SoHarmony, ashamed but unalarmed, made her way by the big spruce to thecorner of the old lodge and thus to the courtyard. 

Ah, this was better! Lights all along the apartment floor and movingshadows; on Jimmy's window-sill a jar of milk. And voices--some one wassinging. 

Peter was singing, droning softly, as one who puts a drowsy child tosleep. Slower and slower, softer and softer, over and over, the littlesong Harmony had been wont to sing:--

"Ah well! For us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from humaneyes. And in the--hereafter--angels may

 Roll--the--stone--from--its--grave--away. "

Slower and slower, softer and softer, until it died away altogether. Peter, in his old dressing-gown, came to the window and turned downthe gaslight beside it to a blue point. Harmony did not breathe. For aminute, two minutes, he stood there looking out. Far off the twin clocksof the Votivkirche struck the hour. All about lay the lights of the oldcity, so very old, so wise, so cunning, so cold. 

Peter stood looking out, as he had each night since Harmony went away. Each night he sang the boy to sleep, turned down the light and stoodby the window. And each night he whispered to the city that shelteredHarmony somewhere, what he had whispered to the little sweater coat thenight before he went away:--

"Good-night, dear. Good-night, Harmony. "

The rabbits stirred uneasily in the hutch; a passing gust shook thegreat tree overhead and sent down a sharp shower on to the bricks below. Peter struck a match and lit his pipe; the flickering light illuminatedhis face, his rough hair, his steady eyes. 

"Good-night, Peter, " whispered Harmony. "Good-night, dear. "

CHAPTER XXIV

Walter Stewart had made an uncomplicated recovery, helped along byrelief at the turn events had taken. In a few days he was going aboutagain, weak naturally, rather handsomer than before because a littleless florid. But the week's confinement had given him an opportunity tothink over many things. Peter had set him thinking, on the day when hehad packed up the last of Marie's small belongings and sent them down toVienna. 

Stewart, lying in bed, had watched him. "Just how much talk do yousuppose this has made, Byrne?" he asked. 

"Haven't an idea. Some probably. The people in the Russian villa saw it, you know. "

Stewart's brows contracted. 

"Damnation! Then the hotel has it, of course!"

"Probably. "

Stewart groaned. Peter closed Marie's American trunk of which she hadbeen so proud, and coming over looked down at the injured man. 

"Don't you think you'd better tell the girl all about it?"

"No, " doggedly. 

"I know, of course, it wouldn't be easy, but--you can't get away withit, Stewart. That's one way of looking at it. There's another. "

"What's that?"

"Starting with a clean slate. If she's the sort you want to marry, andnot a prude, she'll understand, not at first, but after she gets used toit. "

"She wouldn't understand in a thousand years. "

"Then you'd better not marry her. You know, Stewart, I have an ideathat women imagine a good many pretty rotten things about us, anyhow. A sensible girl would rather know the truth and be done with it. What aman has done with his life before a girl--the right girl--comes intoit isn't a personal injury to her, since she wasn't a part of his lifethen. You know what I mean. But she has a right to know it before shechooses. "

"How many would choose under those circumstances?" he jibed. 

Peter smiled. "Quite a few, " he said cheerfully. "It's a wrong system, of course; but we can get a little truth out of it. "

"You can't get away with it" stuck in Stewart's mind for several days. It was the one thing Peter said that did stick. And before Stewart hadrecovered enough to be up and about he had made up his mind to tellAnita. In his mind he made quite a case for himself; he argued theaffair against his conscience and came out victorious. 

Anita's party had broken up. The winter sports did not compare, theycomplained, with St. Moritz. They disliked German cooking. Into thebargain the weather was not good; the night's snows turned soft bymidday; and the crowds that began to throng the hotels were solidcitizens, not the fashionables of the Riviera. Anita's arm forbade hertraveling. In the reassembling of the party she went to the Kurhaus inthe valley below the pension with one of the women who wished to takethe baths. 

It was to the Kurhaus, then, that Stewart made his first excursion afterthe accident. He went to dinner. Part of the chaperon's treatment calledfor an early retiring hour, which was highly as he had wished it andrather unnerving after all. A man may decide that a dose of poison isthe remedy for all his troubles, but he does not approach his hour withany hilarity. Stewart was a stupid dinner guest, ate very little, andlooked haggard beyond belief when the hour came for the older woman toleave. 

He did not lack courage however. It was his great asset, physical andmental rather than moral, but courage nevertheless. The evening wasquiet, and they elected to sit on the balcony outside Anita's sittingroom, the girl swathed in white furs and leaning back in her steamerchair. 

Below lay the terrace of the Kurhaus, edged with evergreen trees. Beyondand far below that was the mountain village, a few scattered housesalong a frozen stream. The townspeople retired early; light after lightwas extinguished, until only one in the priest's house remained. A traincrept out of one tunnel and into another, like a glowing worm crawlingfrom burrow to burrow. 

The girl felt a change in Stewart. During the weeks he had known herthere had been a curious restraint in his manner to her. There weretimes when an avowal seemed to tremble on his lips, when his eyes lookedinto hers with the look no women ever mistakes; the next moment he wouldglance away, his face would harden. They were miles apart. And perhapsthe situation had piqued the girl. Certainly it had lost nothing for herby its unusualness. 

To-night there was a difference in the man. His eyes met hers squarely, without evasion, but with a new quality, a searching, perhaps, forsomething in her to give him courage. The girl had character, more thanordinary decision. It was what Stewart admired in her most, and thething, of course, that the little Marie had lacked. Moreover, Anita, barely twenty, was a woman, not a young girl. Her knowledge of theworld, not so deep as Marie's, was more comprehensive. Where Marie wouldhave been merciful, Anita would be just, unless she cared for him. Inthat case she might be less than just, or more. 

Anita in daylight was a pretty young woman, rather incisive of speech, very intelligent, having a wit without malice, charming to look at, keenly alive. Anita in the dusk of the balcony, waiting to hear she knewnot what, was a judicial white goddess, formidably still, frightfullypotential. Stewart, who had embraced many women, did not dare a fingeron her arm. 

He had decided on a way to tell the girl the story--a preamble about hisupbringing, which had been indifferent, his struggle to get to Vienna, his loneliness there, all leading with inevitable steps to Marie. Fromthat, if she did not utterly shrink from him, to his love for her. 

It was his big hour, that hour on the balcony. He was reaching, throughlove, heights of honesty he had never scaled before. But as a matter offact he reversed utterly his order of procedure. The situation got him, this first evening absolutely alone with her. That and her nearness, andthe pathos of her bandaged, useless arm. Still he had not touched her. 

The thing he was trying to do was more difficult for that. Generalcredulity to the contrary, men do not often make spoken love first. Howmany men propose marriage to their women across the drawing-room or fromchair to chair? Absurd! The eyes speak first, then the arms, the lipslast. The woman is in his arms before he tells his love. It is by herresponse that he gauges his chances and speaks of marriage. Actually thething is already settled; tardy speech only follows on swift instinct. Stewart, wooing as men woo, would have taken the girl's hand, gainedan encouragement from it, ventured to kiss it, perhaps, and finding norebuff would then and there have crushed her to him; What need of words?They would follow in due time, not to make a situation but to clarifyit. 

But he could not woo as men woo. The barrier of his own weakness stoodbetween them and must be painfully taken down. 

"I'm afraid this is stupid for you, " said Anita out of the silence. "Would you like to go to the music-room?"

"God forbid. I was thinking. "

"Of what?" Encouragement this, surely. 

"I was thinking how you had come into my life, and stirred it up. "

"Really? I?"

"You know that. "

"How did I stir it up?"

"That's hardly the way I meant to put it. You've changed everything forme. I care for you--a very great deal. "

He was still carefully in hand, his voice steady. And still he did nottouch her. Other men had made love to her, but never in this fashion, orwas he making love?

"I'm very glad you like me. "

"Like you!" Almost out of hand that time. The thrill in his voice wasunmistakable. "It's much more than that, Anita, so much more that I'mgoing to try to do a hideously hard thing. Will you help a little?"

"Yes, if I can. " She was stirred, too, and rather frightened. 

Stewart drew his chair nearer to her and sat forward, his face set anddogged. 

"Have you any idea how you were hurt? Or why?"

"No. There's a certain proportion of accidents that occur at all theseplaces, isn't there?"

"This was not an accident. "

"No?"

