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+Project Gutenberg's The Street of Seven Stars, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Street of Seven Stars
+
+Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
+Posting Date: September 15, 2008 [EBook #1214]
+Release Date: February, 1998
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STREET OF SEVEN STARS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Michael Delaney
+
+
+
+
+
+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 been
+a garden, when that part of the Austrian city had been a royal game
+preserve. Tradition had it that the Empress Maria Theresa had used the
+building as a hunting-lodge, and undoubtedly there was something royal
+in the proportions of the salon. With all the candles lighted in the
+great glass chandelier, and no sidelights, so that the broken paneling
+was mercifully obscured by gloom, it was easy to believe that the great
+empress herself had sat in one of the tall old chairs and listened to
+anecdotes of questionable character; even, if tradition may be believed,
+related not a few herself.
+
+The chandelier was not lighted on this rainy November night. Outside
+in the garden the trees creaked and bent before the wind, and the
+heavy barred gate, left open by the last comer, a piano student named
+Scatchett and dubbed "Scatch"--the gate slammed to and fro monotonously,
+giving now and then just enough pause for a hope that it had latched
+itself, a hope that was always destroyed by the next gust.
+
+One candle burned in the salon. Originally lighted for the purpose of
+enabling Miss Scatchett to locate the score of a Tschaikowsky concerto,
+it had been moved to the small center table, and had served to give
+light if not festivity to the afternoon coffee and cakes. It still
+burned, a gnarled and stubby fragment, in its china holder; round it the
+disorder of the recent refreshment, three empty cups, a half of a
+small cake, a crumpled napkin or two,--there were never enough to go
+round,--and on the floor the score of the concerto, clearly abandoned
+for the things of the flesh.
+
+The room was cold. The long casement windows creaked in time with the
+slamming of the gate and the candle flickered in response to a draft
+under the doors. The concerto flapped and slid along the uneven old
+floor. At the sound a girl in a black dress, who had been huddled
+near the tile stove, rose impatiently and picked it up. There was no
+impatience, however, in the way she handled the loose sheets. She put
+them together carefully, almost tenderly, and placed them on the top of
+the grand piano, anchoring them against the draft with a china dog from
+the stand.
+
+The room was very bare--a long mirror between two of the windows, half
+a dozen chairs, a stand or two, and in a corner the grand piano. There
+were no rugs--the bare floor stretched bleakly into dim corners and
+was lost. The crystal pendants of the great chandelier looked like
+stalactites in a cave. The girl touched the piano keys; they were ice
+under her fingers.
+
+In a sort of desperation she drew a chair underneath the chandelier, and
+armed with a handful of matches proceeded to the unheard-of extravagance
+of lighting it, not here and there, but throughout as high as she could
+reach, standing perilously on her tiptoes on the chair.
+
+The resulting illumination revealed a number of things: It showed that
+the girl was young and comely and that she had been crying; it revealed
+the fact that the coal-pail was empty and the stove almost so; it let
+the initiated into the secret that the blackish fluid in the cups had
+been made with coffee extract that had been made of Heaven knows what;
+and it revealed in the cavernous corner near the door a number of
+trunks. The girl, having lighted all the candles, stood on the chair and
+looked at the trunks. She was very young, very tragic, very feminine. A
+door slammed down the hall and she stopped crying instantly. Diving into
+one of those receptacles that are a part of the mystery of the sex, she
+rubbed 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 more
+than once over some crime against her namesake, had paid penances of
+early rising and two hours of scales before breakfast, working with
+stiffened fingers in her cold little room where there was no room for a
+stove, and sitting on the edge of the bed in a faded kimono where once
+pink butterflies sported in a once blue-silk garden. Then coffee, rolls,
+and honey, and back again to work, with little Scatchett at the piano in
+the salon beyond the partition, wearing a sweater and fingerless gloves
+and holding a hot-water bottle on her knees. Three rooms beyond, down
+the stone hall, the Big Soprano, doing Madama Butterfly in bad German,
+helped to make an encircling wall of sound in the center of which one
+might practice peacefully.
+
+Only the Portier objected. Morning after morning, crawling out at dawn
+from under his featherbed in the lodge below, he opened his door and
+listened to Harmony doing penance above; and morning after morning he
+shook his fist up the stone staircase.
+
+"Gott im Himmel!" he would say to his wife, fumbling with the knot of
+his mustache bandage, "what a people, these Americans! So much noise and
+no music!"
+
+"And mad!" grumbled his wife. "All the day coal, coal to heat; and at
+night the windows open! Karl the milkboy has seen it."
+
+And now the little colony was breaking up. The Big Soprano was going
+back to her church, grand opera having found no place for her. Scatch
+was returning to be married, her heart full, indeed, of music, but her
+head much occupied with the trousseau in her trunks. The Harmar sisters
+had gone two weeks before, their funds having given out. Indeed, funds
+were very low with all of them. The "Bitte zum speisen" of the little
+German maid often called them to nothing more opulent than a stew of
+beef and carrots.
+
+Not that all had been sordid. The butter had gone for opera tickets, and
+never was butter better spent. And there had been gala days--a fruitcake
+from Harmony's mother, a venison steak at Christmas, and once or twice
+on birthdays real American ice cream at a fabulous price and worth it.
+Harmony had bought a suit, too, a marvel of tailoring and cheapness, and
+a 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 and
+the faltering technic and the anxiety about money. For that they all
+had always, the old tragedy of the American music student abroad--the
+expensive lessons, the delays in getting to the Master himself, the
+contention against German greed or Austrian whim. And always back in
+one's mind the home people, to whom one dares not confess that after
+nine months of waiting, or a year, one has seen the Master once or not
+at all.
+
+Or--and one of the Harmar girls had carried back this scar in her
+soul--to go back rejected, as one of the unfit, on whom even the
+undermasters refuse to waste time. That has been, and often. Harmony
+stood on her chair and looked at the trunks. The Big Soprano was calling
+down 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 got
+a comb?"
+
+"As soon as I get something on I'm coming to shake you. Half the teeth
+are 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 bedroom
+slippers. Oh, Harry, I found your slippers!" The girl got down off the
+chair 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 the
+window the air would brighten them.
+
+Armed with the brush, little Scatchett hurried to the Big Soprano's
+room. She flung the brush on the bed and closed the door. She held her
+shabby wrapper about her and listened just inside the door. There were
+no footsteps, only the banging of the gate in the wind. She turned to
+the Big Soprano, heating a curling iron in the flame of a candle, and
+held out her hand.
+
+"Look!" she said. "Under my bed! Ten kronen!"
+
+Without a word the Big Soprano put down her curling-iron, and
+ponderously getting down on her knees, candle in hand, inspected the
+dusty floor beneath her bed. It revealed nothing but a cigarette, on
+which she pounced. Still squatting, she lighted the cigarette in the
+candle flame and sat solemnly puffing it.
+
+"The first for a week," she said. "Pull out the wardrobe, Scatch; there
+may be another relic of my prosperous days."
+
+But little Scatchett was not interested in Austrian cigarettes with a
+government monopoly and gilt tips. She was looking at the ten-kronen
+piece.
+
+"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, "added
+to 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, without
+losing it now. I'll have to jump overboard and swim ashore at New
+York--I haven't even a dollar for tips."
+
+"New York!" said little Scatchett with her eyes glowing. "If Henry meets
+me I know he will--"
+
+"Tut!" The Big Soprano got up cumbrously and stood looking down. "You
+and your Henry! Scatchy, child, has it occurred to your maudlin young
+mind that money isn't the only thing Harmony is going to need? She's
+going to be alone--and this is a bad town to be alone in. And she is not
+like us. You have your Henry. I'm a beefy person who has a stomach, and
+I'm thankful for it. But she is different--she's got the thing that you
+are as well without, the thing that my lack of is sending me back to
+fight in a church choir instead of grand opera."
+
+Little Scatchett was rather puzzled.
+
+"Temperament?" she asked. It had always been accepted in the little
+colony that Harmony was a real musician, a star in their lesser
+firmament.
+
+The Big Soprano sniffed.
+
+"If you like," she said. "Soul is a better word. Only the rich ought to
+have souls, Scatchy, dear."
+
+This was over the younger girl's head, and anyhow Harmony was coming
+down 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 flame
+of a candle.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Harmony found the little hoard under her pillow that night when, having
+seen Scatch and the Big Soprano off at the station, she had come back
+alone to the apartment on the Siebensternstrasse. The trunks were
+gone now. Only the concerto score still lay on the piano, where little
+Scatchett, 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 tears
+of paraffin that spattered the floor beneath. One or two of the sockets
+were still smoking, and the sharp odor of burning wickends filled the
+room.
+
+Harmony had come through the garden quickly. She had had an uneasy sense
+of being followed, and the garden, with its moaning trees and slamming
+gate and the great dark house in the background, was a forbidding place
+at 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 figure
+had stopped outside the gate and stood looking in, but the next moment
+the gate had swung to and the Portier was fumbling at the lock behind
+her.
+
+The Portier had put on his trousers over his night garments, and his
+mustache bandage gave him a sinister expression, rather augmented
+when he smiled at her. The Portier liked Harmony in spite of the early
+morning practicing; she looked like a singer at the opera for whom he
+cherished a hidden attachment. The singer had never seen him, but it was
+for her he wore the mustache bandage. Perhaps some day--hopefully! One
+must be ready!
+
+The Portier gave Harmony a tiny candle and Harmony held out his tip, the
+five Hellers of custom. But the Portier was keen, and Rosa was a niece
+of his wife and talked more than she should. He refused the tip with a
+gesture.
+
+"Bitte, Fraulein!" he said through the bandage. "It is for me a pleasure
+to 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 over
+his hairy chest and his feet were bare to the stone floor. But to
+Harmony that lonely night he was beautiful. She tried to speak and could
+not but she held out her hand in impulsive gratitude, and the Portier in
+his best manner bent over and kissed it. As she reached the curve of the
+stone staircase, carrying her tiny candle, the Portier was following her
+with his eyes. She was very like the girl of the opera.
+
+The clang of the door below and the rattle of the chain were comforting
+to Harmony's ears. From the safety of the darkened salon she peered out
+into the garden again, but no skulking figure detached itself from the
+shadows, and the gate remained, for a marvel, closed.
+
+It was when--having picked up her violin in a very passion of
+loneliness, only to put it down when she found that the familiar sounds
+echoed and reechoed sadly through the silent rooms--it was when she was
+ready for bed that she found the money under her pillow, and a scrawl
+from Scatchy, a breathless, apologetic scrawl, little Scatchett having
+adored her from afar, as the plain adore the beautiful, the mediocre the
+gifted:--
+
+DEAREST HARRY [here a large blot, Scatchy being addicted to blots]: I am
+honestly frightened when I think what we are doing. But, oh, my dear, if
+you could know how pleased we are with ourselves you'd not deny us this
+pleasure. Harry, you have it--the real thing, you know, whatever it
+is--and I haven't. None of the rest of us had. And you must stay. To go
+now, just when lessons would mean everything--well, you must not think
+of it. We have scads to take us home, more than we need, both of us, or
+at least--well, I'm lying, and you know it. But we have enough, by being
+careful, 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 yours
+anyhow.
+
+"Sadie [Sadie was the Big Soprano] keeps saying awful things about our
+leaving 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 have
+a soul and I haven't, and that souls are deadly things to have. I feel
+to-night that in urging you to stay I am taking the burden of your soul
+on me! Do be careful, Harry. If any one you do not know speaks to you
+call a policeman. And be sure you get into a respectable pension. There
+are queer ones.
+
+"Sadie and I think that if you can get along on what you get from
+home--you said your mother would get insurance, didn't you?--and will
+keep this as a sort of fund to take you home if anything should go
+wrong--. But perhaps we are needlessly worried. In any case, of course
+it's a loan, and you can preserve that magnificent independence of yours
+by sending it back when you get to work to make your fortune. And if you
+are doubtful at all, just remember that hopeful little mother of yours
+who sent you over to get what she had never been able to have for
+herself, and who planned this for you from the time you were a kiddy and
+she named you Harmony.
+
+"I'm not saying good-bye. I can't.
+
+"SCATCH."
+
+That night, while the Portier and his wife slept under their crimson
+feather beds and the crystals of the chandelier in the salon shook in
+the draft as if the old Austrian court still danced beneath, Harmony
+fought her battle. And a battle it was. Scatchy and the Big Soprano had
+not 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 to
+take her home, and she had--the hoard under the pillow. To go back and
+teach 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 the
+prestige at home that that would mean, and its resulting possibility of
+fame and fortune--which?
+
+She decided to stay. There might be a concert or so, and she could
+teach English. The Viennese were crazy about English. Some of the stores
+advertised "English Spoken." That would be something to fall back on, a
+clerkship during the day.
+
+Toward dawn she discovered that she was very cold, and she went into the
+Big Soprano's deserted and disordered room. The tile stove was warm and
+comfortable, but on the toilet table there lay a disreputable comb with
+most of the teeth gone. Harmony kissed this unromantic object! Which
+reveals the fact that, genius or not, she was only a young and rather
+frightened 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 feet
+under her and thought things out. At dawn the Portier, crawling out
+into the cold from under his feathers, opened the door into the hall
+and listened. She was playing, not practicing, and the music was the
+barcarolle from the "Tales" of Hoffmann. Standing in the doorway in
+his night attire, his chest open to the frigid morning air, his face
+upraised 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 eyed
+him.
+
+"So! It is the American Fraulein now!"
+
+"I did but hum a little. She drags out my heart with her music." He
+fumbled with his mustache bandage, which was knotted behind, keeping one
+eye 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 I
+last night, after she entered and you stood moon-gazing up the stair
+after her! A man in the gateway!"
+
+The Portier was angry. He snarled something through the bandage, which
+had slipped down over his mouth, and picked up a great knife.
+
+"She will stay if she so desire," he muttered furiously, and, raising
+the knife, he cut the knotted string. His mustache, faintly gray and
+sweetly up-curled, stood revealed.
+
+"She will stay!" he repeated. "And when you see men at the gate, let me
+know. 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 from
+telling 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 must
+go!
+
+Harmony knew also that she must go. The apartment was large and
+expensive; Rosa ate much and wasted more. She must find somewhere a tiny
+room with board, a humble little room but with a stove. It is folly
+to practice with stiffened fingers. A room where her playing would not
+annoy people, that was important.
+
+She paid Rosa off that morning out of money left for that purpose. Rosa
+wept. She said she would stay with the Fraulein for her keep, because it
+was not the custom for young ladies to be alone in the city--young girls
+of the people, of course; but beautiful young ladies, no!
+
+Harmony gave her an extra krone or two out of sheer gratitude, but she
+could not keep her. And at noon, having packed her trunk, she went down
+to interview the Portier and his wife, who were agents under the owner
+for the old house.
+
+The Portier, entirely subdued, was sweeping out the hallway. He looked
+past the girl, not at her, and observed impassively that the lease was
+up and it was her privilege to go. In the daylight she was not so like
+the angel, and after all she could only play the violin. The angel had
+a voice, such a voice! And besides, there was an eye at the crack of the
+door.
+
+The bit of cheer of the night before was gone; it was with a heavy heart
+that Harmony started on her quest for cheaper quarters.
+
+Winter, which had threatened for a month, had come at last. The
+cobblestones glittered with ice and the small puddles in the gutters
+were frozen. Across the street a spotted deer, shot in the mountains the
+day before and hanging from a hook before a wild-game shop, was frozen
+quite stiff. It was a pretty creature. The girl turned her eyes away. A
+young 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 Rosa
+talked. When the American left the shop he knew everything of Harmony
+that Rosa knew except her name. Rosa called her "The Beautiful One."
+Also he was short one krone four beliers in his change, which is readily
+done when a customer is plainly thinking of a "beautiful one."
+
+Harmony searched all day for the little room with board and a stove and
+no objection to practicing. There were plenty--but the rates! The
+willow plume looked prosperous, and she had a way of making the plainest
+garments appear costly. Landladies looked at the plume and the suit and
+heard the soft swish of silk beneath, which marks only self-respect in
+the American woman but is extravagance in Europe, and added to their
+regular terms until poor Harmony's heart almost stood still. And then
+at last toward evening she happened on a gloomy little pension near the
+corner of the Alserstrasse, and it being dark and the plume not showing,
+and the landlady missing the rustle owing to cotton in her ears for
+earache, Harmony found terms that she could meet for a time.
+
+A mean little room enough, but with a stove. The bed sagged in the
+center, and the toilet table had a mirror that made one eye appear
+higher than the other and twisted one's nose. But there was an odor
+of stewing cabbage in the air. Also, alas, there was the odor of many
+previous 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 purity
+of the staircase atmosphere and felt her way down. She reeled once or
+twice. At the bottom of the dark stairs she stood for a moment with her
+eyes closed, to the dismay of a young man who had just come in with a
+cheese 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 du
+krank?" He colored violently at that, recalling too late the familiarity
+of 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 with
+pork."
+
+"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 buying
+strong and odorous food at the delicatessens--odorous, because only
+rugged flavors rise above the atmosphere up there. Cheese is the only
+thing that really knocks out the cabbage, and once or twice even cheese
+has retired defeated."
+
+"But I don't like cheese." In sheer relief from the loneliness of the
+day her spirits were rising.
+
+"Then coffee! But not there. Coffee at the coffee-house on the corner. I
+say--" 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 see
+this brisk young American--young, she knew by his voice, tall by his
+silhouette, strong by the way he had caught her. She could not see his
+face, 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 were
+legitimate friends in need.
+
+"I am sure it is not proper, but--"
+
+"Proper! Of course it is. I shall send you a bill for professional
+services. Besides, won't we be formally introduced to-night by the
+landlady? 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 all
+day, and, hang it all, I'm not shaved."
+
+"What difference does that make?"
+
+"My dear young lady," he explained gravely, picking up the cheese and
+the tinned fish, "it makes a difference in me that I wish you to realize
+before you see me in a strong light."
+
+He rapped at the Portier's door, with the intention of leaving his
+parcels there, but receiving no reply tucked them under his arm. A
+moment later Harmony was in the open air, rather dazed, a bit excited,
+and lovely with the color the adventure brought into her face. Her
+companion walked beside her, tall, slightly stooped. She essayed a
+fugitive little side-glance up at him, and meeting his eyes hastily
+averted hers.
+
+They passed a policeman, and suddenly there flashed into the girl's mind
+little Scatchett's letter.
+
+"Do be careful, Harry. If any one you do not know speaks to you, call a
+policeman."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The coffee-house was warm and bright. Round its small tables were
+gathered miscellaneous groups, here and there a woman, but mostly
+men--uniformed officers, who made of the neighborhood coffee-house a
+sort of club, where under their breath they criticized the Government
+and retailed small regimental gossip; professors from the university,
+still wearing under the beards of middle life the fine horizontal scars
+of student days; elderly doctors from the general hospital across the
+street; even a Hofrath or two, drinking beer and reading the "Fliegende
+Blaetter" and "Simplicissimus"; and in an alcove round a billiard table
+a 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 rose
+even above the blue tobacco haze and dominated the atmosphere with
+its spicy and stimulating richness. A bustle of waiters, a hum of
+conversation, the rattle of newspapers and the click of billiard
+balls--this was the coffee-house.
+
+Harmony had never been inside one before. The little music colony had
+been a tight-closed corporation, retaining its American integrity, in
+spite of the salon of Maria Theresa and three expensive lessons a week
+in German. Harmony knew the art galleries and the churches, which were
+free, and the opera, thanks to no butter at supper. But of that backbone
+of Austrian life, the coffee-house, she was profoundly ignorant.
+
+Her companion found her a seat in a corner near a heater and disappeared
+for an instant on the search for the Paris edition of the "Herald." The
+girl followed him with her eyes. Seen under the bright electric lights,
+he was not handsome, hardly good-looking. His mouth was wide, his nose
+irregular, his hair a nondescript brown,--but the mouth had humor, the
+nose character, and, thank Heaven, there was plenty of hair. Not that
+Harmony 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--a
+tall man, possibly thirty, broadshouldered, somewhat stooped, as tall
+men are apt to be. And shabby, undeniably shabby!
+
+The shabbiness was a shock. A much-braided officer, trim from the points
+of his mustache to the points of his shoes, rose to speak to him. The
+shabbiness was accentuated by the contrast. Possibly the revelation
+was an easement to the girl's nervousness. This smiling and unpressed
+individual, blithely waving aloft the Paris edition of the "Herald" and
+equally blithely ignoring the maledictions of the student from whom
+he had taken it--even Scatchy could not have called him a vulture or
+threatened him with the police.
+
+He placed the paper before her and sat down at her side, not to
+interfere with her outlook over the room.
+
+"Warmer?" he asked.
+
+"Very much."
+
+"Coffee is coming. And cinnamon cakes with plenty of sugar. They know me
+here 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 is
+getting a divorce--or is it always the same one? And who's President
+back 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 back
+to America with me--one coffee-house, one dozen military men for local
+color, one dozen students ditto, and one proprietor's wife to sit in the
+cage 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 humorous
+promise of his mouth.
+
+"Why, it will work out perfectly," he said whimsically. "The great
+American public will eat cinnamon cakes and drink coffee until the
+feeble American nervous system will be shattered. I shall have an office
+across the street!"
+
+After that, having seen how tired she looked, he forbade conversation
+until she had had her coffee. She ate the cakes, too, and he watched her
+with 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 or
+shall I not open the cheese?"
+
+But Harmony did not wish the cheese, and so signified. Something
+inherently delicate in the unknown kept him from more than an occasional
+swift glance at her. He read aloud, as she ate, bits of news from the
+paper, pausing to sip his own coffee and to cast an eye over the crowded
+room. Here and there an officer, gazing with too open admiration on
+Harmony's lovely face, found himself fixed by a pair of steel-gray eyes
+that were anything but humorous at that instant, and thought best to
+shift his gaze.
+
+The coffee finished, the girl began to gather up her wraps. But the
+unknown 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 choke
+over conversation? Besides, she was very comfortable. It was warm
+there, with the heater at her back; better than the little room with the
+sagging bed and the doors covered with wall paper. Her feet had stopped
+aching, too, She could have sat there for hours. And--why evade it?--she
+was interested. This whimsical and respectful young man with his absurd
+talk and his shabby clothes had roused her curiosity.
+
+"Please," she assented.
+
+"Then, first of all, my name. I'm getting that over early, because it
+isn'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 German
+uncle of my mother's. Augustus! It's rather a mess. What shall I put on
+my 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! Patrick
+has possibilities. The diminutive is Pat, and that's not bad. But
+Peter!"
+
+"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 Peter
+Byrne. The rest doesn't amount to much, but I want you to know it, since
+you have been good enough to accept me on faith. I'm here alone, from
+a little town in eastern Ohio; worked my way through a coeducational
+college in the West and escaped unmarried; did two years in a drygoods
+store until, by saving and working in my vacations, I got through
+medical college and tried general practice. Didn't like it--always
+wanted to do surgery. A little legacy from the German uncle, trying to
+atone for the 'Augustus,' gave me enough money to come here. I've got a
+chance with the Days--surgeons, you know--when I go back, if I can hang
+on long enough. That's all. Here's a traveler's check with my name on
+it, to vouch for the truth of this thrilling narrative. Gaze on it with
+awe; there are only a few of them left!"
+
+Harmony was as delicately strung, as vibratingly responsive as the
+strings of her own violin, and under the even lightness of his tone she
+felt many things that met a response in her--loneliness and struggle,
+and the ever-present anxiety about money, grim determination, hope and
+fear, and even occasional despair. He was still young, but there were
+lines in his face and a hint of gray in his hair. Even had he been less
+frank, she would have known soon enough--the dingy little pension, the
+shabby clothes--
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+"Thank you for telling me," she said simply. "I think I understand very
+well because--it's music with me: violin. And my friends have gone, so I
+am alone, too."
+
+He leaned his elbows on the table and looked out over the crowd without
+seeing it.
+
+"It's curious, isn't it?" he said. "Here we are, you and I, meeting
+in the center of Europe, both lonely as the mischief, both working our
+heads off for an idea that may never pan out! Why aren't you at home
+to-night, eating a civilized beefsteak and running upstairs to get ready
+for a nice young man to bring you a box of chocolates? Why am I not
+measuring out calico in Shipley & West's? Instead, we are going to
+Frau Schwarz', to listen to cold ham and scorched compote eaten in six
+different languages."
+
+Harmony made no immediate reply. He seemed to expect none. She was
+drawing 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 being
+introspective, became watchful.
+
+The young man was handsome in a florid, red-checked way, with black hair
+and blue eyes. Unlike Byrne, he was foppishly neat. He was not alone. A
+slim little Austrian girl, exceedingly chic, rose when he did and threw
+away the end of a cigarette.
+
+"Why do we go so soon?" she demanded fretfully in German. "It is early
+still."
+
+He replied in English. It was a curious way they had, and eminently
+satisfactory, each understanding better than he spoke the other's
+language.
+
+"Because, my beloved," he said lightly, "you are smoking a great many
+poisonous and highly expensive cigarettes. Also I wish to speak to
+Peter."
+
+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 at
+last!"
+
+The little Austrian walked delicately, swaying her slim body with a slow
+and sensuous grace. She touched an officer as she passed him, and paused
+to apologize, to the officer's delight and her escort's irritation. And
+Peter 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 a
+word of apology, and met the couple. It was adroitly done. He had taken
+the little Austrian's arm and led her by the table while he was still
+greeting her. He held her in conversation in his absurd German until
+they had reached the swinging doors, while her companion followed
+helplessly. And he bowed her out, protesting his undying admiration for
+her eyes, while the florid youth alternately raged behind him and stared
+back at Harmony, interested and unconscious behind her table.
+
+The little Austrian was on the pavement when Byrne turned, unsmiling, to
+the 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. I
+didn't know. We're looking for you to-night."
+
+A sudden repulsion for the evening's engagement rose in Byrne, but the
+situation following his ungraciousness was delicate.
+
+"I'll be round," he said. "I have a lecture and I may be late, but I'll
+come."
+
+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 hand
+through her arm. "He protects her from me! It is because of you. Before
+I knew you--"
+
+"Before you knew me, little one," he said cheerfully, "you were exactly
+what 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 her
+suspicion.
+
+"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 of
+soldiers trundling a breadwagon by a rope, Stewart stood on the pavement
+and dodged verbal brickbats of Viennese idioms and German epithets. He
+drew his chin into the up-turned collar of his overcoat and waited, an
+absurdly patient figure, until the hail of consonants had subsided
+into 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 and
+eyes of the Alserstrasse.
+
+Byrne went back to Harmony. The incident of Stewart and the girl was
+closed and he dismissed it instantly. That situation was not his, or
+of his making. But here in the coffee-house, lovely, alluring, rather
+puzzled at this moment, was also a situation. For there was a situation.
+He had suspected it that morning, listening to the delicatessen-seller's
+narrative of Rosa's account of the disrupted colony across in the old
+lodge; he had been certain of it that evening, finding Harmony in the
+dark entrance to his own rather sordid pension. Now, in the bright
+light of the coffee-house, surmising her poverty, seeing her beauty, the
+emotional coming and going of her color, her frank loneliness, and God
+save the mark!--her trust in him, he accepted the situation and adopted
+it: his responsibility, if you please.
+
+He straightened under it. He knew the old city fairly well--enough to
+love it and to loathe it in one breath. He had seen its tragedies and
+passed 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 higher
+than others, its wretchednesses that are hell. Once in the Hofstadt
+Theater, where he had bought standing room, he had seen a girl he had
+known in Berlin, where he was taking clinics and where she was cooking
+her own meals. She had been studying singing. In the Hofstadt Theater
+she had worn a sable coat and had avoided his eyes.
+
+Perhaps the old coffee-house had seen nothing more absurd, in its years
+of coffee and billiards and Munchener beer, than Peter's new resolution
+that 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 knew
+her 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 part
+of protector and guardian, squared his shoulders and tried to look much
+older than he really was, and responsible. The result was a grimness
+that alarmed Harmony back to the forgotten proprieties.
+
+"I think I must go," she said hurriedly, after a glance at his
+determinedly altruistic profile. "I must finish packing my things. The
+Portier 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 yard
+alone after dark."
+
+"Yard! How do you know that?"
+
+Byrne was picking up the cheese, which he had thoughtlessly set on the
+heater, and which proved to be in an alarming state of dissolution. It
+took a moment to rewrap, and incidentally furnished an inspiration. He
+indicated 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's
+eyes 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 you
+were an American, and that's not a good neighborhood. I took the liberty
+of 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 see
+her safely to the old lodge and help her carry her hand-luggage and her
+violin to the pension. He paid the trifling score, and followed by many
+eyes in the room they went out into the crisp night together.
+
+At the lodge the doors stood wide, and a vigorous sound of scrubbing
+showed that the Portier's wife was preparing for the inspection of
+possible new tenants. She was cleaning down the stairs by the light of
+a candle, and the steam of the hot water on the cold marble invested her
+like an aura. She stood aside to let them pass, and then went cumbrously
+down 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, and
+with a man!"
+
+"It is the way of the young and beautiful--there is always a man," said
+the 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 back
+over her shoulder. "I knew it from the first; but you, great booby, can
+see nothing but red lips. Bah!"
+
+Upstairs in the salon of Maria Theresa, lighted by one candle and
+freezing cold, in a stiff chair under the great chandelier Peter Byrne
+sat and waited and blew on his fingers. Down below, in the Street of
+Seven Stars, the arc lights swung in the wind.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The supper that evening was even unusually bad. Frau Schwarz, much
+crimped and clad in frayed black satin, presided at the head of the long
+table. There were few, almost no Americans, the Americans flocking to
+good food at reckless prices in more fashionable pensions; to the Frau
+Gallitzenstein's, for instance, in the Kochgasse, where there was to
+be had real beefsteak, where turkeys were served at Thanksgiving and
+Christmas, and where, were one so minded, one might revel in whipped
+cream.
+
+The Pension Schwarz, however, was not without adornment. In the center
+of the table was a large bunch of red cotton roses with wire stems and
+green paper leaves, and over the side-table, with its luxury of compote
+in tall glass dishes and its wealth of small hard cakes, there hung
+a framed motto which said, "Nicht Rauchen," "No Smoking,"--and which
+looked suspiciously as if it had once adorned a compartment of a
+railroad train.
+
+Peter Byrne was early in the dining-room. He had made, for him, a
+careful toilet, which consisted of a shave and clean linen. But he had
+gone further: He had discovered, for the first time in the three months
+of its defection, a button missing from his coat, and had set about to
+replace it. He had cut a button from another coat, by the easy method
+of amputating it with a surgical bistoury, and had sewed it in its new
+position with a curved surgical needle and a few inches of sterilized
+catgut. The operation was slow and painful, and accomplished only with
+the aid of two cigarettes and an artery clip. When it was over he tied
+the ends in a surgeon's knot underneath and stood back to consider the
+result. It seemed neat enough, but conspicuous. After a moment or two of
+troubled thought he blacked the white catgut with a dot of ink and went
+on his way rejoicing.
+
+Peter Byrne was entirely untroubled as to the wisdom of the course he
+had laid out for himself. He followed no consecutive line of thought as
+he dressed. When he was not smoking he was whistling, and when he was
+doing neither, and the needle proved refractory in his cold fingers,
+he was swearing to himself. For there was no fire in the room. The
+materials for a fire were there, and a white tile stove, as cozy as an
+obelisk in a cemetery, stood in the corner. But fires are expensive,
+and hardly necessary when one sleeps with all one's windows open--one
+window, to be exact, the room being very small--and spends most of the
+day in a warm and comfortable shambles called a hospital.
+
+To tell the truth he was not thinking of Harmony at all, except
+subconsciously, as instance the button. He was going over, step by
+step, the technic of an operation he had seen that afternoon, weighing,
+considering, even criticizing. His conclusion, reached as he brushed
+back his hair and put away his sewing implements, was somewhat to the
+effect that he could have done a better piece of work with his eyes
+shut and his hands tied behind his back; and that if it were not for the
+wealth of material to work on he'd pack up and go home. Which brought
+him back to Harmony and his new responsibility. He took off the necktie
+he had absently put on and hunted out a better one.
+
+He was late at supper--an offense that brought a scowl from the head
+of the table, a scowl that he met with a cheerful smile. Harmony was
+already in her place. Seated between a little Bulgarian and a Jewish
+student from Galicia, she was almost immediately struggling in a sea of
+language, into which she struck out now and then tentatively, only to
+be again submerged. Byrne had bowed to her conventionally, even coldly,
+aware of the sharp eyes and tongues round the table, but Harmony did
+not understand. She had expected moral support from his presence, and
+failing that she sank back into the loneliness and depression of the
+day. Her bright color faded; her eyes looked tragic and rather aloof.
+She ate almost nothing, and left the table before the others had
+finished.
+
+What curious little dramas of the table are played under unseeing eyes!
+What small tragedies begin with the soup and end with dessert! What
+heartaches with a salad! Small tragedies of averted eyes, looking
+away from appealing ones; lips that tremble with wretchedness nibbling
+daintily at a morsel; smiles that sear; foolish bits of talk that mean
+nothing except to one, and to that one everything! Harmony, freezing at
+Peter's formal bow and gazing obstinately ahead during the rest of the
+meal, or no nearer Peter than the red-paper roses, and Peter, showering
+the little Bulgarian next to her with detestable German in the hope of a
+glance. And over all the odor of cabbage salad, and the "Nicht Rauchen"
+sign, and an acrimonious discussion on eugenics between an American
+woman doctor named Gates and a German matron who had had fifteen
+children, and who reduced every general statement to a personal insult.
+
+Peter followed Harmony as soon as he dared. Her door was closed, and she
+was playing very softly, so as to disturb no one. Defiantly, too, had he
+only known it, her small chin up and her color high again; playing the
+"Humoresque," of all things, in the hope, of course, that he would
+hear it and guess from her choice the wild merriment of her mood. Peter
+rapped once or twice, but obtained no answer, save that the "Humoresque"
+rose a bit higher; and, Dr. Gates coming along the hall just then, he
+was forced to light a cigarette to cover his pausing.
+
+Dr. Gates, however, was not suspicious. She was a smallish woman of
+forty or thereabout, with keen eyes behind glasses and a masculine
+disregard of clothes, and she paused by Byrne to let him help her into
+her ulster.
+
+"New girl, eh?" she said, with a birdlike nod toward the door. "Very
+gay, 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, but
+not for our terms."
+
+Dr. Gates sighed, and picking a soft felt hat from the table put it on
+with a single jerk down over her hair.
+
+"Oh, darn money, anyhow!" she said. "Come and walk to the corner with
+me. 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 little
+Bulgarian came along and stopped, smiling. He said nothing, nor did
+Peter, who rose and dusted his knees. The little Bulgarian spoke no
+English and little German. Between them was the wall of language. But
+higher than this barrier was the understanding of their common sex. He
+held out his hand, still smiling, and Peter, grinning sheepishly, took
+it. Then he followed the woman doctor down the stairs.