"The branch of a tree was thrown out in front of the sled to send usover the bank. It was murder, if intention is crime. "

After a brief silence--

"Somebody who wished to kill you, or me?"

"Both of us, I believe. It was done by a woman--a girl, Anita. A girl Ihad been living with. "

A brutal way to tell her, no doubt, but admirably courageous. For he wasquivering with dread when he said it--the courage of the man who facesa cannon. And here, where a less-poised woman would have broken intospeech, Anita took the refuge of her kind and was silent. Stewartwatched her as best he could in the darkness, trying to gather furthercourage to go on. He could not see her face, but her fingers, touchingthe edge of the chair, quivered. 

"May I tell you the rest?"

"I don't think I want to hear it. "

"Are you going to condemn me unheard?"

"There isn't anything you can say against the fact?"

But there was much to say, and sitting there in the darkness he madehis plea. He made no attempt to put his case. He told what had happenedsimply; he told of his loneliness and discomfort. And he emphasized thelack of sentiment that prompted the arrangement. 

Anita spoke then for the first time: "And when you tried to terminate itshe attempted to kill you!"

"I was acting the beast. I brought her up here, and then neglected herfor you. "

"Then it was hardly only a business arrangement for her. "

"It was at first. I never dreamed of any thing else. I swear that, Anita. But lately, in the last month or two, she--I suppose I shouldhave seen that she--"

"That she had fallen in love with you. How old is she?"

"Nineteen. "

A sudden memory came to Anita, of a slim young girl, who had watched herwith wide, almost childish eyes. 

"Then it was she who was in the compartment with you on the train comingup?"

"Yes. "

"Where is she now?"

"In Vienna. I have not heard from her. Byrne, the chap who came upto see me after the--after the accident, sent her away. I think he'slooking after her. I haven't heard from him. "

"Why did you tell me all this?"

"Because I love you, Anita. I want you to marry me. "

"What! After that?"

"That, or something similar, is in many men's lives. They don't tell it, that's the difference. I 'm not taking any credit for telling you this. I'm ashamed to the bottom of my soul, and when I look at your bandagedarm I'm suicidal. Peter Byrne urged me to tell you. He said I couldn'tget away with it; some time or other it would come out. Then he saidsomething else. He said you'd probably understand, and that if youmarried me it was better to start with a clean slate. "

No love, no passion in the interview now. A clear statement of fact, anoffer--his past against hers, his future with hers. Her hand was steadynow. The light in the priest's house had been extinguished. The chill ofthe mountain night penetrated Anita's white furs; and set her--or was itthe chill?--to shivering. 

"If I had not told you, would you have married me?"

"I think so. I'll be honest, too. Yes. "

"I am the same man you would have married. Only--more honest. "

"I cannot argue about it. I am tired and cold. "

Stewart glanced across the valley to where the cluster of villas huggedthe mountain-side There was a light in his room; outside was the littlebalcony where Marie had leaned against the railing and looked down, down. Some of the arrogance of his new virtue left the man. He wassuddenly humbled. For the first time he realized a part of what Mariehad endured in that small room where the light burned. 

"Poor little Marie!" he said softly. 

The involuntary exclamation did more for him than any plea he could havemade. Anita rose and held out her hand. 

"Go and see her, " she said quietly. "You owe her that. We'll be leavinghere in a day or so and I'll not see you again. But you've been honest, and I will be honest, too. I--I cared a great deal, too. "

"And this has killed it?"

"I hardly comprehend it yet. I shall have to have time to think. "

"But if you are going away--I'm afraid to leave you. You'll think thisthing over, alone, and all the rules of life you've been taught willcome--"

"Please, I must think. I will write you, I promise. "

He caught her hand and crushed it between both of his. 

"I suppose you would rather I did not kiss you?" humbly. 

"I do not want you to kiss me. "

He released her hand and stood looking down at her in the darkness. Ifhe could only have crushed her to him, made her feel the security of hislove, of his sheltering arms! But the barrier of his own building wasbetween them. His voice was husky. 

"I want you to try to remember, past what I have told you, to the thingthat concerns us both--I love you. I never loved the other woman. Inever pretended I loved her. And there will be nothing more like that. "

"I shall try to remember. "

Anita left Semmering the next day, against the protests of the doctorand the pleadings of the chaperon. She did not see Stewart again. Butbefore she left, with the luggage gone and the fiacre at the door, shewent out on the terrace, and looked across to the Villa Waldheim, risingfrom among its clustering trees. Although it was too far to be certain, she thought she saw the figure of a man on the little balcony standingwith folded arms, gazing across the valley to the Kurhaus. 

Having promised to see Marie, Stewart proceeded to carry out his promisein his direct fashion. He left Semmering the evening of the followingday, for Vienna. The strain of the confession was over, but he was avictim of sickening dread. To one thing only he dared to pin his hopes. Anita had said she cared, cared a great deal. And, after all, what elsemattered? The story had been a jolt, he told himself. Girls were full ofqueer ideas of right and wrong, bless them! But she cared. She cared!

He arrived in Vienna at nine o'clock that night. The imminence ofhis interview with Marie hung over him like a cloud. He ate a hurriedsupper, and calling up the Doctors' Club by telephone found Peter'saddress in the Siebensternstrasse. He had no idea, of course, that Mariewas there. He wanted to see Peter to learn where Marie had taken refuge, and incidentally to get from Peter a fresh supply of moral courage forthe interview. For he needed courage. In vain on the journey down had heclothed himself in armor of wrath against the girl; the very compartmentin the train provoked softened memories of her. Here they had bought aluncheon, there Marie had first seen the Rax. Again at this station shehad curled up and put her head on his shoulder for a nap. Ah, but again, at this part of the journey he had first seen Anita!

He took a car to the Siebensternstrasse. His idea of Peter's mannerof living those days was exceedingly vague. He had respected Peter'sreticence, after the manner of men with each other. Peter had oncementioned a boy he was looking after, in excuse for leaving so soonafter the accident. That was all. 

The house on the Siebensternstrasse loomed large and unlighted. Thestreet was dark, and it was only after a search that Stewart found thegate. Even then he lost the path, and found himself among a group oftrees, to touch the lowest branches of any of which resulted in a showerof raindrops. To add to his discomfort some one was walking in thegarden, coming toward him with light, almost stealthy steps. 

Stewart by his tree stood still, waiting. The steps approached, werevery close, were beside him. So intense was the darkness that even thenall he saw was a blacker shadow, and that was visible only because itmoved. Then a hand touched his arm, stopped as if paralyzed, drew backslowly, fearfully. 

"Good Heavens!" said poor Harmony faintly. 

"Please don't be alarmed. I have lost the path. " Stewart's voice wasalmost equally nervous. "Is it to the right or the left?"

It was a moment before Harmony had breath to speak. Then:--

"To the right a dozen paces or so. "

"Thank you. Perhaps I can help you to find it. "

"I know it quite well. Please don't bother. "

The whole situation was so unexpected that only then did it dawn onStewart that this blacker shadow was a countrywoman speaking God's ownlanguage. Together, Harmony a foot or so in advance, they made the path. 

"The house is there. Ring hard, the bell is out of order. "

"Are you not coming in?"

"No. I--I do not live here. "

She must have gone just after that. Stewart, glancing at the dark facadeof the house, turned round to find her gone, and a moment later heardthe closing of the gate. He was bewildered. What sort of curious placewas this, a great looming house that concealed in its garden a fugitiveAmerican girl who came and went like a shadow, leaving only the memoryof a sweet voice strained with fright?

Stewart was full of his encounter as he took the candle the Portiergave him and followed the gentleman's gruff directions up the staircase. Peter admitted him, looking a trifle uneasy, as well he might with Mariein the salon. 

Stewart was too preoccupied to notice Peter's expression. He shook therain off his hat, smiling. 

"How are you?" asked Peter dutifully. 

"Pretty good, except for a headache when I'm tired. What sort of a placehave you got here anyhow, Byrne?"

"Old hunting-lodge of Maria Theresa, " replied Peter, still preoccupiedwith Marie and what was coming. "Rather interesting old place. "

"Rather, " commented Stewart, "with goddesses in the garden and all theusual stunts. "

"Goddesses?"

"Ran into one just now among the trees. 'A woman I forswore, but thoubeing a goddess I forswore not thee. ' English-speaking goddess, byGeorge!"

Peter was staring at him incredulously; now he bent forward and graspedhis arm in fingers of steel. 

"For Heaven's sake, Stewart, tell me what you mean! Who was in thegarden?"

Stewart was amused and interested. It was not for him to belittle asituation of his own making, an incident of his own telling. 

"I lost my way in your garden, wandered among the trees, broke through ahedgerow or two, struck a match and consulted the compass--"

Peter's fingers closed. 

"Quick, " he said. 

Stewart's manner lost its jauntiness. 

"There was a girl there, " he said shortly. "Couldn't see her. She spokeEnglish. Said she didn't live here, and broke for the gate the minute Igot to the path. "

"You didn't see her?"

"No. Nice voice, though. Young. "

The next moment he was alone. Peter in his dressing-gown was runningdown the staircase to the lower floor, was shouting to the Portier tounlock the door, was a madman in everything but purpose. The Portier lethim out and returned to the bedroom. 

"The boy above is worse, " he said briefly. "A strange doctor has justcome, and but now the Herr Doktor Byrne runs to the drug store. "

The Portier's wife shrugged her shoulders even while tears filled hereyes. 

"What can one expect?" she demanded. "The good Herr Gott has forbiddentheft and Rosa says the boy was stolen. Also the druggist has gone tovisit his wife's mother. "

"Perhaps I may be of service; I shall go up. "

"And see for a moment that hussy of the streets! Remain here. I shallgo. "

Slowly and ponderously she climbed the stairs. 

Stewart, left alone, wandered along the dim corridor. He found Peter'sexcitement rather amusing. So this was where Peter lived, an old house, isolated in a garden where rambled young women with soft voices. Hello, a youngster asleep! The boy, no doubt. 

He wandered on toward the lighted door of the salon and Marie. The placewas warm and comfortable, but over it all hung the indescribable odor ofdrugs that meant illness. He remembered that the boy was frail. 

Marie turned as he stopped in the salon doorway, and then rose, white-faced. Across the wide spaces of the room they eyed each other. Marie's crisis had come. Like all crises it was bigger than speech. Itwas after a distinct pause that she spoke. 

"Hast thou brought the police?"

Curiously human, curiously masculine at least was Stewart's mentalcondition at that moment. He had never loved the girl; it was withtremendous relief he had put her out of his life. And yet--

"So it's old Peter now, is it?"

"No, no, not that, Walter. He has given me shelter, that is all. I swearit. I look after the boy. "

"Who else is here?"

"No one else; but--"

"Tell that rot to some one who does not know you. "

"It is true. He never even looks at me. I am wicked, but I do not lie. "There was a catch of hope in her voice. Marie knew men somewhat, but shestill cherished the feminine belief that jealousy is love, whereas it isonly injured pride. She took a step toward him. "Walter, I am sorry. Doyou hate me?" She had dropped the familiar "thou. "

Stewart crossed the room until only Peter's table and lamp stood betweenthem. 

"I didn't mean to be brutal, " he said, rather largely, entirelyconscious of his own magnanimity. "It was pretty bad up there and Iknow it. I don't hate you, of course. That's hardly possibleafter--everything. "

"You--would take me back?"

"No. It's over, Marie. I wanted to know where you were, that's all; tosee that you were comfortable and not frightened. You're a silly childto think of the police. "

Marie put a hand to her throat. 

"It is the American, of course. "

"Yes. "

She staggered a trifle, recovered, threw up her head. "Then I wish I hadkilled her!"

No man ever violently resents the passionate hate of one woman for herrival in his affections. Stewart, finding the situation in hand andMarie only feebly formidable, was rather amused and flattered by thehonest fury in her voice. The mouse was under his paw; he would play abit. "You'll get over feeling that way, kid. You don't really love me. "

"You were my God, that is all. "

"Will you let me help you--money, I mean?"

"Keep it for her. "

"Peter will be here in a minute. " He bent over the table and eyed herwith his old, half-bullying, half-playful manner. "Come round here andkiss me for old times. "

"No!"

"Come. "

She stood stubbornly still, and Stewart, still smiling, took a step ortwo toward her. Then he stopped, ceased smiling, drew himself up. 

"You are quite right and I'm a rotter. " Marie's English did notcomprehend "rotter, " but she knew the tone. "Listen, Marie, I've toldthe other girl, and there's a chance for me, anyhow. Some day she maymarry me. She asked me to see you. "

"I do not wish her pity. "

"You are wasting your life here. You cannot marry, you say, without adot. There is a chance in America for a clever girl. You are clever, little Marie. The first money I can spare I'll send you--if you'll takeit. It's all I can do. "

This was a new Stewart, a man she had never known. Marie recoiled fromhim, eyed him nervously, sought in her childish mind for an explanation. When at last she understood that he was sincere, she broke down. Stewart, playing a new part and raw in it, found the situationirritating. But Marie's tears were not entirely bitter. Back of them herbusy young mind was weaving a new warp of life, with all of America forits loom. Hope that had died lived again. Before her already lay thatgreat country where women might labor and live by the fruit of theirlabor, where her tawdry past would be buried in the center of distantEurope. New life beckoned to the little Marie that night in the oldsalon of Maria Theresa, beckoned to her as it called to Stewart, opportunity to one, love and work to the other. To America!

"I will go, " she said at last simply. "And I will not trouble youthere. "

"Good!" Stewart held out his hand and Marie took it. With a quickgesture she held it to her cheek, dropped it. 

Peter came back half an hour later, downcast but not hopeless. He hadnot found Harmony, but life was not all gray. She was well, still inVienna, and--she had come back! She had cared then enough to come back. To-morrow he would commence again, would comb the city fine, and whenhe had found her he would bring her back, the wanderer, to a marvelouswelcome. 

He found Stewart gone, and Marie feverishly overhauling her fewbelongings by the salon lamp. She turned to him a face still stainedwith tears but radiant with hope. 

"Peter, " she said gravely, "I must prepare my outfit. I go to America. "

"With Stewart?"

"Alone, Peter, to work, to be very good, to be something. I am veryhappy, although--Peter, may I kiss you?"

"Certainly, " said Peter, and took her caress gravely, patting her thinshoulder. His thoughts were in the garden with Harmony, who had caredenough to come back. 

"Life, " said Peter soberly, "life is just one damned thing afteranother, isn't it?"

But Marie was anxiously examining the hem of a skirt. 

The letter from Anita reached Stewart the following morning. She said:--

"I have been thinking things over, Walter, and I am going to hurt youvery much--but not, believe me, without hurting myself. Perhaps myuppermost thought just now is that I am disappointing you, that I am notso big as you thought I would be. For now, in this final letter, I cantell you how much I cared. Oh, my dear, I did care!

"But I will not marry you. And when this reaches you I shall have gonevery quietly out of your life. I find that such philosophy as I havedoes not support me to-night, that all my little rules of life areinadequate. Individual liberty was one--but there is no liberty of theindividual. Life--other lives--press too closely. You, living your lifeas seemed best and easiest, and carrying down with you into shipwreckthe little Marie and--myself!

"For, face to face with the fact, I cannot accept it, Walter. It is notonly a question of my past against yours. It is of steady revoltand loathing of the whole thing; not the flash of protest before onesuccumbs to the inevitable, but a deep-seated hatred that is a part ofme and that would never forget. 

"You say that you are the same man I would have married, only morehonest for concealing nothing. But--and forgive me this, it insists oncoming up in my mind--were you honest, really? You told me, and it tookcourage, but wasn't it partly fear? What motive is unmixed? Honesty--andfear, Walter. You were preparing against a contingency, although you maynot admit this to yourself. 

"I am not passing judgment on you. God forbid that I should! I am onlytrying to show you what is in my mind, and that this break is final. Therevolt is in myself, against something sordid and horrible which I willnot take into my life. And for that reason time will make no difference. 

"I am not a child, and I am not unreasonable. But I ask a great deal ofthis life of mine that stretches ahead, Walter--home and children, thelove of a good man, the fulfillment of my ideals. And you ask me tostart with a handicap. I cannot do it. I know you are resentful, but--Iknow that you understand. 

"ANITA. "

CHAPTER XXV

The little Georgiev was in trouble those days. The Balkan engine wasthreatening to explode, but continued to gather steam, with Bulgariasitting on the safety-valve. Austria was mobilizing troops, and therewere long conferences in the Burg between the Emperor and variousbearded gentlemen, while the military prayed in the churches for war. 