+
+To say that Peter Byrne was already in love with Harmony would be
+absurd. She attracted him, as any beautiful and helpless girl attracts
+an unattracted man. He was much more concerned, now that he feared he
+had offended her, than he would have been without this fillip to his
+interest. But even his concern did not prevent his taking copious and
+intelligent notes at his lecture that night, or interfere with his
+enjoyment of the Stein of beer with which, after it was over, he washed
+down its involved German.
+
+The engagement at Stewart's irked him somewhat. He did not approve of
+Stewart exactly, not from any dislike of the man, but from a lack of
+fineness in the man himself--an intangible thing that seems to be a
+matter of that unfashionable essence, the soul, as against the clay; of
+the thing contained, by an inverse metonymy, for the container.
+
+Boyer, a nerve man from Texas, met him on the street, and they walked
+to Stewart's apartment together. The frosty air and the rapid exercise
+combined to drive away Byrne's irritation; that, and the recollection
+that it was Saturday night and that to-morrow there would be no clinics,
+no lectures, no operations; that the great shambles would be closed down
+and that priests would read mass to convalescents in the chapels. He was
+whistling as he walked along.
+
+Boyer, a much older man, whose wife had come over with him, stopped
+under a street light to consult his watch.
+
+"Almost ten!" he said. "I hope you don't mind, Byrne; but I told Jennie
+I 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 good
+woman 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 was
+to be gained only by ringing, and Boyer touched the bell. The lights
+were still on, however, in the hallways, revealing not overclean stairs
+and, for a wonder, an electric elevator. This, however, a card announced
+as out of order. Boyer stopped and examined the card grimly.
+
+"'Out of order'!" he observed. "Out of order since last spring, judging
+by that card. Vorwarts!"
+
+They climbed easily, deliberately. At home in God's country Boyer played
+golf, as became the leading specialist of his county. Byrne, with a
+driving-arm like the rod of a locomotive, had been obliged to
+forswear the more expensive game for tennis, with a resulting muscular
+development that his slight stoop belied. He was as hard as nails,
+without an ounce of fat, and he climbed the long steep flights with an
+elasticity that left even Boyer a step or so behind.
+
+Stewart opened the door himself, long German pipe in hand, his coat
+replaced by a worn smoking-jacket. The little apartment was thick with
+smoke, and from a room on the right came the click of chips and the
+sound of beer mugs on wood.
+
+Marie, restored to good humor, came out to greet them, and both men
+bowed ceremoniously over her hand, clicking their heels together and
+bowing 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 old
+friend. 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 on
+Byrne's arm.
+
+"I was very angry with you to-day."
+
+"With me?"
+
+Like the others who occasionally gathered in Stewart's unconventional
+menage, Byrne had adopted Stewart's custom of addressing Marie in
+English, while she replied in her own tongue.
+
+"Ja. I wished but to see nearer the American Fraulein's hat, and
+you--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, looking
+up 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. She
+had put on a white dress, cut out at the neck, and above her collarbones
+were small, cuplike hollows. She was very thin.
+
+"I was sad to-night," she said plaintively. "I wished to jump out the
+window."
+
+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 stopped
+tragically, then sniffled.
+
+"The sausages!" she cried, and gathering up her skirts ran toward the
+kitchen. Byrne went on into the sitting-room.
+
+Stewart was a single man spending two years in post-graduate work in
+Germany and Austria, not so much because the Germans and Austrians could
+teach what could not be taught at home, but because of the wealth of
+clinical material. The great European hospitals, filled to overflowing,
+offered unlimited choice of cases. The contempt for human life of
+overpopulated cities, coupled with the extreme poverty and helplessness
+of the masses, combined to form that tragic part of the world which dies
+that others may live.
+
+Stewart, like Byrne, was doing surgery, and the very lack of fineness
+which Byrne felt in the man promised something in his work, a sort of
+ruthlessness, a singleness of purpose, good or bad, an overwhelming
+egotism that in his profession might only be a necessary self-reliance.
+
+His singleness of purpose had, at the beginning of his residence in
+Vienna, devoted itself to making him comfortable. With the narrow means
+at his control he had the choice of two alternatives: To live, as Byrne
+was living, in a third-class pension, stewing in summer, freezing in
+winter, starving always; or the alternative he had chosen.
+
+The Stewart apartment had only three rooms, but it possessed that luxury
+of luxuries, a bath. It was not a bath in the usual sense of water
+on tap, and shining nickel plate, but a bath for all that, where with
+premeditation and forethought one might bathe. The room had once been
+a fuel and store room, but now boasted a tin tub and a stove with a
+reservoir on top, where water might be heated to the boiling point, at
+the same time bringing up the atmosphere to a point where the tin tub
+sizzled 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 already
+there: Stewart and Boyer, a pathology man named Wallace Hunter, doing
+research work at the general hospital, and a young piano student from
+Tennessee named MacLean. The cards had been already dealt, and Byrne
+stood by waiting for the hand to be played.
+
+The game was a small one, as befitted the means of the majority. It was
+a regular Saturday night affair, as much a custom as the beer that sat
+in Steins on the floor beside each man, or as Marie's boiled Wiener
+sausages.
+
+The blue chips represented a Krone, the white ones five Hellers.
+MacLean, who was hardly more than a boy, was winning, drawing in chips
+with 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's
+hesitation Byrne turned to him.
+
+"I don't know just what to say, Stewart," he began in an undertone. "I'm
+sorry. I didn't want to hurt Marie, but--"
+
+"Oh, that's all right." Stewart drew at his pipe and bent forward to
+watch the game with an air of ending the discussion.
+
+"Not at all. I did hurt her and I want to explain. Marie has been kind
+to me, and I like her. You know that."
+
+"Don't be an ass!" Stewart turned on him sharply. "Marie is a little
+fool, 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 stayed
+out of the last hand, and with a cigarette wandered about the room. He
+glanced into the tidy bedroom and beyond, to where Marie hovered over
+the stove.
+
+She turned and saw him.
+
+"Come," she called. "Watch the supper for me while I go down for more
+beer."
+
+"But no," he replied, imitating her tone. "Watch the supper for me while
+I 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. The
+cards were put away, and young MacLean and Wallace Hunter were replacing
+the cover and the lamp on the card-table. Stewart was orating from a
+pinnacle of proprietorship.
+
+"Exactly," he was saying, in reply to something gone before; "I used
+to 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 corner
+and 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 he
+was 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. He
+came back last fall on his wedding trip--he married a wealthy girl and
+came to see us. I was out, but Marie was here. There was the deuce to
+pay."
+
+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't
+respect her!"
+
+"It's a curious code of honor," said Boyer thoughtfully. And indeed to
+none 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 made
+it, living up to it with every fiber of her.
+
+"Bitte zum speisen!" called Marie gayly from her brick stove, and the
+men trooped out to the kitchen.
+
+The supper was spread on the table, with the pitcher of beer in the
+center. There were Swiss cheese and cold ham and rolls, and above all
+sausages and mustard. Peter drank a great deal of beer, as did the
+others, and sang German songs with a frightful accent and much vigor and
+sentiment, as also did the others.
+
+Then he went back to the cold room in the Pension Schwarz, and told
+himself he was a fool to live alone when one could live like a prince
+for the same sum properly laid out. He dropped into the hollow center of
+his bed, where his big figure fitted as comfortably as though it lay in
+a washtub, and before his eyes there came a vision of Stewart's flat and
+the slippers by the fire--which was eminently human.
+
+However, a moment later he yawned, and said aloud, with considerable
+vigor, 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 gasjet
+in the air from the opened window, Peter was asleep. For four hours he
+had entirely forgotten Harmony.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The peace of a gray Sunday morning hung like a cloud over the little
+Pension Schwarz. In the kitchen the elderly maid, with a shawl over her
+shoulders and stiffened fingers, made the fire, while in the dining-room
+the little chambermaid cut butter and divided it sparingly among a dozen
+breakfast 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 two
+butter pats. The mistress yet slept, but in the kitchen Katrina had a
+keen eye for butter--and a hard heart.
+
+Katrina came to the door.
+
+"The hot water is ready," she announced. "And the coffee also. Hast thou
+been to mass?"
+
+"Ja."
+
+"That is a lie." This quite on general principle, it being one of the
+cook's small tyrannies to exact religious observance from her underling,
+and one of Olga's Sunday morning's indulgences to oversleep and avoid
+the mass. Olga took the accusation meekly and without reply, being
+occupied at that moment in standing between Katrina and the extra pats
+of butter.
+
+"For the lie," said Katrina calmly, "thou shalt have no butter this
+morning. 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. "The
+Americans use much water. God knows it cannot be healthy!"
+
+Olga filled her pitcher from the great copper kettle and stood with it
+poised in her thin young arms.
+
+"The new Fraulein is very beautiful," she continued aloud. "Thinkest
+thou it is the hot water?"
+
+"Is an egg more beautiful for being boiled?" demanded Katrina. "Go, and
+be less foolish. See, it is not the Herr Doktor who rings, but the new
+American."
+
+Olga carried her pitcher to Harmony's door, and being bidden, entered.
+The room was frigid and Harmony, at the window in her nightgown, was
+closing the outer casement. The inner still swung open. Olga, having put
+down 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 and
+illnesses! 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, shaking
+her head.
+
+"They are strange, the Americans!" she said to latrine. "And if to be
+lovely one must bathe daily, and sleep with open windows--"
+
+Harmony had slept soundly after all. Her pique at Byrne had passed
+with the reading of his note, and the sensation of his protection and
+nearness had been almost physical. In the virginal little apartment in
+the lodge of Maria Theresa the only masculine presence had been that
+of the Portier, carrying up coals at ninety Hellers a bucket, or of the
+accompanist who each alternate day had played for the Big Soprano to
+practice. And they had felt no deprivation, except for those occasional
+times when Scatchy developed a reckless wish to see the interior of a
+dancing-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 or
+disputed the bill at the delicatessen shop, Harmony had thrown herself
+on the protection of this shabby big American whom she had met but
+once, and, having done so, slept like a baby. Not, of course, that
+she realized her dependence. She had felt very old and experienced and
+exceedingly courageous as she put out her light the night before and
+took a flying leap into the bed. She was still old and experienced, if a
+trifle less courageous, that Sunday morning.
+
+Promptly in ten minutes Olga brought the breakfast, two rolls, two pats
+of butter--shades of the sleeping mistress and Katrina the thrifty--and
+a 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. Will
+you walk with me this afternoon? I would come in person to ask you, but
+am spending the morning in my bathrobe, while my one remaining American
+suit 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 told
+Harmony that the pension was fully awake, she got out her violin.
+The idea of work obsessed her. To-morrow there would be the hunt for
+something to do to supplement her resources, this afternoon she had
+rashly 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 outside
+her door and listened, rapt, his eyes closed. Peter Byrne, listening
+while he sorted lecture memoranda at his little table in bathrobe and
+slippers, absently filed the little note with the others--where he came
+across it months later--next to a lecture on McBurney's Point, and spent
+a sad hour or so over it. Over all the sordid little pension, with its
+odors of food and stale air, its spotted napery and dusty artificial
+flowers, the music hovered, and made for the time all things lovely.
+
+In her room across from Harmony's, Anna Gates was sewing, or preparing
+to sew. Her hair in a knob, her sleeves rolled up, the room in violent
+disorder, she was bending over the bed, cutting savagely at a roll of
+pink flannel. Because she was working with curved surgeon's scissors,
+borrowed from Peter, the cut edges were strangely scalloped. Her method
+as well as her tools was unique. Clearly she was intent on a body
+garment, 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 to
+cut again, jaw tight set, small veins on her forehead swelling, a small
+replica of Peter Byrne sewing a button on his coat.
+
+After a time it became clear to her that her method was wrong. She
+rolled up the flannel viciously and flung it into a corner, and
+proceeded to her Sunday morning occupation of putting away the garments
+she had worn during the week, a vast and motley collection.
+
+On the irritability of her mood Harmony's music had a late but certain
+effect. She made a toilet, a trifle less casual than usual, seeing that
+she put on her stays, and rather sheepishly picked up the bundle from
+the corner. She hunted about for a thimble, being certain she had
+brought 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. I
+want to sew, and my room is such a mess!"
+
+Harmony threw the door wide. "You will make me very happy, if only my
+practicing does not disturb you."
+
+Dr. Gates came in and closed the door.
+
+"I'll probably be the disturbing element," she said. "I'm a noisy
+sewer."
+
+Harmony's immaculate room and radiant person put her in good humor
+immediately. She borrowed a thimble--not because she cared whether
+she had one or not, but because she knew a thimble was a part of the
+game--and settled herself in a corner, her ragged pieces in her lap. For
+an hour she plodded along and Harmony played. Then the girl put down her
+bow and turned to the corner. The little doctor was jerking at a knot in
+her thread.
+
+"It's in the most damnable knot!" she said, and Harmony was suddenly
+aware 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 fool
+about music."
+
+"Perhaps, if you hate to sew--"
+
+"I hate a good many things, my dear, when you play like that. I hate
+being over here in this place, and I hate fleas and German cooking and
+clinics, and I hate being forty years old and as poor as a church-mouse
+and as ugly as sin, and I hate never having had any children!"
+
+Harmony was very uncomfortable and just a little shocked. But the next
+moment Dr. Gates had wiped her eyes with a scrap of the flannel and was
+smiling up through her glasses.
+
+"The plain truth really is that I have indigestion. I dare say I'm
+really weeping in anticipation over the Sunday dinner! The food's bad
+and I can't afford to live anywhere else. I'd take a room and do my own
+cooking, but what time have I?" She spread out the pieces of flannel on
+her 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 from
+them 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, delicately
+flushed, repeated the name, clung to it conversationally, using little
+adroitnesses to bring the talk back to him. All roads of talk led to
+Peter--Peter's future, Peter's poverty, Peter's refusing to have his
+hair cut, Peter's encounter with a major of the guards, and the duel
+Peter almost fought. It developed that Peter, as the challenged, had had
+the choice of weapons, and had chosen fists, and that the major had been
+carried away. Dr. Gates grew rather weary of Peter at last and fell back
+on the pink flannel. She confided to Harmony that the various pieces,
+united, were to make a dressing-gown for a little American boy at the
+hospital. "Although," she commented, "it looks more like a chair cover."
+
+Harmony offered to help her, and got out a sewing-box that was lined
+with a piece of her mother's wedding dress. And as she straightened the
+crooked edges she told the doctor about the wedding dress, and about the
+mother who had called her Harmony because of the hope in her heart.
+And soon, by dint of skillful listening, which is always better than
+questioning, 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 any
+comparison in destitution!"
+
+Harmony stiffened a trifle.
+
+"Of course I do not mean money," she said. "There are such things as
+encouragement, and--and friendliness."
+
+"One cannot eat encouragement," retorted Dr. Gates sagely. "And
+friendliness between you and any man--bah! Even Peter is only human, my
+dear."
+
+"I am sure he is very good."
+
+"So he is. He is very poor. But you are very attractive. There, I'm a
+skeptic about men, but you can trust Peter. Only don't fall in love with
+him. It will be years before he can marry. And don't let him fall in
+love with you. He probably will."
+
+Whereupon Dr. Gates taking herself and her pink flannel off to prepare
+for lunch, Harmony sent a formal note to Peter Byrne, regretting that
+a headache kept her from taking the afternoon walk as she had promised.
+Also, to avoid meeting him, she did without dinner, and spent the
+afternoon crying herself into a headache that was real enough.
+
+Anna Gates was no fool. While she made her few preparations for dinner
+she repented bitterly what she had said to Harmony. It is difficult for
+the sophistry of forty to remember and cherish the innocence of twenty.
+For illusions it is apt to substitute facts, the material for the
+spiritual, the body against the soul. Dr. Gates, from her school of
+general 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 best
+tie, and was looking distinguished and just now rather stern.
+
+"To whom?"
+
+"To the young Wells person. Frankly, Peter, I dare say at this moment
+she thinks you are everything you shouldn't be, because I said you were
+only human. Why it should be evil to be human, or human to be evil--"
+
+"I cannot imagine," said Peter slowly, "the reason for any conversation
+about me."
+
+"Nor I, when I look back. We seemed to talk about other things, but it
+always ended with you. Perhaps you were our one subject in common. Then
+she irritated me by her calm confidence. The world was good, everybody
+was 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 mischief
+is done."
+
+Dr. Gates looked up at him.
+
+"I'm in love with you myself, Peter!" she said gratefully. "Perhaps it
+is the tie. Did you ever eat such a meal?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A very pale and dispirited Harmony it was who bathed her eyes in cold
+water that evening and obeyed little Olga's "Bitte sum speisen." The
+chairs round the dining-table were only half occupied--a free concert
+had taken some, Sunday excursions others. The little Bulgarian, secretly
+considered to be a political spy, was never about on this one evening of
+the week. Rumor had it that on these evenings, secreted in an attic room
+far off in the sixteenth district, he wrote and sent off reports of what
+he had learned during the week--his gleanings from near-by tables in
+coffee-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 met
+a tremulous bow and silence. From the head of the table Frau Schwarz was
+talking volubly--as if, by mere sound, to distract attention from the
+scantiness of the meal. Under cover of the Babel Peter spoke to the
+girl. Having had his warning his tone was friendly, without a hint of
+the intimacy of the day before.
+
+"Better?"
+
+"Not entirely. Somewhat."
+
+"I wish you had sent Olga to me for some tablets. No one needs to suffer
+from 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, what
+had she to do with the man himself? He had constituted himself her
+physician. That was all.
+
+"The next time I shall send Olga."
+
+"Good!" he responded heartily; and proceeded to make such a meal as
+he might, talking little, and nursing, by a careful indifference, her
+new-growing confidence.
+
+It was when he had pushed his plate away and lighted a
+cigarette--according to the custom of the pension, which accorded the
+"Nicht Rauchen" sign the same attention that it did to the portrait of
+the 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 nerved
+herself 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 my
+going 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 swift
+glance of admiration, which he caught and acknowledged. He was rather
+exultant 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 nice
+companion, I'm sure."
+
+It is doubtful, however, if Anna Gates would have applauded Peter
+had she followed the two in their rambling walk that night. Direction
+mattering little and companionship everything, they wandered on, talking
+of immaterial things--of the rough pavements, of the shop windows, of
+the gray medieval buildings. They came to a full stop in front of the
+Votivkirche, and discussed gravely the twin Gothic spires and the
+Benk sculptures on the facade. And there in the open square, casting
+diplomacy to the winds, Peter Byrne turned to Harmony and blurted out
+what was in his heart.
+
+"Look here," he said, "you don't care a rap about spires. I don't
+believe you know anything about them. I don't. What did that idiot of a
+woman 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 with
+two premises: I'm a man, and you're young and attractive. Then she draws
+some sort of fool deduction. You know what I mean?"
+
+"I don't see why we need discuss it," said poor Harmony. "Or how you
+know--"
+
+"I know because she told me. She knew she had been a fool, and she
+came 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 dear
+girl, 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 not
+say like a brother, because all the ones I ever knew were darned poor
+brothers to their sisters, but some one who will keep an eye on you and
+who isn't going to fall in love with you."
+
+"I didn't think you were falling in love with me; nor did I wish you
+to."
+
+"Certainly not. Besides, I--" Here Peter Byrne had another inspiration,
+not so good as the first--"Besides, there is somebody at home, you
+understand? 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 all
+sorts of a cheat, took it, and got his reward in a complete restoral of
+their former comradely relations. From abstractions of church towers
+and street paving they went, with the directness of the young, to
+themselves. Thereafter, during that memorable walk, they talked
+blissful personalities, Harmony's future, Peter's career, money--or
+its lack--their ambitions, their hopes, even--and here was intimacy,
+indeed!--their disappointments, their failures of courage, their
+occasional loss of faith in themselves.
+
+The first real snow of the year was falling as they turned back toward
+the Pension Schwarz, a damp snow that stuck fast and melted with a
+chilly cold that had in it nothing but depression. The upper spires of
+the Votivkirche were hidden in a gray mist; the trees in the park took
+on, against the gloom of the city hall, a snowy luminosity. Save for
+an occasional pedestrian, making his way home under an umbrella, the
+streets were deserted. Byrne and Harmony had no umbrella, but the girl
+rejected his offer of a taxicab.
+
+"We should be home too quickly," she observed naively. "And we have
+so much to say about me. Now I thought that perhaps by giving English
+lessons 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 what
+a precarious future stretched before this girl beside him, how very
+slender her resources, how more than dubious the outcome.
+
+Poverty, which had only stimulated Peter Byrne in the past, ate deep
+into his soul that night.
+
+Epochmaking as the walk had been, seeing that it had reestablished a
+friendship and made a working basis for future comradely relations, they
+were back at the corner of the Alserstrasse before ten. As they turned
+in at the little street, a man, lurching somewhat, almost collided
+with Harmony. He was a short, heavy-set person with a carefully curled
+mustache, and he was singing, not loudly, but with all his maudlin
+heart in his voice, the barcarolle from the "Tales" of Hoffmann. He saw
+Harmony, and still singing planted himself in her path. When Byrne would
+have 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 no
+more music, and Rosa has run away with a soldier from Salzburg who has
+only one lung."
+
+"But think!" Harmony said in German. "No more practicing in the early
+dawn, no young ladies bringing mud into your newscrubbed hall! It is
+better, is it not? All day you may rest and smoke!"
+
+Byrne led Harmony past the drunken Portier, who turned with caution and
+bowed after them.
+
+"Gute Nacht," he called. "Kuss die Hand, Fraulein. Four rooms and the
+salon and a bath of the finest."
+
+As they went up the Hirschengasse they could hear him pursuing his
+unsteady way down the street and singing lustily. At the door of the
+Pension 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 feminine
+names. 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 of
+disappointment in her voice.
+
+Harmony had a lesson the next day. She was a favorite pupil with the
+master. Out of so much musical chaff he winnowed only now and then a
+grain of real ability. And Harmony had that. Scatchy and the Big Soprano
+had been right--she had the real thing.
+
+The short half-hour lesson had a way with Harmony of lengthening itself
+to an hour or more, much to the disgust of the lady secretary in the
+anteroom. On that Monday Harmony had pleased the old man to one of his
+rare enthusiasms.
+
+"Six months," he said, "and you will go back to your America and show
+them 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 my
+pupil, is it not so?"
+
+Harmony was drawing on her worn gloves; her hands trembled a little with
+the 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 finished
+you talk of going! Gott im Himmel!"
+
+"It is a matter of money. My father is dead. And unless I find something
+to do I shall have to go back."
+
+The master had heard many such statements. They never ceased to rouse
+his ire against a world that had money for everything but music. He
+spent 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 he
+had thrown out before, a hook without a bait. It needed no bait, being
+always eagerly swallowed. "And no more talk of going away. I refuse to
+allow. You shall not go."
+
+Harmony paid the lady secretary on her way out. The master was
+interested. He liked Harmony and he believed in her. But fifty Kronen
+is fifty Kronen, and South American beef is high of price. He followed
+Harmony into the outer room and bowed her out of his studio.
+
+"The Fraulein has paid?" he demanded, turning sharply to the lady
+secretary.
+
+"Always."
+
+"After the lesson?"
+
+"Ja, Herr Professor."
+
+"It is better," said the master, "that she pay hereafter before the
+lesson."
+
+"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 the
+morning, hurried back to the midday meal and was gone again the moment
+it was over. He had lectures in the evenings, too, and although he
+lingered for an hour or so after supper it was to find Harmony taken
+possession of by the little Bulgarian, seized with a sudden thirst for
+things American.
+
+On the evening of the second day he had left Harmony, enmeshed and
+helpless in a tangle of language, trying to explain to the little
+Bulgarian the reason American women wished to vote. Byrne flung down the
+stairs and out into the street, almost colliding with Stewart.
+
+They walked on together, Stewart with the comfortably rolling gait of
+the man who has just dined well, Byrne with his heavy, rather solid
+tread. The two men were not congenial, and the frequent intervals
+without speech between them were rather for lack of understanding than
+for that completeness of it which often fathers long silences. Byrne was
+the 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 mood
+failed 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 Days
+nor any one else is going to have the benefit of your assistance if you
+go on living the way you have been. I was at Schwarz's. It is the double
+drain there that tells on one--eating little and being eaten much. Those
+old 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 Breidau
+can't take me for two months. It's Marie's off season and we're going to
+Semmering 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, or
+less, you can have it, and--a home, old man."
+
+Byrne was irritated, the more so that he realized that the offer tempted
+him. 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 give
+you a chance."
+
+They separated shortly after and Byrne went on alone. The snow of Sunday
+had 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; and
+the smoke from the little stoves in the street-cars followed them in
+depressing horizontal clouds. Cabmen sat and smoked in the interior of
+musty cabs. The women hod-carriers on a new building steamed like horses
+as they worked.
+
+Byrne walked along, his head thrust down into his up-turned collar;
+moisture gathered on his face like dew, condensed rather than
+precipitated. And as he walked there came before him a vision of the
+little flat on the Hochgasse, with the lamp on the table, and the
+general air of warmth and cheer, and a figure presiding over the brick
+stove in the kitchen. Byrne shook himself like a great dog and turned in
+at the gate of the hospital. He was thoroughly ashamed of himself.
+
+That week was full of disappointments for Harmony. Wherever she turned
+she faced a wall of indifference or, what was worse, an interest that
+frightened her. Like a bird in a cage she beat helplessly against
+barriers of language, of strange customs, of stolidity that were not far
+from absolute cruelty.
+
+She held to her determination, however, at first with hope, then, as
+the pension in advance and the lessons at fifty Kronen--also in
+advance,--went on, recklessly. She played marvelously those days, crying
+out through her violin the despair she had sealed her lips against. On
+Thursday, playing for the master, she turned to find him flourishing
+his handkerchief, and went home in a sort of daze, incredulous that she
+could have moved him to tears.
+
+The little Bulgarian was frankly her slave now. He had given up the
+coffee-houses that he might spend that hour near her, on the chance of
+seeing her or, failing that, of hearing her play. At night in the Cafe
+Hungaria he sat for hours at a time, his elbows on the table, a bottle
+of native wine before him, and dreamed of her. He was very fat, the
+little Georgiev, very swarthy, very pathetic. The Balkan kettle was
+simmering in those days, and he had been set to watch the fire. But
+instead he had kindled a flame of his own, and was feeding it with stray
+words, odd glances, a bit of music, the curve of a woman's hair behind
+her ears. For reports he wrote verses in modern Greek, and through one
+of those inadvertences which make tragedy, the Minister of War down in
+troubled Bulgaria once received between the pages of a report in cipher
+on the fortifications of the Danube a verse in fervid hexameter that
+made even that grim official smile.
+
+Harmony was quite unconscious. She went on her way methodically: so
+many hours of work, so many lessons at fifty Kronen, so many afternoons
+searching for something to do, making rounds of shops where her English
+might be valuable.
+
+And after a few weeks Peter Byrne found time to help. After one
+experience, when Harmony left a shop with flaming face and tears in her
+eyes, he had thought it best to go with her. The first interview,
+under Peter's grim eyes, was a failure. The shopkeeper was obviously
+suspicious of Peter. After that, whenever he could escape from clinics,
+Peter went along, but stayed outside, smoking his eternal cigarette, and
+keeping a watchful eye on things inside the shop.
+
+Only once was he needed. At that time, suspecting that all was not
+well, from the girl's eyes and the leer on the shopkeeper's face, he
+had opened the door in time to hear enough. He had lifted the proprietor
+bodily and flung him with a crash into a glass showcase of ornaments
+for the hair. Then, entirely cheerful and happy, and unmolested by the
+frightened clerks, he led Harmony outside and in a sort of atavistic
+triumph bought her a bunch of valley lilies.
+
+Nevertheless, in his sane moments, Peter knew that things were very
+bad, indeed. He was still not in love with the girl. He analyzed his own
+feeling very carefully, and that was his conclusion. Nevertheless he did
+a quixotic thing--which was Peter, of course, all over.
+
+He took supper with Stewart and Marie on Friday, and the idea came to
+him there. Hardly came to him, being Marie's originally. The little flat
+was cozy and bright. Marie, having straightened her kitchen, brought in
+a waist she was making and sat sewing while the two men talked. Their
+conversation was technical, a new extirpation of the thyroid gland, a
+recent nephrectomy.
+
+In her curious way Marie liked Peter and respected him. She struggled
+with the technicalities of their talk as she sewed, finding here and
+there a comprehensive bit. At those times she sat, needle poised,
+intelligent eyes on the speakers, until she lost herself again in the
+mazes of their English.
+
+At ten o'clock she rose and put away her sewing. Peter saw her get the
+stone pitcher and knew she was on her way for the evening beer. He took
+advantage of her absence to broach the matter of Harmony.
+
+"She's up against it, as a matter of fact," he finished. "It ought to be
+easy enough for her to find something, but it isn't."
+
+"I hardly saw her that day in the coffee-house; but she's rather
+handsome, 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's
+usually some sort of infant prodigy ready to play at any entertainments
+of the Doctors' Club."
+
+"They don't want an American teacher, I fancy; but I suppose I could put
+a card up in the club rooms. Damn it all!" cried Peter with a burst of
+honest resentment, "why do I have to be poor?"
+
+"If you were rolling in gold you could hardly offer her money, could
+you?"
+
+Peter had not thought of that before. It was the only comfort he found
+in his poverty. Marie had brought in the beer and was carefully filling
+the mugs. "Why do you not marry her?" she asked unexpectedly. "Then you
+could take this flat. We are going to Semmering for the winter sports. I
+would show her about the stove."
+
+"Marry her, of course!" said Peter gravely. "Just pick her up and carry
+her to church! The trifling fact that she does not wish to marry me need
+have 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 the
+Pension Schwarz. About himself he was absurdly modest, almost humble. It
+had never occurred to him that women might care for him for himself.
+In his struggling life there had been little time for women. But about
+himself as the solution of a problem--that was different.
+
+He argued the thing over. In the unlikely contingency of the girl's
+being willing, was Stewart right--could two people live as cheaply as
+one? Marie was an Austrian and knew how to manage--that was different.
+And another thing troubled him. He dreaded to disturb the delicate
+adjustment of their relationship; the terra incognita of a young
+girl's mind daunted him. There was another consideration which he put
+resolutely in the back of his mind--his career. He had seen many a
+promising one killed by early marriage, men driven to the hack work of
+the profession by the scourge of financial necessity. But that was a
+matter of the future; the necessity was immediate.
+
+The night was very cold. Gusts of wind from the snow-covered Schneeberg
+drove along the streets, making each corner a fortress defended by the
+elements, a battlement to be seized, lost, seized again. Peter Byrne
+battled valiantly but mechanically. And as he fought he made his
+decision.
+
+He acted with characteristic promptness. Possibly, too, he was afraid of
+the strength of his own resolution. By morning sanity might prevail, and
+in cold daylight he would see the absurdity of his position. He almost
+ran up the winding staircase. At the top his cold fingers fumbled the
+key and he swore under his breath. He slammed the door behind him. Peter
+always slammed doors, and had an apologetic way of opening the door
+again and closing it gently, as if to show that he could. Harmony's room
+was dark, but he had surprised her once into a confession that when
+she was very downhearted she liked to sit in the dark and be very blue
+indeed. 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 once
+that Harmony was there.
+
+Peter hardly hesitated. He took off his soft hat and ran a hand over his
+hair, and he straightened his tie. These preliminaries to a proposal of
+marriage being disposed of, he rapped at the door.
+
+Anna Gates opened it. She wore a hideous red-flannel wrapper, and in
+deference to Harmony a thimble. Her flat breast was stuck with pins, and
+pinkish 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 her
+shoulders 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 of
+clothing can do. Don't mind her, Peter, and sit on the bed. Look out for
+pins!"
+
+Peter, however, did not sit down. He stood just inside the closed door
+and stared at Harmony--Harmony in the red light from the little
+open door of the stove; Harmony in blue and pink and a bit of white
+petticoat; Harmony with her hair over her shoulders and tied out of her
+eyes 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 of
+proposing marriage to a pink and blue and white vision. Peter, seated
+now 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 pension
+etiquette 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, but
+not 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." She
+turned to Peter. "You can say it before her, can't you? She--I have told
+her 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--you
+could learn to use the stove, unless, of course, you don't like
+housekeeping--and food is really awfully cheap. Why, at these
+delicatessen places and bakeshops--"
+
+Here he paused for breath and found Dr. Gates's quizzical glance fixed
+on him, and Harmony's startled eyes.
+
+"What I am trying to say," he exploded, "is that I believe if you would
+marry me it would solve some of your troubles anyhow." He was talking
+for time now, against Harmony's incredulous face. "You'd be taking on
+others, of course. I'm not much and I'm as poor--well, you know. It--it
+was 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 mirth
+with Harmony, the first laugh of days, that curious laughter of women
+that is not far from tears.
+
+Peter sat on the bed uncomfortably. He grinned sheepishly and made a
+last 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. Lord
+knows 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--your
+transparency, 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 of
+your generosity you are willing to take on another burden. Oh, Peter!"
+
+And here, Harmony being an emotional young person, the tears beat the
+laughter to the surface and had to be wiped away under the cover of
+mirth.
+
+Anna Gates, having recovered herself, sat back and surveyed them both
+sternly 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 dozen
+years. Any man can saddle himself with a wife; not every man can be what
+you may be if you keep your senses and stay single. And the same is true
+for you, girl. To tide over a bad six months you would sacrifice the
+very 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, remember
+what 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 of
+marriage."
+
+It was in some confusion of mind that Peter Byrne took himself off
+to the bedroom with the cold tiled stove and the bed that was as
+comfortable as a washtub. Undeniably he was relieved. Also Harmony's
+problem 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 to
+warm the cold concavity of his bed and had dozed off, Anna Gates knocked
+at 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 up
+to retain as much heat as possible. An icy blast from the open window
+blew round him, setting everything movable in the little room to
+quivering. 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 out
+of its hard knot, and hung in an equally uncompromising six-inch plait
+down her back. She had no glasses, and over the candle-frame she peered
+shortsightedly at Peter.
+
+"It's about Jimmy," she said. "I don't know what's got into me, but I've
+forgotten 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 a
+little. The nurse found him crying."
+
+"The poor little devil!" said Peter contritely. "Overdue, is it? I'll
+fix it to-night."
+
+"Leave it under the door where I can get it in the morning. I'm off at
+seven."
+
+"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 the
+twin clocks of the Votivkirche and echoed from the Stephansplatz across
+the city. It found Peter with the window closed, sitting up in bed, a
+candle balanced on one knee, a writing-tablet on the other.
+
+He was writing a spirited narrative of a chamois hunt in which he had
+taken part that day, including a detailed description of the quarry,
+which weighed, according to Peter, two hundred and fifty pounds, Peter
+being strong on imagination and short on facts as regards the Alpine
+chamois. Then, trying to read the letter from a small boy's point of
+view and deciding that it lacked snap, he added by way of postscript a
+harrowing incident of avalanche, rope, guide, and ice axe. He ended in a
+sort of glow of authorship, and after some thought took fifty pounds off
+the chamois.
+
+The letter finished, he put it in a much-used envelope addressed to
+Jimmy Conroy--an envelope that stamped the whole episode as authentic,
+bearing as it did an undecipherable date and the postmark of a tiny
+village in the Austrian Tyrol.
+
+It was almost two when Peter put out the candle and settled himself to
+sleep.
+
+It was just two o'clock when the night nurse, making rounds in her
+ward in the general hospital, found a small boy very much awake on his
+pillow, and taking off her felt slipper shook it at him in pretended
+fury.
+
+"Now, thou bad one!" she said. "Awake, when the Herr Doktor orders
+sleep! 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 the
+mountains there are accidents, and that sometimes--"
+
+"The Fraulein Elisabet is a great fool. Tomorrow comes thy letter of a
+certainty. The post has been delayed with great snows. Thy father has
+perhaps 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 Scatchy
+and the Big Soprano, Peter, and Anna Gates, with far off in the
+firmament the master. Scatchy and the Big Soprano had gone, weeping
+anxious postcards from every way station it is true, but nevertheless
+gone. Peter and Anna Gates remained, and the master as long as her funds
+held out. To them now she was about to add Jimmy.
+
+The bathrobe was finished. Out of the little doctor's chaos of pink
+flannel Harmony had brought order. The result, masculine and complete
+even to its tassels and cord of pink yarn, was ready to be presented. It
+was with mingled emotions that Anna Gates wrapped it up and gave it to
+Harmony the next morning.
+
+"He hasn't been so well the last day or two," she said. "He doesn't
+sleep much--that's the worst of those heart conditions. Sometimes, while
+I've been working on this thing, I've wondered--Well, we're making a
+fight anyhow. And better take the letter, too, Harry. I might forget and
+make lecture notes on it, and if I spoil that envelope--"
+
+Harmony had arranged to carry the bathrobe to the hospital, meeting the
+doctor there after her early clinic. She knew Jimmy's little story quite
+well. 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 I
+have my own little tragedy, because I have to go through the rest of
+life 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 a
+father who hoped to see him cured, and spent all he had to bring him
+here, 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 took
+about all the money there was. He wrote home about it, too, to the place
+they came from. There has never been any reply. Then ever since Peter
+has written these letters. Jimmy lives for them."
+
+Peter! It was always Peter. Peter did this. Peter said that. Peter
+thought thus. A very large part of Harmony's life was Peter in those
+days.
+
+She was thinking of him as she waited at the gate of the hospital for
+Anna Gates, thinking of his shabby gray suit and unkempt hair, of his
+letter that she carried to Jimmy Conroy, of his quixotic proposal of
+the night before. Of the proposal, most of all--it was so eminently
+characteristic of Peter, from the conception of the plan to its
+execution. Harmony's thought of Peter was very tender that morning
+as she stood in the arched gateway out of reach of the wind from the
+Schneeberg. The tenderness and the bright color brought by the wind made
+her very beautiful. Little Marie, waiting across the Alserstrasse for
+a bus, and stamping from one foot to the other to keep warm, recognized
+and admired her. After all, the American women were chic, she decided,
+although some of the doctors had wives of a dowdiness--Himmel! And she
+could copy the Fraulein's hat for two Kronen and a bit of ribbon she
+possessed.
+
+The presentation of the bathrobe was a success. Six nurses and a Dozent
+with a red beard stood about and watched Jimmy put into it, and the
+Dozent, who had been engaged for five years and could not marry because
+the hospital board forbade it, made a speech for Jimmy in awe-inspiring
+German, ending up with a poem that was intended to be funny, but that
+made the nurses cry. From which it will be seen that Jimmy was a great
+favorite.
+
+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. That
+the letter had come was enough. He lay back in anticipatory joy, and
+let himself be talked over, and bathrobed, and his hair parted Austrian
+fashion and turned up over a finger, which is very Austrian indeed.
+He liked Harmony. The girl caught his eyes on her more than once. He
+interrupted the speech once to ask her just what part of the robe she
+had made, and whether she had made the tassel. When she admitted the
+tassel, his admiration became mixed with respect.
+
+It was a bright day, for a marvel. Sunlight came through the barred
+window behind Jimmy's bed, and brought into dazzling radiance the pink
+bathrobe, and Harmony's eyes, and fat Nurse Elisabet's white apron. It
+lay on the bedspread in great squares, outlined by the shadows of the
+window bars. Now and then the sentry, pacing outside, would advance as
+far as Jimmy's window, and a warlike silhouette of military cap and
+the upper end of a carbine would appear on the coverlet. These events,
+however, were rare, the sentry preferring the shelter of the gateway and
+the odor of boiling onions from the lodge just inside.
+
+The Dozent retired to his room for the second breakfast; the nurses went
+about the business of the ward; Dr. Anna Gates drew a hairpin from her
+hair 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 are
+gone. I always do."
+
+Anna Gates read the letter. She read aloud poor Peter's first halting
+lines, when he was struggling against sleep and cold. They were mainly
+an apology for the delay. Then forgetting discomfort in the joy of
+creation, he became more comfortable. The account of the near-accident
+was wonderfully graphic; the description of the chamois was fervid, if
+not accurate. But consternation came with the end.
+
+The letter apparently finished, there was yet another sheet. The doctor
+read on.
+
+"For Heaven's sake," said Peter's frantic postscript, "find out how much
+a medium-sized chamois--"
+
+Dr. Gates stopped "--ought to weigh," was the rest of it, "and fix it
+right in the letter. The kid's too smart to be fooled and I never saw a
+chamois 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 must
+not ask too many questions, especially when Christmas is only six weeks
+off."
+
+"I know! He wants to send me the horns the way he sent me the boar's
+tusks."
+
+For Peter, having in one letter unwisely recorded the slaughter of a
+boar, had been obliged to ransack Vienna for a pair of tusks. The tusks
+had not been so difficult. But horns!
+
+Jimmy was contented with his solution and asked no more questions. The
+morning's excitement had tired him, and he lay back. Dr. Gates went to
+hold a whispered consultation with the nurse, and came back, looking
+grave.
+
+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 one
+worse off than she was, to satisfy that eternal desire of women to do
+something, however small, for some one else. Her own troubles looked
+very small to her that day as she left the hospital and stepped out into
+the 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, and
+nay, nay, and not always that. But Harmony was lovely and the sun was
+moderating 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 not
+think--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 the
+gun."
+
+"Ah, the gun!" He smiled and nodded in comprehension, then, as an
+officer appeared in the door of a coffee-house across the street, he
+stiffened into immobility and stared past Harmony into space. But the
+girl knew he would do as she had desired.
+
+That day brought good luck to Harmony. The wife of one of the professors
+at the hospital desired English conversation at two Kronen an hour.
+
+Peter brought the news home at noon, and that afternoon Harmony was
+engaged. It was little enough, but it was something. It did much more
+than 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 with
+Harmony, engaged her, and took her first two Kronen worth that
+afternoon. It was the day for a music-lesson. Harmony arrived five
+minutes late, panting, hat awry, and so full of the Frau Professor
+Bergmeister that she could think of nothing else.
+
+Obedient to orders she had placed the envelope containing her fifty
+Kronen 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 chit
+of a girl--only, of course, he said "das Kindchen" or some other German
+equivalent for chit--and then have her come into the sacred presence
+breathless, and salute him between gasps as the Frau Professor
+Bergmeister?
+
+Being excited and now confused by her error, and being also rather
+tremulous with three flights of stairs at top speed, Harmony dropped
+her bow. In point of heinousness this classes with dropping one's infant
+child from an upper window, or sitting on the wrong side of a carriage
+when 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 outer
+room, and picking up the envelope with the fifty Kronen held it out to
+her without a word.
+
+Harmony's world came crashing about her ears. She stared stupidly at the
+envelope in her hand, at the master's retreating back.
+
+Two girl students waiting their turn, envelopes in hand, giggled
+together. Harmony saw them and flushed scarlet. But the lady secretary
+touched 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. You
+are his well-beloved pupil. To-night he will not eat for grief that he
+has 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 who
+had laughed. They were not laughing now. Something of fellowship and
+understanding passed between them in the glance. After all, it was in
+the day's work--would come to one of them next, perhaps. And they had
+much 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 of
+the winter day.
+
+On the Ring she almost ran into Peter. He was striding toward her,
+giving a definite impression of being bound for some particular
+destination and of being behind time. That this was not the case was
+shown by the celerity with which, when he saw Harmony, he turned about
+and walked with her.
+
+"I had an hour or two," he explained, "and I thought I'd walk. But
+walking is a social habit, like drinking. I hate to walk alone. How
+about 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 the
+busy 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 tax
+anyhow; it was a license. Can't you switch her on to medicine or
+surgery, 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 overcoat
+pocket a largish bundle--Peter always bulged with packages--and held
+it out for her to see. "Tell the Frau Professor Bergmeister with my
+compliments," he said, "that because some idiot at home sent me five
+pounds of tobacco, hearing from afar my groans over the tobacco here,
+I have passed from mere financial stress to destitution. The Austrian
+customs 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 was
+fifty Kronen, and fifty Kronen was a great deal of money. She reached
+over and patted his arm.
+
+"You'll make it up in some way. Can't you cut off some little
+extravagance?"
+
+"I might cut down on my tailor bills." He looked down at himself
+whimsically. "Or on ties. I'm positively reckless about ties!"
+
+They walked on in silence. A detachment of soldiery, busy with that
+eternal military activity that seems to get nowhere, passed on a
+dog-trot. Peter looked at them critically.
+
+"Bosnians," he observed. "Raw, half-fed troops from Bosnia, nine out
+of ten of them tubercular. It's a rotten game, this military play of
+Europe. How's Jimmy?"
+
+"We left him very happy with your letter."
+
+Peter flushed. "I expect it was pretty poor stuff," he apologized. "I've
+never 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 the
+letter?"
+
+"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, he
+talked of Jimmy; of what had been done and might still be done, if only
+there were money; and from Jimmy he talked boy. He had had a boys' club
+at home during his short experience in general practice. Boys were his
+hobby.
+
+"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 playing
+the 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 were
+allowed 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 always
+seemed rather old, solid and dependable, the fault of his elder brother
+attitude to her, no doubt. She was suddenly rather shy, a bit aloof.
+Peter felt the change and thought she was bored. He talked of other
+things.
+
+A surprise was waiting for them in the cold lower hallway of the Pension
+Schwarz. A trunk was there, locked and roped, and on the trunk, in
+ulster and hat, sat Dr. Gates. Olga, looking rather frightened, was
+coming down with a traveling-bag. She put down the bag and scuttled up
+the staircase like a scared rabbit. The little doctor was grim. She eyed
+Peter 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 terrific
+row upstairs and I'm going. That woman's a devil!"
+
+It had been a bad day for Harmony, and this new development, after
+everything else, assumed the proportions of a crisis. She had clung,
+at first out of sheer loneliness and recently out of affection, to the
+sharp little doctor with her mannish affectations, her soft and womanly
+heart.
+
+"Sit down, child." Anna Gates moved over on the trunk. "You are fagged
+out. Peter, will you stop looking murderous and listen to me? How much
+did 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 it
+will 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 Maria
+Theresa, and Harmony shall keep house for us!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+It was the middle of November when Anna Gates, sitting on her trunk in
+the cold entrance hall on the Hirschengasse, flung the conversational
+bomb that left empty three rooms in the Pension Schwarz.
+
+Mid-December found Harmony back and fully established in the lodge of
+Maria Theresa on the Street of Seven Stars--back, but with a difference.
+True, the gate still swung back and forward on rusty hinges, obedient to
+every whim of the December gales; but the casement windows in the salon
+no longer creaked or admitted drafts, thanks to Peter and a roll of
+rubber weather-casing. The grand piano, which had been Scatchy's rented
+extravagance, had gone never to return, and in its corner stood a
+battered but still usable upright. Under the great chandelier sat a
+table with an oil lamp, and evening and morning the white-tiled stove
+gleamed warm with fire. On the table by the lamp were the combined
+medical books of Peter and Anna Gates, and an ash-tray which also they
+used in common.
+
+Shabby still, of course, bare, almost denuded, the salon of Maria
+Theresa. But at night, with the lamp lighted and the little door of the
+stove open, and perhaps, when the dishes from supper had been washed,
+with Harmony playing softly, it took resolution on Peter's part to
+put on his overcoat and face a lecture on the resection of a rib or a
+discussion of the function of the pituitary body.
+
+The new arrangement had proved itself in more ways than one not only
+greater in comfort, but in economy. Food was amazingly cheap. Coal,
+which had cost ninety Hellers a bucket at the Pension Schwarz, they
+bought in quantity and could afford to use lavishly. Oil for the lamp
+was a trifle. They dined on venison now and then, when the shop across
+boasted a deer from the mountains. They had other game occasionally,
+when Peter, carrying home a mysterious package, would make them guess
+what 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 coaxing
+to make Peter see it that way. In vain Harmony argued the extravagance
+of Rosa, now married to the soldier from Salzburg with one lung, or the
+tendency of the delicatessen seller to weigh short if one did not watch
+him. Peter was firm.
+
+It was Dr. Gates, after all, who found the solution.
+
+"Don't be too obstinate, Peter," she admonished him. "The child needs
+occupation; she can't practice all day. You and I can keep up the
+financial end well enough, reduced as it is. Let her keep house to her
+heart's content. That can be her contribution to the general fund."
+
+And that eventually was the way it settled itself, not without demur
+from Harmony, who feared her part was too small, and who irritated Anna
+almost to a frenzy by cleaning the apartment from end to end to make
+certain of her usefulness.
+
+A curious little household surely, one that made the wife of the Portier
+shake her head, and speak much beneath her breath with the wife of
+the brushmaker about the Americans having queer ways and not as the
+Austrians.
+
+The short month had seen a change in all of them. Peter showed it least
+of all, perhaps. Men feel physical discomfort less keenly than women,
+and Peter had been only subconsciously wretched. He had gained a pound
+or two in flesh, perhaps, and he was unmistakably tidier. Anna Gates was
+growing round and rosy, and Harmony had trimmed her a hat. But the real
+change was in Harmony herself.
+
+The girl had become a woman. Who knows the curious psychology by which
+such 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 occasional
+introspection and mysterious daydreams; the next she was a young woman,
+tender but not shyly so, incredibly poised, almost formidably dignified
+on occasion, but with little girlish lapses into frolic and high
+spirits.
+
+The transition moment with Harmony came about in this wise: They had
+been settled for three weeks. The odor of stewing cabbages at the
+Pension Schwarz had retired into the oblivion of lost scents, to be
+recalled, along with its accompanying memory of discomfort, with every
+odor of stewing cabbages for years to come. At the hospital Jimmy had
+had a bad week again. It had been an anxious time for all of them. In
+vain the sentry had stopped outside the third window and smiled and
+nodded through it; in vain--when the street was deserted and there
+was none to notice--he went through a bit of the manual of arms on the
+pavement outside, ending by setting his gun down with a martial and
+ringing clang.
+
+In vain had Peter exhausted himself in literary efforts, climbing
+unheard-of peaks, taking walking-tours through such a Switzerland as
+never was, shooting animals of various sorts, but all hornless, as he
+carefully emphasized.
+
+And now Jimmy was better again. He was propped up in bed, and with the
+aid of Nurse Elisabet he had cut out a paper sentry and set it in the
+barred window. The real sentry had been very much astonished; he had
+almost fallen over backward. On recovering he went entirely through the
+manual of arms, and was almost seen by an Oberst-lieutenant. It was all
+most exciting.
+
+Harmony had been to see Jimmy on the day in question. She had taken
+him some gelatin, not without apprehension, it being her first essay in
+jelly and Jimmy being frank with the candor of childhood. The jelly had
+been a great success.
+
+It was when she was about to go that Jimmy broached a matter very near
+his 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 I
+had the horns, Sister Elisabet would tie them there at the foot of the
+bed. And I could pretend I was hunting."
+
+Harmony had a great piece of luck that day. As she went home she saw
+hanging in front of the wild-game shop next to the delicatessen store
+a fresh deer, and this time it was a stag. Like the others it hung head
+down, and as it swayed on its hook its great antlers tapped against the
+shop 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. The
+wild-game seller was obdurate. He would sell the deer entire, or he
+would mount head and antlers for his wife's cousin in Galicia as a
+Christmas gift.
+
+Harmony went back to the lodge and climbed the stairs. She was
+profoundly depressed. Even the discovery that Peter had come home early
+and 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 a
+movement to light the candles. Peter stopped her.
+
+"Can't we have the firelight for a little while? You are always
+beautiful, but--you are lovely in the firelight, Harmony."
+
+"That is because you like me. We always think our friends are
+beautiful."
+
+"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 fast
+fading into darkness; to this tiny room at the back of the old house few
+street sounds penetrated. Round them, shutting them off together from
+the world of shops with lighted windows, rumbling busses and hurrying
+humanity, lay the old lodge with its dingy gardens, its whitewashed
+halls, its dark and twisting staircases.
+
+Peter had been very careful. He had cultivated a comradely manner with
+the girl that had kept her entirely at her ease with him. But it had
+been growing increasingly hard. He was only human after all. And he was
+very comfortable. Love, healthy human love, thrives on physical ease.
+Indigestion is a greater foe to it than poverty. Great love songs are
+written, not by poets starving in hall bedrooms, with insistent hunger
+gnawing and undermining all that is of the spirit, but by full-fed
+gentlemen who sing out of an overflowing of content and wide fellowship,
+and who write, no doubt, just after dinner. Love, being a hunger, does
+not thrive on hunger.
+
+Thus Peter. He had never found women essential, being occupied in the
+struggle for other essentials. Women had had little part in his busy
+life. Once or twice he had seen visions, dreamed dreams, to waken
+himself savagely to the fact that not for many years could he afford the
+luxury of tender eyes looking up into his, of soft arms about his neck.
+So he had kept away from women with almost ferocious determination. And
+now!
+
+He drew a chair before the stove and sat down. Standing or sitting, he
+was much too large for the kitchen. He sat in the chair, with his hands
+hanging, 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 before
+Peter had found an error in his bank balance which meant that he was a
+hundred Kronen or so poorer than he had thought. This discovery had been
+very upsetting.
+
+"Not more than usual. Don't mind me. I'll probably end in a roaring bad
+temper and smash something. My moody spells often break up that way!"
+
+Harmony put down the paring-knife, and going over to where he sat rested
+a 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 her
+voice.
+
+"No. Good Lord, Harmony, don't ask me what's wrong! I don't know
+myself."
+
+He got up almost violently and set the little chair back against the
+wall. Hurt and astonished, Harmony went back to the table. The kitchen
+was entirely dark, save for the firelight, which gleamed on the bare
+floor and the red legs of the table. She was fumbling with a match and
+the 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 starved
+senses 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 had
+torn him root and branch from his firm ground of self-restraint left
+her only shaken. He was still very close to her; she could hear him
+breathing. He did not attempt to speak. With every atom of strength that
+was left in him he was fighting a mad desire to take her in his arms
+again 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 turned
+and 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 still
+obsessed him. "Why not? Why should I not take you in my arms? If
+there is a moment of happiness to be had in this grind of work and
+loneliness--"
+
+"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. He
+knew then that he had left her unstirred. He dropped his outstretched
+arms.
+
+"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 and
+was 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't
+avoid me. I'm not a cad. I'll let you alone."
+
+There was only time for a glance of understanding between them, of
+promise from Peter, of acceptance from the girl. When Anna Gates entered
+the kitchen she found Harmony peeling potatoes and Peter filling up an
+already overfed stove.
+
+That night, during that darkest hour before the dawn when the thrifty
+city fathers of the old town had shut off the street lights because two
+hours later the sun would rise and furnish light that cost the taxpayers
+nothing, the Portier's wife awakened.
+
+The room was very silent, too silent. On those rare occasions when the
+Portier's wife awakened in the night and heard the twin clocks of the
+Votivkirche strike three, and listened, perhaps, while the delicatessen
+seller ambled home from the Schubert Society, singing beerily as he
+ambled, she was wont to hear from the bed beside hers the rhythmic
+respiration that told her how safe from Schubert Societies and such like
+evils was her lord. There was no sound at all.
+
+The Portier's wife raised herself on her elbow and reached over. Owing
+to the width of the table that stood between the beds and to a sweeping
+that day which had left the beds far apart she met nothing but empty
+air. Words had small effect on the Portier, who slept fathoms deep in
+unconsciousness. Also she did not wish to get up--the floor was cold
+and a wind blowing. Could she not hear it and the creaking of the deer
+across the street, as it swung on its hook?
+
+The wife of the Portier was a person of resource. She took the iron
+candlestick from the table and flung it into the darkness at the
+Portier's pillow. No startled yell followed.
+
+Suspicion thus confirmed, the Portier's wife forgot the cold floor and
+the wind, and barefoot felt her way into the hall.
+
+Suspicion was doubly confirmed. The chain was off the door; it even
+stood open an inch or two.
+
+Armed with a second candlestick she stationed herself inside the door
+and waited. The stone floor was icy, but the fury of a woman scorned
+kept her warm. The Votivkirche struck one, two, three quarters of an
+hour. The candlestick in her hand changed from iron to ice, from ice
+to red-hot fire. Still the Portier had not come back and the door chain
+swung in the wind.
+
+At four o'clock she retired to the bedroom again. Indignation had
+changed to fear, coupled with sneezing. Surely even the Schubert
+Society--What was that?
+
+From the Portier's bed was coming a rhythmic respiration!
+
+She roused him, standing over him with the iron candlestick, now
+lighted, and gazing at him with eyes in which alarm struggled with
+suspicion.
+
+"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 Americans
+above? Sleep and keep peace."
+
+He yawned and was instantly asleep again. The Portier's wife crawled
+into her bed and warmed her aching feet under the crimson feather
+comfort. But her soul was shaken.
+
+The Devil had been known to come at night and take innocent ones out to
+do his evil. The innocent ones knew it not, but it might be told by the
+soles of the feet, which were always soiled.
+
+At dawn the Portier's wife cautiously uncovered the soles of her
+sleeping lord's feet, and fell back gasping. They were quite black, as
+of one who had tramped in garden mould.
+
+Early the next morning Harmony, after a restless night, opened the door
+from the salon of Maria Theresa into the hall and set out a pitcher for
+the milk.
+
+On the floor, just outside, lay the antlers from the deer across the
+street. Tied to them was a bit of paper, and on it was written the one
+word, "Still!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+In looking back after a catastrophe it is easy to trace the steps by
+which the inevitable advanced. Destiny marches, not by great leaps but
+with a thousand small and painful steps, and here and there it leaves
+its mark, a footprint on a naked soul. We trace a life by its scars, as
+a tree by its rings.
+
+Anna Gates was not the best possible companion for Harmony, and this
+with every allowance for her real kindliness, her genuine affection for
+the girl. Life had destroyed her illusions, and it was of illusions
+that Harmony's veil had been woven. To Anna Gates, worn with a thousand
+sleepless nights, a thousand thankless days, withered before her time
+with the struggling routine of medical practice, sapped with endless
+calls for sympathy and aid, existence ceased to be spiritual and became
+physiological.
+
+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 strange
+bombshells of theories, shafts of distorted moralities, personal
+liberties, irresponsibilities, a supreme scorn for modern law and the
+prophets. 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 of
+the opportunity it was doubtful whether she would have had the strength
+of her convictions. Men love theories, but seldom have the courage of
+them, and Anna Gates was largely masculine. Women, being literal, are
+apt to absorb dangerous doctrine and put it to the test. When it is
+false doctrine they discover it too late.
+
+Harmony was now a woman.
+
+Anna would have cut off her hand sooner than have brought the girl to
+harm; but she loved to generalize. It amused her to see Harmony's eyes
+widen with horror at one of her radical beliefs. Nothing pleased
+her more than to pit her individualism against the girl's rigid and
+conventional morality, and down her by some apparently unanswerable
+argument.
+
+On the day after the incident in the kitchen such an argument took
+place--hardly an argument, for Harmony knew nothing of mental fencing.
+Anna had taken a heavy cold, and remained at home. Harmony had been
+practicing, and at the end she played a little winter song by some
+modern composer. It breathed all the purity of a white winter's day; it
+was as chaste as ice and as cold; and yet throughout was the thought of
+green things hiding beneath the snow and the hope of spring.
+
+Harmony, having finished, voiced some such feeling. She was rather
+ashamed of her thought.
+
+"It seems that way to me," she finished apologetically. "It sounds
+rather silly. I always think I can tell the sort of person who composes
+certain 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 in
+this world I want to weep always."
+
+"I don't find it a bad world. Of course there are bad people, but there
+are 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 a
+gentleman 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 fifth
+over--for every man. Each man gets one woman, and for every five couples
+there is a derelict like myself, mateless."
+
+Anna's amazing frankness about herself often confused Harmony. Her
+resentment at her single condition, because it left her childless,
+brought forth theories that shocked and alarmed the girl. In the
+atmosphere in which Harmony had been reared single women were always
+presumed to be thus by choice and to regard with certain tolerance those
+weaker sisters who had married. Anna, on the contrary, was frankly
+a derelict, frankly regretted her maiden condition and railed with
+bitterness against her enforced childlessness. The near approach of
+Christmas had for years found her morose and resentful. There are, here
+and 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 her
+resentment, every theory of existence the girl had ever known, and
+offered her instead an incredible liberty in the name of the freedom of
+the individual. Harmony found all her foundations of living shaken, and
+though refusing to accept Anna's theories, found her faith in her own
+weakened. She sat back, pale and silent, listening, while Anna built up
+out of her discontent a new heaven and a new earth, with liberty written
+high in its firmament.
+
+When her reckless mood had passed Anna was regretful enough at the
+girl's stricken face.
+
+"I'm a fool!" she said contritely. "If Peter had been here he'd have
+throttled me. I deserve it. I'm a theorist, pure and simple, and
+theorists are the anarchists of society. There's only one comfort about
+us--we never live up to our convictions. Now forget all this rot I've
+been talking."
+
+Peter brought up the mail that afternoon, a Christmas card or two for
+Anna, depressingly early, and a letter from the Big Soprano for Harmony
+from New York. The Big Soprano was very glad to be back and spent two
+pages over her chances for concert work.
+
+"... I could have done as well had I stayed at home. If I had had the
+money they wanted, to go to Geneva and sing 'Brunnhilde,' it would have
+helped a lot. I could have said I'd sung in opera in Europe and at least
+have had a hearing at the Met. But I didn't, and I'm back at the church
+again and glad to get my old salary. If it's at all possible, stay until
+the master has presented you in a concert. He's quite right, you haven't
+a chance unless he does. And now I'll quit grumbling.
+
+"Scatchy met her Henry at the dock and looked quite lovely, flushed with
+excitement and having been up since dawn curling her hair. He was rather
+a disappointment--small and blond, with light blue eyes, and almost
+dapper. But oh, my dear, I wouldn't care how pale a man's eyes were if
+he looked at me the way Henry looked at her.
+
+"They asked me to luncheon with them, but I knew they wanted to be alone
+together, and so I ate a bite or two, all I could swallow for the lump
+in my throat, by myself. I was homesick enough in old Wien, but I am
+just as homesick now that I am here, for we are really homesick only for
+people, 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 was
+unpleasant and decide to leave? What if a reckless impulse, recklessly
+carried out, were to break up an arrangement that had made a green oasis
+of happiness and content for all of them in the desert of their common
+despair?
+
+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 almost
+groaned 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 bad
+night, as nights go. She had gone through the painful introspection
+which, in a thoroughly good girl, always follows such an outburst as
+Peter's. Had she said or done anything to make him think--Surely she had
+not! Had she been wrong about Peter after all? Surely not again.
+
+While the Portier's wife, waked, as may happen, by an unaccustomed
+silence, was standing guard in the hall below, iron candlestick in
+hand, Harmony, having read the Litany through in the not particularly
+religious hope of getting to sleep, was dreaming placidly. It was Peter
+who tossed and turned almost all night. Truly there had been little
+sleep that night in the old hunting-lodge of Maria Theresa.
+
+Peter, still not quite at ease, that evening kept out of the kitchen
+while supper was preparing. Anna, radical theories forgotten and wearing
+a knitted shawl against drafts, was making a salad, and Harmony, all
+anxiety 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 cloth
+straight."
+
+Peter, exiled in the salon, came joyously. Obviously the wretched
+business of yesterday was forgiven. He came to the door, pipe in mouth.
+
+"Suppose I refuse?" he questioned. "You--you haven't been very friendly
+with 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's
+promise, abasement, regret. Harmony met him with forgiveness and
+restoration.
+
+"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 moving
+smoothly. Having rented their apartment to the Boyers, and through
+Marie's frugality and the extra month's wages at Christmas, which was
+Marie's annual perquisite, being temporarily in funds the sky seemed
+clear enough, and Walter Stewart started on his holiday with a
+comfortable sense of financial security.
+
+Mrs. Boyer, shown over the flat by Stewart during Marie's temporary
+exile in the apartment across the hall, was captivated by the comfort of
+the little suite and by its order. Her housewifely mind, restless with
+long inactivity in a pension, seized on the bright pans of Marie's
+kitchen and the promise of the brick-and-sheetiron stove. She
+disapproved of Stewart, having heard strange stories of him, but there
+was nothing bacchanal or suspicious about this orderly establishment.
+Mrs. Boyer was a placid, motherly looking woman, torn from her church
+and her card club, her grown children, her household gods of thirty
+years' 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 be
+left. He's always wanted to do it, but we couldn't go while you were
+little."
+
+"But, mother!" expostulated the oldest girl. "When you are so afraid of
+the ocean! And a year!"
+
+"What is to be will be," she had replied. "If I'm going to be drowned
+I'll be drowned, whether it's in the sea or in a bathtub. And I'll not
+let father go alone."
+
+Fatalism being their mother's last argument and always final, the
+children gave up. They let her go. More, they prepared for her so
+elaborate a wardrobe that the poor soul had had no excuse to purchase
+anything abroad. She had gone through Paris looking straight ahead lest
+her eyes lead her into the temptation of the shops. In Vienna she wore
+her home-town outfit with determination, vaguely conscious that the
+women about her had more style, were different. She priced unsuitable
+garments wistfully, and went home to her trunks full of best materials
+that would never wear out. The children, knowing her, had bought the
+best.
+
+To this couple, then, Stewart had rented his apartment. It is hard to
+say by what psychology he found their respectability so satisfactory. It
+was as though his own status gained by it. He had much the same feeling
+about the order and decency with which Marie managed the apartment, as
+if irregularity were thus regularized.
+
+Marie had met him once for a walk along the Graben. She had worn an
+experimental touch of rouge under a veil, and fine lines were drawn
+under her blue eyes, darkening them. She had looked very pretty, rather
+frightened. Stewart had sent her home and had sulked for an entire
+evening.
+
+So curious a thing is the mind masculine, such an order of disorder, so
+conventional its defiance of convention. Stewart breaking the law and
+trying to keep the letter!
+
+On the day they left for Semmering Marie was up at dawn. There was
+much to do. The house must be left clean and shining. There must be no
+feminine gewgaws to reveal to the Frau Doktor that it was not a purely
+masculine establishment. At the last moment, so late that it sent her
+heart into her mouth, she happened on the box of rouge hidden from
+Stewart's watchful eyes. She gave it to the milk girl.
+
+Finally she folded her meager wardrobe and placed it in the Herr
+Doktor's American trunk: a marvel, that trunk, so firm, so heavy,
+bound with iron. And with her own clothing she packed Stewart's, the
+dress-suit he had worn once to the Embassy, a hat that folded, strange
+American shoes, and books--always books. The Herr Doktor would study
+at Semmering. When all was in readiness and Stewart was taking a final
+survey, Marie ran downstairs and summoned a cab. It did not occur to her
+to ask him to do it. Marie's small life was one of service, and besides
+there was an element in their relationship that no one but Marie
+suspected, and that she hid even from herself. She was very much in
+love with this indifferent American, this captious temporary god of her
+domestic altar. Such a contingency had never occurred to Stewart; but
+Peter, smoking gravely in the little apartment, had more than once
+caught a look in Marie's eyes as she turned them on the other man, and
+had surmised it. It made him uncomfortable.
+
+When the train was well under way, however, and he found no disturbing
+element among the three others in the compartment, Stewart relaxed.
+Semmering was a favorite resort with the American colony, but not until
+later in the winter. In December there were rains in the mountains, and
+low-lying clouds that invested some of the chalets in constant fog.
+It was not until the middle of January that the little mountain train
+became crowded with tourists, knickerbockered men with knapsacks, and
+jaunty feathers in their soft hats, boys carrying ski, women with Alpine
+cloaks 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 the
+Raxalpe, the beloved mountain of the Viennese.
+
+Marie had seen the Rax all her life, as it towered thirty miles or
+so away above the plain. On peaceful Sundays, having climbed the cog
+railroad, she had seen its white head turn rosy in the setting sun, and
+once when a German tourist from Munich had handed her his fieldglass she
+had even made out some of the crosses that showed where travelers had
+met 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 of
+those who had died. It was of a marvel, truly; so far may one go when
+one has money and leisure.
+
+The small single-trucked railway carriages bumped and rattled up the
+mountain sides, always rising, always winding. There were moments when
+the track held to the cliffs only by gigantic fingers of steel, while
+far below were peaceful valleys and pink-and-blue houses and churches
+with gilded spires. There were vistas of snow-peak and avalanche shed,
+and always there were tunnels. Marie, so wise in some things, was a
+child in others; she slid close to Stewart in the darkness and touched
+him for comfort.
+
+"It is so dark," she apologized, "and it frightens me, the mountain
+heart. 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 Europe
+I'd exchange for the Rockies. And when we cross the mountains there we
+use 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 was
+apt to put the Herr Doktor in a bad humor or to depress him, which was
+even worse. Marie, her hand still on his arm and not repulsed, became
+silent.
+
+At a small way station the three Germans in the compartment left the
+train. Stewart, lowering a window, bought from a boy on the platform
+beer and sausages and a bag of pretzels. As the train resumed its
+clanking progress they ate luncheon, drinking the beer from the bottles
+and slicing the sausage with a penknife. It was a joyous trip, a
+red-letter day in the girl's rather sordid if not uneventful life. The
+Herr Doktor was pleased with her. He liked her hat, and when she
+flushed with pleasure demanded proof that she was not rouged. Proof was
+forthcoming. She rubbed her cheeks vigorously with a handkerchief and
+produced in triumph its unreddened purity.
+
+"Thou suspicious one!" she pouted. "I must take off the skin to assure
+thee! When the Herr Doktor says no rouge, I use none."
+
+"You're a good child." He stooped over and kissed one scarlet cheek and
+then being very comfortable and the beer having made him drowsy, he put
+his head in her lap and slept.
+
+When he awakened they were still higher. The snow-peak towered above
+and the valleys were dizzying! Semmering was getting near. They were
+frequently in darkness; and between the tunnels were long lines of
+granite avalanche sheds. The little passage of the car was full of
+tourists looking down.
+
+"We are very close, I am sure," an American girl was saying just outside
+the doorway. "See, isn't that the Kurhaus? There, it is lost again."
+
+The tourists in the passage were Americans and the girl who had spoken
+was young and attractive. Stewart noticed them for the first time and
+moved to a more decorous distance from Marie.