The little Georgiev hardly ate or slept. Much hammering went on all dayin the small room below Harmony's on the Wollbadgasse. At night, when the man in the green velours hat took a little sleep, mysteriouspackages were carried down the whitewashed staircase and loaded intowagons waiting below. Once on her window-sill Harmony found among thepigeons a carrier pigeon with a brass tube fastened to its leg. 

On the morning after Harmony's flight from the garden in the Streetof Seven Stars, she received a visit from Georgiev. She had put ina sleepless night, full of heart-searching. She charged herself withcowardice in running away from Peter and Jimmy when they needed her, andin going back like a thief the night before. The conviction that the boywas not so well brought with it additional introspection--her sacrificeseemed useless, almost childish. She had fled because two men thoughtit necessary, in order to save her reputation, to marry her; and shedid not wish to marry. Marriage was fatal to the career she had promisedherself, had been promised. But this career, for which she had given upeverything else--would she find it in the workroom of a dressmaker?

Ah, but there was more to it than that. Suppose--how her cheeks burnedwhen she thought of it!--suppose she had taken Peter at his word andmarried him? What about Peter's career? Was there any way by whichPeter's poverty for one would be comfort for two? Was there anyreason why Peter, with his splendid ability, should settle down to thehack-work of general practice, the very slough out of which he had sopainfully climbed?

Either of two things--go back to Peter, but not to marry him, or staywhere she was. How she longed to go back only Harmony knew. There inthe little room, with only the pigeons to see, she held out her armslongingly. "Peter!" she said. "Peter, dear!"

She decided, of course, to stay where she was, a burden to no one. The instinct of the young girl to preserve her good name at any costoutweighed the vision of Peter at the window, haggard and tired, lookingout. It was Harmony's chance, perhaps, to do a big thing; to proveherself bigger than her fears, stronger than convention. But she wasyoung, bewildered, afraid. And there was this element, stronger thanany of the others--Peter had never told her he loved her. To go back, throwing herself again on his mercy, was unthinkable. On his love--thatwas different. But what if he did not love her? He had been good to her;but then Peter was good to every one. 

There was something else. If the boy was worse what about his mother?Whatever she was or had been, she was his mother. Suppose he were to dieand his mother not see him? Harmony's sense of fairness rebelled. In thesmall community at home mother was sacred, her claims insistent. 

It was very early, hardly more than dawn. The pigeons cooed on the sill;over the ridge of the church roof, across, a luminous strip foretold thesun. An oxcart, laden with vegetables for the market, lumbered along thestreets. Puzzled and unhappy, Harmony rose and lighted her fire, drew onher slippers and the faded silk kimono with the pink butterflies. 

In the next room the dressmaker still slept, dreaming early morningdreams of lazy apprentices, overdue bills, complaining customers. 

Harmony moved lightly not to disturb her. She set her room in order, fedthe pigeons, --it was then she saw the carrier with its message, --madeher morning coffee by setting the tiny pot inside the stove. And all thetime, moving quietly through her morning routine, she was there in thatupper room in body only. 

In soul she was again in the courtyard back of the old lodge, in theStreet of Seven Stars, with the rabbits stirring in the hutch, andPeter, with rapt eyes, gazing out over the city. Bed, toilet-table, coffee-pot, Peter; pigeons, rolls, Peter; sunrise over the church roof, and Peter again. Always Peter!

Monia Reiff was stirring in the next room. Harmony could hear her, muttering and putting coal on the stove and calling to the Hungarianmaid for breakfast. Harmony dressed hastily. It was one of her newduties to prepare the workroom for the day. The luminous streak abovethe church was rose now, time for the day to begin. 

She was not certain at once that some one had knocked at the door, sofaint was the sound. 

She hesitated, listened. The knob turned slightly. Harmony, expectingMonia, called "Come in. "

It was the little Georgiev, very apologetic, rather gray of face. Hestood in the doorway with his finger on his lips, one ear toward thestairway. It was very silent. Monia was drinking her coffee in bed, whither she had retired for warmth. 

"Pardon!" said the Bulgarian in a whisper. "I listened until I heard youmoving about. Ah, Fraulein, that I must disturb you!"

"Something has happened!" exclaimed Harmony, thinking of Peter, ofcourse. 

"Not yet. I fear it is about to happen. Fraulein, do me the honor toopen your window. My pigeon comes now to you to be fed, and I fear--onthe sill, Fraulein. "

Harmony opened the window. The wild pigeons scattered at once, but thecarrier, flying out a foot or two, came back promptly and set about itsbreakfast. 

"Will he let me catch him?"

"Pardon, Fraulein, If I may enter--"

"Come in, of course. "

Evidently the defection of the carrier had been serious. A handful ofgrain on a wrong window-sill, and kingdoms overthrown! Georgiev caughtthe pigeon and drew the message from the tube. Even Harmony grasped theseriousness of the situation. The little Bulgarian's face, from graybecame livid; tiny beads of cold sweat came out on his forehead. 

"What have I done?" cried Harmony. "Oh, what have I done? If I had knownabout the pigeon--"

Georgiev recovered himself. 

"The Fraulein can do nothing wrong, " he said. "It is a matter of anhour's delay, that is all. It may not be too late. "

Monia Reiff, from the next room, called loudly for more coffee. Thesulky Hungarian brought it without a glance in their direction. 

"Too late for what?"

"Fraulein, if I may trouble you--but glance from the window to thestreet below. It is of an urgency, or I--Please, Fraulein!"

Harmony glanced down into the half-light of the street. Georgiev, behindher, watched her, breathless, expectant. Harmony drew in her head. 

"Only a man in a green hat, " she said. "And down the street a group ofsoldiers. "

"Ah!"

The situation dawned on the girl then, at least partially. 

"They are coming for you?"

"It is possible. But there are many soldiers in Vienna. "

"And I with the pigeon--Oh, it's too horrible! Herr Georgiev, stay herein this room. Lock the door. Monia will say that it is mine--"

"Ah no, Fraulein! It is quite hopeless. Nor is it a matter of thepigeon. It is war, Fraulein. Do not distress yourself. It is but amatter of--imprisonment. "

"There must be something I can do, " desperately. "I hear them below. Isthere no way to the roof, no escape?"

"None, Fraulein. It was an oversight. War is not my game; I am a man ofpeace. You have been very kind to me, Fraulein. I thank you. "

"You are not going down!"

"Pardon, but it is better so. Soldiers they are of the provinces mostly, and not for a lady to confront. "

"They are coming up!"

He listened. The clank of scabbards against the stone stairs wasunmistakable. The little Georgiev straightened, threw out his chest, turned to descend, faltered, came back a step or two. 

His small black eyes were fixed on Harmony's face. 

"Fraulein, " he said huskily, "you are very lovely. I carry always in myheart your image. Always so long as I live. Adieu. "

He drew his heels together, gave a stiff little bow and was gone downthe staircase. Harmony was frightened, stricken. She collapsed in a heapon the floor of her room, her fingers in her ears. But she need not havefeared. The little Georgiev made no protest, submitted to the inevitablelike a gentleman and a soldier, went out of her life, indeed, asunobtrusively as he had entered it. 

The carrier pigeon preened itself comfortably on the edge of thewashstand. Harmony ceased her hysterical crying at last and ponderedwhat was best to do. Monia was still breakfasting so incredibly briefare great moments. After a little thought Harmony wrote a tiny message, English, German, and French, and inclosed it in the brass tube. 

"The Herr Georgiev has been arrested, " she wrote. An hour later thecarrier rose lazily from the window-sill, flapped its way overthe church roof and disappeared, like Georgiev, out of her life. Grim-visaged war had touched her and passed on. 

The incident was not entirely closed, however. A search of the buildingfollowed the capture of the little spy. Protesting tenants were turnedout, beds were dismantled, closets searched, walls sounded for hiddenhollows. In one room on Harmony's floor was found stored a quantity ofammunition. 

It was when the three men who had conducted the search had finished, when the boxes of ammunition had been gathered in the hall, and thechattering sewing-girls had gone back to work, that Harmony, on her wayto her dismantled room, passed through the upper passage. 

She glanced down the staircase where little Georgiev had so manfullydescended. 

"I carry always in my heart your image. Always so long as I live. "

The clatter of soldiers on their way down to the street came to herears; the soft cooing of the pigeons, the whirr of sewing-machines fromthe workroom. The incident was closed, except for the heap of ammunitionboxes on the landing, guarded by an impassive soldier. 