+
+Marie Jedlicka took her cue and lapsed into silence, but her thoughts
+were busy. Perhaps this girl was going to Semmering also and the Herr
+Doktor would meet her. But that was foolish! There were other resorts
+besides Semmering, and in the little villa to which they went there
+would be no Americans. It was childish to worry about a girl whose back
+and profile only she had seen. Also profiles were deceptive; there was
+the matter of the ears. Marie's ears were small and set close to her
+head. If the American Fraulein's ears stuck out or her face were only
+short and wide! But no. The American Fraulein turned and glanced once
+swiftly into the compartment. She was quite lovely.
+
+Stewart thought so, too. He got up with a great show of stretching and
+yawning and lounged into the passage. He did not speak to the girl;
+Marie noted that with some comfort. But shortly after she saw him
+conversing easily with a male member of the party. Her heart sank again.
+Life was moving very fast for Marie Jedlicka that afternoon on the
+train.
+
+Stewart was duly presented to the party of Americans and offered his own
+cards, bowing from the waist and clicking his heels together, a German
+custom he had picked up. The girl was impressed; Marie saw that. When
+they drew into the station at Semmering Stewart helped the American
+party off first and then came back for Marie. Less keen eyes than
+the little Austrian's would have seen his nervous anxiety to escape
+attention, once they were out of the train and moving toward the gate
+of the station. He stopped to light a cigarette, he put down the
+hand-luggage and picked it up again, as though it weighed heavily,
+whereas it was both small and light. He loitered through the gate and
+paused to exchange a word with the gateman.
+
+The result was, of course, that the Americans were in a sleigh and well
+up the mountainside before Stewart and Marie were seated side by side in
+a 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 to
+her then, the first time for half an hour.
+
+Marie found some comfort. The villas at Semmering were scattered wide
+over the mountain breast, set in dense clumps of evergreens, hidden
+from the roads and from each other by trees and shrubbery separated by
+valleys. One might live in one part of Semmering for a month and never
+suspect the existence of other parts, or wander over steep roads and
+paths for days and never pass twice over the same one. The Herr Doktor
+might not see the American girl again--and if he did! Did he not see
+American girls wherever he went?
+
+The sleigh climbed on. It seemed they would never stop climbing. Below
+in the valley twilight already reigned, a twilight of blue shadows, of
+cows with bells wandering home over frosty fields, of houses with dark
+faces that opened an eye of lamplight as one looked.
+
+Across the valley and far above--Marie pointed without words. Her small
+heart was very full. Greater than she had ever dreamed it, steeper, more
+beautiful, more deadly, and crowned with its sunset hue of rose was the
+Rax. Even Stewart lost his look of irritation as he gazed with her. He
+reached over and covered both her hands with his large one under the
+robe.
+
+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 the
+side that looked like a cross. Marie stopped the sleigh at a wayside
+shrine, and getting out knelt to say a prayer for the travelers who had
+died on the Rax. They had taken a room at a small villa where board was
+cheap, and where the guests were usually Germans of the thriftier
+sort from Bavaria. Both the season and the modest character of the
+establishment promised them quiet and seclusion.
+
+To Marie the house seemed the epitome of elegance, even luxury. It clung
+to a steep hillside. Their room, on the third floor, looked out from the
+back of the building over the valley, which fell away almost sheer from
+beneath their windows. A tiny balcony outside, with access to it by a
+door from the bedroom, looked far down on the tops of tall pines. It
+made Marie dizzy.
+
+She was cheerful again and busy. The American trunk was to be unpacked
+and the Herr Doktor's things put away, his shoes in rows, as he liked
+them, and his shaving materials laid out on the washstand. Then there
+was 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 the
+draft under the balcony door; the light was wrong for shaving. But the
+truth 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 young
+man you saw."
+
+Marie glanced down at her gala toilet. Then she began slowly to take
+off the dress, reaching behind her for a hook he had just fastened and
+fighting 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 to
+wear it."
+
+Stewart went out in a bad humor, which left him before he had walked for
+five minutes in the clear mountain air. At the hotel he found the party
+waiting for him, the women in evening gowns. The girl, whose name was
+Anita, was bewitching in pale green.
+
+That was a memorable night for Walter Stewart, with his own kind once
+more--a perfect dinner, brisk and clever conversation, enlivened by a
+bit of sweet champagne, an hour or two on the terrace afterward with the
+women in furs, and stars making a jeweled crown for the Rax.
+
+He entirely forgot Marie until he returned to the villa and opening the
+door of the room found her missing.
+
+She had not gone far. At the sound of his steps she moved on the balcony
+and came in slowly. She was pale and pinched with cold, but she was wise
+with 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 Professor
+Bergmeister had gone to St. Moritz for the winter. She regretted the
+English lessons, but there were always English at St. Moritz and it cost
+nothing to talk with them. Before she left she made Harmony a present.
+"For Christmas," she explained. It was a glass pin-tray, decorated
+beneath with labels from the Herr Professor's cigars and in the center a
+picture of the Emperor.
+
+The response came in this wise. Harmony struggling home against an east
+wind and holding the pin-tray and her violin case, opened the old
+garden gate by the simple expedient of leaning against it. It flew back
+violently, almost overthrowing a stout woman in process of egress down
+the walk. The stout woman was Mrs. Boyer, clad as usual in the best
+broadcloth and wearing her old sable cape, made over according to her
+oldest daughter's ideas into a staid stole and muff. The muff lay on the
+path now and Mrs. Boyer was gasping for breath.
+
+"I'm so sorry!" Harmony exclaimed. "It was stupid of me; but the
+wind--Is this your muff?"
+
+Mrs. Boyer took the muff coldly. From its depths she proceeded to
+extract a handkerchief and with the handkerchief she brushed down the
+broadcloth. Harmony stood apologetically by. It is explanatory of Mrs.
+Boyer's face, attitude, and costume that the girl addressed her in
+English.
+
+"I backed in," she explained. "So few people come, and no Americans."
+
+Mrs. Boyer, having finished her brushing and responded to this humble
+apology in her own tongue, condescended to look at Harmony.
+
+"It really is no matter," she said, still coolly but with indications of
+thawing. "I am only glad it did not strike my nose. I dare say it would
+have, but I was looking up to see if it were going to snow." Here she
+saw 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 lessons
+and 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 talk
+about 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 to
+suspect 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, here
+an ancient bit of furniture not considered worthy of salvage, there
+a closed and locked room, home of ghosts and legends. To Harmony this
+elderly woman, climbing slowly behind her, was a bit of home. There
+had been many such in her life; women no longer young, friends of her
+mother's who were friends of hers; women to whom she had been wont to
+pay the courtesy of a potted hyacinth at Easter or a wreath at Christmas
+or a bit of custard during an illness. She had missed them all cruelly,
+as she had missed many things--her mother, her church, her small
+gayeties. She had thought at first that Frau Professor Bergmeister
+might allay her longing for these comfortable, middle-aged, placid-eyed
+friends of hers. But the Frau Professor Bergmeister had proved to be a
+frivolous and garrulous old woman, who substituted ease for comfort,
+and who burned a candle on the name-day of her first husband while her
+second was safely out of the house.
+
+So it was with something of excitement that Harmony led the way up the
+stairs and into the salon of Maria Theresa.
+
+Peter was there. He was sitting with his back to the door, busily
+engaged in polishing the horns of the deer. Whatever scruples Harmony
+had had about the horns, Peter had none whatever, save to get them
+safely out of the place and to the hospital. So Peter was polishing the
+horns. Harmony had not expected to find him home, and paused, rather
+startled.
+
+"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 salon
+and he did not immediately recognize Mrs. Boyer. But that keen-eyed
+lady had known him before he turned, had taken in the domesticity of the
+scene and Peter's part in it, and had drawn the swift conclusion of the
+pure 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 in
+as a boarder. Please sit down."
+
+Harmony found nothing strange in the situation and was frankly puzzled
+at Peter. The fact that there was anything unusual in two single women
+and one unmarried man, unrelated and comparative strangers, setting up
+housekeeping together had never occurred to her. Many a single woman
+whom she knew at home took a gentleman into the house as a roomer, and
+thereafter referred to him as "he" and spent hours airing the curtains
+of smoke and even, as "he" became a member of the family, in sewing on
+his 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 bustling
+about cheerfully, with her hat rather awry and her cheeks flushed with
+excitement and hope. Just now, when the Frau Professor had gone, the
+prospect of a music pupil meant everything. An American child, too!
+Fond as Harmony was of children, the sedate and dignified youngsters who
+walked the parks daily with a governess, or sat with folded hands and
+fixed eyes through hours of heavy music at the opera, rather daunted
+her. They were never alone, those Austrian children--always under
+surveillance, always restrained, always prepared to kiss the hand of
+whatever relative might be near and to take themselves of to anywhere so
+it were somewhere else.
+
+"I am so glad you are going to talk to me about an American child," said
+Harmony, bringing in the tea.
+
+But Mrs. Boyer was not so sure she was going to talk about the American
+child. She was not sure of anything, except that the household looked
+most irregular, and that Peter Byrne was trying to cover a difficult
+situation with much conversation. He was almost glib, was Peter. The tea
+was good; that was one thing.
+
+She sat back with her muff on her knee, having refused the concession
+of putting it on a chair as savoring too much of acceptance if not
+approval, 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, but
+fearful to leave Harmony alone with her. She was quite likely, at the
+first opportunity, to read her a lesson on the conventions, if nothing
+worse; to upset the delicate balance of the little household he was
+guarding. 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 the
+lessons. None came. Mrs. Boyer, having finished her tea, rose and put
+down her cup.
+
+"That was very refreshing," she said. "Where shall I find the
+street-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 the
+conductors double tips to put me down where I want to go; but how can
+they when it is the wrong car?" She bowed to Harmony without shaking
+hands. "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 her
+voice was not so hard.
+
+"That will have to wait until another time. I have made a social visit
+and we'll not spoil it with business."
+
+"But--"
+
+"I really think the boy's mother must attend to that herself. But I
+shall tell her where to find you, and"--here she glanced at Peter--"all
+about it."
+
+"Thank you," said Harmony gratefully.
+
+Peter had no finesse. He escorted Mrs. Boyer across the yard and through
+the gate with hardly a word. With the gate closed behind them he turned
+and faced her:--
+
+"You are going away with a wrong impression, Mrs. Boyer."
+
+Mrs. Boyer had been thinking hard as she crossed the yard. The result
+was a resolution to give Peter a piece of her mind. She drew her ample
+proportions into a dignity that was almost majesty.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I--I can understand why you think as you do. It is quite without
+foundation."
+
+"I am glad of that." There was no conviction in her voice.
+
+"Of course," went on Peter, humbling himself for Harmony's sake, "I
+suppose it has been rather unconventional, but Dr. Gates is not a young
+woman by any means, and she takes very good care of Miss Wells. There
+were reasons why this seemed the best thing to do. Miss Wells was alone
+and--"
+
+"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 that
+there might be a Dr. Gates, but equally convinced that the situation was
+anomalous and certainly suspicious; defrauded in that she had lost the
+anticipated pleasure of giving Peter a piece of her mind. She walked
+along beside him without speaking until they reached the street-car
+line. Then she turned.
+
+"You called her--you spoke to her very affectionately, young man," she
+accused him.
+
+Peter smiled. The car was close. Some imp of recklessness, some
+perversion of humor seized him.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Boyer," he said, "that was in jest purely. Besides, I did
+not know that you were there!"
+
+Mrs. Boyer was a literal person without humor. It was outraged American
+womanhood incarnate that got into the street-car and settled its
+broadcloth of the best quality indignantly on the cane seat. It was
+outraged American womanhood that flung open the door of Marie Jedlicka's
+flat, and stalking into Marie Jedlicka's sitting room confronted her
+husband 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 to
+meet domestic broadsides with a shield of impenetrable good humor, or at
+the 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 know
+their names."
+
+"Where does Peter Byrne live?"
+
+"In a pension, I believe, my dear. Are we going to have anything to eat
+or do we sup of Peter Byrne?"
+
+Mrs. Boyer made no immediate reply. She repaired to the bedroom of Marie
+Jedlicka, and placed her hat, coat and furs on one of the beds with the
+crocheted coverlets. It is a curious thing about rooms. There was no
+change in the bedroom apparent to the eye, save that for Marie's tiny
+slippers at the foot of the wardrobe there were Mrs. Boyer's substantial
+house shoes. But in some indefinable way the room had changed. About it
+hung an atmosphere of solid respectability, of impeccable purity that
+soothed Mrs. Boyer's ruffled virtue into peace. Is it any wonder that
+there is a theory to the effect that things take on the essential
+qualities of people who use them, and that we are haunted by things, not
+people? That when grandfather's wraith is seen in his old armchair it
+is the chair that produces it, while grandfather himself serenely haunts
+the shades of some vast wilderness of departed spirits?
+
+Not that Mrs. Boyer troubled herself about such things. She was
+exceedingly orthodox, even in the matter of a hereafter, where the most
+orthodox are apt to stretch a point, finding no attraction whatever in
+the thing they are asked to believe. Mrs. Boyer, who would have regarded
+it as heterodox to substitute any other instrument for the harp of her
+expectation, 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 shocked
+than 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 a
+representative male had never taught his wife the reserves among members
+of the sex masculine.
+
+"I might, but I don't intend to," he said. "And if you listen to me
+you'll keep the thing to yourself."
+
+"I'll take precious good care that the girl gets no pupils," snapped
+Mrs. Boyer. And she did with great thoroughness.
+
+We trace a life by its scars. Destiny, marching on by a thousand painful
+steps, had left its usual mark, a footprint on a naked soul. The soul
+was 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 the
+sunset a bitter wind had risen, but he was too indignant to be cold. He
+ran up the staircase, hearing on all sides the creaking and banging with
+which the old house resented a gale, and burst into the salon of Maria
+Theresa.
+
+Harmony was sitting sidewise in a chair by the tea-table with her face
+hidden 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 it
+and 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 than
+ever 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 have
+said, 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 added
+hastily. "I'll make Anna go to her and explain. It's her infernal
+jumping 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 woman
+get down on her knees to you. I'll--"
+
+"You'll make bad very much worse," said Harmony dejectedly. "When a
+thing 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 the
+dusky kitchen only a few days before, he felt the compelling influence
+of her nearness. He wanted, as he had never wanted anything in his life
+before, to take her in his arms, to hold her close and bid defiance to
+evil tongues. He was afraid of himself. To gain a moment he put a chair
+between them and stood, strong hands gripping its back, looking down at
+her.
+
+"There is one thing we could do."
+
+"What, Peter?"
+
+"We could marry. If you cared for me even a little it--it might not be
+so bad for you."
+
+"But I am not in love with you. I care for you, of course, but--not that
+way, 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 care
+a little for me, you do not care enough, Peter. You are lonely and I
+am the only person you see much, so you think you want to marry me. You
+don't really. You want to help me."
+
+Few motives are unmixed. Poor Peter, thus accused, could not deny his
+altruism.
+
+And in the face of his poverty and the little he could offer, compared
+with what she must lose, he did not urge what was the compelling motive
+after 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 to
+me 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. Anna
+is right. There might be an excuse if we were very much in love: but we
+are 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 and
+approached Jimmy with his hands behind him and an atmosphere of mystery
+that enshrouded him like a cloak. Jimmy, having had a good night and
+having taken the morning's medicine without argument, had been allowed
+up in a roller chair. It struck Peter with a pang that the boy looked
+more 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 his
+very good friend, admitted to the Jimmy club, which consisted of Nurse
+Elisabet, the Dozent with the red beard, Anna and Peter, and of course
+the 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 of
+beds, its barred windows, its clean, uneven old floor. As if to add a
+touch of completeness the sentry outside, peering in, saw the wheeled
+chair with its occupant, and celebrated this advance along the road to
+recovery 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 father
+comes back I shall tell him. He is very fond of people who are kind to
+me. 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 stood
+up before the wheeled chair to be searched. The ward watched joyously,
+while from pocket after pocket of Peter's old gray suit came Jimmy's
+salvage--two nuts, a packet of figs, a postcard that represented a stout
+colonel of hussars on his back on a frozen lake, with a private soldier
+waiting to go through the various salutations due his rank before
+assisting him. A gala day, indeed, if one could forget the grave in the
+little mountain town with only a name on the cross at its head, and if
+one did not notice that the boy was thinner than ever, that his hands
+soon tired of playing and lay in his lap, that Nurse Elisabet, who was
+much inured to death and lived her days with tragedy, caught him to her
+almost fiercely as she lifted him back from the chair into the smooth
+white bed.
+
+He fell asleep with Peter's arm under his head and the horns of the deer
+beside him. On the bedside stand stood the wooden sentry, keeping
+guard. As Peter drew his arm away he became aware of the Nurse Elisabet
+beckoning to him from a door at the end of the ward Peter left the
+sentinel on guard and tiptoed down the room. Just outside, round a
+corner, was the Dozent's laboratory, and beyond the tiny closet where
+he slept, where on a stand was the photograph of the lady he would marry
+when he had become a professor and required no one's consent.
+
+The Dozent was waiting for Peter. In the amiable conspiracy which
+kept the boy happy he was arch-plotter. His familiarity with Austrian
+intrigue had made him invaluable. He it was who had originated the idea
+of making Jimmy responsible for the order of the ward, so that a burly
+Trager quarreling over his daily tobacco with the nurse in charge, or
+brawling over his soup with another patient, was likely to be hailed in
+a thin soprano, and to stand, grinning sheepishly, while Jimmy, in
+mixed English and German, restored the decorum of the ward. They were a
+quarrelsome lot, the convalescents. Jimmy was so busy some days settling
+disputes and awarding decisions that he slept almost all night. This was
+as 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 out
+a letter.
+
+"This has come for the child," he said in quite good English. He was
+obliged to speak English. Day by day he taught in the clinics Americans
+who scorned his native tongue, and who brought him the money with
+which some day he would marry. He liked the English language; he liked
+Americans because they learned quickly. He held out an envelope with a
+black 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 open
+to the Dozent. There was silence in the laboratory while the Dozent
+read it, silence except for his canary, which was chipping at a lump of
+sugar. 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 a
+baby--went on the stage, I think. He has no recollection of her, which
+is 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 going
+to see the child if I can help it. She left because--she's the boy's
+mother, 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--and
+tell 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 in
+his hand and thought fiercely.
+
+"She is on her way here," said the Dozent. "That is bad. Paris to Wien
+is 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 portrait
+on the stand. "It would be possible to hide the boy, at least for a
+time. In the interval the mother might be watched, and if she proved a
+fit person the boy could be given to her. It is, of course, an affair of
+police."
+
+This gave Peter pause. He had no money for fines, no time for
+imprisonment, and he shared the common horror of the great jail. He read
+the letter again, and tried to read into the lines Jimmy's mother,
+and failed. He glanced into the ward. Still Jimmy slept. A burly
+convalescent, with a saber cut from temple to ear and the general
+appearance of an assassin, had stopped beside the bed and was drawing up
+the blanket round the small shoulders.
+
+"I can give orders that the woman be not admitted to-day," said the
+Dozent. "That gives us a few hours. She will go to the police, and
+to-morrow she will be admitted. In the mean time--"
+
+"In the mean time," Peter replied, "I'll try to think of something. If I
+thought she could be warned and would leave him here--"
+
+"She will not. She will buy him garments and she will travel with him
+through the Riviera and to Nice. She says Nice. She wishes to be there
+for carnival, and the boy will die."
+
+Peter took the letter and went home. He rode, that he might read it
+again in the bus. But no scrap of comfort could he get from it. It spoke
+of the dead father coldly, and the father had been the boy's idol. No
+good woman could have been so heartless. It offered the boy a seat in
+one of the least reputable of the Paris theaters to hear his mother
+sing. And in the envelope, overlooked before, Peter found a cutting
+from a French newspaper, a picture of the music-hall type that made him
+groan. 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 but
+Peter's room. That was to have a special cleaning later. Next, still
+with her hair tied up, she had spent two hours with her violin, standing
+very close to the stove to save fuel and keep her fingers warm. She
+played well that morning: even her own critical ears were satisfied,
+and the Portier, repairing a window lock in an empty room below, was
+entranced. 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, and
+almost swallowed a screw that he held in his teeth.
+
+After the practicing Harmony cleaned Peter's room. She felt very tender
+toward Peter that day. The hurt left by Mrs. Boyer's visit had died
+away, but there remained a clear vision of Peter standing behind the
+chair and offering himself humbly in marriage, so that a bad situation
+might be made better. And as with a man tenderness expresses itself in
+the giving of gifts, so with a woman it means giving of service. Harmony
+cleaned Peter's room.
+
+It was really rather tidy. Peter's few belongings did not spread to any
+extent and years of bachelorhood had taught him the rudiments of order.
+Harmony took the covers from washstand and dressing table and washed and
+ironed them. She cleaned Peter's worn brushes and brought a pincushion
+of her own for his one extra scarfpin. Finally she brought her own
+steamer rug and folded it across the foot of the bed. There was no stove
+in the room; it had been Harmony's room once, and she knew to the full
+how cold it could be.
+
+Having made all comfortable for the outer man she prepared for the
+inner. She was in the kitchen, still with her hair tied up, when Anna
+came home.
+
+Anna was preoccupied. Instead of her cheery greeting she came somberly
+back to the kitchen, a letter in her hand. History was making fast that
+day.
+
+"Hello, Harry," she said. "I'm going to take a bite and hurry off. Don't
+bother, I'll attend to myself." She stuffed the letter in her belt and
+got 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 rather
+better after the tea. Harmony, having taken the towel off, was busy over
+the 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 of
+Peter. 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 thoughts
+wandered from Peter to Harmony to the letter in her belt and back again
+to Peter and Harmony. For some time she had been suspicious of Peter.
+From her dozen years of advantage in age and experience she looked down
+on Peter's thirty years of youth, and thought she knew something that
+Peter himself did not suspect. Peter being unintrospective, Anna did his
+heart-searching for him. She believed he was madly in love with Harmony
+and did not himself suspect it. As she watched the girl over her teacup,
+revealing herself in a thousand unposed gestures of youth and grace, a
+thousand lovelinesses, something of the responsibility she and Peter had
+assumed 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 go
+I'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, and
+there was no time to discuss Peter's new complication with her. Harmony
+and Peter ate together, Harmony rather silent. Anna's unfortunate
+comment about Peter had made her constrained. After the meal Peter, pipe
+in mouth, carried the dishes to the kitchen, and there it was that he
+gave her the letter. What Peter's slower mind had been a perceptible
+time in grasping Harmony comprehended at once--and not only the
+situation, but its solution.
+
+"Don't let her have him!" she said, putting down the letter. "Bring him
+here. Oh, Peter, how good we must be to him!"
+
+And that after all was how the thing was settled. So simple, so obvious
+was it that these three expatriates, these waifs and estrays, banded
+together against a common poverty, a common loneliness, should share
+without question whatever was theirs to divide. Peter and Anna gave
+cheerfully of their substance, Harmony of her labor, that a small boy
+should 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 dials
+of the Votivkirche showed nine o'clock, he did not notice a cab that
+halted across the street from the hospital.
+
+Still more strange that, although Peter passed within a dozen feet of
+him, carrying a wriggling and excited figure wrapped in a blanket and
+insisting on uncovering its feet, the sentry was able the next day to
+say that he had observed such a person carrying a bundle, but that
+it was a short stocky person, quite lame, and that the bundle was
+undoubtedly clothing going to the laundry.
+
+Perhaps--it is just possible--the sentry had his suspicions. It is
+undeniable that as Jimmy in the cab on Peter's knee, with Peter's arm
+close about him, looked back at the hospital, the sentry was going
+through the manual of arms very solemnly under the stars and facing
+toward the carriage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+For two days at Semmering it rained. The Raxalpe and the Schneeberg
+sulked behind walls of mist. From the little balcony of the Pension
+Waldheim one looked out over a sea of cloud, pierced here and there
+by islands that were crags or by the tops of sunken masts that were
+evergreen trees. The roads were masses of slippery mud, up which the
+horses steamed and sweated. The gray cloud fog hung over everything; the
+barking of a dog loomed out of it near at hand where no dog was to be
+seen. Children cried and wild birds squawked; one saw them not.
+
+During the second night a landslide occurred on the side of the mountain
+with a rumble like the noise of fifty trains. In the morning, the rain
+clouds lifting for a moment, Marie saw the narrow yellow line of the
+slip.
+
+Everything was saturated with moisture. It did no good to close the
+heavy wooden shutters at night: in the morning the air of the room was
+sticky and clothing was moist to the touch. Stewart, confined to the
+house, grew irritable.
+
+Marie watched him anxiously. She knew quite well by what slender
+tenure she held her man. They had nothing in common, neither speech nor
+thought. And the little Marie's love for Stewart, grown to be a part of
+her, was largely maternal. She held him by mothering him, by keeping him
+comfortable, not by a great reciprocal passion that might in time have
+brought him to her in chains.
+
+And now he was uncomfortable. He chafed against the confinement; he
+resented the food, the weather. Even Marie's content at her unusual
+leisure 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 curious
+thunderstorms of early Alpine winter.
+
+On the night of the second day the weather changed. Marie, awakening
+early, stepped out on to the balcony and closed the door carefully
+behind her. A new world lay beneath her, a marvel of glittering
+branches, of white plain far below; the snowy mane of the Raxalpe was
+become a garment. And from behind the villa came the cheerful sound of
+sleigh-bells, of horses' feet on crisp snow, of runners sliding easily
+along frozen roads. Even the barking of the dog in the next yard had
+ceased rumbling and become sharp staccato.
+
+The balcony extended round the corner of the house. Marie, eagerly
+discovering her new world, peered about, and seeing no one near ventured
+so far. The road was in view, and a small girl on ski was struggling to
+prevent a collision between two plump feet. Even as Marie saw her the
+inevitable happened and she went headlong into a drift. A governess who
+had been kneeling before a shrine by the road hastily crossed herself
+and ran to the rescue.
+
+It was a marvelous morning, a day of days. The governess and the child
+went on out of vision. Marie stood still, looking at the shrine. A drift
+had piled about its foot, where the governess had placed a bunch of
+Alpine flowers. Down on her knees on the balcony went the little
+Marie, regardless of the snow, and prayed to the shrine of the Virgin
+below--for what? For forgiveness? For a better life? Not at all. She
+prayed that the heels of the American girl would keep her in out of the
+snow.
+
+The prayer of the wicked availeth nothing; even the godly at times must
+suffer disappointment. And when one prays of heels, who can know of
+the yearning back of the praying? Marie, rising and dusting her chilled
+knees, saw the party of Americans on the road, clad in stout boots
+and swinging along gayly. Marie shrugged her shoulders resignedly. She
+should have gone to the shrine itself; a balcony was not a holy
+place. But one thing she determined--the Americans went toward the
+Sonnwendstein. She would advise against the Sonnwendstein for that day.
+
+Marie's day of days had begun wrong after all. For Stewart rose with the
+Sonnwendstein in his mind, and no suggestion of Marie's that in another
+day a path would be broken had any effect on him. He was eager to be
+off, 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 see
+if the balcony door was securely closed. At a little shop where they
+stopped to buy mountain sticks she must purchase postcards and send them
+at once. Stewart was fairly patient: air and exercise were having their
+effect.
+
+It was eleven o'clock when, having crossed the valley, they commenced to
+mount the slope of the Sonnwendstein. The climb was easy; the road wound
+back 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 her
+sit on a boulder and rest. The snow was not heavy; he showed her the
+footprints of a party that had gone ahead, and to amuse her tried
+to count the number of people. When he found it was five he grew
+thoughtful. There were five in Anita's party. Thanks to Marie's delays
+they met the Americans coming down. The meeting was a short one: the
+party 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 fallen
+spirits. What were the Vienna plain and the Styrian Alps to her, with
+this impatient and frowning man beside her consulting his watch and
+computing the time until he might see the American again? What was
+prayer, if this were its answer?
+
+They descended rapidly, Stewart always in the lead and setting a pace
+that Marie struggled in vain to meet. To her tentative and breathless
+remarks he made brief answer, and only once in all that time did he
+volunteer a remark. They had reached the Hotel Erzherzog in the valley.
+The hotel was still closed, and Marie, panting, sat down on an edge of
+the 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 sort
+could have been met with scorn or with threats; things had changed
+for Marie Jedlicka since the day Peter had refused to introduce her to
+Harmony. Then it had been vanity; now it was life itself.
+
+"What you mean," she said with pale lips, "is that we must not be seen
+together at all. Must I--do you wish me to remain a prisoner while
+you--" she choked.
+
+"For Heaven's sake," he broke out brutally, "don't make a scene. There
+are men cutting ice over there. Of course you are not a prisoner. You
+may go where you like."
+
+Marie rose and picked up her muff.
+
+Marie's sordid little tragedy played itself out in Semmering. Stewart
+neglected her almost completely; he took fewer and fewer meals at the
+villa. In two weeks he spent one evening with the girl, and was so
+irritable that she went to bed crying. The little mountain resort was
+filling up; there were more and more Americans. Christmas was drawing
+near and a dozen or so American doctors came up, bringing their families
+for the holidays. It was difficult to enter a shop without encountering
+some of them. To add to the difficulty, the party at the hotel, finding
+it crowded there, decided to go into a pension and suggested moving to
+the Waldheim.
+
+Stewart himself was wretchedly uncomfortable. Marie's tragedy was his
+predicament. He disliked himself very cordially, loathing himself and
+his situation with the new-born humility of the lover. For Stewart was
+in love for the first time in his life. Marie knew it. She had not lived
+with him for months without knowing his every thought, every mood. She
+grew bitter and hard those days, sitting alone by the green stove in
+the Pension Waldheim, or leaning, elbows on the rail, looking from the
+balcony over the valley far below. Bitter and hard, that is, during his
+absences; he had but to enter the room and her rage died, to be
+replaced with yearning and little, shy, tentative advances that he only
+tolerated. Wild thoughts came to Marie, especially at night, when the
+stars 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 that
+they go back to Vienna she openly scoffed.
+
+"Why?" she demanded. "That you may come back here to her, leaving me
+there?"
+
+"My dear girl," he flung back exasperated, "this affair was not a
+permanent one. You knew that at the start."
+
+"You have taken me away from my work. I have two months' vacation. It is
+but one month."
+
+"Go back and let me pay--"
+
+"No!"
+
+In pursuance of the plan to leave the hotel the American party came to
+see the Waldheim, and catastrophe almost ensued. Luckily Marie was on
+the balcony when the landlady flung open the door, and announced it as
+Stewart'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. Anita
+was beautiful, a bit of a coquette, too; as are most pretty women. And
+Stewart was not alone in his devotion. A member of the party, a New
+Yorker named Adam, was much in love with the girl and indifferent who
+knew it. Stewart detested him.
+
+In his despair Stewart wrote to Peter Byrne. It was characteristic of
+Peter that, however indifferent people might be in prosperity, they
+always 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 can
+see. I would like to chuck everything here and sail for home with these
+people who go in January. But, confound it, Byrne, what am I to do with
+Marie? 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 liked
+her, didn't you? You could talk her into reason if anybody could. Now
+that you know how things are, can't you come up over Sunday? It's asking
+a lot, and I know it; but things are pretty bad."
+
+Peter received the letter on the morning of the day before Christmas. He
+read it several times and, recalling the look he had seen more than once
+in 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 family
+festival not to be lightly ignored. He wired to Stewart that he would
+come up as soon as possible after Christmas. Then, because of the look
+in Marie's eyes and because he feared for her a sad Christmas, full of
+heartaches and God knows what loneliness, he bought her a most hideous
+brooch, which he thought admirable in every way and highly ornamental
+and which he could not afford at all. This he mailed, with a cheery
+greeting, and feeling happier and much poorer made his way homeward.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Christmas-Eve in the saloon of Maria Theresa! Christmas-Eve, with the
+great chandelier recklessly ablaze and a pig's head with cranberry eyes
+for supper! Christmas-Eve, with a two-foot tree gleaming with candles on
+the stand, and beside the stand, in a huge chair, Jimmy!
+
+It had been a busy day for Harmony. In the morning there had been
+shopping and marketing, and such a temptation to be reckless, with the
+shops full of ecstasies and the old flower women fairly overburdened.
+There had been anxieties, too, such as the pig's head, which must be
+done a certain way, and Jimmy, who must be left with the Portier's wife
+as nurse while all of them went to the hospital. The house revolved
+around Jimmy now, Jimmy, who seemed the better for the moving, and whose
+mother as yet had failed to materialize.
+
+In the afternoon Harmony played at the hospital. Peter took her as the
+early twilight was falling in through the gate where the sentry kept
+guard and so to the great courtyard. In this grim playground men
+wandered about, smoking their daily allowance of tobacco and moving to
+keep warm, offscourings of the barracks, derelicts of the slums, with
+here and there an honest citizen lamenting a Christmas away from home.
+The hospital was always pathetic to Harmony; on this Christmas-Eve she
+found it harrowing. Its very size shocked her, that there should be so
+much suffering, so much that was appalling, frightful, insupportable.
+Peter felt her quiver under his hand. A hospital in festivity is very
+affecting. It smiles through its tears. And in every assemblage there
+are sharply defined lines of difference. There are those who are going
+home soon, God willing; there are those who will go home some time after
+long days and longer nights. And there are those who will never go home
+and who know it. And because of this the ones who are never going home
+are most festively clad, as if, by way of compensation, the nurses
+mean to give them all future Christmasses in one. They receive an
+extra orange, or a pair of gloves, perhaps,--and they are not the less
+grateful because they understand. And when everything is over they lay
+away in the bedside stand the gloves they will never wear, and divide
+the 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 the
+children sang? So little, to sing like that! It made me think--of
+angels."
+
+Peter led Harmony across the courtyard, through many twisting corridors,
+and up and down more twisting staircases to the room where she was to
+play. There were many Christmas trees in the hospital that afternoon;
+no one hall could have held the thousands of patients, the doctors, the
+nurses. Sometimes a single ward had its own tree, its own entertainment.
+Occasionally two or three joined forces, preempted a lecture-room, and
+wheeled or hobbled or carried in their convalescents. In such case an
+imposing audience was the result.
+
+Into such a room Peter led Harmony. It was an amphitheater, the seats
+rising in tiers, half circle above half circle, to the dusk of the
+roof. In the pit stood the tree, candle-lighted. There was no other
+illumination in the room. The semi-darkness, the blazing tree, the
+rows of hopeful, hoping, hopeless, rising above, white faces over white
+gowns, the soft rustle of expectancy, the silence when the Dozent with
+the red beard stepped out and began to read an address--all caught
+Harmony by the throat. Peter, keenly alive to everything she did, felt
+rather than heard her soft sob.
+
+Peter saw the hospital anew that dark afternoon, saw it through
+Harmony's eyes. Layer after layer his professional callus fell away,
+leaving him quick again. He had lived so long close to the heart of
+humanity that he had reduced its throbbing to beats that might be
+counted. Now, once more, Peter was back in the early days, when a heart
+was not a pump, but a thing that ached or thrilled or struggled, that
+loved or hated or yearned.
+
+The orchestra, insisting on sadly sentimental music, was fast turning
+festivity into gloom. It played Handel's "Largo"; it threw its whole
+soul into the assurance that the world, after all, was only a poor
+place, that Heaven was a better. It preached resignation with every deep
+vibration of the cello. Harmony fidgeted.
+
+"How terrible!" she whispered. "To turn their Christmas-Eve into
+mourning! 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. Followed
+recitations, gifts, a speech of thanks from Nurse Elisabet for the
+patients. Then--Harmony.
+
+Harmony never remembered afterward what she had played. It was joyous,
+she knew, for the whole atmosphere changed. Laughter came; even the
+candles burned more cheerfully. When she had finished, a student in a
+white coat asked her to play a German Volkspiel, and roared it out to
+her accompaniment with much vigor and humor. The audience joined in, at
+first 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, and
+finding them dwelt there a moment. Then she began to play softly and as
+softly 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 in
+which his poverty was forgotten or mattered not at all. Visions of a
+Christmas-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, which
+had been Anna's, had been given up to him. Here, carefully tended, with
+a fire all day in the stove, Jimmy reigned from the bed. To him Harmony
+brought 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 the
+battles she and Peter fought at night over his treatment, frightful the
+litter of authorities Harmony put straight every morning.
+
+The extra expense was not much, but it told. Peter's carefully
+calculated expenditures felt the strain. He gave up a course in X-ray on
+which he had set his heart and cut off his hour in the coffee-house as
+a luxury. There was no hardship about the latter renunciation. Life for
+Peter was spelling itself very much in terms of Harmony and Jimmy those
+days. He resented anything that took him from them.
+
+There were anxieties of a different sort also. Anna's father was
+failing. He had written her a feeble, half-senile appeal to let bygones
+be bygones and come back to see him before he died. Anna was Peter's
+great prop. What would he do should she decide to go home? He had built
+his 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 marvelous
+adventure; Jimmy still watched for them, listened breathless, treasured
+them under his pillow. But he spoke less of his father. The open page of
+his childish mind was being written over with new impressions. "Dad" was
+already a memory; Peter and Harmony and Anna were realities. Sometimes
+he called Peter "Dad." At those times Peter caught the boy to him in an
+agony of tenderness.
+
+And as the little apartment revolved round Jimmy, so was this
+Christmas-Eve given up to him. All day he had stayed in bed for the
+privilege of an extra hour propped up among pillows in the salon. All
+day he had strung little red berries that looked like cranberries for
+the tree, or fastened threads to the tiny cakes that were for trimming
+only, and sternly forbidden to eat.
+
+A marvelous day that for Jimmy. Late in the afternoon the Portier, with
+a collar on, had mounted the stairs and sheepishly presented him with a
+pair of white mice in a wooden cage. Jimmy was thrilled. The cage was
+on his knees all evening, and one of the mice was clearly ill of a cake
+with pink icing. The Portier's gift was a stealthy one, while his wife
+was having coffee with her cousin, the brushmaker. But the spirit Of
+Christmas does strange things. That very evening, while the Portier was
+roistering in a beer hall preparatory to the midnight mass, came the
+Portier's wife, puffing from the stairs, and brought a puzzle book that
+only the initiated could open, and when one succeeded at last there was
+a picture of the Christ-Child within.
+
+Young McLean came to call that evening--came to call and remained to
+worship. It was the first time since Mrs. Boyer that a visitor had
+come. McLean, interested with everything and palpably not shocked, was
+a comforting caller. He seemed to Harmony, who had had bad moments since
+the day of Mrs. Boyer's visit, to put the hallmark of respectability on
+the 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 Jimmy
+to bed. The tree candles were burned out; Peter was extinguishing
+the dying remnants when Harmony came back. McLean was at the piano,
+thrumming softly. Peter, turning round suddenly, surprised an expression
+on 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 had
+never seen her in white before.
+
+It was Peter's way to sit back and listen: his steady eyes were always
+alert, good-humored, but he talked very little. That night he was
+unusually silent. He sat in the shadow away from the lamp and watched
+the two at the piano: McLean playing a bit of this or that, the girl
+bending 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 people
+are wealthy."
+
+Money, always money! Peter ground his teeth over his pipestem. Eminently
+it would be a good thing for Harmony, this nice boy in his well-made
+evening clothes, who spoke Harmony's own language of music, who was
+almost speechless over her playing, and who looked up at her with eyes
+in which admiration was not unmixed with adoration.
+
+Peter was restless. As the music went on he tiptoed out of the room and
+took to pacing up and down the little corridor. Each time as he passed
+the door he tried not to glance in; each time he paused involuntarily.
+Jealousy had her will of him that night, jealousy, when he had never
+acknowledged even to himself how much the girl was to him.
+
+Jimmy was restless. Usually Harmony's music put him to sleep; but that
+night he lay awake, even after Peter had closed all the doors. Peter
+came in and sat with him in the dark, going over now and then to cover
+him, or to give him a drink, or to pick up the cage of mice which Jimmy
+insisted on having beside him and which constantly slipped off on to the
+floor. After a time Peter lighted the night-light, a bit of wick on a
+cork 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 cage
+of mice, the box, the wooden sentry. The boy fell asleep. Peter sat in
+the 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 they
+stopped for very weariness. Anna had yawned herself off to bed. From
+Jimmy's room Peter could hear the soft hum of their voices.
+
+"You have been awfully good to me," McLean said as he finally rose to
+go. "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 has
+been no one for the piano. I have been lonely sometimes for some one to
+talk 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 be
+busy--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 as
+possible. Then he missed a glove, and it must be searched for in all
+the dark corners of the salon until found in his pocket. Even then he
+hesitated, 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 think
+of it? You and I meeting here in the center of Europe and both of us
+working our heads off for something that may never pan out."
+
+There was something reminiscent about that to Harmony. It was not until
+after young McLean had gone that she recalled. It was almost word for
+word what Peter had said to her in the coffee-house the night they met.
+She thought it very curious, the coincidence, and pondered it, being
+ignorant of the fact that it is always a matter for wonder when the
+man meets the woman, no matter where. Nothing is less curious, more
+inevitable, 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 shock
+came on Christmas-Day, after young McLean, now frankly infatuated, had
+been 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 back
+like rain off a roof. Finally Peter gathered up the fur-lined coat, the
+velours hat, gloves, and stick, and placed them on the piano in front of
+the younger man.
+
+"I'm sorry you must go," said Peter calmly, "but, as you say, Miss Wells
+is 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, went
+out. He brought a cablegram for Anna. Peter took it to her door and
+waited uneasily while she read it.
+
+It was an urgent summons home; the old father was very low. He was
+calling for her, and a few days or week' would see the end. There were
+things that must be looked after. The need of her was imperative.
+With the death the old man's pension would cease and Anna was the
+bread-winner.
+
+Anna held the paper out to Peter and sat down. Her nervous strength
+seemed to have deserted her. All at once she was a stricken, elderly
+woman, with hope wiped out of her face and something nearer resentment
+than 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 bad
+you could hardly get there in time, and--you must think of yourself a
+little, Anna."
+
+"I am not thinking of anything else. Peter, I'm an uncommonly selfish
+woman, but I--"
+
+Quite without warning she burst out crying, unlovely, audible weeping
+that shook her narrow shoulders. Harmony heard the sound and joined
+them. After a look at Anna she sat down beside her and put a white
+arm over her shoulders. She did not try to speak. Anna's noisy grief
+subsided as suddenly as it came. She patted Harmony's hand in mute
+acknowledgment and dried her eyes.
+
+"I'm not grieving, child," she said; "I'm only realizing what a selfish
+old 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 go
+at once. Peter must keep the apartment, having Jimmy to look after and
+to hide. What was a frightful dilemma to him and to Harmony Anna took
+rather lightly.
+
+"You'll find some one else to take my place," she said. "If I had a day
+I 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 of
+the two think of anything to urge beyond a situation she refused to
+see, or rather a situation she refused to acknowledge. She was not as
+comfortable as she pretended. During all that long night, while snow
+sifted down into the ugly yard and made it beautiful, while Jimmy slept
+and the white mice played, while Harmony tossed and tried to sleep and
+Peter sat in his cold room and smoked his pipe, Anna packed her untidy
+belongings and added a name now and then to a list that was meant
+for Peter, a list of possible substitutes for herself in the little
+household.
+
+She left early the next morning, a grim little person who bent over the
+sleeping boy hungrily, and insisted on carrying her own bag down the
+stairs. Harmony did not go to the station, but stayed at home, pale and
+silent, hovering around against Jimmy's awakening and struggling against
+a feeling of panic. Not that she feared Peter or herself. But she
+was conventional; shielded girls are accustomed to lean for a certain
+support on the proprieties, as bridgeplayers depend on rules.
+
+Peter came back to breakfast, but ate little. Harmony did not even sit
+down, but drank her cup of coffee standing, looking down at the snow
+below. 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. He
+pulled a chair out for her and she sat down. Now that they were face
+to face the tension was lessened. Peter laid Anna's list on the table
+between 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 about
+us? 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, but
+you'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 put
+up with me--"
+
+"Put up with you, when it is your apartment I use, your food I eat!" She
+almost 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's
+and hunt up some body. Just describe the person you desire and I'll find
+her." He assumed a certainty he was far from feeling, but it reassured
+the 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 the
+strict 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 of
+uneasiness. Before this Anna had shared his proprietorship with him. Now
+the little household was his. His vicarious domesticity pleased him. He
+strutted about, taking a new view of his domain; he tightened a doorknob
+and fastened a noisy window. He inspected the coal-supply and grumbled
+over its quality. He filled the copper kettle on the stove, carried
+in the water for Jimmy's morning bath, cleaned the mouse cage. He even
+insisted on peeling the little German potatoes, until Harmony cried
+aloud at his wastefulness and took the knife from him.
+
+And afterward, while Harmony in the sickroom read aloud and Jimmy put
+the wooden sentry into the cage to keep order, he got out his books and
+tried to study. But he did little work. His book lay on his knee, his
+pipe died beside him. The strangeness of the situation came over him,
+sitting there, and left him rather frightened. He tried to see it
+from the viewpoint of an outsider, and found himself incredulous and
+doubting. McLean would resent the situation. Even the Portier was a
+person to reckon with. The skepticism of the American colony was a thing
+to fear and avoid.
+
+And over all hung the incessant worry about money; he could just manage
+alone. He could not, by any method he knew of, stretch his resources
+to cover a separate arrangement for himself. But he had undertaken to
+shield 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 of
+Maria Theresa, with the cat of the Portier purring before the fire;
+brave thoughts, cool reason, with Harmony practicing scales very softly
+while Jimmy slept, and with Anna speeding through a white world, to the
+accompaniment of bitter meditation.
+
+Peter had meant to go to Semmering that day, but even the urgency of
+Marie's need faded before his own situation. He wired Stewart that he
+would come as soon as he could, and immediately after lunch departed for
+the club, Anna's list in his pocket, Harmony's requirements in mind. He
+paused 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. Wait
+until 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 he
+will come back this year?" wistfully.
+
+Peter dropped on his baggy knees beside the bed and drew the little
+wasted 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 little
+Georgiev, the Bulgarian, and they went on together. Peter managed to
+make out that Georgiev was studying English, and that he desired to know
+the state of health and the abode of the Fraulein Wells. Peter evaded
+the latter by the simple expedient of pretending not to understand. The
+little Bulgarian watched him earnestly, his smouldering eyes not without
+suspicion. There had been much talk in the Pension Schwarz about the
+departure together of the three Americans. The Jew from Galicia still
+raved 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 absolutely
+obtuse to the question nearest the little spy's heart.
+
+The club was almost deserted. The holidays had taken many of the members
+out of town. Other men were taking advantage of the vacation to see the
+city, or to make acquaintance again with families they had hardly seen
+during the busy weeks before Christmas. The room at the top of the
+stairs where the wives of the members were apt to meet for chocolate and
+to exchange the addresses of dressmakers was empty; in the reading room
+he found McLean. Although not a member, McLean was a sort of honorary
+habitue, being allowed the privilege of the club in exchange for a
+dependable willingness to play at entertainments of all sorts.
+
+It was in Peter's mind to enlist McLean's assistance in his
+difficulties. McLean knew a good many people. He was popular,
+goodlooking, and in a colony where, unlike London and Paris, the great
+majority were people of moderate means, he was conspicuously well
+off. But he was also much younger than Peter and intolerant with the
+insolence of youth. Peter was thinking hard as he took off his overcoat
+and ordered beer.
+
+The boy was in love with Harmony already; Peter had seen that, as he
+saw many things. How far his love might carry him, Peter had no idea. It
+seemed to him, as he sat across the reading-table and studied him over
+his magazine, that McLean would resent bitterly the girl's position, and
+that when he learned it a crisis might be precipitated.
+
+One of three things might happen: He might bend all his energies to
+second Peter's effort to fill Anna's place, to find the right person; he
+might suggest taking Anna's place himself, and insist that his presence
+in the apartment would be as justifiable as Peter's; or he might do at
+once the thing Peter felt he would do eventually, cut the knot of
+the difficulty by asking Harmony to marry him. Peter, greeting him
+pleasantly, decided not to tell him anything, to keep him away if
+possible until the thing was straightened out, and to wait for an hour
+at the club in the hope that a solution might stroll in for chocolate
+and gossip.
+
+In any event explanation to McLean would have required justification.
+Peter disliked the idea. He could humble himself, if necessary, to a
+woman; he could admit his asininity in assuming the responsibility of
+Jimmy, for instance, and any woman worthy of the name, or worthy of
+living in the house with Harmony, would understand. But McLean was
+young, intolerant. He was more than that, though Peter, concealing from
+himself just what Harmony meant to him, would not have admitted a rival
+for what he had never claimed. But a rival the boy was. Peter, calmly
+reading a magazine and drinking his Munich beer, was in the grip of the
+fiercest jealousy. He turned pages automatically, to recall nothing of
+what he had read.
+
+McLean, sitting across from him, watched him surreptitiously. Big Peter,
+aggressively masculine, heavy of shoulder, direct of speech and eye, was
+to 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, was
+young enough to glory in it. Shameless love is always young; with years
+comes discretion, perhaps loss of confidence. The Crusaders were youths,
+pursuing an idea to the ends of the earth and flaunting a lady's
+guerdon from spear or saddle-bow. The older men among them tucked the
+handkerchief or bit of a gauntleted glove under jerkin and armor near
+the heart, and flung to the air the guerdon of some light o' love.
+McLean would have shouted Harmony's name from the housetops. Peter did
+not acknowledge even to himself that he was in love with her.
+
+It occurred to McLean after a time that Peter being in the club, and
+Harmony being in all probability at home, it might be possible to see
+her alone for a few minutes. He had not intended to go back to the house
+in the Siebensternstrasse so soon after being peremptorily put out; he
+had come to the club with the intention of clinching his resolution with
+a game of cribbage. But fate was playing into his hands. There was no
+cribbage player round, and Peter himself sat across deeply immersed in a
+magazine. McLean rose, not stealthily, but without unnecessary noise.
+
+So far so good. Peter turned a page and went on reading. McLean
+sauntered to a window, hands in pockets. He even whistled a trifle,
+under his breath, to prove how very casual were his intentions. Still
+whistling, he moved toward the door. Peter turned another page, which
+was curiously soon to have read two columns of small type without
+illustrations.
+
+Once out in the hall McLean's movements gained aim and precision. He got
+his coat, hat and stick, flung the first over his arm and the second on
+his head, and--
+
+"Going out?" asked Peter calmly.
+
+"Yes, nothing to do here. I've read all the infernal old magazines until
+I'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 the
+boy's eye. It was a swift exchange of glances, but illuminating--Peter's
+whimsical, but with a sort of grim determination; McLean's sheepish, but
+equally determined.
+
+"Rotten afternoon," said McLean as they started for the stairs. "Half
+rain, half snow. Streets are ankle-deep."
+
+"I'm not particularly keen about walking, but--I don't care for this
+tomb alone."
+
+Nothing was further from McLean's mind than a walk with Peter that
+afternoon. 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 was
+nothing to do."
+
+Things went very well for Peter that afternoon--up to a certain point.
+He beat McLean unmercifully, playing with cold deliberation. McLean
+wearied, fidgeted, railed at his luck. Peter played on grimly.
+
+The club filled up toward the coffee-hour. Two or three women, wives of
+members, a young girl to whom McLean had been rather attentive before
+he 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's
+requirements. Dr. Jennings seemed to fit them all, a woman, not young,
+not too stout, agreeable and human. She was a large, almost bovinely
+placid person, not at all reminiscent of Anna. She was neat where Anna
+had been disorderly, well dressed and breezy against Anna's dowdiness
+and sharpness. Peter, having totaled the score, rose and looked down at
+McLean.
+
+"You're a nice lad," he said, smiling. "Sometime I shall teach you the
+game."
+
+"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 statement
+was false, but the boy was spared that knowledge for the moment.
+
+Things went well. Dr. Jennings was badly off for quarters. She would
+make a change if she could better herself. Peter drew her off to a
+corner and stated his case. She listened attentively, albeit not without
+disapproval.
+
+She frankly discredited the altruism of Peter's motives when he told
+her about Harmony. But as the recital went on she found herself rather
+touched. The story of Jimmy appealed to her. She scolded and lauded
+Peter in one breath, and what was more to the point, she promised to
+visit 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's
+myocarditis. She's afraid to be left with him."
+
+"Is she quite alone?"
+
+"Absolutely, and without funds, except enough for her lessons. Our
+arrangement was that she should keep the house going; that was her
+share."
+
+Dr. Jennings was impressed. It was impossible to talk to Peter and not
+believe him. Women trusted Peter always.
+
+"You've been very foolish, Dr. Byrne," she said as she rose; "but you've
+been 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 opened
+badly. 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 she
+prepared the Christmas breakfast. After that, however, things happened.
+
+In the first place, under her plate she had found a frivolous chain and
+pendant which she had admired. And when her eyes filled up, as they did
+whenever she was emotionally moved, the doctor had come round the table
+and put both his arms about her.
+
+"Too young for you? Not a bit!" he said heartily. "You're better-looking
+then you ever were, Jennie; and if you weren't you're the only woman for
+me, anyhow. Don't you think I realize what this exile means to you and
+that 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 out
+to-morrow and buy something you like--not that I don't like you in
+anything or without--"
+
+"Frank!"
+
+"Be happy, that's the thing. It's the first Christmas without the
+family, and I miss them too. But we're together, dear. That's the big
+thing. Merry Christmas."
+
+An auspicious opening, that, to Christmas-Day. And they had carried
+out the program as outlined. Mrs. Boyer had enjoyed it, albeit a bit
+horrified at the Christmas gayety at the Tabarin.
+
+The next morning, however, she awakened with a keen reaction. Her head
+ached. She had a sense of taint over her. She was virtue rampant
+again, as on the day she had first visited the old lodge in the
+Siebensternstrasse.
+
+It is hardly astonishing that by association of ideas Harmony came
+into her mind again, a brand that might even yet be snatched from the
+burning. She had been a bit hasty before, she admitted to herself. There
+was a woman doctor named Gates, although her address at the club was
+given as Pension Schwarz. She determined to do her shopping early and
+then to visit the house in the Siebensternstrasse. She was not a hard
+woman, for all her inflexible morality, and more than once she had
+had an uneasy memory of Harmony's bewildered, almost stricken face
+the afternoon of her visit. She had been a watchful mother over a not
+particularly handsome family of daughters. This lovely young girl needed
+mothering and she had refused it. She would go back, and if she found
+she had been wrong and the girl was deserving and honest, she would see
+what 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 nothing
+that she cared for after all. The garments that looked chic in the
+windows or on manikins in the shops, were absurd on her. Her insistent
+bosom bulged, straight lines became curves or tortuous zigzags, plackets
+gaped, collars choked her or shocked her by their absence. In the mirror
+of Marie Jedlicka, clad in familiar garments that had accommodated
+themselves to the idiosyncrasies of her figure, Mrs. Boyer was a plump,
+rather comely matron. Here before the plate glass of the modiste, under
+the glare of a hundred lights, side by side with a slim Austrian girl
+who 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 absurdity
+physically, fell back for comfort on her soul. She had been a good wife
+and mother; she was chaste, righteous. God had been cruel to her in the
+flesh, but He had given her the spirit.
+
+"Madame wishes not the gown? It is beautiful--see the embroidery! And
+the neck may be filled with chiffon."
+
+"Young woman," she said grimly, "I see the embroidery; and the neck
+may be filled with chiffon, but not for me! And when you have had five
+children, 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 her
+self-esteem, her pride in tatters, she took her way to the old lodge and
+climbed the stairs.
+
+She found a condition of mild excitement. Jimmy had slept long after his
+bath. Harmony practiced, cut up a chicken for broth, aired blankets for
+the chair into which Peter on his return was to lift the boy.
+
+She was called to inspect the mouse-cage, which, according to Jimmy, had
+strawberries in it.
+
+"Far back," he explained. "There in the cotton, Harry."
+
+But it was not strawberries. Harmony opened the cage and very tenderly
+took out the cotton nest. Eight tiny pink baby mice, clean washed by the
+mother, 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's
+delicate explanation that this was unnecessary, life took on a new
+meaning for Jimmy. He watched the mother lest she slight one. His
+responsibility 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 be
+his little boy. You never happened to see any babies when you were out
+walking, 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 on
+her.
+
+"You could lay it here on the bed," he offered, "and I'd watch it. When
+they yell you let 'em suck your finger. I knew a woman once that had a
+baby and she did that. And it could watch Isabella." Isabella was the
+mother mouse. "And when I'm better I could take it walking."
+
+"That," said Harmony gravely, "is mighty fine of you, Jimmy boy. I--I'll
+think 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 a
+secret? 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 flower
+into reality. Thus Peter had shamelessly promised him a visit to the
+circus when he was able to go, Harmony not to be told until the tickets
+were bought. Anna had similarly promised to send him from America a
+pitcher's glove and a baseball bat. To this list of futurities he now
+added Harmony's baby.
+
+Harmony brought in her violin and played softly to him, not to disturb
+the sleeping mice. She sang, too, a verse that the Big Soprano had been
+fond of and that Jimmy loved. Not much of a voice was Harmony's, but
+sweet 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 had
+snagged her skirt on a nail in the old gate, and although that very
+morning she had detested the suit, her round of shopping had again
+endeared it to her. She told the Portier in English what she thought
+of him, and climbed ponderously, pausing at each landing to examine the
+damage.
+
+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 wretched
+if her hat were of last year's fashion, anxious to be inconspicuous by
+doing 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 met
+at the master's house had yellowed fingers and smoked in the anteroom;
+the Big Soprano had smoked; Anna and Scatchy had smoked; in the
+coffee-houses milliners' apprentices produced little silver mouth-pieces
+to prevent soiling their pretty lips and smoked endlessly. Even Peter
+had 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 had
+smoked together and it had looked comradely. Perhaps, without reasoning
+it out, Harmony was experimenting toward the end of establishing her
+relations with Peter still further on friendly and comradely grounds.
+Two men might smoke together; a man and a woman might smoke together
+as friends. According to Harmony's ideas, a girl paring potatoes might
+inspire 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. She
+smoked very hard, so that she stood in the center of a gray nimbus. She
+hated it, but she persisted. Perhaps it grew on one; perhaps, also,
+if she walked about it would choke her less. She practiced holding the
+thing between her first and second fingers, and found that easier than
+smoking. Then she went to the salon where there was more air, and tried
+exhaling through her nose. It made her sneeze.
+
+On the sneeze came Mrs. Boyer's ring. Harmony thought very fast. It
+might be the bread or the milk, but again--She flung the cigarette into
+the stove, shut the door, and answered the bell.
+
+Mrs. Boyer's greeting was colder than she had intended. It put Harmony
+on the defensive at once, made her uncomfortable. Like all the innocent
+falsely 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 the
+cigarette. 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 bring
+Dr. 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 in
+Harmony's mind to explain the situation, to show Jimmy to Mrs. Boyer,
+to throw herself on the older woman's sympathy, to ask advice. But
+the 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 had
+had a cup of tea, and Harmony, sitting on a stool, had mended the rent
+so that it could hardly be seen. Mrs. Boyer, softened by the tea and by
+the proximity of Harmony's lovely head bent over her task, grew slightly
+more expansive.
+
+"I ought to tell you something, Miss Wells," she said. "You remember my
+other visit?"
+
+"Perfectly." Harmony bent still lower.
+
+"I did you an injustice at that time. I've been sorry ever since. I
+thought that there was no Dr. Gates. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to
+deny it. People do things in this wicked city that they wouldn't do at
+home. 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 has
+been smoking cigarettes in this room? There is one still burning in that
+stove!"
+
+Harmony's hand was forced. She was white as she cut the brown-silk
+thread 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. It
+is really about Peter. Mrs. Boyer, will you come very quietly across the
+hall?"
+
+Mrs. Boyer, expecting Heaven knows what, rose with celerity. Harmony
+led the way to Jimmy's door and opened it. He was still asleep, a wasted
+small figure on the narrow bed. Beside him the mice frolicked in their
+cage, the sentry kept guard over Peter's shameless letters from the
+Tyrol, the strawberry babies wriggled in their cotton.
+
+"We are not going to have him very long," said Harmony softly. "Peter is
+making him happy for a little while."
+
+Back in the salon of Maria Theresa she told the whole story. Mrs. Boyer
+found it very affecting. Harmony sat beside her on a stool and she kept
+her hand on the girl's shoulder. When the narrative reached Anna's
+going away, however, she took it away. From that point on she sat
+uncompromisingly rigid and listened.
+
+"Then you mean to say," she exploded when Harmony had finished, "that
+you 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 three
+people now on what is starvation for one?"
+
+"Then he's a fool!" Mrs. Boyer rose in majesty. "I'm not going to leave
+you here."
+
+"I'm sorry. You must see--"
+
+"I see nothing but a girl deliberately putting herself in a compromising
+portion and worse."
+
+"Mrs. Boyer!"
+
+"Get your things on. I guess Dr. Boyer and I can look after you until we
+can send you home."
+
+"I am not going home--yet," said poor Harmony, biting her lip to steady
+it.
+
+Back and forth waged the battle, Mrs. Boyer assailing, Harmony offering
+little defense but standing firm on her refusal to go as long as Peter
+would let her remain.
+
+"It means so much to me," she ventured, goaded. "And I earn my lodging
+and board. I work hard and--I make him comfortable. It costs him very
+little and I give him something in exchange. All men are not alike. If
+the sort you have known are--are different--"
+
+This was unfortunate. Mrs. Boyer stiffened. She ceased offensive
+tactics, and retired grimly into the dignity of her high calling of
+virtuous wife and mother. She washed her hands of Harmony and Peter. She
+tied on her veil with shaking hands, and prepared to leave Harmony to
+her 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 save
+myself 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 who
+try to save us from ourselves."
+
+Unluckily for Harmony, one of Anna's specious arguments must pop into
+her head at that instant and demand expression.
+
+"People are living their own lives these days, Mrs. Boyer; old standards
+have gone. It is what one's conscience condemns that is wrong, isn't
+it? Not merely breaking laws that were made to fit the average, not the
+exception."
+
+Anna! Anna!
+
+Mrs. Boyer flung up her hands.
+
+"You are impossible!" she snapped. "After all, I believe it is Peter who
+needs 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 if
+you really expect to find a respectable woman to chaperon YOU, keep your
+views to yourself."
+
+Harmony, a bruised and wounded thing, crept into Jimmy's room and sank
+on her knees beside the bed. One small hand lay on the coverlet; she
+dared not touch it for fear of waking him--but she laid her cheek close
+to it for comfort. When Peter came in, much later, he found the boy wide
+awake and Harmony asleep, a crumpled heap beside the bed.
+
+"I think she's been crying," Jimmy whispered. "She's been sobbing in her
+sleep. And strike a match, Peter; there may be more mice."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Mrs. Boyer, bursting with indignation, went to the Doctors' Club. It was
+typical of the way things were going with Peter that Dr. Boyer was not
+there, and that the only woman in the clubrooms should be Dr. Jennings.
+Young McLean was in the reading room, eating his heart out with jealousy
+of Peter, vacillating between the desire to see Harmony that night and
+fear 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 a
+magazine, and was sitting with it open before him. Very deeply and
+really in love was McLean that afternoon, and the Fraulein Engel and
+Harmony were not unlike. The double doors between the reading room and
+the reception room adjoining were open. McLean, lost in a rosy future in
+which he and Harmony sat together for indefinite periods, with no Peter
+to scowl over his books at them, a future in which life was one long
+piano-violin duo, with the candles in the chandelier going out one by
+one, leaving them at last alone in scented darkness together--McLean
+heard nothing until the mention of the Siebensternstrasse roused him.
+
+After that he listened. He heard that Dr. Jennings was contemplating
+taking Anna's place at the lodge, and he comprehended after a moment
+that Anna was already gone. Even then the significance of the situation
+was a little time in dawning on him. When it did, however, he rose with
+a stifled oath.
+
+Mrs. Boyer was speaking.
+
+"It is exactly as I tell you," she was saying. "If Peter Byrne is trying
+to protect her reputation he is late doing it. Personally I have been
+there twice. I never saw Anna Gates. And she is registered here at the
+club as living in the Pension Schwarz. Whatever the facts may be, one
+thing remains, she is not there now."
+
+McLean waited to hear no more. He was beside himself with rage. He found
+a "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 of
+protests from its frantic passenger.
+
+The boy was white-lipped with wrath and fear. Peter's silence that
+afternoon as to the state of affairs loomed large and significant. He
+had thought once or twice that Peter was in love with Harmony; he knew
+it now in the clearer vision of the moment. He recalled things that
+maddened him: the dozen intimacies of the little menage, the caress
+in Peter's voice when he spoke to the girl, Peter's steady eyes in the
+semi-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 for
+half an hour, perhaps, but Peter would walk. If he could only see the
+girl 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. Peter
+was 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. It
+was barely twilight outside, but the staircase well was dark. At the
+upper landing he was compelled to fumble for the bell.
+
+Peter admitted him. The corridor was unlighted, but from the salon came
+a 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 bell
+rang, had anticipated it when Harmony told him of Mrs. Boyer's visit. In
+the second between the peal of the bell and his opening the door he had
+decided what to do.
+
+"Come in."
+
+McLean stepped inside. He was smaller than Peter, not so much shorter as
+slenderer. 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 stood
+just 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 see
+me 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 me
+this 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 can
+under the circumstances."
+
+"Then your best is pretty bad."
+
+"Perhaps. If you would try to remember the circumstances, McLean,--that
+the girl has no place else to go, practically no money, and that I--"
+
+"I remember one circumstance, that you are living here alone with her
+and 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's
+safe with me. When I say that I mean it. She will not go away from
+here with you or with any one else if I can prevent it. And if you care
+enough about her to try to keep her happy you'll not let her know you
+have been here. I've got a woman coming to take Anna's place. That ought
+to satisfy you."
+
+"Dr. Jennings?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She'll not come. Mrs. Boyer has been talking to her. Inside of an hour
+the whole club will have it--every American in Vienna will know about it
+in 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 McLean
+came; had had to stand by, wordless, and see Harmony trying to smile,
+see her dragging about, languid and white, see her tragic attempts
+to greet him on the old familiar footing. Through it all he had been
+sustained by the thought that a day or two days would see the old
+footing reestablished, another woman in the house, life again worth the
+living and Harmony smiling up frankly into his eyes. Now this hope had
+departed.
+
+"You can't keep me from seeing her, you know," McLean persisted. "I've
+got 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 boy
+wouldn't that be best for her? What had he to offer against that? He
+couldn't marry. He could only offer her shelter, against everything
+else. Even then he did not dislike McLean. He was a man, every slender
+inch of him, this boy musician. Peter's heart sank, but he put down his
+pipe and turned to the door.
+
+"I'll call her," he said. "But, since this concerns me very vitally, I
+should like to be here while you put the thing to her. After that if you
+like--"
+
+He called Harmony. She had given Jimmy his supper and was carrying out a
+tray 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 one
+wishes to speak to you."
+
+"To me?"
+
+"Yes. Harry, do you remember that evening in the kitchen when--Do you
+recall 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 tray
+to the kitchen. He had no desire to play watchdog over the girl, he told
+himself savagely; only to keep himself straight with her and to save
+her from McLean's impetuosity. He even waited in the kitchen to fill and
+light 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. So
+entirely did the girl fill his existence that he forgot, or did not care
+to remember, how short a time he had known her. As Harmony she dominated
+his life and his thoughts; as Harmony he addressed her when, rather
+startled, 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't
+you see that?"
+
+"I think it is rather silly to talk of appearance when there is no one
+to 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 in
+this position?"
+
+"I am one of Peter's idiocies."
+
+Peter entered on that. He took in the situation with a glance, and
+Harmony turned to him; but if she had expected Peter to support her, she
+was 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 the
+windows, looking out, a passive participant in the scene.
+
+The day had been a trying one for Harmony. What she chose to consider
+Peter's defection was a fresh stab. She glanced from McLean, flushed and
+excited, to Peter's impassive back. Then she sat down, rather limp, and
+threw out her hands helplessly.
+
+"What am I to do?" she demanded. "Every one comes with cruel things to
+say, 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. After
+that--"
+
+"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 expected
+to tell you so soon, or before a third person." He faltered before
+Harmony's eyes, full of bewilderment. "I'd be very happy if you--if you
+could see it that way. I care a great deal, you see."
+
+It seemed hours to Peter before she made any reply, and that her voice
+came from miles away.
+
+"Is it really as bad as that?" she asked. "Have I made such a mess of
+things that some one, either you or Peter, must marry me to straighten
+things 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 his
+voice, relief and also something of exultation. "McLean, you mean well,
+but marriage isn't the solution. We were getting along all right until
+our friends stepped in. Let Mrs. Boyer howl all over the colony; there
+will be one sensible woman somewhere to come and be comfortable here
+with us. In the interval we'll manage, unless Harmony is afraid. In that
+case--"
+
+"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 not
+afraid 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, would
+have pleaded with her, would have made less of a situation that roused
+her resentment and more of his love for her. He was very hard hit, very
+young. He was almost hysterical with rage and helplessness; he wanted
+to slap her, to take her in his arms. He writhed under the restraint of
+Peter'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 know
+better; she isn't. And don't look so damned superior. You're human, like
+the rest of us. And if any harm comes to her--"
+
+Here unexpectedly Peter held out his hand, and after a sheepish moment
+McLean 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 knew
+what 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 took
+Peter'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. "But
+you 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 for
+him, poor lad! He turned and went blindly out the door and down the dark
+stone staircase. It was rather anticlimax, after all that, to have Peter
+discover he had gone without his hat and toss it down to him a flight
+below.
+
+All the frankness had gone out of the relationship between Harmony and
+Peter. They made painful efforts at ease, talked during the meal of
+careful abstractions, such as Jimmy, and Peter's proposed trip to
+Semmering, avoided each other's eyes, ate little or nothing. Once when
+Harmony passed Peter his coffee-cup their fingers touched, and between
+them 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 from
+Semmering, urging Peter to come. He would be away for two days. In two
+days much might happen; Dr. Jennings might come or some one else. In two
+days some of the restraint would have worn off. Things would never be
+the same, but they would be forty-eight hours better.