Harmony glanced at him. He was eying her steadily, thumbs in, heels in, toes out, chest out. Harmony put her hand to her heart. 

"You!" she said. 

The conversation of a sentry, save on a holiday is, "Yea, yea, " and"Nay, nay. "

"Yes, Fraulein. "

Harmony put her hands together, a little gesture of appeal, infinitelytouching. 

"You will not say that you have found, have seen me?"

"No, Fraulein. "

It was in Harmony's mind to ask all her hungry heart craved to learn--ofPeter, of Jimmy, of the Portier, of anything that belonged to the oldlife in the Siebensternstrasse. But there was no time. The sentry'simpassive face became rigid; he looked through her, not at her. Harmonyturned. 

The man in the green hat was coming up the staircase. There was nofurther chance to question. The sentry was set to carrying the boxesdown the staircase. 

Full morning now, with the winter sun shining on the beggars in themarket, on the crowds in the parks, on the flower sellers in theStephansplatz; shining on Harmony's golden head as she bent over a bitof chiffon, on the old milkwoman carrying up the whitewashed staircaseher heavy cans of milk; on the carrier pigeon winging its way to thesouth; beating in through bars to the exalted face of Herr Georgiev;resting on Peter's drooping shoulders, on the neglected mice and thewooden soldier, on the closed eyes of a sick child--the worshiped sun, peering forth--the golden window of the East. 

CHAPTER XXVI

Jimmy was dying. Peter, fighting hard, was beaten at last. All throughthe night he had felt it; during the hours before the dawn there hadbeen times when the small pulse wavered, flickered, almost ceased. Withthe daylight there had been a trifle of recovery, enough for a bit ofhope, enough to make harder Peter's acceptance of the inevitable. 

The boy was very happy, quite content and comfortable. When he openedhis eyes he smiled at Peter, and Peter, gray of face, smiled back. Peterdied many deaths that night. 

At daylight Jimmy fell into a sleep that was really stupor. Marie, creeping to the door in the faint dawn, found the boy apparentlyasleep and Peter on his knees beside the bed. He raised his head ather footstep and the girl was startled at the suffering in his face. Hemotioned her back. 

"But you must have a little sleep, Peter. "

"No. I'll stay until--Go back to bed. It is very early. "

Peter had not been able after all to secure the Nurse Elisabet, and nowit was useless. At eight o'clock he let Marie take his place, then hebathed and dressed and prepared to face another day, perhaps anothernight. For the child's release came slowly. He tried to eat breakfast, but managed only a cup of coffee. 

Many things had come to Peter in the long night, and one wasinsistent--the boy's mother was in Vienna and he was dying without her. Peter might know in his heart that he had done the best thing for thechild, but like Harmony his early training was rising now to accusehim. He had separated mother and child. Who was he to have decided themother's unfitness, to have played destiny? How lightly he had taken thelives of others in his hand, and to what end? Harmony, God knows where;the boy dying without his mother. Whatever that mother might be, herplace that day was with her boy. What a wreck he had made of things! Hewas humbled as well as stricken, poor Peter!

In the morning he sent a note to McLean, asking him to try to trace themother and inclosing the music-hall clipping and the letter. The letter, signed only "Mamma, " was not helpful. The clipping might prove valuable. 

"And for Heaven's sake be quick, " wrote Peter. "This is a matter ofhours. I meant well, but I've done a terrible thing. Bring her, Mac, nomatter what she is or where you find her. " The Portier carried the note. When he came up to get it he brought in his pocket a small rabbit anda lettuce leaf. Never before had the combination failed to arouse andamuse the boy. He carried the rabbit down again sorrowfully. "He sawit not, " he reported sadly to his wife. "Be off to the church whileI deliver this letter. And this rabbit we will not cook, but keep inremembrance. "

At eleven o'clock Marie called Peter, who was asleep on the horsehairsofa. 

"He asks for you. "

Peter was instantly awake and on his feet. The boy's eyes were open andfixed on him. 

"Is it another day?" he asked. 

"Yes, boy; another morning. "

"I am cold, Peter. "

They blanketed him, although the room was warm. From where he lay hecould see the mice. He watched them for a moment. Poor Peter, veryhumble, found himself wondering in how many ways he had been remiss. Tosee this small soul launched into eternity without a foreword, without abit of light for the journey! Peter's religion had been one of life andliving, not of creed. 

Marie, bringing jugs of hot water, bent over Peter. 

"He knows, poor little one!" she whispered. 

And so, indeed, it would seem. The boy, revived by a spoonful or two ofbroth, asked to have the two tame mice on the bed. Peter, opening thecage, found one dead, very stiff and stark. The catastrophe he kept fromthe boy. 

"One is sick, Jimmy boy, " he said, and placed the mate, forlorn andshivering, on the pillow. After a minute:--

"If the sick one dies will it go to heaven?"

"Yes, honey, I think so. "

The boy was silent for a time. Thinking was easier than speech. His mindtoo worked slowly. It was after a pause, while he lay there with closedeyes, that Peter saw two tears slip from under his long lashes. Peterbent over and wiped them away, a great ache in his heart. 

"What is it, dear?"

"I'm afraid--it's going to die!"

"Would that be so terrible, Jimmy boy?" asked Peter gently. "To go toheaven, where there is no more death or dying, where it is always summerand the sun always shines?"

No reply for a moment. The little mouse sat up on the pillow and rubbedits nose with a pinkish paw. The baby mice in the cage nuzzled theirdead mother. 

"Is there grass?"

"Yes--soft green grass. "

"Do--boys in heaven--go in their bare feet?" Ah, small mind and heart, so terrified and yet so curious!

"Indeed, yes. " And there on his knees beside the white bed Peter paintedsuch a heaven as no theologue has ever had the humanity to paint--aheaven of babbling brooks and laughing, playing children, a heaven ofdear departed puppies and resurrected birds, of friendly deer, of treesin fruit, of speckled fish in bright rivers. Painted his heaven withsmiling eyes and death in his heart, a child's heaven of games andfriendly Indians, of sunlight and rain, sweet sleep and brisk awakening. 

The boy listened. He was silent when Peter had finished. Speech wasincreasingly an effort. 

"I should--like--to go there, " he whispered at last. 

He did not speak again during all the long afternoon, but just at duskhe roused again. 

"I would like--to see--the sentry, " he said with difficulty. 

And so again, and for the last time, Rosa's soldier from Salzburg withone lung. 

Through all that long day, then, Harmony sat over her work, unaccustomedmuscles aching, the whirring machines in her ears. Monia, upset over themorning's excitement, was irritable and unreasonable. The gold-tissuecostume had come back from Le Grande with a complaint. Below in thecourtyard all day curious groups stood gaping up the staircase, wherethe morning had seen such occurrences. 

At the noon hour, while the girls heated soup and carried in pails ofsalad from the corner restaurant, Harmony had fallen into the way ofplaying for them. To the music-loving Viennese girls this was the hourof the day. To sit back, soup bowl on knee, the machines silent, Moniaquarreling in the kitchen with the Hungarian servant, and while thepigeons ate crusts on the window-sills, to hear this American girl playsuch music as was played at the opera, her slim figure swaying, herwhole beautiful face and body glowing with the melody she made, thegirls found the situation piquant, altogether delightful. Although shedid not suspect it, many rumors were rife about Harmony in the workroom. She was not of the people, they said--the daughter of a great American, of course, run away to escape a loveless marriage. This was borne outby the report of one of them who had glimpsed the silk petticoat. Itwas rumored also that she wore no chemise, but instead an infinitelycoquettish series of lace and nainsook garments--of a fineness!

Harmony played for them that day, played, perhaps, as she had not playedsince the day she had moved the master to tears, played to Peter as shehad seen him at the window, to Jimmy, to the little Georgiev as he wentdown the staircase. And finally with a choke in her throat to the littlemother back home, so hopeful, so ignorant. 

In the evening, as was her custom, she took the one real meal of the dayat the corner restaurant, going early to avoid the crowd and coming backquickly through the winter night. The staircase was always a peril, tobe encountered and conquered night after night and even in the daytimenot to be lightly regarded. On her way up this night she heard stepsahead, heavy, measured steps that climbed steadily without pauses. Foran instant Harmony thought it sounded like Peter's step and she wentdizzy. 

But it was not Peter. Standing in the upper hall, much as he had stoodthat morning over the ammunition boxes, thumbs in, heels in, toes out, chest out, was the sentry. 

Harmony's first thought was of Georgiev and more searching of thebuilding. Then she saw that the sentry's impassive face wore lines oftrouble. He saluted. "Please, Fraulein. "

"Yes?"

"I have not told the Herr Doktor. "

"I thank you. "

"But the child dies. "

"Jimmy?"

"He dies all of last night and to-day. To-night, it is, perhaps, but ofmoments. "

Harmony clutched at the iron stair-rail for support. "You are sure? Youare not telling me so that I will go back?"

"He dies, Fraulein. The Herr Doktor has not slept for many hours. Mywife, Rosa, sits on the stair to see that none disturb, and her cousin, the wife of the Portier, weeps over the stove. Please, Fraulein, comewith me. "

"When did you leave the Siebensternstrasse?"

"But now. "

"And he still lives?"

"Ja, Fraulein, and asks for you. "

Now suddenly fell away from the girl all pride, all fear, all that waspersonal and small and frightened, before the reality of death. Sherose, as women by divine gift do rise, to the crisis; ceased trembling, got her hat and coat and her shabby gloves and joined the sentry again. Another moment's delay--to secure the Le Grande's address from Monia. Then out into the night, Harmony to the Siebensternstrasse, the tallsoldier to find the dancer at her hotel, or failing that, at theRonacher Music-Hall. 

Harmony took a taxicab--nothing must be spared now--bribed the chauffeurto greater speed, arrived at the house and ran across the garden, stilltearless, up the stairs, past Rosa on the upper flight, and rang thebell. 

Marie admitted her with only a little gasp of surprise. There wasnothing to warn Peter. One moment he sat by the bed, watch in hand, alone, drear, tragic-eyed. The next he had glanced up, saw Harmony andwent white, holding to the back of his chair. Their eyes met, agonyand hope in them, love and death, rapture and bitterness. In Harmony's, pleading, promise, something of doubt; in Peter's, only yearning, as ofempty arms. Then Harmony dared to look at the bed and fell on her kneesin a storm of grief beside it. Peter bent over and gently stroked herhair. 

Le Grande was singing; the boxes were full. In the body of the immensetheater waiters scurried back and forward among the tables. Everywherewas the clatter of silver and steel on porcelain, the clink of glasses. Smoke was everywhere--pipes, cigars, cigarettes. Women smoked betweenbites at the tables, using small paper or silver mouthpieces, even agold one shone here and there. Men walked up and down among the diners, spraying the air with chemicals to clear it. At a table just below thestage sat the red-bearded Dozent with the lady of the photograph. Theywere drinking cheap native wines and were very happy. 

From the height of his worldly wisdom he was explaining the people toher. 

"In the box--don't stare, Liebchen, he looks--is the princeling I havetold you of. Roses, of course. Last night it was orchids. "

"Last night! Were you here?" He coughed. 

"I have been told, Liebchen. Each night he sits there, and when shefinishes her song he rises in the box, kisses the flowers and tossesthem to her. "

"Shameless! Is she so beautiful?"

"No. But you shall see. She comes. "

Le Grande was very popular. She occupied the best place on the program;and because she sang in American, which is not exactly English and moredifficult to understand, her songs were considered exceedingly risque. As a matter of fact they were merely ragtime melodies, with a lilt tothem that caught the Viennese fancy, accustomed to German sentimentalditties and the artificial forms of grand opera. And there was anotherreason for her success. She carried with her a chorus of a dozenpickaninnies. 

In Austria darkies were as rare as cats, and there were no cats! So thelittle chorus had made good. 

Each day she walked in the Prater, ermine from head to foot, and behindher two by two trailed twelve little Southern darkies in red-velvetcoats and caps, grinning sociably. When she drove a pair sat on theboot. 

Her voice was strong, not sweet, spoiled by years of singing againstdishes and bottles in smoky music halls; spoiled by cigarettes andabsinthe and foreign cocktails that resembled their American prototypesas the night resembles the day. 

She wore the gold dress, decolletee, slashed to the knee overrhinestone-spangled stockings. And back of her trailed the twelve littledarkies. 

She sang "Dixie, " of course, and the "Old Folks at Home"; then a ragtimemedley, with the chorus showing rows of white teeth and clogging withall their short legs. Le Grande danced to that, a whirling, nimbledance. The little rhinestones on her stockings flashed; her opulentbosom quivered. The Dozent, eyes on the dancer, squeezed his companion'shand. 

"I love thee!" he whispered, rather flushed. 

And then she sang "Doan ye cry, mah honey. " Her voice, rather coarse butmelodious, lent itself to the negro rhythm, the swing and lilt of thelullaby. The little darkies, eyes rolling, preternaturally solemn, linked arms and swayed rhythmically, right, left, right, left. Theglasses ceased clinking; sturdy citizens forgot their steak and beerfor a moment and listened, knife and fork poised. Under the table theDozent's hand pressed its captive affectionately, his eyes no longeron Le Grande, but on the woman across, his sweetheart, she who wouldbe mother of his children. The words meant little to the audience; therich, rolling Southern lullaby held them rapt:--

 "Doan ye Cry, mah honey-- Doan ye weep no mo', Mammy's gwine to hold her baby, All de udder black trash sleepin' on the flo', "

The little darkies swayed; the singer swayed, empty arms cradled. 

She picked the tiniest darky up and held him, woolly head against herbreast, and crooned to him, rocking on her jeweled heels. The crowdapplauded; the man in the box kissed his flowers and flung them. Glassesand dishes clinked again. 

The Dozent bent across the table. 

"Some day--" he said. 

The girl blushed. 

Le Grande made her way into the wings, surrounded by her little troupe. A motherly colored woman took them, shooed them off, rounded them uplike a flock of chickens. 

And there in the wings, grimly impassive, stood a private soldier of theold Franz Josef, blocking the door to her dressing room. For a momentgold dress and dark blue-gray uniform confronted each other. Then thesentry touched his cap. 

"Madam, " he said, "the child is in the Riebensternstrasse and to-nighthe dies. "

"What child?" Her arms were full of flowers. 

"The child from the hospital. Please to make haste. "

Jimmy died an hour after midnight, quite peacefully, died with one handin Harmony's and one between Peter's two big ones. 

Toward the last he called Peter "Daddy" and asked for a drink. His eyes, moving slowly round the room, passed without notice the grayfaced womanin a gold dress who stood staring down at him, rested a moment on thecage of mice, came to a stop in the doorway, where stood the sentry, white and weary, but refusing rest. 

It was Harmony who divined the child's unspoken wish. 

"The manual?" she whispered. 

The boy nodded. And so just inside the door of the bedroom across fromthe old salon of Maria Theresa the sentry, with sad eyes but no lack ofvigor, went again through the Austrian manual of arms, and because hehad no carbine he used Peter's old walking-stick. 

When it was finished the boy smiled faintly, tried to salute, lay still. 

CHAPTER XXVII

Peter was going back to America and still he had not told Harmony heloved her. It was necessary that he go back. His money had about givenout, and there was no way to get more save by earning it. The drain ofJimmy's illness, the inevitable expense of the small grave and the tinystone Peter had insisted on buying, had made retreat his only course. True, Le Grande had wished to defray all expenses, but Peter wasinexorable. No money earned as the dancer earned hers should purchasepeaceful rest for the loved little body. And after seeing Peter's eyesthe dancer had not insisted. 

A week had seen many changes. Marie was gone. After a conference betweenStewart and Peter that had been decided on. Stewart raised the moneysomehow, and Peter saw her off, palpitant and eager, with the pin he hadsent her to Semmering at her throat. She kissed Peter on the cheek inthe station, rather to his embarrassment. From the lowered window, asthe train pulled out, she waved a moist handkerchief. 

"I shall be very good, " she promised him. The last words he heard abovethe grinding of the train were her cheery: "To America!"

Peter was living alone in the Street of Seven Stars, getting foodwhere he might happen to be, buying a little now and then from thedelicatessen shop across the street. For Harmony had gone back to thehouse in the Wollbadgasse. She had stayed until all was over and untilMarie's small preparations for departure were over. Then, while Peterwas at the station, she slipped away again. But this time she left heraddress. She wrote:--

"You will come to visit me, dear Peter, because I was so lonely beforeand that is unnecessary now. But you must know that I cannot stay inthe Siebensternstrasse. We have each our own fight to make, and you havebeen trying to fight for us all, for Marie, for dear little Jimmy, forme. You must get back to work now; you have lost so much time. And Iam managing well. The Frau Professor is back and will take an eveninglesson, and soon I shall have more money from Fraulein Reiff. You cansee how things are looking up for me. In a few months I shall be able torenew my music lessons. And then, Peter, --the career!