+
+Peter spent the early part of the evening with Jimmy, reading aloud to
+him. After the child had dropped to sleep he packed a valise for the
+next day's journey and counted out into an envelope half of the money he
+had with him. This he labeled "Household Expenses" and set it up on
+his table, leaning against his collar-box. There was no sign of Harmony
+about. The salon was dark except for the study lamp turned down.
+
+Peter was restless. He put on his shabby dressing-gown and worn slippers
+and wandered about. The Portier had brought coal to the landing; Peter
+carried it in. He inspected the medicine bottles on Jimmy's stand
+and wrote full directions for every emergency he could imagine. Then,
+finding it still only nine o'clock, he turned up the lamp in the salon
+and 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 and
+carried down into the fold and the arms of the shepherd. And because
+he stood so in loco parentis, and because it seemed so inevitable that
+before 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 too
+steady as he folded up the letter.
+
+The fire was dead in the stove; Peter put out the salon lamp and closed
+the shutters. In the warm darkness he put out his hand to feel his way
+through the room. It touched a little sweater coat of Harmony's, hanging
+over the back of a chair. Peter picked it up in a very passion of
+tenderness 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 find
+that the mere unexpected touch of a familiar garment could rouse such a
+storm in him. It made him pause. He put down the coat and pulled himself
+up sharply. McLean was right; he was only human stuff, very poor human
+stuff. He put the little coat down hastily, only to lift it again gently
+to his lips.
+
+"Good-night, dear," he whispered. "Goodnight, Harmony."
+
+Frau Schwarz had had two visitors between the hours of coffee and
+supper that day. The reason of their call proved to be neither rooms nor
+pension. They came to make inquiries.
+
+The Frau Schwarz made this out at last, and sat down on the edge of
+the bed in the room that had once been Peter's and that still lacked an
+occupant.
+
+Mrs. Boyer had no German; Dr. Jennings very little and that chiefly
+medical. There is, however, a sort of code that answers instead of
+language frequently, when two or three women of later middle life
+are gathered together, a code born of mutual understanding, mutual
+disillusion, mutual distrust, a language of outspread hands, raised
+eyebrows, portentous shakings of the head. Frau Schwarz, on the edge of
+Peter's tub-shaped bed, needed no English to convey the fact that Peter
+was 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 eyes
+of a saint! The little Georgiev was mad for her. When the three of them
+left, disgraced, as one may say, he came to me, he threatened me. The
+Herr Schwarz, God rest his soul, was a violent man, but never spoke he
+so to me!"
+
+"She says," interpreted Dr. Jennings, "that they were a bad lot--that
+the younger one made eyes at the Herr Schwarz!"
+
+Mrs. Boyer drew her ancient sables about her and put a tremulous hand on
+the other woman's arm.
+
+"What an escape for you!" she said. "If you had gone there to live and
+then 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 in
+their own country, where the water, I have learned, comes hot from the
+earth."
+
+Olga, bending forward, opened the door a crack wider.
+
+"Sh! They do not come for rooms. They inquire for the Herr Doktor Byrne
+and the others!"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Of a certainty."
+
+"Then let me to the door!"
+
+"A moment. She tells them everything and more. She says--how she is
+wicked, Katrina! She says the Fraulein Harmony was not good, that she
+sent them all away. Here, take the door!"
+
+Thus it happened that Dr. Jennings and Mrs. Boyer, having shaken off the
+dust of a pension that had once harbored three malefactors, and having
+retired Peter and Anna and Harmony into the limbo of things best
+forgotten or ignored, found themselves, at the corner, confronted by a
+slovenly girl in heelless slippers and wearing a knitted shawl over her
+head. "The Frau Schwarz is wrong," cried Olga passionately in Vienna
+dialect. "They were good, all of them!"
+
+"What in the world--"
+
+"And, please, tell me where lives the Fraulein Harmony. The Herr
+Georgiev 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 to
+be told. She burst into a despairing appeal in which the Herr Georgiev,
+Peter, a necktie Peter had forgotten, open windows, and hot water were
+inextricably confused. Dr. Jennings listened, then waved her back with a
+gesture.
+
+"She says," she interpreted as they walked on, "that Dr. Peter--by which
+I suppose she means Dr. Byrne--has left a necktie, and that she'll be in
+hot 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 and
+without breakfast. He went in to cover Jimmy, lying diagonally across
+his small bed amid a riot of tossed blankets. The communicating door
+into 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 and
+listen, and find only silence.
+
+He tore himself away at last, closing the outer door carefully behind
+him and lighting a match to find his way down the staircase. The Portier
+was not awake. Peter had to rouse him, and to stand by while he donned
+the trousers which he deemed necessary to the dignity of his position
+before he opened the street door.
+
+Reluctant as he had been to go, the change was good for Peter. The dawn
+grew rosy, promised sunshine, fulfilled its promise. The hurrying crowds
+at the depot interested him: he enjoyed his coffee, taken from a bare
+table in the station. The horizontal morning sunlight, shining in
+through marvelously clean windows, warmed the marble of the floor, made
+black shadows beside the heaps of hand luggage everywhere, turned into
+gold the hair of a toddling baby venturing on a tour of discovery. The
+same morning light, alas! revealed to Peter a break across the toe of
+one of his shoes. Peter sighed, then smiled. The baby was catching at
+the bits of dust that floated in the sunshine.
+
+Suddenly a great wave of happiness overwhelmed Peter. It was a passing
+thing, born of nothing, but for the instant that it lasted Peter was a
+king. Everything was well. The world was his oyster. Life was his,
+to make it what he would--youth and hope and joy. Under the beatific
+influence he expanded, grew, almost shone. Youth and hope and joy--that
+cometh 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. He
+hunted out a beggar he had passed and gave him five Hellers. He helped a
+suspicious old lady with an oilcloth-covered bundle; he called the guard
+on the train "son" and forced a grin out of that dignitary.
+
+Peter traveled third-class, which was quite comfortable, and no bother
+about "Nicht Rauchen" signs. His unreasonable cheerfulness persisted as
+far as Gloggnitz. There, with the increasing ruggedness of the scenery
+and his first view of the Raxalpe, came recollection of the urgency of
+Stewart's last message, of Marie Jedlicka, of the sordid little tragedy
+that awaited him at the end of his journey.
+
+Peter sobered. Life was rather a mess, after all, he reflected. Love
+was a blessing, but it was also a curse. After that he sat back in
+his corner and let the mountain scenery take care of itself, while he
+recalled the look he had surprised once or twice in Marie's eyes when
+she looked at Stewart. It was sad, pitiful. Marie was a clever little
+thing. If only she'd had a chance!--Why wasn't he rich enough to help
+the ones who needed help. Marie could start again in America, with no
+one the wiser, and make her way.
+
+"Smart as the devil, these Austrian girls!" Peter reflected. "Poor
+little guttersnipe!"
+
+The weather was beautiful. The sleet of the previous day in Vienna had
+been a deep snowfall on the mountains. The Schwarza was frozen, the
+castle of Liechtenstein was gray against a white world. A little
+pilgrimage church far below seemed snowed in against the faithful. The
+third-class compartment filled with noisy skiing parties. The old woman
+opened her oilcloth bundle, and taking a cat out of a box inside fed it
+a sausage.
+
+Up and up, past the Weinzettelwand and the Station Breitenstein, across
+the 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, was
+very vague, indeed, as to just what that errand might be. He was stiff
+and rather cold. Also he thought the cat might stifle in the oilcloth,
+but the old woman too clearly distrusted him to make it possible
+to interfere. Anyhow, he did not know the German for either cat or
+oilcloth.
+
+He had wired Stewart; but the latter was not at the station. This made
+him vaguely uneasy, he hardly knew why. He did not know Stewart well
+enough to know whether he was punctilious in such matters or not: as a
+matter of fact he hardly knew him at all. It was because he had appealed
+to him that Peter was there, it being only necessary to Peter to be
+needed, and he was anywhere.
+
+The Pension Waldheim was well up the mountains. He shouldered his valise
+and started up--first long flights of steps through the pines, then a
+steep road. Peter climbed easily. Here and there he met groups coming
+down, men that he thought probably American, pretty women in "tams" and
+sweaters. He watched for Marie, but there was no sign of her.
+
+He was half an hour, perhaps, in reaching the Waldheim. As he turned
+in at the gate he noticed a sledge, with a dozen people following it,
+coming toward him. It was a singularly silent party. Peter, with his
+hand 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 he
+saw Stewart, limp and unconscious, lifted out of the straw and carried
+toward him.
+
+Suicide may be moral cowardice; but it requires physical bravery.
+And Marie was not brave. The balcony had attracted her: it opened
+possibilities of escape, of unceasing regret and repentance for Stewart,
+of publicity that would mean an end to the situation. But every inch of
+her 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 tree
+tops, to be dropped from branch to branch, a broken thing, and perhaps
+even not yet dead--that was the unthinkable thing, to live for a time
+and suffer!
+
+Stewart was not ignorant of all that went on in her mind. She had
+threatened him with the balcony, just as, earlier in the winter, it had
+been a window-ledge with which she had frightened him. But there was
+this difference, whereas before he had drawn her back from the window
+and clapped her into sanity, now he let her alone. At the end of one of
+their quarrels she had flung out on to the balcony, and then had watched
+him through the opening in the shutter. He had lighted a cigarette!
+
+Stewart spent every daylight hour at the hotel, or walking over the
+mountain roads, seldom alone with Anita, but always near her. He left
+Marie sulking or sewing, as the case might be. He returned in the
+evening to find her still sulking, still sewing.
+
+But Marie did not sulk all day, or sew. She too was out, never far from
+Stewart, always watching. Many times she escaped discovery only by a
+miracle, as when she stooped behind an oxcart, pretending to tie her
+shoe, or once when they all met face to face, and although she lowered
+her veil Stewart must have known her instantly had he not been so intent
+on helping Anita over a slippery gutter.
+
+She planned a dozen forms of revenge and found them impossible of
+execution. Stewart himself was frightfully unhappy. For the first
+time in his life he was really in love, with all the humility of the
+condition. There were days when he would not touch Anita's hand, when
+he hardly spoke, when the girl herself would have been outraged at
+his conduct had she not now and then caught him watching her, seen the
+wretchedness in his eyes.
+
+The form of Marie's revenge was unpremeditated, after all. The light
+mountain snow was augmented by a storm; roads were ploughed through
+early in the morning, leaving great banks on either side. Sleigh-bells
+were everywhere. Coasting parties made the steep roads a menace to
+the pedestrian; every up-climbing sleigh carried behind it a string of
+sleds, 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 straightaway
+dashes through the woodland. Two miles, perhaps three, it wound its
+tortuous 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 the
+slide, interfered.
+
+The track was crowded. Every minute a sled set out, sped down the
+straightaway, dipped, turned, disappeared. A dozen would be lined up,
+waiting for the interval and the signal. And here, watching from the
+porch of the church, in the very shadow of the saints, Marie found her
+revenge.
+
+Stewart had given her a little wrist watch. Stewart and Anita
+were twelfth in line. By the watch, then, twelve minutes down the
+mountain-side, straight down through the trees to a curve that Marie
+knew well, a bad curve, only to be taken by running well up on the
+snowbank. Beyond the snowbank there was a drop, fifteen feet, perhaps
+more, 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 a
+little distance. There was no time to think; perhaps had she thought she
+would have weakened. She had no real courage, only desperation.
+
+As she reached the track the man in the green stocking-cap was in
+sight. A minute and a half she had then, not more. She looked about her
+hastily. A stone might serve her purpose, almost anything that would
+throw the sled out of its course. She saw a tree branch just above the
+track and dragged at it frantically. Some one was shouting at her from
+an upper window of the Russian villa. She did not hear. Stewart and
+Anita had made the curve above and were coming down at frantic speed.
+Marie stood, her back to the oncoming rush of the sled, swaying
+slightly. When she could hear the singing of the runners she stooped and
+slid the tree branch out against the track.
+
+She had acted almost by instinct, but with devilish skill. The sled
+swung to one side up the snowbank, and launched itself into the air.
+Marie heard the thud and the silence that followed it. Then she turned
+and 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 of
+the night. Peter could find no fracture, but felt it wise to get another
+opinion. In the afternoon he sent for a doctor from the Kurhaus and
+learned for the first time that Anita had also been hurt--a broken arm.
+"Not serious," said the Kurhaus man. "She is brave, very brave, the
+young woman. I believe they are engaged?" Peter said he did not know and
+thought very hard. Where was Marie? Not gone surely. Here about him lay
+all 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 a
+long day and very little sleep the night before, began to look jaded. He
+would have sent for a nurse from the Kurhaus, but he doubted Stewart's
+ability to stand any extra financial strain, and Peter could not help
+any.
+
+The time for supper passed, and no Marie.
+
+The landlady sent up a tray to Peter, stewed meat and potatoes, a
+salad, coffee. Peter sat in a corner with his back to Stewart and ate
+ravenously. He had had nothing since the morning's coffee. After that he
+sat 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 got
+some fresh air and a smoke! He remembered the balcony.
+
+It was there on the balcony that he found Marie, a cowering thing that
+pushed his hands away when he would have caught her and broke into
+passionate crying.
+
+"I cannot! I cannot!"
+
+"Cannot what?" demanded Peter gently, watching her. So near was the
+balcony 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 big
+hand, moaning out in the dialect of the people that always confused him
+her story of the day, of what she had done, of watching Stewart brought
+back, of stealing into the house and through an adjacent room to the
+balcony, 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, while
+the night wind beat about them, and pondered what was best to do. He
+thought she might come in and care for Stewart, at least, until he was
+conscious. 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 at
+midnight. You can take it."
+
+"I have no money."
+
+This raised a delicate question. Marie absolutely refused to take
+Stewart's money. She had almost none of her own. And there were other
+complications--where was she to go? The family of the injured girl did
+not suspect her since they did not know of her existence. She might get
+away without trouble. But after that, what?
+
+Peter pondered this on the balcony, while Marie in the bedroom was
+changing her clothing, soaked with a day in the snow. He came to the
+inevitable decision, the decision he knew at the beginning that he was
+going to make.
+
+"If I could only put it up to Harmony first!" he reflected. "But she
+will understand when I tell her. She always understands."
+
+Standing there on the little balcony, with tragedy the thickness of
+a pine board beyond him, Peter experienced a bit of the glow of the
+morning, as of one who stumbling along in a dark place puts a hand on a
+friend.
+
+He went into the room. Stewart was lying very still and breathing
+easily. On her knees beside the bed knelt Marie. At Peter's step she
+rose 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 an
+express. I had forgotten. It is double fare."
+
+"What of that, little sister?" said Peter. "What is a double fare when
+it means life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? And there will be
+happiness, little sister."
+
+He put his hand in his pocket.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+The Portier was almost happy that morning. For one thing, he had won
+honorable mention at the Schubert Society the night before; for another,
+that night the Engel was to sing Mignon, and the Portier had spent his
+Christmas tips for a ticket. All day long he had been poring over the
+score.
+
+"'Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bluhen?'" he sang with feeling
+while he polished the floors. He polished them with his feet, wearing
+felt boots for the purpose, and executing in the doing a sort of
+ungainly dance--a sprinkle of wax, right foot forward and back, left
+foot forward and back, both feet forward and back in a sort of double
+shuffle; more wax, more vigorous polishing, more singing, with longer
+pauses for breath. "'Knowest thou the land where the lemon trees
+bloom?'" he bellowed--sprinkle of wax, right foot, left foot, any foot
+at all. Now and then he took the score from his pocket and pored over
+it, humming the air, raising his eyebrows over the high notes, dropping
+his chin to the low ones. It was a wonderful morning. Between greetings
+to neighbors he sang--a bit of talk, a bit of song.
+
+"'Kennst du das Land'--Good-morning, sir--the old Rax wears a crown. It
+will snow soon. 'Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen'--Ah, madam the milk
+Frau, 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 Engel
+sings? 'Kennst du das Land'--"
+
+At eleven came Rosa with her husband, the soldier from Salzburg with one
+lung. 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 coffee
+together and a bit of mackerel he sang a very fair bass to the Portier's
+tenor. Together they pored over the score, and even on their way to the
+beer hall hummed together such bits as they recalled.
+
+On one point they differed. The score was old and soiled with much
+thumbing. At one point, destroyed long since, the sentry sang A sharp:
+the Portier insisted on A natural. They argued together over three
+Steins of beer; the waiter, referred to, decided for A flat. It was a
+serious matter to have one's teeth set, as one may say, for a natural
+and then to be shocked with an unexpected half-tone up or down! It
+destroyed 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 looking
+serious; 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; perhaps
+she had the score.
+
+Harmony was having a bad morning. She had slept little until dawn, and
+Peter's stealthy closing of the outer door had wakened her by its very
+caution. After that there had been no more sleep. She had sat up in bed
+with 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 man
+and then another must propose marriage to her to save her. To save her
+from what? From what people thought, or--each from the other?
+
+Were men so evil that they never trusted each other? McLean had frankly
+distrusted Peter, had said so. Or could it be that there was something
+about her, something light and frivolous? She had been frivolous. She
+always laughed at Peter's foolishnesses. Perhaps that was it. That
+was it. They were afraid for her. She had thrown herself on Peter's
+hands--almost into his arms. She had made this situation.
+
+She must get away, of course. If only she had some one to care for Jimmy
+until Peter returned! But there was no one. The Portier's wife was fond
+of Jimmy, but not skillful. And suppose he were to wake in the night and
+call for her and she would not come. She cried a little over this. After
+a time she pattered across the room in her bare feet and got from a
+bureau drawer the money she had left. There was not half enough to take
+her home. She could write; the little mother might get some for her, but
+at 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. Jimmy
+wakened about that time, and she went through the details of his morning
+toilet with all the brightness she could assume--bath blankets, warm
+bath, toenails, finger-nails, fresh nightgown, fresh sheets, and--final
+touch of all--a real barber's part straight from crown to brow. After
+that ten minutes under extra comforters while the room aired.
+
+She hung over the boy that morning in an agony of tenderness--he was so
+little, 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 he
+needed nothing else. In some curious process of his childish mind Peter
+and Daddy mingled in inextricable confusion. More than once he had
+recalled 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! You
+remember 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 have
+to 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 find
+her.
+
+At noon came the Portier and the sentry, now no longer friends, and rang
+the doorbell. Harmony was rather startled. McLean and Mrs. Boyer had
+been her only callers, and she did not wish to see either of them. But
+after a second ring she gathered her courage in her hands and opened the
+door.
+
+She turned pale when she saw the sentry in his belted blue-gray tunic
+and high cap. She thought, of course, that Jimmy had been traced and
+that now he would be taken away. If the sentry knew her, however, he
+kept his face impassive and merely touched his cap. The Portier stated
+their errand. Harmony's face cleared. She even smiled as the Portier
+extended to her the thumbed score with its missing corner. What,
+after all, does it matter which was right--whether it was A sharp or A
+natural? What really matters is that Harmony, having settled the dispute
+and clinched the decision by running over the score for a page or two,
+turned to find the Portier, ecstatic eyes upturned, hands folded on
+paunch, enjoying a delirium of pleasure, and the sentry nowhere in
+sight.
+
+He was discovered a moment later in the doorway of Jimmy's room, where,
+taciturn as ever, severe, martial, he stood at attention, shoulders
+back, arms at his sides, thumbs in. In this position he was making, with
+amazing rapidity, a series of hideous grimaces for the benefit of the
+little boy in the bed: marvelous faces they were, in which nose, mouth,
+and eyes seemed interchangeable, where features played leapfrog with
+one another. When all was over--perhaps when his repertoire was
+exhausted--the sentry returned his nose to the center of his face,
+replaced eyes and mouth, and wiped the ensemble with a blue cotton
+handkerchief. Then, still in silence, he saluted and withdrew, leaving
+the youngster enraptured, staring at the doorway.
+
+Harmony had decided the approximate location of her room. In the
+higher part of the city, in the sixteenth district, there were many
+unpretentious buildings. She had hunted board there and she knew. It
+was far from the Stadt, far from the fashionable part of town, a
+neighborhood of small shops, of frank indigence. There surely she could
+find a room, and perhaps in one of the small stores what she failed to
+secure in the larger, a position.
+
+Rosa having taken her soldier away, Harmony secured the Portier's wife
+to sit with Jimmy and spent two hours that afternoon looking about for
+a room. She succeeded finally in finding one, a small and wretchedly
+furnished bedroom, part of the suite of a cheap dressmaker. The approach
+was forbidding enough. One entered a cavelike, cobble-paved court
+under the building, filled with wagons, feeding horses, quarrelsome and
+swearing 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 of
+sewing-machines, the Babel of workpeople. Harmony, seeking not a
+home but a hiding-place, took the room at once. She was asked for no
+reference. In a sort of agony lest this haven fail her she paid for a
+week in advance. The wooden bed, the cracked mirror over the table, even
+the 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: the
+masquerade season is on. The Fraulein is American, is she not?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"One knows the Americans. They are chic, not like the English. I have
+some American customers."
+
+Harmony started. The dressmaker was shrewd. Many people hid in the
+sixteenth district. She hastened to reassure the girl.
+
+"They will not disturb you. And just now I have but one, a dancer. I
+shall have the room cleaned. Good-bye, Fraulein."
+
+So far, good. She had a refuge now, one spot that the venom of scandal
+could not poison, where she could study and work--work hard, although
+there could be no more lessons--one spot where Peter would not have to
+protect her, where Peter, indeed, would never find her. This thought,
+which should have brought comfort, brought only new misery. Peace seemed
+dearly bought all at once; shabby, wholesome, hearty Peter, with his
+rough hair and quiet voice, his bulging pockets and steady eyes--she was
+leaving Peter forever, exchanging his companionship for that of a row
+of pigeons on a window-sill. He would find some one, of course; but who
+would know that he liked toast made hard and plenty of butter, or to
+leave his bed-clothing loose at the foot, Peter being very long and apt
+to lop over? The lopping over brought a tear or two. A very teary and
+tragic young heroine, this Harmony, prone to go about for the last day
+or two with a damp little handkerchief tucked in her sleeve.
+
+She felt her way down the staircase and into the cave below. Fate hangs
+by a very slender thread sometimes. If a wagon had not lumbered by as
+she reached the lowest step, so that she must wait and thus had time
+to lower her veil, she would have been recognized at once by the little
+Georgiev, waiting to ascend. But the wagon was there, Harmony lowered
+her veil, the little Georgiev, passing a veiled young woman in the
+gloom, went up the staircase with even pulses and calm and judicial
+bearing, up to the tiny room a floor or two below Harmony's, where he
+wrote reports to the Minister of War and mixed them with sonnets--to
+Harmony.
+
+Harmony went back to the Siebensternstrasse, having accomplished what
+she had set out to do and being very wretched in consequence. Because
+she was leaving the boy so soon she strove to atone for her coming
+defection by making it a gala evening. The child was very happy. She
+tucked him up in the salon, lighted all the candles, served him the
+daintiest of suppers there. She brought in the mice and tied tiny bows
+on their necks; she played checkers with him while the supper dishes
+waited, and went down to defeat in three hilarious games; and last of
+all she played to him, joyous music at first, then slower, drowsier
+airs, until his heavy head dropped on his shoulder and she gathered him
+up in tender arms and carried him to bed.
+
+It was dawn when Marie arrived. Harmony was sleeping soundly when the
+bell rang. Her first thought was that Peter had come back--but Peter
+carried a key. The bell rang again, and she slipped on the old kimono
+and 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 slipped
+by her and into the hall.
+
+There was a gaslight burning very low; Harmony turned it up and faced
+her visitor. She recognized her at once--the girl Dr. Stewart had been
+with 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; she
+was bewildered, almost frightened. Crisis of some sort was written on
+Marie's face. Harmony felt very young, very incapable. The other girl
+refused coffee, would not even go into the salon until Peter's letter
+had been read. She was a fugitive, a criminal; the Austrian law is
+severe to those that harbor criminals. Let Harmony read:--
+
+"DEAR HARRY,--Will you forgive me for this and spread the wings of your
+splendid charity over this poor child? Perhaps I am doing wrong in
+sending her to you, but just now it is all I can think of. If she wants
+to talk let her talk. It will probably help her. Also feed her, will
+you? And if she cannot sleep, give her one of the blue powders I fixed
+for 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. Her
+eyes were sunken in her head. She had recognized her at once, but any
+surprise she may have felt at finding Harmony in Peter's apartment was
+sunk in a general apathy, a compound of nervous reaction and fatigue.
+During the long hours in the express she had worn herself out with
+fright and remorse: there was nothing left now but exhaustion.
+
+Harmony was bewildered, but obedient. She went back to the cold kitchen
+and lighted a fire. She made Marie as comfortable as she could in the
+salon, and then went into her room to dress. There she read the letter
+again, and wondered if Peter had gone through life like this, picking up
+waifs and strays and shouldering their burdens for them. Decidedly, life
+with Peter was full of surprises.
+
+She remembered, as she hurried into her clothes; the boys' club back
+in America and the spelling-matches. Decidedly, also, Peter was an
+occupation, a state of mind, a career. No musician, hoping for a career
+of her own, could possibly marry Peter.
+
+That was a curious morning in the old lodge of Maria Theresa, while
+Stewart in the Pension Waldheim struggled back to consciousness, while
+Peter sat beside him and figured on an old envelope the problem of
+dividing among four enough money to support one, while McLean ate his
+heart out in wretchedness in his hotel.
+
+Marie told her story over the early breakfast, sitting with her thin
+elbows on the table, her pointed chin in her palms.
+
+"And now I am sorry," she finished. "It has done no good. If it had only
+killed 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, no
+worldly 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, had
+Marie realized that this establishment of Peter's was not on the same
+basis as Stewart's had been, or had Harmony divined her thought.
+
+The presence of the boy was discovered by his waking. Marie was taken
+in and presented. She looked stupefied. Certainly the Americans were a
+marvelous people--to have taken into their house and their hearts this
+strange child--if he were strange. Marie's suspicious little slum mind
+was 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 at
+once. It seemed to Harmony, going about her morning routine, that Marie
+was her solution and Peter's.
+
+During the afternoon she took a package to the branch post-office and
+mailed it by parcel-post to the Wollbadgasse. On the way she met Mrs.
+Boyer face to face. That lady looked severely ahead, and Harmony passed
+her 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 a
+vase, in a pitcher beside Jimmy's bed.
+
+At dusk a telegram came to say that Stewart was better and that Peter
+was on his way down to Vienna. He would arrive at eight. Time was
+very short now--seconds flashed by, minutes galloped. Harmony stewed
+a chicken for supper, and creamed the breast for Jimmy. She fixed the
+table, flowers in the center, the best cloth, Peter's favorite cheese.
+Six o'clock, six-thirty, seven; Marie was telling Jimmy a fairy tale and
+making the fairies out of rosebuds. The studylamp was lighted, the stove
+glowing, Peter's slippers were out, his old smoking-coat, his pipe.
+
+A quarter past seven. Peter would be near Vienna now and hungry. If he
+could 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 it
+again to close it gently, as he always did, and then he would look for
+her, going from room to room until he found her--only to-night he would
+not find her.
+
+She did not say good-bye to Jimmy. She stood in the doorway and said a
+little prayer for him. Marie had made the flower fairies on needles, and
+they stood about his head on the pillow--pink and yellow and white elves
+with fluffy skirts. Then, very silently, she put on her hat and jacket
+and closed the outer door behind her. In the courtyard she turned and
+looked up. The great chandelier in the salon was not lighted, but from
+the 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 the
+mountains. He had the third-class compartment to himself, and sat in a
+corner, soft hat over his eyes. Life had never been particularly simple
+to Peter--his own life, yes; a matter of three meals a day--he had had
+fewer--a roof, clothing. But other lives had always touched him closely,
+and at the contact points Peter glowed, fused, amalgamated. Thus he had
+been 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 for
+himself--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 three
+nights. Also he explained to himself that he was smoking too much, and
+resolutely--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, utterly
+miserable, had refused to capitulate, when to capitulate would have
+meant the surrender of the house in the Siebensternstrasse. And the
+absence from Harmony had shown him just where he stood.
+
+He was in love, crazy in love. Every fiber of his long body glowed with
+it, ached with it. And every atom of his reason told him what mad folly
+it was, this love. Even if Harmony cared--and at the mere thought his
+heart pounded--what madness for her, what idiocy for him! To ask her to
+accept the half of--nothing, to give up a career to share his struggle
+for one, to ask her to bury her splendid talent and her beauty under a
+bushel that he might wave aloft his feeble light!
+
+And there was no way out, no royal road to fortune by the route he had
+chosen; nothing but grinding work, with a result problematical and years
+ahead. There were even no legacies to expect, he thought whimsically.
+Peter had known a chap once, struggling along in gynecology, who had
+had a fortune left him by a G. P., which being interpreted is Grateful
+Patient. Peter's patients had a way of living, and when they did drop
+out, as happened now and then, had also a way of leaving Peter an unpaid
+bill in token of appreciation; Peter had even occasionally helped to
+bury them, by way, he defended himself, of covering up his mistakes.
+
+Peter, sitting back in his corner, allowed the wonderful scenery to slip
+by unnoticed. He put Harmony the Desirable out of his mind, and took
+to calculating on a scrap of paper what could be done for Harmony the
+Musician. He could hold out for three months, he calculated, and still
+have 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 him
+along: if not--
+
+He would have to put six months' work in the next three. That was not so
+hard. He had got along before with less sleep, and thrived on it. Also
+there must be no more idle evenings, with Jimmy in the salon propped in
+a chair and Harmony playing, the room dark save for the glow from the
+stove 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 the
+firelight, Harmony Hushed over the brick stove, Harmony paring potatoes
+that night in the kitchen when he--Harmony! Harmony!
+
+Stewart knew all about the accident and its cause. Peter had surmised as
+much 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, he
+grew restless and uneasy. As the time approached for Peter to leave, he
+was clearly struggling with himself. The landlady had agreed to care
+for him and was bustling about the room. During one of her absences he
+turned 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 shoot
+that 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 do
+something I'd be sorry for. The kindest thing to say for her is that she
+was not sane."
+
+"No," said Peter gravely, "she was hardly sane."
+
+Stewart caught his steady gaze and glanced away. For him Marie's little
+tragedy had been written and erased. He would forget it magnanimously.
+He had divided what he had with her, and she had repaid him by
+attempting his life. And not only his life, but Anita's. Peter followed
+his line of reasoning easily.
+
+"It's quite a frequent complication, Stewart," he said, "but every man
+to whom it happens regards himself more or less as a victim. She fell in
+love with you, that's all. Her conduct is contrary to the ethics of the
+game, 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 sense
+of great relief overwhelmed him. Marie was gone, frightened into hiding.
+It was as if a band that had been about him was suddenly loosed: he
+breathed 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 with
+that little devil. And now she's gone!" He glanced round the disordered
+room, where bandages and medicines crowded toilet articles on the
+dressing-table, where one of Marie's small slippers still lay where it
+had fallen under the foot of the bed, where her rosary still hung over
+the corner of the table. "Ring for the maid, Peter, will you! I've got
+to get this junk out of here. Some of Anita's people may come."
+
+During that afternoon ride, while the train clump-clumped down the
+mountains, Peter thought of all this. Some of Marie's "junk" was in his
+bag; her rosary lay in his breastpocket, along with the pin he had sent
+her at Christmas. Peter happened on it, still in its box, which looked
+as if it had been cried over. He had brought it with him. He admired it
+very much, and it had cost money he could ill afford to spend.
+
+It was late when the train drew into the station. Peter, encumbered with
+Marie's luggage and his own, lowered his window and added his voice
+to the chorus of plaintive calls: "Portier! Portier!" they shouted.
+"Portier!" bawled Peter.
+
+He was obliged to resort to the extravagance of a taxicab. Possibly
+a fiacre would have done as well, but it cost almost as much and was
+slower. Moments counted now: a second was an hour, an hour a decade. For
+he was on his way to Harmony. Extravagance became recklessness. As soon
+die for a sheep as a lamb! He stopped the taxicab and bought a bunch of
+violets, stopped again and bought lilies of the valley to combine with
+the violets, went out of his way to the American grocery and bought a
+jar of preserved fruit.
+
+By that time he was laden. The jar of preserves hung in one shabby
+pocket, Marie's rosary dangled from another; the violets were buttoned
+under his overcoat against the cold.
+
+At the very last he held the taxi an extra moment and darted into the
+delicatessen shop across the Siebensternstrasse. From there, standing
+inside 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 warnings
+from 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, covering
+the 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 now
+here."
+
+"All well, of course," sang Peter, eyes on the comfortable Floor of
+his lamp, the flicker that was the fire. "Auf wiedersehen, Herr
+Schenkenkaufer."
+
+"Auf wiedersehen, Herr Doktor."
+
+Violets, lilies-of-the-valley, cheese, rosary, luggage--thus Peter
+climbed the stairs. The Portier wished to assist him, but Peter
+declined. The Portier was noisy. There was to be a moment when Peter,
+having admitted himself with extreme caution, would present himself
+without so much as a creak to betray him, would stand in a doorway until
+some one, Harmony perhaps--ah, Peter!--would turn and see him. She had a
+way 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 a
+second surprise. Also he put down the flowers; they were to be brought
+in 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 table
+to stove in the final excitement of dishing up. There was, however,
+a highly agreeable odor of stewing chicken, a crisp smell of baking
+biscuit.
+
+In the darkened hall Peter had to pause to steady himself. For he had
+a sudden mad impulse to shout Harmony's name, to hold out his arms, to
+call her to him there in the warm darkness, and when she had come, to
+catch her to him, to tell his love in one long embrace, his arms about
+her, his rough cheek against her soft one. No wonder he grew somewhat
+dizzy and had to pull himself together.
+
+The silence rather surprised him, until he recalled that Harmony was
+probably sewing in the salon, as she did sometimes when dinner was ready
+to serve. The boy was asleep, no doubt. He stole along on tiptoe, hardly
+breathing, to the first doorway, which was Jimmy's.
+
+Jimmy was asleep. Round him were the pink and yellow and white flower
+fairies with violet heads. Peter saw them and smiled. Then, his eyes
+growing 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 come
+back. The two silent figures were too close to tragedy. Peter, with a
+long 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 the
+stove and laid for Abendessen. The white porcelain coffee-pot had
+boiled and extinguished itself, according to its method, and now gently
+steamed.
+
+On to the kitchen. Much odor of food here, two candles lighted
+but burning low, a small platter with money on it, quite a little
+money--almost all he had left Harmony when he went away.
+
+Peter was dazed at first. Even when Marie, hastily summoned, had
+discovered that Harmony's clothing was gone, when a search of the rooms
+revealed the absence of her violin and her music, when at last the fact
+stared them, incontestable, in the face, Peter refused to accept it. He
+sat for a half-hour or even more by the fire in the salon, obstinately
+refusing to believe she was gone, keeping the supper warm against her
+return. 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 he
+was all alive, sat erect, ears straining for her hand on the knob of the
+outer 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 knew
+too well. But with his alarm came rage.