"HARMONY. "

Her address was beneath. 

Peter had suffered much. He was thinner, grayer, and as he stood withthe letter in his hand he felt that Harmony was right. He could offerher nothing but his shabby self, his problematic future. Perhaps, surely, everything would have been settled, without reason, had he onlyonce taken the girl in his arms, told her she was the breath of lifeitself to him. But adversity, while it had roused his fighting spirit ineverything else, had sapped his confidence. 

He had found the letter on his dressing-table, and he found himselfconfronting his image over it, a tall, stooping figure, a tired, linedface, a coat that bore the impress of many days with a sick child's headagainst its breast. 

So it was over. She had come back and gone again, and this time he mustlet her go. Who was he to detain her? She would carry herself on tosuccess, he felt; she had youth, hope, beauty and ability. And she hadproved the thing he had not dared to believe, that she could take careof herself in the old city. Only--to go away and leave her there!

McLean would remain. No doubt he already had Harmony's address in theWollbadgasse. Peter was not subtle, no psychologist, but he had seenduring the last few days how the boy watched Harmony's every word, everygesture. And, perhaps, when loneliness and hard work began to tell onher, McLean's devotion would win its reward. McLean's devotion, withall that it meant, the lessons again, community of taste, their commonyouth! Peter felt old, very tired. 

Nevertheless he went that night to the Wollbadgasse. He sent his graysuit to the Portier's wife to be pressed, and getting out his surgicalcase, as he had once before in the Pension Schwarz, he sewed a buttonon his overcoat, using the curved needle and the catgut and working withsurgeon's precision. Then, still working very carefully, he trimmed theedges of graying hair over his ears, trimmed his cuffs, trimmed his bestsilk tie, now almost hopeless. He blacked his shoes, and the suit notcoming, he donned his dressing-gown and went into Jimmy's room to feedthe mice. Peter stood a moment beside the smooth white bed with his faceworking. The wooden sentry still stood on the bedside table. 

It was in Peter's mind to take the mice to Harmony, confess his defeatand approaching retreat, and ask her to care for them. Then he decidedagainst this palpable appeal for sympathy, elected to go empty-handedand discover merely how comfortable she was or was not. When the timecame he would slip out of her life, sending her a letter and leavingMcLean on guard. 

Harmony was at home. Peter climbed the dark staircase--where Harmonyhad met the little Georgiev, and where he had gone down to hisdeath--climbed steadily, but without his usual elasticity. The placeappalled him--its gloom, its dinginess, its somber quiet. In thedaylight, with the pigeons on the sills and the morning sunlightprinting the cross of the church steeple on the whitewashed wall, it waspeaceful, cloisterlike, with landings that were crypts. But at night itwas almost terrifying, that staircase. 

Harmony was playing. Peter heard her when he reached the upper landing, playing a sad little strain that gripped his heart. He waited outsidebefore ringing, heard her begin something determinedly cheerful, falter, cease altogether. Peter rang. 

Harmony herself admitted him. Perhaps--oh, certainly she had expectedhim! It would be Peter, of course, to come and see how she was gettingon, how she was housed. She held out her hand and Peter took it. Stillno words, only a half smile from her and no smile at all from Peter, buthis heart in his eyes. 

"I hoped you would come, Peter. We may have the reception room. "

"You knew I would come, " said Peter. "The reception room?"

"Where customers wait. " She still carried her violin, and slipped backto her room to put it away. Peter had a glimpse of its poverty and itsmeagerness. He drew a long breath. 

Monia was at the opera, and the Hungarian sat in the kitchen knitting astocking. The reception room was warm from the day's fire, and in order. All the pins and scraps of the day had been swept up, and the portieresthat made fitting-rooms of the corners were pushed back. Peter sawonly a big room with empty corners, and that at a glance. His eyes wereHarmony's. 

He sat down awkwardly on a stiff chair, Harmony on a velvet settee. Theywere suddenly two strangers meeting for the first time. In the squalorof the Pension Schwarz, in the comfortable intimacies of the Street ofSeven Stars, they had been easy, unconstrained. Now suddenly Peter wastongue-tied. Only one thing in him clamored for utterance, and that hesternly silenced. 

"I--I could not stay there, Peter. You understood?"

"No. Of course, I understood. "

"You were not angry?"

"Why should I be angry? You came, like an angel of light, when I neededyou. Only, of course, --"

"Yes?"

"I'll not say that, I think. "

"Please say it, Peter!"

Peter writhed; looked everywhere but at her. 

"Please, Peter. You said I always came when you needed me, only--"

"Only--I always need you!" Peter, Peter!

"Not always, I think. Of course, when one is in trouble one needs awoman; but--"

"Well, of course--but--I'm generally in trouble, Harry dear. "

Frightfully ashamed of himself by that time was Peter, ashamed of hisweakness. He sought to give a casual air to the speech by stooping for aneglected pin on the carpet. By the time he had stuck it in his lapel hehad saved his mental forces from the rout of Harmony's eyes. 

His next speech he made to the center table, and missed a mostdelectable look in the aforesaid eyes. 

"I didn't come to be silly, " he said to the table. "I hate people whowhine, and I've got into a damnable habit of being sorry for myself!It's to laugh, isn't it, a great, hulking carcass like me, to be--"

"Peter, " said Harmony softly, "aren't you going to look at me?"

"I'm afraid. "

"That's cowardice. And I've fixed my hair a new way. Do you like it?"

"Splendid, " said Peter to the center table. 

"You didn't look!"

The rout of Harmony's eyes was supplemented by the rout of Harmony'shair. Peter, goaded, got up and walked about. Harmony was halfexasperated; she would have boxed Peter's ears with a tender hand hadshe dared. 

His hands thrust savagely in his pockets, Peter turned and faced her atlast. 

"First of all, " he said, "I am going back to America, Harmony. I'vegot all I can get here, all I came for--" He stopped, seeing her face. "Well, of course, that's not true, I haven't. But I'm going back, anyhow. You needn't look so stricken: I haven't lost my chance. I'llcome back sometime again and finish, when I've earned enough to do it. "

"You will never come back, Peter. You have spent all your money onothers, and now you are going back just where you were, and--you areleaving me here alone!"

"You are alone, anyhow, " said Peter, "making your own way and gettingalong. And McLean will be here. "

"Are you turning me over to him?"

No reply. Peter was pacing the floor. 

"Peter!"

"Yes, dear?"

"Do you remember the night in Anna's room at the Schwartz when youproposed to me?"

No reply. Peter found another pin. 

"And that night in the old lodge when you proposed to me again?"

Peter turned and looked at her, at her slender, swaying young figure, her luminous eyes, her parted, childish lips. 

"Peter, I want you to--to ask me again. "

"No!"

"Why?"

"Now, listen to me, Harmony. You're sorry for me, that's all; I don'twant to be pitied. You stay here and work. You'll do big things. I had atalk with the master while I was searching for you, and he says youcan do anything. But he looked at me--and a sight I was with worry andfright--and he warned me off, Harmony. He says you must not marry. "

"Old pig!" said Harmony. "I will marry if I please. "

Nevertheless Peter's refusal and the master's speech had told somewhat. She was colder, less vibrant. Peter came to her, stood close, lookingdown at her. 

"I've said a lot I didn't mean to, " he said. "There's only one thing Ihaven't said, I oughtn't to say it, dear. I'm not going to marry you--Iwon't have such a thing on my conscience. But it doesn't hurt a womanto know that a man loves her. I love you, dear. You're my heaven and myearth--even my God, I'm afraid. But I will not marry you. "

"Not even if I ask you to?"

"Not even then, dear. To share my struggle--"

"I see, " slowly. "It is to be a struggle?"

"A hard fight, Harmony. I'm a pauper practically. "

"And what am I?"