+
+Marie had never seen Peter angry. She shrank from this gaunt and
+gray-faced man who raved up and down the salon, questioning the
+frightened Portier, swearing fierce oaths, bringing accusation after
+accusation against some unnamed woman to whom he applied epithets that
+Marie's English luckily did not comprehend. Not a particularly heroic
+figure was Peter that night: a frantic, disheveled individual, before
+whom the Portier cowered, who struggled back to sanity through a berserk
+haze and was liable to swift relapses into fury again.
+
+To this succeeded at last the mental condition that was to be Peter's
+for many days, hopelessness and alarm and a grim determination to keep
+on searching.
+
+There were no clues. The Portier made inquiries of all the cabstands in
+the neighborhood. Harmony had not taken a cab. The delicatessen seller
+had 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 that
+she might have found a haven in the neighborhood--until he recalled the
+parcel-post.
+
+One possibility he clung to: Mrs. Boyer had made the mischief, but she
+had 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'. Time
+was valuable, and he had wasted an hour, two hours, in useless rage. So
+he took a taxicab, and being by this time utterly reckless of cost let
+it stand while he interviewed the Boyers.
+
+Boyer himself, partially undressed, opened the door to his ring. Peter
+was 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't
+know, I haven't heard anything. I'll ask Mrs. Boyer."
+
+During the interval it took for a whispered colloquy in the bedroom, and
+for Mrs. Boyer to don her flannel wrapper, Peter suffered the tortures
+of the damned. Whatever Mrs. Boyer had meant to say by way of protest at
+the intrusion on the sacred privacy of eleven o'clock and bedtime died
+in her throat. Her plump and terraced chin shook with agitation, perhaps
+with guilt. Peter, however, had got himself in hand. He told a quiet
+story; Boyer listened; Mrs. Boyer, clutching her wrapper about her
+unstayed figure, listened.
+
+"I thought," finished Peter, "that since you had offered her a
+refuge--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 obliged
+to say, Dr. Byrne, that under the circumstances had the girl come here I
+could hardly--Frank, I will speak!--I could hardly have taken her in."
+
+Peter went white and ducked as from a physical blow, stumbling out
+into 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 his
+hand 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, from
+Mrs. Boyer. She had devoted all her energies to losing herself,
+to cutting the threads that bound her to the life in the
+Siebensternstrasse. She had drawn all her money, as Peter discovered
+later. The discovery caused him even more acute anxiety. The city was
+full of thieves; poverty and its companion, crime, lurked on every
+shadowy staircase of the barracklike houses, or peered, red-eyed, from
+every alleyway.
+
+And into this city of contrasts--of gray women of the night hugging
+gratings for warmth and accosting passers-by with loathsome gestures, of
+smug civilians hiding sensuous mouths under great mustaches, of dapper
+soldiers to whom the young girl unattended was potential prey, into
+this night city of terror, this day city of frightful contrasts, ermine
+rubbing elbows with frost-nipped flesh, destitution sauntering along
+the fashionable Prater for lack of shelter, gilt wheels of royalty and
+yellow wheels of courtesans--Harmony had ventured alone for the second
+time.
+
+And this time there was no Peter Byrne to accost her cheerily in the
+twilight and win her by sheer friendliness. She was alone. Her funds
+were lower, much lower. And something else had gone--her faith. Mrs.
+Boyer had seen to that. In the autumn Harmony had faced the city
+clear-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 the
+Big Soprano in the station who fled to her refuge on the upper floor of
+the house in the Wollbadgasse. This was a hunted creature, alternately
+flushed and pale, who locked her door behind her before she took off
+her hat, and who, having taken off her hat and surveyed her hiding-place
+with tragic eyes, fell suddenly to trembling, alone there in the
+gaslight.
+
+She had had no plans beyond flight. She had meant, once alone, to think
+the 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. The
+dressmaker had gone to the Ronacher. Harmony did not know where to find
+a restaurant, was afraid to trust herself to the streets alone. She went
+to bed supperless, with a tiny picture of Peter and Jimmy and the wooden
+sentry under her cheek.
+
+The pigeons, cooing on the window-sill, wakened her early. She was
+confused at first, got up to see if Jimmy had thrown off his blankets,
+and wakened to full consciousness with the sickening realization that
+Jimmy was not there.
+
+The dressmaker, whose name was Monia Reiff, slept late after her evening
+out. Harmony, collapsing with hunger and faintness, waited as long as
+she 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 he
+would never think of the sixteenth district. He would make inquiries, of
+course--the Pension Schwarz, Boyers', the master's.
+
+The breakfast brought back her strength and the morning air gave her
+confidence. The district, too, was less formidable than the neighborhood
+of the Karntnerstrasse and the Graben. The shops were smaller. The
+windows exhibited cheaper goods. There was a sort of family atmosphere
+about many of them; the head of the establishment in the doorway, the
+wife at the cashier's desk, daughters, cousins, nieces behind the
+wooden counters. The shopkeepers were approachable, instead of familiar.
+Harmony met no rebuffs, was respectfully greeted and cheerfully listened
+to. 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, during
+which she kept carefully away from that part of the city where Peter
+might be searching for her.
+
+The fact was, of course, that her knowledge of English was her sole
+asset as a clerk. And there were few English and no tourists in the
+sixteenth district. She was marketing a commodity for which there was no
+demand.
+
+She lunched at a Konditorei, more to rest her tired body than because
+she needed food. The afternoon was as the morning. At six o'clock,
+long after the midwinter darkness had fallen, she stumbled back to the
+Wollbadgasse and up the whitewashed staircase.
+
+She had a shock at the second landing. A man had stepped into the angle
+to let her pass. A gasjet dared over his head, and she recognized the
+short heavy figure and ardent eyes of Georgiev. She had her veil down
+luckily, and he gave no sign of recognition. She passed on, and she
+heard him a second later descending. But there had been something
+reminiscent after all in her figure and carriage. The little Georgiev
+paused, halfway down, and thought a moment. It was impossible, of
+course. All women reminded him of the American. Had he not, only the
+day before, followed for two city blocks a woman old enough to be
+his mother, merely because she carried a violin case? But there was
+something about the girl he had just passed--Bah!
+
+A bad week for Harmony followed, a week of weary days and restless
+nights when she slept only to dream of Peter--of his hurt and
+incredulous eyes when he found she had gone; of Jimmy--that he needed
+her, was worse, was dying. More than once she heard him sobbing and
+wakened to the cooing of the pigeons on the window-sill. She grew thin
+and 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 be
+gone.
+
+This, as it happened, was serious. One day, the sixth, she came back wet
+to the skin from an all-day rain, to find that the carpet bank had been
+looted. There was no clue. The stolid Hungarian, startled out of her
+lethargy, protested innocence; the little dressmaker, who seemed honest
+and friendly, wept in sheer sympathy. The fact remained--half the small
+hoard was gone.
+
+Two days more, a Sunday and a Monday. On Sunday Harmony played, and
+Georgiev in the room below, translating into cipher a recent conference
+between the Austrian Minister of War and the German Ambassador, put
+aside his work and listened. She played, as once before she had played
+when life seemed sad and tragic, the "Humoresque." Georgiev, hands
+behind his head and eyes upturned, was back in the Pension Schwarz that
+night months ago when Harmony played the "Humoresque" and Peter stooped
+outside her door. The little Bulgarian sighed and dreamed.
+
+Harmony, a little sadder, a little more forlorn each day, pursued her
+hopeless quest. She ventured into the heart of the Stadt and paid a
+part of her remaining money to an employment bureau, to teach English
+or violin, whichever offered, or even both. After she had paid they told
+her it would be difficult, almost impossible without references. She had
+another narrow escape as she was leaving. She almost collided with Olga,
+the chambermaid, who, having clashed for the last time with Katrina, was
+seeking new employment. On another occasion she saw Marie in the crowd
+and was obsessed with a longing to call to her, to ask for Peter, for
+Jimmy. That meeting took the heart out of the girl. Marie was white and
+weary--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 being
+pressed for work, offered the girl a situation. The wage was small, but
+she 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 home
+boxes for a ball that night. Thread was needed, and quickly. Harmony,
+who did odds and ends of sewing, was most easily spared. She slipped on
+her jacket and hat and ran down to the shop near by.
+
+It was on the return that she met Georgiev coming down. The afternoon
+was dark and the staircase unlighted. In the gloom one face was as
+another. Georgiev, listening intently, hearing footsteps, drew back
+into the embrasure of a window and waited. His swarthy face was tense,
+expectant. As the steps drew near, were light feminine instead of
+stealthy, the little spy relaxed somewhat. But still he waited,
+crouched.
+
+It was a second before he recognized Harmony, another instant before he
+realized his good fortune. She had almost passed. He put out an unsteady
+hand.
+
+"Fraulein!"
+
+"Herr Georgiev!"
+
+The little Bulgarian was profoundly stirred. His fervid eyes gleamed.
+He struggled against the barrier of language, broke out in passionate
+Bulgar, switched to German punctuated with an English word here and
+there. Made intelligible, it was that he had found her at last. Harmony
+held her spools of thread and waited for the storm of languages to
+subside. 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 happened
+and I came here. Please don't say you have seen me."
+
+Georgiev was puzzled at first. She had to explain very slowly, with his
+ardent eyes on her. But he understood at last and agreed of course. His
+incredulity was turning to certainty. Harmony had actually been in the
+same 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 with
+me?"
+
+"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, Herr
+Georgiev."
+
+She held out her hand, and the little Bulgarian bent over it and kissed
+it reverently. The Herr Georgiev's father was a nobleman in his own
+country, and all the little spy's training had been to make of a girl
+in Harmony's situation lawful prey. But in the spy's glowing heart there
+was 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 clapped
+his hat on his head and made his cautious way down to the street. There
+was no man in a green velours hat below, but the little spy had an
+uneasy feeling that eyes watched him, nevertheless. Life was growing
+complicated for the Herr Georgiev.
+
+Life was pressing very close to Harmony also in those days, a life she
+had never touched before. She discovered, after a day or two in the
+work-room, that Monia Reiff's business lay almost altogether among the
+demi-monde. The sewing-girls, of Marie's type many of them, found in
+the customers endless topics of conversation. Some things Harmony was
+spared, much of the talk being in dialect. But a great deal of it she
+understood, and she learned much that was not spoken. They talked
+freely of the women, their clothes, and they talked a great deal about
+a newcomer, an American dancer, for whom Monia was making an elaborate
+outfit. The American's name was Lillian Le Grande. She was dancing at
+one of the variety theaters.
+
+Harmony was working on a costume for the Le Grande woman--a gold brocade
+slashed to the knee at one side and with a fragment of bodice made of
+gilt 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 the
+girls. She singled out Harmony finally and called her.
+
+"Come and put on the American's gown," she ordered. "She wishes--Heaven
+knows what she wishes!"
+
+Harmony went unwillingly. Nothing she had heard of the Fraulein Le
+Grande had prepossessed her. Her uneasiness was increased when she found
+herself obliged to shed her gown and to stand for one terrible moment
+before the little dressmaker's amused eyes.
+
+"Thou art very lovely, very chic," said Monia. The dress added to
+rather than relieved Harmony's discomfiture. She donned it in one of the
+fitting-rooms, made by the simple expedient of curtaining off a corner
+of the large reception room. The slashed skirt embarrassed her; the low
+cut made her shrink. Monia was frankly entranced. Above the gold tissue
+of the bodice rose Harmony's exquisite shoulders. Her hair was gold;
+even her eyes looked golden. The dressmaker, who worshiped beauty, gave
+a pull here, a pat there. If only all women were so beautiful in the
+things she made!
+
+She had an eye for the theatrical also. She posed Harmony behind the
+curtain, arranged lights, drew down the chiffon so that a bit more of
+the girl's rounded bosom was revealed. Then she drew the curtain aside
+and 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 change
+a line. It is perfect."
+
+Harmony must walk in the gown, turn, sit. Once she caught a glimpse of
+herself and was startled. She had been wearing black for so long, and
+now this radiant golden creature was herself. She was enchanted and
+abashed. The slash in the skirt troubled her: her slender leg had a way
+of revealing itself.
+
+The ordeal was over at last. The dancer was pleased. She ordered another
+gown. Harmony, behind the curtain, slipped out of the dress and into
+her own shabby frock. On the other side of the curtain the dancer
+was talking. Her voice was loud, but rather agreeable. She smoked a
+cigarette. 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 use
+more rouge."
+
+"It is being much worn. It is strange, is it not, that a child could be
+stolen 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, and
+there'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 them
+they 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 do
+with the relapse. He had found Marie a slavishly devoted substitute, and
+besides Peter had indicated that Harmony's absence was purely temporary.
+But the breaking-up was inevitable. All day long the child lay in the
+white bed, apathetic but sleepless. In vain Marie made flower fairies
+for his pillow, in vain the little mice, now quite tame, played
+hide-and-seek over the bed, in vain Peter paused long enough in his
+frantic search for Harmony to buy colored postcards and bring them to
+him.
+
+He was contented enough; he did not suffer at all; and he had no
+apprehension of what was coming. He asked for nothing, tried obediently
+to eat, liked to have Marie in the room. But he did not beg to be
+taken into the salon, as he once had done. There was a sort of mental
+confusion also. He liked Marie to read his father's letters; but as
+he grew weaker the occasional confusing of Peter with his dead father
+became a fixed idea. Peter was Daddy.
+
+Peter took care of him at night. He had moved into Harmony's adjacent
+room and dressed there. But he had never slept in the bed. At night he
+put on his shabby dressing-gown and worn slippers and lay on a haircloth
+sofa at the foot of Jimmy's bed--lay but hardly slept, so afraid was he
+that the slender thread of life might snap when it was drawn out to its
+slenderest during the darkest hours before the dawn. More than once in
+every night Peter rose and stood, hardly breathing, with the tiny lamp
+in his hand, watching for the rise and fall of the boy's thin little
+chest. Peter grew old these days. He turned gray over the ears and
+developed lines about his mouth that never left him again. He felt gray
+and old, and sometimes bitter and hard also. The boy's condition could
+not be helped: it was inevitable, hopeless. But the thing that was
+eating his heart out had been unnecessary and cruel.
+
+Where was Harmony? When it stormed, as it did almost steadily, he
+wondered how she was sheltered; when the occasional sun shone he hoped
+it was bringing her a bit of cheer. Now and then, in the night, when the
+lamp burned low and gusts of wind shook the old house, fearful thoughts
+came 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 young
+and hopeful. Also he had money. Peter could not afford to grease the
+machinery of the police service; McLean could and did. In Berlin Harmony
+could not have remained hidden for two days. In Vienna, however, it
+was different. Returns were made to the department, but irregularly.
+An American music student was missing. There were thousands of American
+music 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 and
+haggard; 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 following
+morning he went to work with renewed strength and energy. Perhaps, after
+all, the iron had not struck so deep into his soul. With Peter it was a
+life-and-death matter.
+
+Clinics and lectures had begun again, but he had no heart for work. The
+little household went on methodically. Marie remained; there had seemed
+nothing 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 kept
+the apartment neat. She was never intrusive, never talkative. Indeed,
+she seemed to have lapsed into definite silence. She deferred absolutely
+to Peter, adored him, indeed, from afar. She never ate with him, in
+spite of his protests.
+
+The little apartment was very quiet. Where formerly had been music and
+Harmony's soft laughter, where Anna Gates had been wont to argue with
+Peter in loud, incisive tones, where even the prisms of the chandelier
+had once vibrated in response to Harmony's violin, almost absolute
+silence now reigned. Even the gate, having been repaired, no longer
+creaked, and the loud altercations between the Portier and his wife had
+been silenced out of deference to the sick child.
+
+On the day that Harmony, in the gold dress, had discovered Jimmy's
+mother in the American dancer Peter had had an unusually bad day. McLean
+had sent him a note by messenger early in the morning, to the effect
+that a young girl answering Harmony's description had been seen in the
+park at Schonbrunn and traced to an apartment near by.
+
+Harmony had liked Schonbrunn, and it seemed possible. They had gone out
+together, McLean optimistic, Peter afraid to hope. And it had been as he
+feared--a pretty little violin student, indeed, who had been washing her
+hair, 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 Frau
+Professor Bergmeister's, along the Graben and the Karntnerstrasse,
+ending up at the Doctors' Club in the faint hope of a letter. Wrath
+still smouldered deep in Peter; he would not enter a room at the club
+if Mrs. Boyer sat within. He had had a long hour with Dr. Jennings,
+and left that cheerful person writhing in abasement. And he had held
+a stormy interview with the Frau Schwarz, which left her humble for
+a week, and exceedingly nervous, being of the impression from Peter's
+manner that in the event of Harmony not turning up an American gunboat
+would sail up the right arm of the Danube and bombard the Pension
+Schwarz.
+
+Schonbrunn having failed them, McLean and, Peter went back to the city
+in the street-car, neither one saying much. Even McLean's elasticity was
+deserting him. His eyes, from much peering into crowds, had taken on a
+strained, concentrated look.
+
+Peter was shabbier than ever beside the other man's ultrafashionable
+dress. He sat, bent forward, his long arms dangling between his knees,
+his head down. Their common trouble had drawn the two together, or had
+drawn McLean close to Peter, as if he recognized that there were degrees
+in grief and that Peter had received almost a death-wound. His old
+rage at Peter had died. Harmony's flight had proved the situation as no
+amount of protestation would have done. The thing now was to find the
+girl; then he and Peter would start even, and the battle to the best
+man.
+
+They had the car almost to themselves. Peter had not spoken since he sat
+down. McLean was busy over a notebook, in which he jotted down from day
+to day such details of their search as might be worth keeping. Now and
+then 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 go
+like this all day and be up all night, you know. And Marie has him most
+of the day." McLean, of course, had known Marie before. "The boy ought
+to 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 exasperation
+struggled with fatigue.
+
+"Good Lord, boy," he rasped, "don't you suppose I'd have a nurse if I
+could afford it?"
+
+"Would you let me help? I'd like to do something. I'm a useless cub in
+a sick-room, but I could do that. Who's the woman he liked in the
+hospital?"
+
+"Nurse Elisabet. I don't know, Mac. There's no reason why I shouldn't
+let you help, I suppose. It hurts, of course, but--if he would be
+happier--"
+
+"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 and
+haven't had the nerve. Let me help you out for a while. You can send it
+back 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 if
+things 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 with
+difficulty. He found it always hard to speak of Harmony. His throat
+seemed to close on the name.
+
+That was the best McLean could do, but he made a mental reservation to
+see 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 the
+platform, and sat down unobtrusively in a corner. Things were not going
+well with him either. His small black eyes darted from face to face
+suspiciously, until they came to a rest on Peter.
+
+It was Georgiev's business to read men. Quickly he put together the bits
+he had gathered from Harmony on the staircase, added to them Peter's
+despondent attitude, his strained face, the abstraction which required a
+touch on the arm from his companion when they reached their destination,
+recalled Peter outside the door of Harmony's room in the Pension
+Schwarz--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, with
+military men drinking tea and nibbling Austrian pastry, the hour when
+the flower women along the Stephansplatz did a rousing business in
+roses, when sterile women burned candles before the Madonna in the
+Cathedral, when the lottery did the record business of the day.
+
+It was Peter's forlorn hope that somewhere among the crowd he might
+happen on Harmony. For some reason he thought of her always as in a
+crowd, with people close, touching her, men staring at her, following
+her. He had spent a frightful night in the Opera, scanning seat after
+seat, not so much because he hoped to find her as because inaction was
+intolerable.
+
+And so, on that afternoon, he made his slow progress along the
+Karntnerstrasse, halting now and then to scrutinize the crowd. He even
+peered through the doors of shops here and there, hoping while he feared
+that the girl might be seeking employment within, as she had before in
+the early days of the winter.
+
+Because of his stature and powerful physique, and perhaps, too, because
+of the wretchedness in his eyes, people noticed him. There was one place
+where Peter lingered, where a new building was being erected, and where
+because of the narrowness of the passage the dense crowd was thinned as
+it passed. He stood by choice outside a hairdresser's window, where a
+brilliant light shone on each face that passed.
+
+Inside the clerks had noticed him. Two of them standing together by the
+desk 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 golden
+rose 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 talk
+of war."
+
+"Foolishness! Does a police officer sigh always? Or a spy have such
+sadness 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 strange
+intentness at the back of a worn gray overcoat. Then with a curious
+clutch at her heart she went white. Harmony, of course, Harmony come to
+fetch the golden rose that was to complete Le Grande's costume.
+
+She recovered almost at once and made an excuse to leave by another
+exit.
+
+She took a final look at the gray sleeve that was all she could see of
+Peter, who had shifted a bit, and stumbled out into the crowd, walking
+along with her lip trembling under her veil, and with the slow and
+steady 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 proposed
+to her twice, but that had been in each case to solve a difficulty for
+her. And once he had taken her in his arms, but that was different. Even
+then 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 him
+out of her life.
+
+The sight of the familiar gray coat, the scrap of conversation, so
+enlightening as to poor Peter's quest, that Peter was growing thin and
+white, made her almost reel. She had been too occupied with her own
+position to realize Peter's. With the glimpse of him came a great
+longing for the house on the Siebensternstrasse, for Jimmy's arms about
+her neck, for the salon with the lamp lighted and the sleet beating
+harmlessly against the casement windows, for the little kitchen with the
+brick 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 the
+old situation again, too, for Marie most certainly did not add to the
+respectability of the establishment. And other doubts assailed her. What
+if Jimmy were not so well, should die, as was possible, and she had not
+let his mother see him!
+
+Monia Reiff was very busy that day. Harmony did not leave the workroom
+until eight o'clock. During all that time, while her slim fingers worked
+over fragile laces and soft chiffons, she was seeing Jimmy as she had
+seen him last, with the flower fairies on his pillow, and Peter, keeping
+watch over the crowd in the Karntnerstrasse, looking with his steady
+eyes for her.
+
+No part of the city was safe for a young girl after night, she knew; the
+sixteenth 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 see
+once again the comfortable glow of Peter's lamp, the flicker that was
+the fire.
+
+She ate no supper. She was too tired to eat, and there was the pain. She
+put 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-car
+was only a block, but during that block she was accosted twice. She was
+white and frightened when she reached the car.
+
+The Siebensternstrasse at last. The street was always dark; the
+delicatessen shop was closed, but in the wild-game store next a light
+was burning low, and a flame flickered before the little shrine over the
+money drawer. The gameseller was a religious man.
+
+The old stucco house dominated the neighborhood. From the time she left
+the 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 by
+the 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 firelight
+from the salon windows. The light was not regular--it disappeared at
+regular intervals, was blotted out. Harmony knew what that meant. Some
+one beyond range of where she stood was pacing the floor, back and
+forward, back and forward. When he was worried or anxious Peter always
+paced the door.
+
+She did not know how long she stood there. One of the soft rains was
+falling, or more accurately, condensing. The saturated air was hardly
+cold. She stood on the pavement unmolested, while the glow died lower
+and 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 in
+the wild-game shop burned itself out; the Portier across the way came to
+the door, glanced up at the sky and went in. Harmony heard the rattle of
+the chain as it was stretched across the door inside.
+
+Not all the windows of the suite opened on the street. Jimmy's
+windows--and Peter's--opened toward the back of the house, where in
+a brick-paved courtyard the wife of the Portier hung her washing, and
+where the Portier himself kept a hutch of rabbits. A wild and reckless
+desire to see at least the light from the child's room possessed
+Harmony. Even the light would be something; to go like this, to carry
+with her only the memory of a dark looming house without cheer was
+unthinkable. The gate was never locked. If she but went into the garden
+and round by the spruce tree to the back of the house, it would be
+something.
+
+She knew the garden quite well. Even the darkness had no horror for
+her. Little Scatchy had had a habit of leaving various articles on her
+window-sill and of instigating searches for them at untimely hours
+of night. Once they had found her hairbrush in the rabbit hutch! So
+Harmony, ashamed but unalarmed, made her way by the big spruce to the
+corner of the old lodge and thus to the courtyard.
+
+Ah, this was better! Lights all along the apartment floor and moving
+shadows; on Jimmy's window-sill a jar of milk. And voices--some one was
+singing.
+
+Peter was singing, droning softly, as one who puts a drowsy child to
+sleep. Slower and slower, softer and softer, over and over, the little
+song Harmony had been wont to sing:--
+
+"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."
+
+Slower and slower, softer and softer, until it died away altogether.
+Peter, in his old dressing-gown, came to the window and turned down
+the gaslight beside it to a blue point. Harmony did not breathe. For a
+minute, two minutes, he stood there looking out. Far off the twin clocks
+of the Votivkirche struck the hour. All about lay the lights of the old
+city, 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 stood
+by the window. And each night he whispered to the city that sheltered
+Harmony somewhere, what he had whispered to the little sweater coat the
+night before he went away:--
+
+"Good-night, dear. Good-night, Harmony."
+
+The rabbits stirred uneasily in the hutch; a passing gust shook the
+great tree overhead and sent down a sharp shower on to the bricks below.
+Peter struck a match and lit his pipe; the flickering light illuminated
+his 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 by
+relief at the turn events had taken. In a few days he was going about
+again, weak naturally, rather handsomer than before because a little
+less florid. But the week's confinement had given him an opportunity to
+think over many things. Peter had set him thinking, on the day when he
+had packed up the last of Marie's small belongings and sent them down to
+Vienna.
+
+Stewart, lying in bed, had watched him. "Just how much talk do you
+suppose 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 had
+been 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 with
+it, 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, and
+not a prude, she'll understand, not at first, but after she gets used to
+it."
+
+"She wouldn't understand in a thousand years."
+
+"Then you'd better not marry her. You know, Stewart, I have an idea
+that 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 a
+man has done with his life before a girl--the right girl--comes into
+it isn't a personal injury to her, since she wasn't a part of his life
+then. You know what I mean. But she has a right to know it before she
+chooses."
+
+"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 had
+recovered enough to be up and about he had made up his mind to tell
+Anita. In his mind he made quite a case for himself; he argued the
+affair against his conscience and came out victorious.
+
+Anita's party had broken up. The winter sports did not compare, they
+complained, with St. Moritz. They disliked German cooking. Into the
+bargain the weather was not good; the night's snows turned soft by
+midday; and the crowds that began to throng the hotels were solid
+citizens, not the fashionables of the Riviera. Anita's arm forbade her
+traveling. In the reassembling of the party she went to the Kurhaus in
+the valley below the pension with one of the women who wished to take
+the baths.
+
+It was to the Kurhaus, then, that Stewart made his first excursion after
+the accident. He went to dinner. Part of the chaperon's treatment called
+for an early retiring hour, which was highly as he had wished it and
+rather unnerving after all. A man may decide that a dose of poison is
+the remedy for all his troubles, but he does not approach his hour with
+any hilarity. Stewart was a stupid dinner guest, ate very little, and
+looked haggard beyond belief when the hour came for the older woman to
+leave.
+
+He did not lack courage however. It was his great asset, physical and
+mental rather than moral, but courage nevertheless. The evening was
+quiet, and they elected to sit on the balcony outside Anita's sitting
+room, the girl swathed in white furs and leaning back in her steamer
+chair.
+
+Below lay the terrace of the Kurhaus, edged with evergreen trees. Beyond
+and far below that was the mountain village, a few scattered houses
+along a frozen stream. The townspeople retired early; light after light
+was extinguished, until only one in the priest's house remained. A train
+crept out of one tunnel and into another, like a glowing worm crawling
+from burrow to burrow.
+
+The girl felt a change in Stewart. During the weeks he had known her
+there had been a curious restraint in his manner to her. There were
+times when an avowal seemed to tremble on his lips, when his eyes looked
+into hers with the look no women ever mistakes; the next moment he would
+glance away, his face would harden. They were miles apart. And perhaps
+the situation had piqued the girl. Certainly it had lost nothing for her
+by 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, for
+something in her to give him courage. The girl had character, more than
+ordinary decision. It was what Stewart admired in her most, and the
+thing, of course, that the little Marie had lacked. Moreover, Anita,
+barely twenty, was a woman, not a young girl. Her knowledge of the
+world, not so deep as Marie's, was more comprehensive. Where Marie would
+have been merciful, Anita would be just, unless she cared for him. In
+that 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 knew
+not what, was a judicial white goddess, formidably still, frightfully
+potential. Stewart, who had embraced many women, did not dare a finger
+on her arm.
+
+He had decided on a way to tell the girl the story--a preamble about his
+upbringing, which had been indifferent, his struggle to get to Vienna,
+his loneliness there, all leading with inevitable steps to Marie. From
+that, 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, through
+love, heights of honesty he had never scaled before. But as a matter of
+fact he reversed utterly his order of procedure. The situation got him,
+this first evening absolutely alone with her. That and her nearness, and
+the pathos of her bandaged, useless arm. Still he had not touched her.
+
+The thing he was trying to do was more difficult for that. General
+credulity to the contrary, men do not often make spoken love first. How
+many men propose marriage to their women across the drawing-room or from
+chair to chair? Absurd! The eyes speak first, then the arms, the lips
+last. The woman is in his arms before he tells his love. It is by her
+response that he gauges his chances and speaks of marriage. Actually the
+thing is already settled; tardy speech only follows on swift instinct.
+Stewart, wooing as men woo, would have taken the girl's hand, gained
+an encouragement from it, ventured to kiss it, perhaps, and finding no
+rebuff 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 clarify
+it.
+
+But he could not woo as men woo. The barrier of his own weakness stood
+between 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 for
+me. I care for you--a very great deal."
+
+He was still carefully in hand, his voice steady. And still he did not
+touch her. Other men had made love to her, but never in this fashion, or
+was he making love?
+
+"I'm very glad you like me."
+
+"Like you!" Almost out of hand that time. The thrill in his voice was
+unmistakable. "It's much more than that, Anita, so much more that I'm
+going 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 and
+dogged.
+
+"Have you any idea how you were hurt? Or why?"
+
+"No. There's a certain proportion of accidents that occur at all these
+places, isn't there?"
+
+"This was not an accident."
+
+"No?"
+
+"The branch of a tree was thrown out in front of the sled to send us
+over 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 I
+had been living with."
+
+A brutal way to tell her, no doubt, but admirably courageous. For he was
+quivering with dread when he said it--the courage of the man who faces
+a cannon. And here, where a less-poised woman would have broken into
+speech, Anita took the refuge of her kind and was silent. Stewart
+watched her as best he could in the darkness, trying to gather further
+courage to go on. He could not see her face, but her fingers, touching
+the 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 made
+his plea. He made no attempt to put his case. He told what had happened
+simply; he told of his loneliness and discomfort. And he emphasized the
+lack of sentiment that prompted the arrangement.
+
+Anita spoke then for the first time: "And when you tried to terminate it
+she attempted to kill you!"
+
+"I was acting the beast. I brought her up here, and then neglected her
+for 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 should
+have 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 her
+with wide, almost childish eyes.
+
+"Then it was she who was in the compartment with you on the train coming
+up?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where is she now?"
+
+"In Vienna. I have not heard from her. Byrne, the chap who came up
+to see me after the--after the accident, sent her away. I think he's
+looking 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 bandaged
+arm I'm suicidal. Peter Byrne urged me to tell you. He said I couldn't
+get away with it; some time or other it would come out. Then he said
+something else. He said you'd probably understand, and that if you
+married me it was better to start with a clean slate."
+
+No love, no passion in the interview now. A clear statement of fact, an
+offer--his past against hers, his future with hers. Her hand was steady
+now. The light in the priest's house had been extinguished. The chill of
+the mountain night penetrated Anita's white furs; and set her--or was it
+the 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 hugged
+the mountain-side There was a light in his room; outside was the little
+balcony where Marie had leaned against the railing and looked down,
+down. Some of the arrogance of his new virtue left the man. He was
+suddenly humbled. For the first time he realized a part of what Marie
+had 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 have
+made. Anita rose and held out her hand.
+
+"Go and see her," she said quietly. "You owe her that. We'll be leaving
+here 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 this
+thing over, alone, and all the rules of life you've been taught will
+come--"
+
+"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. If
+he could only have crushed her to him, made her feel the security of his
+love, of his sheltering arms! But the barrier of his own building was
+between them. His voice was husky.
+
+"I want you to try to remember, past what I have told you, to the thing
+that concerns us both--I love you. I never loved the other woman. I
+never 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 doctor
+and the pleadings of the chaperon. She did not see Stewart again. But
+before she left, with the luggage gone and the fiacre at the door, she
+went out on the terrace, and looked across to the Villa Waldheim, rising
+from 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 standing
+with folded arms, gazing across the valley to the Kurhaus.
+
+Having promised to see Marie, Stewart proceeded to carry out his promise
+in his direct fashion. He left Semmering the evening of the following
+day, for Vienna. The strain of the confession was over, but he was a
+victim 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 else
+mattered? The story had been a jolt, he told himself. Girls were full of
+queer ideas of right and wrong, bless them! But she cared. She cared!
+
+He arrived in Vienna at nine o'clock that night. The imminence of
+his interview with Marie hung over him like a cloud. He ate a hurried
+supper, and calling up the Doctors' Club by telephone found Peter's
+address in the Siebensternstrasse. He had no idea, of course, that Marie
+was 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 for
+the interview. For he needed courage. In vain on the journey down had he
+clothed himself in armor of wrath against the girl; the very compartment
+in the train provoked softened memories of her. Here they had bought a
+luncheon, there Marie had first seen the Rax. Again at this station she
+had 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 manner
+of living those days was exceedingly vague. He had respected Peter's
+reticence, after the manner of men with each other. Peter had once
+mentioned a boy he was looking after, in excuse for leaving so soon
+after the accident. That was all.
+
+The house on the Siebensternstrasse loomed large and unlighted. The
+street was dark, and it was only after a search that Stewart found the
+gate. Even then he lost the path, and found himself among a group of
+trees, to touch the lowest branches of any of which resulted in a shower
+of raindrops. To add to his discomfort some one was walking in the
+garden, coming toward him with light, almost stealthy steps.
+
+Stewart by his tree stood still, waiting. The steps approached, were
+very close, were beside him. So intense was the darkness that even then
+all he saw was a blacker shadow, and that was visible only because it
+moved. Then a hand touched his arm, stopped as if paralyzed, drew back
+slowly, fearfully.
+
+"Good Heavens!" said poor Harmony faintly.
+
+"Please don't be alarmed. I have lost the path." Stewart's voice was
+almost 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 on
+Stewart that this blacker shadow was a countrywoman speaking God's own
+language. 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 facade
+of the house, turned round to find her gone, and a moment later heard
+the closing of the gate. He was bewildered. What sort of curious place
+was this, a great looming house that concealed in its garden a fugitive
+American girl who came and went like a shadow, leaving only the memory
+of a sweet voice strained with fright?
+
+Stewart was full of his encounter as he took the candle the Portier
+gave him and followed the gentleman's gruff directions up the staircase.
+Peter admitted him, looking a trifle uneasy, as well he might with Marie
+in the salon.
+
+Stewart was too preoccupied to notice Peter's expression. He shook the
+rain off his hat, smiling.
+
+"How are you?" asked Peter dutifully.
+
+"Pretty good, except for a headache when I'm tired. What sort of a place
+have you got here anyhow, Byrne?"
+
+"Old hunting-lodge of Maria Theresa," replied Peter, still preoccupied
+with Marie and what was coming. "Rather interesting old place."
+
+"Rather," commented Stewart, "with goddesses in the garden and all the
+usual stunts."
+
+"Goddesses?"
+
+"Ran into one just now among the trees. 'A woman I forswore, but thou
+being a goddess I forswore not thee.' English-speaking goddess, by
+George!"
+
+Peter was staring at him incredulously; now he bent forward and grasped
+his arm in fingers of steel.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Stewart, tell me what you mean! Who was in the
+garden?"
+
+Stewart was amused and interested. It was not for him to belittle a
+situation of his own making, an incident of his own telling.
+
+"I lost my way in your garden, wandered among the trees, broke through a
+hedgerow 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 spoke
+English. Said she didn't live here, and broke for the gate the minute I
+got 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 running
+down the staircase to the lower floor, was shouting to the Portier to
+unlock the door, was a madman in everything but purpose. The Portier let
+him out and returned to the bedroom.
+
+"The boy above is worse," he said briefly. "A strange doctor has just
+come, and but now the Herr Doktor Byrne runs to the drug store."
+
+The Portier's wife shrugged her shoulders even while tears filled her
+eyes.
+
+"What can one expect?" she demanded. "The good Herr Gott has forbidden
+theft and Rosa says the boy was stolen. Also the druggist has gone to
+visit 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 shall
+go."
+
+Slowly and ponderously she climbed the stairs.
+
+Stewart, left alone, wandered along the dim corridor. He found Peter's
+excitement 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 place
+was warm and comfortable, but over it all hung the indescribable odor of
+drugs 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. It
+was after a distinct pause that she spoke.
+
+"Hast thou brought the police?"
+
+Curiously human, curiously masculine at least was Stewart's mental
+condition at that moment. He had never loved the girl; it was with
+tremendous 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 swear
+it. 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 she
+still cherished the feminine belief that jealousy is love, whereas it is
+only injured pride. She took a step toward him. "Walter, I am sorry. Do
+you hate me?" She had dropped the familiar "thou."
+
+Stewart crossed the room until only Peter's table and lamp stood between
+them.
+
+"I didn't mean to be brutal," he said, rather largely, entirely
+conscious of his own magnanimity. "It was pretty bad up there and I
+know it. I don't hate you, of course. That's hardly possible
+after--everything."
+
+"You--would take me back?"
+
+"No. It's over, Marie. I wanted to know where you were, that's all; to
+see that you were comfortable and not frightened. You're a silly child
+to 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 had
+killed her!"
+
+No man ever violently resents the passionate hate of one woman for her
+rival in his affections. Stewart, finding the situation in hand and
+Marie only feebly formidable, was rather amused and flattered by the
+honest fury in her voice. The mouse was under his paw; he would play a
+bit. "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 her
+with his old, half-bullying, half-playful manner. "Come round here and
+kiss me for old times."
+
+"No!"
+
+"Come."
+
+She stood stubbornly still, and Stewart, still smiling, took a step or
+two toward her. Then he stopped, ceased smiling, drew himself up.
+
+"You are quite right and I'm a rotter." Marie's English did not
+comprehend "rotter," but she knew the tone. "Listen, Marie, I've told
+the other girl, and there's a chance for me, anyhow. Some day she may
+marry 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 a
+dot. 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 take
+it. It's all I can do."
+
+This was a new Stewart, a man she had never known. Marie recoiled from
+him, 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 situation
+irritating. But Marie's tears were not entirely bitter. Back of them her
+busy young mind was weaving a new warp of life, with all of America for
+its loom. Hope that had died lived again. Before her already lay that
+great country where women might labor and live by the fruit of their
+labor, where her tawdry past would be buried in the center of distant
+Europe. New life beckoned to the little Marie that night in the old
+salon 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 you
+there."
+
+"Good!" Stewart held out his hand and Marie took it. With a quick
+gesture she held it to her cheek, dropped it.
+
+Peter came back half an hour later, downcast but not hopeless. He had
+not found Harmony, but life was not all gray. She was well, still in
+Vienna, 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 when
+he had found her he would bring her back, the wanderer, to a marvelous
+welcome.
+
+He found Stewart gone, and Marie feverishly overhauling her few
+belongings by the salon lamp. She turned to him a face still stained
+with 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 very
+happy, although--Peter, may I kiss you?"
+
+"Certainly," said Peter, and took her caress gravely, patting her thin
+shoulder. His thoughts were in the garden with Harmony, who had cared
+enough to come back.
+
+"Life," said Peter soberly, "life is just one damned thing after
+another, 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 you
+very much--but not, believe me, without hurting myself. Perhaps my
+uppermost thought just now is that I am disappointing you, that I am not
+so big as you thought I would be. For now, in this final letter, I can
+tell 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 gone
+very quietly out of your life. I find that such philosophy as I have
+does not support me to-night, that all my little rules of life are
+inadequate. Individual liberty was one--but there is no liberty of the
+individual. Life--other lives--press too closely. You, living your life
+as seemed best and easiest, and carrying down with you into shipwreck
+the little Marie and--myself!
+
+"For, face to face with the fact, I cannot accept it, Walter. It is not
+only a question of my past against yours. It is of steady revolt
+and loathing of the whole thing; not the flash of protest before one
+succumbs to the inevitable, but a deep-seated hatred that is a part of
+me and that would never forget.
+
+"You say that you are the same man I would have married, only more
+honest for concealing nothing. But--and forgive me this, it insists on
+coming up in my mind--were you honest, really? You told me, and it took
+courage, but wasn't it partly fear? What motive is unmixed? Honesty--and
+fear, Walter. You were preparing against a contingency, although you may
+not admit this to yourself.
+
+"I am not passing judgment on you. God forbid that I should! I am only
+trying to show you what is in my mind, and that this break is final. The
+revolt is in myself, against something sordid and horrible which I will
+not 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 of
+this life of mine that stretches ahead, Walter--home and children, the
+love of a good man, the fulfillment of my ideals. And you ask me to
+start with a handicap. I cannot do it. I know you are resentful, but--I
+know that you understand.
+
+"ANITA."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+The little Georgiev was in trouble those days. The Balkan engine was
+threatening to explode, but continued to gather steam, with Bulgaria
+sitting on the safety-valve. Austria was mobilizing troops, and there
+were long conferences in the Burg between the Emperor and various
+bearded gentlemen, while the military prayed in the churches for war.
+
+The little Georgiev hardly ate or slept. Much hammering went on all day
+in the small room below Harmony's on the Wollbadgasse. At night,
+when the man in the green velours hat took a little sleep, mysterious
+packages were carried down the whitewashed staircase and loaded into
+wagons waiting below. Once on her window-sill Harmony found among the
+pigeons a carrier pigeon with a brass tube fastened to its leg.
+
+On the morning after Harmony's flight from the garden in the Street
+of Seven Stars, she received a visit from Georgiev. She had put in
+a sleepless night, full of heart-searching. She charged herself with
+cowardice in running away from Peter and Jimmy when they needed her, and
+in going back like a thief the night before. The conviction that the boy
+was not so well brought with it additional introspection--her sacrifice
+seemed useless, almost childish. She had fled because two men thought
+it necessary, in order to save her reputation, to marry her; and she
+did not wish to marry. Marriage was fatal to the career she had promised
+herself, had been promised. But this career, for which she had given up
+everything else--would she find it in the workroom of a dressmaker?
+
+Ah, but there was more to it than that. Suppose--how her cheeks burned
+when she thought of it!--suppose she had taken Peter at his word and
+married him? What about Peter's career? Was there any way by which
+Peter's poverty for one would be comfort for two? Was there any
+reason why Peter, with his splendid ability, should settle down to the
+hack-work of general practice, the very slough out of which he had so
+painfully climbed?
+
+Either of two things--go back to Peter, but not to marry him, or stay
+where she was. How she longed to go back only Harmony knew. There in
+the little room, with only the pigeons to see, she held out her arms
+longingly. "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 cost
+outweighed the vision of Peter at the window, haggard and tired, looking
+out. It was Harmony's chance, perhaps, to do a big thing; to prove
+herself bigger than her fears, stronger than convention. But she was
+young, bewildered, afraid. And there was this element, stronger than
+any 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--that
+was 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 die
+and his mother not see him? Harmony's sense of fairness rebelled. In the
+small 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 the
+sun. An oxcart, laden with vegetables for the market, lumbered along the
+streets. Puzzled and unhappy, Harmony rose and lighted her fire, drew on
+her slippers and the faded silk kimono with the pink butterflies.
+
+In the next room the dressmaker still slept, dreaming early morning
+dreams of lazy apprentices, overdue bills, complaining customers.
+
+Harmony moved lightly not to disturb her. She set her room in order, fed
+the pigeons,--it was then she saw the carrier with its message,--made
+her morning coffee by setting the tiny pot inside the stove. And all the
+time, moving quietly through her morning routine, she was there in that
+upper room in body only.
+
+In soul she was again in the courtyard back of the old lodge, in the
+Street of Seven Stars, with the rabbits stirring in the hutch, and
+Peter, 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 Hungarian
+maid for breakfast. Harmony dressed hastily. It was one of her new
+duties to prepare the workroom for the day. The luminous streak above
+the church was rose now, time for the day to begin.
+
+She was not certain at once that some one had knocked at the door, so
+faint was the sound.
+
+She hesitated, listened. The knob turned slightly. Harmony, expecting
+Monia, called "Come in."
+
+It was the little Georgiev, very apologetic, rather gray of face. He
+stood in the doorway with his finger on his lips, one ear toward the
+stairway. 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 you
+moving about. Ah, Fraulein, that I must disturb you!"
+
+"Something has happened!" exclaimed Harmony, thinking of Peter, of
+course.
+
+"Not yet. I fear it is about to happen. Fraulein, do me the honor to
+open your window. My pigeon comes now to you to be fed, and I fear--on
+the sill, Fraulein."
+
+Harmony opened the window. The wild pigeons scattered at once, but the
+carrier, flying out a foot or two, came back promptly and set about its
+breakfast.
+
+"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 of
+grain on a wrong window-sill, and kingdoms overthrown! Georgiev caught
+the pigeon and drew the message from the tube. Even Harmony grasped the
+seriousness of the situation. The little Bulgarian's face, from gray
+became 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 known
+about the pigeon--"
+
+Georgiev recovered himself.
+
+"The Fraulein can do nothing wrong," he said. "It is a matter of an
+hour's delay, that is all. It may not be too late."
+
+Monia Reiff, from the next room, called loudly for more coffee. The
+sulky 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 the
+street below. It is of an urgency, or I--Please, Fraulein!"
+
+Harmony glanced down into the half-light of the street. Georgiev, behind
+her, watched her, breathless, expectant. Harmony drew in her head.
+
+"Only a man in a green hat," she said. "And down the street a group of
+soldiers."
+
+"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 here
+in 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 the
+pigeon. It is war, Fraulein. Do not distress yourself. It is but a
+matter of--imprisonment."
+
+"There must be something I can do," desperately. "I hear them below. Is
+there no way to the roof, no escape?"
+
+"None, Fraulein. It was an oversight. War is not my game; I am a man of
+peace. 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 was
+unmistakable. 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 my
+heart your image. Always so long as I live. Adieu."
+
+He drew his heels together, gave a stiff little bow and was gone down
+the staircase. Harmony was frightened, stricken. She collapsed in a heap
+on the floor of her room, her fingers in her ears. But she need not have
+feared. The little Georgiev made no protest, submitted to the inevitable
+like a gentleman and a soldier, went out of her life, indeed, as
+unobtrusively as he had entered it.
+
+The carrier pigeon preened itself comfortably on the edge of the
+washstand. Harmony ceased her hysterical crying at last and pondered
+what was best to do. Monia was still breakfasting so incredibly brief
+are 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 the
+carrier rose lazily from the window-sill, flapped its way over
+the 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 building
+followed the capture of the little spy. Protesting tenants were turned
+out, beds were dismantled, closets searched, walls sounded for hidden
+hollows. In one room on Harmony's floor was found stored a quantity of
+ammunition.
+
+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 the
+chattering sewing-girls had gone back to work, that Harmony, on her way
+to her dismantled room, passed through the upper passage.
+
+She glanced down the staircase where little Georgiev had so manfully
+descended.
+
+"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 her
+ears; the soft cooing of the pigeons, the whirr of sewing-machines from
+the workroom. The incident was closed, except for the heap of ammunition
+boxes 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, infinitely
+touching.
+
+"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--of
+Peter, of Jimmy, of the Portier, of anything that belonged to the old
+life in the Siebensternstrasse. But there was no time. The sentry's
+impassive face became rigid; he looked through her, not at her. Harmony
+turned.
+
+The man in the green hat was coming up the staircase. There was no
+further chance to question. The sentry was set to carrying the boxes
+down the staircase.
+
+Full morning now, with the winter sun shining on the beggars in the
+market, on the crowds in the parks, on the flower sellers in the
+Stephansplatz; shining on Harmony's golden head as she bent over a bit
+of chiffon, on the old milkwoman carrying up the whitewashed staircase
+her heavy cans of milk; on the carrier pigeon winging its way to the
+south; beating in through bars to the exalted face of Herr Georgiev;
+resting on Peter's drooping shoulders, on the neglected mice and the
+wooden 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 through
+the night he had felt it; during the hours before the dawn there had
+been times when the small pulse wavered, flickered, almost ceased. With
+the daylight there had been a trifle of recovery, enough for a bit of
+hope, enough to make harder Peter's acceptance of the inevitable.
+
+The boy was very happy, quite content and comfortable. When he opened
+his eyes he smiled at Peter, and Peter, gray of face, smiled back. Peter
+died 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 apparently
+asleep and Peter on his knees beside the bed. He raised his head at
+her footstep and the girl was startled at the suffering in his face. He
+motioned 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 now
+it was useless. At eight o'clock he let Marie take his place, then he
+bathed and dressed and prepared to face another day, perhaps another
+night. 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 was
+insistent--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 the
+child, but like Harmony his early training was rising now to accuse
+him. He had separated mother and child. Who was he to have decided the
+mother's unfitness, to have played destiny? How lightly he had taken the
+lives of others in his hand, and to what end? Harmony, God knows where;
+the boy dying without his mother. Whatever that mother might be, her
+place that day was with her boy. What a wreck he had made of things! He
+was humbled as well as stricken, poor Peter!
+
+In the morning he sent a note to McLean, asking him to try to trace the
+mother 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 of
+hours. I meant well, but I've done a terrible thing. Bring her, Mac, no
+matter 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 and
+a lettuce leaf. Never before had the combination failed to arouse and
+amuse the boy. He carried the rabbit down again sorrowfully. "He saw
+it not," he reported sadly to his wife. "Be off to the church while
+I deliver this letter. And this rabbit we will not cook, but keep in
+remembrance."
+
+At eleven o'clock Marie called Peter, who was asleep on the horsehair
+sofa.
+
+"He asks for you."
+
+Peter was instantly awake and on his feet. The boy's eyes were open and
+fixed 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 he
+could see the mice. He watched them for a moment. Poor Peter, very
+humble, found himself wondering in how many ways he had been remiss. To
+see this small soul launched into eternity without a foreword, without a
+bit of light for the journey! Peter's religion had been one of life and
+living, 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 of
+broth, asked to have the two tame mice on the bed. Peter, opening the
+cage, found one dead, very stiff and stark. The catastrophe he kept from
+the boy.
+
+"One is sick, Jimmy boy," he said, and placed the mate, forlorn and
+shivering, 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 mind
+too worked slowly. It was after a pause, while he lay there with closed
+eyes, that Peter saw two tears slip from under his long lashes. Peter
+bent 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 to
+heaven, where there is no more death or dying, where it is always summer
+and the sun always shines?"
+
+No reply for a moment. The little mouse sat up on the pillow and rubbed
+its nose with a pinkish paw. The baby mice in the cage nuzzled their
+dead 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 painted
+such a heaven as no theologue has ever had the humanity to paint--a
+heaven of babbling brooks and laughing, playing children, a heaven of
+dear departed puppies and resurrected birds, of friendly deer, of trees
+in fruit, of speckled fish in bright rivers. Painted his heaven with
+smiling eyes and death in his heart, a child's heaven of games and
+friendly Indians, of sunlight and rain, sweet sleep and brisk awakening.
+
+The boy listened. He was silent when Peter had finished. Speech was
+increasingly 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 dusk
+he 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 with
+one lung.
+
+Through all that long day, then, Harmony sat over her work, unaccustomed
+muscles aching, the whirring machines in her ears. Monia, upset over the
+morning's excitement, was irritable and unreasonable. The gold-tissue
+costume had come back from Le Grande with a complaint. Below in the
+courtyard all day curious groups stood gaping up the staircase, where
+the morning had seen such occurrences.
+
+At the noon hour, while the girls heated soup and carried in pails of
+salad from the corner restaurant, Harmony had fallen into the way of
+playing for them. To the music-loving Viennese girls this was the hour
+of the day. To sit back, soup bowl on knee, the machines silent, Monia
+quarreling in the kitchen with the Hungarian servant, and while the
+pigeons ate crusts on the window-sills, to hear this American girl play
+such music as was played at the opera, her slim figure swaying, her
+whole beautiful face and body glowing with the melody she made, the
+girls found the situation piquant, altogether delightful. Although she
+did 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 out
+by the report of one of them who had glimpsed the silk petticoat. It
+was rumored also that she wore no chemise, but instead an infinitely
+coquettish series of lace and nainsook garments--of a fineness!
+
+Harmony played for them that day, played, perhaps, as she had not played
+since the day she had moved the master to tears, played to Peter as she
+had seen him at the window, to Jimmy, to the little Georgiev as he went
+down the staircase. And finally with a choke in her throat to the little
+mother back home, so hopeful, so ignorant.
+
+In the evening, as was her custom, she took the one real meal of the day
+at the corner restaurant, going early to avoid the crowd and coming back
+quickly through the winter night. The staircase was always a peril, to
+be encountered and conquered night after night and even in the daytime
+not to be lightly regarded. On her way up this night she heard steps
+ahead, heavy, measured steps that climbed steadily without pauses. For
+an instant Harmony thought it sounded like Peter's step and she went
+dizzy.
+
+But it was not Peter. Standing in the upper hall, much as he had stood
+that 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 the
+building. Then she saw that the sentry's impassive face wore lines of
+trouble. 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 of
+moments."
+
+Harmony clutched at the iron stair-rail for support. "You are sure? You
+are not telling me so that I will go back?"
+
+"He dies, Fraulein. The Herr Doktor has not slept for many hours. My
+wife, Rosa, sits on the stair to see that none disturb, and her cousin,
+the wife of the Portier, weeps over the stove. Please, Fraulein, come
+with 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 was
+personal and small and frightened, before the reality of death. She
+rose, 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 tall
+soldier to find the dancer at her hotel, or failing that, at the
+Ronacher Music-Hall.
+
+Harmony took a taxicab--nothing must be spared now--bribed the chauffeur
+to greater speed, arrived at the house and ran across the garden, still
+tearless, up the stairs, past Rosa on the upper flight, and rang the
+bell.
+
+Marie admitted her with only a little gasp of surprise. There was
+nothing 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 and
+went white, holding to the back of his chair. Their eyes met, agony
+and hope in them, love and death, rapture and bitterness. In Harmony's,
+pleading, promise, something of doubt; in Peter's, only yearning, as of
+empty arms. Then Harmony dared to look at the bed and fell on her knees
+in a storm of grief beside it. Peter bent over and gently stroked her
+hair.
+
+Le Grande was singing; the boxes were full. In the body of the immense
+theater waiters scurried back and forward among the tables. Everywhere
+was the clatter of silver and steel on porcelain, the clink of glasses.
+Smoke was everywhere--pipes, cigars, cigarettes. Women smoked between
+bites at the tables, using small paper or silver mouthpieces, even a
+gold 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 the
+stage sat the red-bearded Dozent with the lady of the photograph. They
+were drinking cheap native wines and were very happy.
+
+From the height of his worldly wisdom he was explaining the people to
+her.
+
+"In the box--don't stare, Liebchen, he looks--is the princeling I have
+told 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 she
+finishes her song he rises in the box, kisses the flowers and tosses
+them 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 more
+difficult to understand, her songs were considered exceedingly risque.
+As a matter of fact they were merely ragtime melodies, with a lilt to
+them that caught the Viennese fancy, accustomed to German sentimental
+ditties and the artificial forms of grand opera. And there was another
+reason for her success. She carried with her a chorus of a dozen
+pickaninnies.
+
+In Austria darkies were as rare as cats, and there were no cats! So the
+little chorus had made good.
+
+Each day she walked in the Prater, ermine from head to foot, and behind
+her two by two trailed twelve little Southern darkies in red-velvet
+coats and caps, grinning sociably. When she drove a pair sat on the
+boot.
+
+Her voice was strong, not sweet, spoiled by years of singing against
+dishes and bottles in smoky music halls; spoiled by cigarettes and
+absinthe and foreign cocktails that resembled their American prototypes
+as the night resembles the day.
+
+She wore the gold dress, decolletee, slashed to the knee over
+rhinestone-spangled stockings. And back of her trailed the twelve little
+darkies.
+
+She sang "Dixie," of course, and the "Old Folks at Home"; then a ragtime
+medley, with the chorus showing rows of white teeth and clogging with
+all their short legs. Le Grande danced to that, a whirling, nimble
+dance. The little rhinestones on her stockings flashed; her opulent
+bosom quivered. The Dozent, eyes on the dancer, squeezed his companion's
+hand.
+
+"I love thee!" he whispered, rather flushed.
+
+And then she sang "Doan ye cry, mah honey." Her voice, rather coarse but
+melodious, lent itself to the negro rhythm, the swing and lilt of the
+lullaby. The little darkies, eyes rolling, preternaturally solemn,
+linked arms and swayed rhythmically, right, left, right, left. The
+glasses ceased clinking; sturdy citizens forgot their steak and beer
+for a moment and listened, knife and fork poised. Under the table the
+Dozent's hand pressed its captive affectionately, his eyes no longer
+on Le Grande, but on the woman across, his sweetheart, she who would
+be mother of his children. The words meant little to the audience; the
+rich, 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 her
+breast, and crooned to him, rocking on her jeweled heels. The crowd
+applauded; the man in the box kissed his flowers and flung them. Glasses
+and 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 up
+like a flock of chickens.
+
+And there in the wings, grimly impassive, stood a private soldier of the
+old Franz Josef, blocking the door to her dressing room. For a moment
+gold dress and dark blue-gray uniform confronted each other. Then the
+sentry touched his cap.
+
+"Madam," he said, "the child is in the Riebensternstrasse and to-night
+he 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 hand
+in 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 woman
+in a gold dress who stood staring down at him, rested a moment on the
+cage 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 from
+the old salon of Maria Theresa the sentry, with sad eyes but no lack of
+vigor, went again through the Austrian manual of arms, and because he
+had 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 he
+loved her. It was necessary that he go back. His money had about given
+out, and there was no way to get more save by earning it. The drain of
+Jimmy's illness, the inevitable expense of the small grave and the tiny
+stone Peter had insisted on buying, had made retreat his only course.
+True, Le Grande had wished to defray all expenses, but Peter was
+inexorable. No money earned as the dancer earned hers should purchase
+peaceful rest for the loved little body. And after seeing Peter's eyes
+the dancer had not insisted.
+
+A week had seen many changes. Marie was gone. After a conference between
+Stewart and Peter that had been decided on. Stewart raised the money
+somehow, and Peter saw her off, palpitant and eager, with the pin he had
+sent her to Semmering at her throat. She kissed Peter on the cheek in
+the station, rather to his embarrassment. From the lowered window, as
+the train pulled out, she waved a moist handkerchief.
+
+"I shall be very good," she promised him. The last words he heard above
+the grinding of the train were her cheery: "To America!"
+
+Peter was living alone in the Street of Seven Stars, getting food
+where he might happen to be, buying a little now and then from the
+delicatessen shop across the street. For Harmony had gone back to the
+house in the Wollbadgasse. She had stayed until all was over and until
+Marie's small preparations for departure were over. Then, while Peter
+was at the station, she slipped away again. But this time she left her
+address. She wrote:--
+
+"You will come to visit me, dear Peter, because I was so lonely before
+and that is unnecessary now. But you must know that I cannot stay in
+the Siebensternstrasse. We have each our own fight to make, and you have
+been trying to fight for us all, for Marie, for dear little Jimmy, for
+me. You must get back to work now; you have lost so much time. And I
+am managing well. The Frau Professor is back and will take an evening
+lesson, and soon I shall have more money from Fraulein Reiff. You can
+see how things are looking up for me. In a few months I shall be able to
+renew 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 with
+the letter in his hand he felt that Harmony was right. He could offer
+her nothing but his shabby self, his problematic future. Perhaps,
+surely, everything would have been settled, without reason, had he only
+once taken the girl in his arms, told her she was the breath of life
+itself to him. But adversity, while it had roused his fighting spirit in
+everything else, had sapped his confidence.
+
+He had found the letter on his dressing-table, and he found himself
+confronting his image over it, a tall, stooping figure, a tired, lined
+face, a coat that bore the impress of many days with a sick child's head
+against its breast.
+
+So it was over. She had come back and gone again, and this time he must
+let her go. Who was he to detain her? She would carry herself on to
+success, he felt; she had youth, hope, beauty and ability. And she had
+proved the thing he had not dared to believe, that she could take care
+of 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 the
+Wollbadgasse. Peter was not subtle, no psychologist, but he had seen
+during the last few days how the boy watched Harmony's every word, every
+gesture. And, perhaps, when loneliness and hard work began to tell on
+her, McLean's devotion would win its reward. McLean's devotion, with
+all that it meant, the lessons again, community of taste, their common
+youth! Peter felt old, very tired.
+
+Nevertheless he went that night to the Wollbadgasse. He sent his gray
+suit to the Portier's wife to be pressed, and getting out his surgical
+case, as he had once before in the Pension Schwarz, he sewed a button
+on his overcoat, using the curved needle and the catgut and working with
+surgeon's precision. Then, still working very carefully, he trimmed the
+edges of graying hair over his ears, trimmed his cuffs, trimmed his best
+silk tie, now almost hopeless. He blacked his shoes, and the suit not
+coming, he donned his dressing-gown and went into Jimmy's room to feed
+the mice. Peter stood a moment beside the smooth white bed with his face
+working. The wooden sentry still stood on the bedside table.
+
+It was in Peter's mind to take the mice to Harmony, confess his defeat
+and approaching retreat, and ask her to care for them. Then he decided
+against this palpable appeal for sympathy, elected to go empty-handed
+and discover merely how comfortable she was or was not. When the time
+came he would slip out of her life, sending her a letter and leaving
+McLean on guard.
+
+Harmony was at home. Peter climbed the dark staircase--where Harmony
+had met the little Georgiev, and where he had gone down to his
+death--climbed steadily, but without his usual elasticity. The place
+appalled him--its gloom, its dinginess, its somber quiet. In the
+daylight, with the pigeons on the sills and the morning sunlight
+printing the cross of the church steeple on the whitewashed wall, it was
+peaceful, cloisterlike, with landings that were crypts. But at night it
+was 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 outside
+before ringing, heard her begin something determinedly cheerful, falter,
+cease altogether. Peter rang.
+
+Harmony herself admitted him. Perhaps--oh, certainly she had expected
+him! It would be Peter, of course, to come and see how she was getting
+on, how she was housed. She held out her hand and Peter took it. Still
+no words, only a half smile from her and no smile at all from Peter, but
+his 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 back
+to her room to put it away. Peter had a glimpse of its poverty and its
+meagerness. He drew a long breath.
+
+Monia was at the opera, and the Hungarian sat in the kitchen knitting a
+stocking. 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 portieres
+that made fitting-rooms of the corners were pushed back. Peter saw
+only a big room with empty corners, and that at a glance. His eyes were
+Harmony's.
+
+He sat down awkwardly on a stiff chair, Harmony on a velvet settee. They
+were suddenly two strangers meeting for the first time. In the squalor
+of the Pension Schwarz, in the comfortable intimacies of the Street of
+Seven Stars, they had been easy, unconstrained. Now suddenly Peter was
+tongue-tied. Only one thing in him clamored for utterance, and that he
+sternly 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 needed
+you. 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 a
+woman; but--"
+
+"Well, of course--but--I'm generally in trouble, Harry dear."
+
+Frightfully ashamed of himself by that time was Peter, ashamed of his
+weakness. He sought to give a casual air to the speech by stooping for a
+neglected pin on the carpet. By the time he had stuck it in his lapel he
+had saved his mental forces from the rout of Harmony's eyes.
+
+His next speech he made to the center table, and missed a most
+delectable look in the aforesaid eyes.
+
+"I didn't come to be silly," he said to the table. "I hate people who
+whine, 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's
+hair. Peter, goaded, got up and walked about. Harmony was half
+exasperated; she would have boxed Peter's ears with a tender hand had
+she dared.
+
+His hands thrust savagely in his pockets, Peter turned and faced her at
+last.
+
+"First of all," he said, "I am going back to America, Harmony. I've
+got 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'll
+come 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 on
+others, and now you are going back just where you were, and--you are
+leaving me here alone!"
+
+"You are alone, anyhow," said Peter, "making your own way and getting
+along. 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 you
+proposed 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't
+want to be pitied. You stay here and work. You'll do big things. I had a
+talk with the master while I was searching for you, and he says you
+can do anything. But he looked at me--and a sight I was with worry and
+fright--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, looking
+down at her.
+
+"I've said a lot I didn't mean to," he said. "There's only one thing I
+haven't said, I oughtn't to say it, dear. I'm not going to marry you--I
+won't have such a thing on my conscience. But it doesn't hurt a woman
+to know that a man loves her. I love you, dear. You're my heaven and my
+earth--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 Peter
+steadily. "In the time to come, when you would think of what you might
+have 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 be
+the music or me."
+
+"And you make the choice!" said Harmony proudly. "Very well, Peter, I
+shall 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 you
+enough 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, very
+beautiful.
+
+"I'm afraid to ask," said Peter, and picking up his hat he made for the
+door. There he turned, looked back, was lost.
+
+"My sweetest heart!" he cried, and took her in his hungry arms. But even
+then, with her arms about his neck at last, with her slender body held
+to him, her head on his shoulder, his lips to her soft throat, Peter put
+her 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 I
+would sacrifice you. You are very lovely, my girl, my girl! As long as I
+live I shall carry your image in my heart."
+
+Ah, what the little Georgiev had said on his way to the death that
+waited down the staircase. Peter, not daring to look at her again, put
+away 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, with
+the recording angel opening a new page in life's ledger for her and
+a red-ink line erasing the other; with Jimmy and his daddy wandering
+through the heaven of friendly adventure and green fields, hand in hand;
+with the carrier resting after its labors in the pigeon house by the
+rose-fields of Sofia; with the sentry casting martial shadows through
+the barred windows of the hospital; and the little Georgiev, about to
+die, dividing his heart, as a heritage, between his country and a young
+girl.
+
+Very near the end, with the morning light of the next day shining into
+the salon of Maria Theresa and on to Peter's open trunk and shabby
+wardrobe spread over chairs. An end of trunks and departure, as was the
+beginning.
+
+Early morning at the Gottesacker, or God's acre, whence little Jimmy had
+started on his comfortable journey. Early morning on the frost-covered
+grass, the frozen roads, the snap and sparkle of the Donau. Harmony had
+taken her problem there, in the early hour before Monia would summon her
+to labor--took her problem and found her answer.
+
+The great cemetery was still and deserted. Harmony, none too warmly
+clad, walked briskly, a bunch of flowers in oiled paper against the
+cold. Already the air carried a hint of spring; there was a feeling of
+resurrection and promise. The dead earth felt alive under-foot.
+
+Harmony knelt by the grave and said the little prayer the child had
+repeated at night and morning. And, because he had loved it, with some
+vague 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 bunch
+of roses that bore only too clearly the stamp of whence they came. One
+of the pickaninnies had carried the box and stood impassively by, gazing
+at Harmony.
+
+Le Grande placed her flowers on the grave. They almost covered it, quite
+eclipsed 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 the
+woman's eyes. After that she knew. It was on the drive back, with the
+little 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 person
+to--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 did
+not 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 in
+the cemetery back there, and on it roses sent me by a man I loathe! If I
+could 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 boy
+always. There is only one thing worth while--the love of a good man. I
+have lived, lived hard. And I know."
+
+"But supposing that one has real ability--I mean some achievement
+already, 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 your
+doctor 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 clean
+collars next to boots, folding pajamas and such-like negligible garments
+with great care and putting in his dresscoat in a roll. His pipes took
+time, and the wooden sentry he packed with great care and a bit of
+healthy emotion. Once or twice he came across trifles of Harmony's, and
+he put them carefully aside--the sweater coat, a folded handkerchief,
+a bow she had worn at her throat. The bow brought back the night before
+and that reckless kiss on her white throat. Well for Peter to get away
+if he is to keep his resolution, when the sight of a ribbon bow can
+bring that look of suffering into his eyes.
+
+The Portier below was polishing floors, right foot, left foot, any foot
+at 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 his
+voice, and coughed, a bit of floor wax having got into the air. The
+antlers of the deer from the wild-game shop hung now in his bedroom.
+When the wildgame seller came over for coffee there would be a
+discussion 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 is
+that American dancer. Run and pretty thyself!"
+
+It was too late for more than an upward twist of a mustache. Harmony
+was at the door, but not the sad-eyed Harmony of a week before or the
+undecided and troubled girl of before that. A radiant Harmony, this, who
+stood in the doorway, who wished them good-morning, and ran up the old
+staircase with glowing eyes and a heart that leaped and throbbed. A
+woman now, this Harmony, one who had looked on life and learned; one
+who had chosen her fate and was running to meet it; one who feared only
+death, not life or anything that life could offer.
+
+The door was not locked. Perhaps Peter was not up--not dressed. What did
+that matter? What did anything matter but Peter himself?
+
+Peter, sorting out lectures on McBurney's Point, had come across a bit
+of 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 dropping
+down on her knees among a riot of garments--down on her knees, with one
+arm round Peter's neck, drawing his tired head lower until she could
+kiss him.
+
+"Oh, Peter, Peter, dear!" she cried. "I'll love you all my life if only
+you'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 of
+life empty of arm and heart. And when one has one's arms set, as one may
+say, for loneliness and relinquishment it is rather difficult--Ah, but
+Peter 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 her
+what she was doing, what she was giving up. She would not be reasoned
+with.
+
+"I love you," was her answer to every line. And it was no divided
+allegiance 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 the
+curb; the head waiter from the coffee-house across comes to the doorway
+and looks out. The sentry in front of the hospital ceases pacing and
+stands at attention.
+
+In the street a small procession comes at the double quick--a handful of
+troopers, a black van with tiny, high-barred windows, more troopers.
+
+Inside the van a Bulgarian spy going out to death--a swarthy little man
+with black eyes and short, thick hands, going out like a gentleman and a
+soldier to meet the God of patriots and lovers.
+
+The sentry, who was only a soldier from Salzburg with one lung, was also
+a gentleman and a patriot. He uncovered his head.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Street of Seven Stars, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
+
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