"Two poverties don't make a wealth, even of happiness, " said Petersteadily. "In the time to come, when you would think of what you mighthave been, it would be a thousand deaths to me, dear. "

"People have married, women have married and carried on their work, too, Peter. "

"Not your sort of women or your sort of work. And not my sort of man, Harry. I'm jealous--jealous of every one about you. It would have to bethe music or me. "

"And you make the choice!" said Harmony proudly. "Very well, Peter, Ishall do as you say. But I think it is a very curious sort of love. "

"I wonder, " Peter cried, "if you realize what love it is that loves youenough to give you up. "

"You have not asked me if I care, Peter. "

Peter looked at her. She was very near to tears, very sad, verybeautiful. 

"I'm afraid to ask, " said Peter, and picking up his hat he made for thedoor. There he turned, looked back, was lost. 

"My sweetest heart!" he cried, and took her in his hungry arms. But eventhen, with her arms about his neck at last, with her slender body heldto him, her head on his shoulder, his lips to her soft throat, Peter puther from him as a starving man might put away food. 

He held her off and looked at her. 

"I'm a fool and a weakling, " he said gravely. "I love you so much that Iwould sacrifice you. You are very lovely, my girl, my girl! As long as Ilive I shall carry your image in my heart. "

Ah, what the little Georgiev had said on his way to the death thatwaited down the staircase. Peter, not daring to look at her again, putaway her detaining hand, squared his shoulders, went to the door. 

"Good-bye, Harmony, " he said steadily. "Always in my heart!"

Very near the end now: the little Marie on the way to America, withthe recording angel opening a new page in life's ledger for her anda red-ink line erasing the other; with Jimmy and his daddy wanderingthrough the heaven of friendly adventure and green fields, hand in hand;with the carrier resting after its labors in the pigeon house by therose-fields of Sofia; with the sentry casting martial shadows throughthe barred windows of the hospital; and the little Georgiev, about todie, dividing his heart, as a heritage, between his country and a younggirl. 

Very near the end, with the morning light of the next day shining intothe salon of Maria Theresa and on to Peter's open trunk and shabbywardrobe spread over chairs. An end of trunks and departure, as was thebeginning. 

Early morning at the Gottesacker, or God's acre, whence little Jimmy hadstarted on his comfortable journey. Early morning on the frost-coveredgrass, the frozen roads, the snap and sparkle of the Donau. Harmony hadtaken her problem there, in the early hour before Monia would summon herto labor--took her problem and found her answer. 

The great cemetery was still and deserted. Harmony, none too warmlyclad, walked briskly, a bunch of flowers in oiled paper against thecold. Already the air carried a hint of spring; there was a feeling ofresurrection and promise. The dead earth felt alive under-foot. 

Harmony knelt by the grave and said the little prayer the child hadrepeated at night and morning. And, because he had loved it, with somevague feeling of giving him comfort, she recited the little verse:--

"Ah well! For us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes:And in the hereafter, angels may Roll the stone from its grave away. "

When she looked up Le Grande was standing beside her. 

There was no scene, hardly any tears. She had brought out a great bunchof roses that bore only too clearly the stamp of whence they came. Oneof the pickaninnies had carried the box and stood impassively by, gazingat Harmony. 

Le Grande placed her flowers on the grave. They almost covered it, quiteeclipsed Harmony's. 

"I come here every morning, " she said simply. 

She had a cab waiting, and offered to drive Harmony back to the city. Her quiet almost irritated Harmony, until she had looked once into thewoman's eyes. After that she knew. It was on the drive back, with thelittle darky on the box beside the driver, that Harmony got her answer. 

Le Grande put a hand over Harmony's. 

"I tried to tell you before how good I know you were to him. "

"We loved him. "

"And I resented it. But Dr. Byrne was right--I was not a fit personto--to have him. "

"It was not that--not only that--"

"Did he ever ask for me? But of course not. "

"No, he had no remembrance. "

Silence for a moment. The loose windows of the cab clattered. 

"I loved him very much when he came, " said Le Grande, "although I didnot want him. I had been told I could have a career on the stage. Ah, my dear, I chose the career--and look at me! What have I? A grave inthe cemetery back there, and on it roses sent me by a man I loathe! If Icould live it over again!"

The answer was very close now:--

"Would you stay at home?"

"Who knows, I being I? And my husband did not love me. It was the boyalways. There is only one thing worth while--the love of a good man. Ihave lived, lived hard. And I know. "

"But supposing that one has real ability--I mean some achievementalready, and a promise--"

Le Grande turned and looked at Harmony shrewdly. 

"I see. You are a musician, I believe?"

"Yes. "

"And--it is Dr. Byrne?"

"Yes. "

Le Grande bent forward earnestly. 

"My child, " she said, "if one man in all the world looked at me as yourdoctor looks at you, I--I would be a better woman. "

"And my music?"

"Play for your children, as you played for my little boy. "

Peter was packing: wrapping medical books in old coats, putting cleancollars next to boots, folding pajamas and such-like negligible garmentswith great care and putting in his dresscoat in a roll. His pipes tooktime, and the wooden sentry he packed with great care and a bit ofhealthy emotion. Once or twice he came across trifles of Harmony's, andhe put them carefully aside--the sweater coat, a folded handkerchief, a bow she had worn at her throat. The bow brought back the night beforeand that reckless kiss on her white throat. Well for Peter to get awayif he is to keep his resolution, when the sight of a ribbon bow canbring that look of suffering into his eyes. 

The Portier below was polishing floors, right foot, left foot, any footat all. And as he polished he sang in a throaty tenor. 

"Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bluhen, " he sang at the top of hisvoice, and coughed, a bit of floor wax having got into the air. Theantlers of the deer from the wild-game shop hung now in his bedroom. When the wildgame seller came over for coffee there would be adiscussion probably. But were not the antlers of all deer similar?

The Portier's wife came to the doorway with a cooking fork in her hand. 

"A cab, " she announced, "with a devil's imp on the box. Perhaps it isthat American dancer. Run and pretty thyself!"

It was too late for more than an upward twist of a mustache. Harmonywas at the door, but not the sad-eyed Harmony of a week before or theundecided and troubled girl of before that. A radiant Harmony, this, whostood in the doorway, who wished them good-morning, and ran up the oldstaircase with glowing eyes and a heart that leaped and throbbed. Awoman now, this Harmony, one who had looked on life and learned; onewho had chosen her fate and was running to meet it; one who feared onlydeath, not life or anything that life could offer. 

The door was not locked. Perhaps Peter was not up--not dressed. What didthat matter? What did anything matter but Peter himself?

Peter, sorting out lectures on McBurney's Point, had come across a bitof paper that did not belong there, and was sitting by his open trunk, staring blindly at it:--

"You are very kind to me. Yes, indeed. 

"H. W. "

Quite the end now, with Harmony running across the room and droppingdown on her knees among a riot of garments--down on her knees, with onearm round Peter's neck, drawing his tired head lower until she couldkiss him. 

"Oh, Peter, Peter, dear!" she cried. "I'll love you all my life if onlyyou'll love me, and never, never let me go!"

Peter was dazed at first. He put his arms about her rather unsteadily, because he had given her up and had expected to go through the rest oflife empty of arm and heart. And when one has one's arms set, as one maysay, for loneliness and relinquishment it is rather difficult--Ah, butPeter got the way of it swiftly. 

"Always, " he said incoherently; "forever the two of us. Whatever comes, Harmony?"

"Whatever comes. "

"And you'll not be sorry?"

"Not if you love me. "

Peter kissed her on the eyes very solemnly. 

"God helping me, I'll be good to you always. And I'll always love you. "

He tried to hold her away from him for a moment after that, to tell herwhat she was doing, what she was giving up. She would not be reasonedwith. 

"I love you, " was her answer to every line. And it was no dividedallegiance she promised him. "Career? I shall have a career. Yours!"

"And your music?"

She colored, held him closer. 

"Some day, " she whispered, "I shall tell you about that. "

Late winter morning in Vienna, with the school-children hurrying home, the Alserstrasse alive with humanity--soldiers and chimney-sweeps, housewives and beggars. Before the hospital the crowd lines up along thecurb; the head waiter from the coffee-house across comes to the doorwayand looks out. The sentry in front of the hospital ceases pacing andstands at attention. 

In the street a small procession comes at the double quick--a handful oftroopers, a black van with tiny, high-barred windows, more troopers. 

Inside the van a Bulgarian spy going out to death--a swarthy little manwith black eyes and short, thick hands, going out like a gentleman and asoldier to meet the God of patriots and lovers. 

The sentry, who was only a soldier from Salzburg with one lung, was alsoa gentleman and a patriot. He uncovered his head.