The Street of Seven Stars...................................................................................................................................1

Mary Roberts Rhinehart ...........................................................................................................................1

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 huntinglodge, 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

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

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

The room was very barea 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 rugsthe 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

In a sort of desperation she drew a chair underneath the chandelier, and armed with a handful of matches

proceeded to the unheardof extravagance of lighting it, not here and there, but throughout as high as she

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 coalpail 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

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 bluesilk 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 hotwater 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

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

"Gott im Himmel!" he would say to his wife, fumbling with the knot of his mustache bandage, "what a

"And mad!" grumbled his wife. "All the day coal, coal to heat; and at night the windows open! Karl the

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 daysa 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 abroadthe

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

Orand one of the Harmar girls had carried back this sear in her soulto 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

"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

"Here it is," she called joyously. "And here are Harmony's bedroom slippers. Oh, Harry, I found your

She went to the mirror, which had reflected the Empress Maria Theresa, and looked at her eyes. They were

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

Without a word the Big Soprano put down her curlingiron, 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

But little Scatchett was not interested in Austrian cigarettes with a government monopoly and gilt tips. She

"Every little bit," she said flippantly, but still in a whisper, "added to what she's got, makes just a little bit

"Have you thought of a place to leave it for her? If Rosa finds it, it's goodbye. Heaven knows it was hard

enough to get together, without losing it now. I'll have to jump overboard and swim ashore at New YorkI

"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 aloneand 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 differentshe'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

"Temperament?" she asked. It had always been accepted in the little colony that Harmony was a real

"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.

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

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

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 dayhopefully! One must

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

"Bitte, Fraulein!" he said through the bandage. "It is for me a pleasure to admit you. And perhaps if the

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.

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

It was whenhaving 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 roomsit 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 itthe real thing, you know, whatever it isand I haven't. None of

the rest of us had. And you must stay. To go now, just when lessons would mean everythingwell, you must

not think of it. We have scads to take us home, more than we need, both of us, or at leastwell, 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 tonight 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 tonight 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 homeyou 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

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 letterof credit to take her home, and she hadthe 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

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

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

When the music had died away he went in and closed the door sheepishly. His wife stood over the stove, a

"I did but hum a little. She drags out my heart with her music." He fumbled with hismustache bandage, which

was knotted behind, keeping one eye on his wife, whose morning pleasure it was to untie it for him.

The knot was hopeless now, doubletied 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

The Portier was angry. He snarled something through the bandage, which had slipped down over his mouth,

"She will stay if she so desire," he muttered furiously, and, raising the knife, he cut the knotted string. His

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

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 todayHimmel, the girl must

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 cityyoung girls

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

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

The bit of cheer of the night before was gone; it was with a heavy heart that Harmony started on her quest for

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 wildgame 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.

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

Harmony searched all day for the little room with board and a stove and no objection to practicing. There

were plentybut 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 selfrespect 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

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

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.

"Not ill, are you?" he asked in English, and then remembering. "Bist du krank?" He colored violently at that,

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

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

"So bad," he observed, "that I keep body and soul together by buying strong and odorous food at the

delicatessensodorous, 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 coffeehouse on the corner. I say" He hesitated.

Harmony hesitated. In the gloom of the hall she could hardly see this brisk young Americanyoung, she

knew by his voice, tall by his silhouette, strong by the way he had caught her. She could not see his face, but

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

"Proper! Of course it is. I shall send you a bill for professional services. Besides, won't we be formally

introduced tonight by the landlady? Come nowto the coffeehouse 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

"My dear young lady," he explained gravely, picking up the cheese and the tinned fish, "it makes a difference

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 sideglance 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."

The coffeehouse was warm and bright. Round its small tables were gathered miscellaneous groups, here and

there a woman, but mostly menuniformed officers, who made of the neighborhood coffeehouse 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 ballsthis was

Harmony had never been inside one before. The little music colony had been a tightclosed 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 coffeehouse, 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 goodlooking. 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 effecta tall man, possibly thirty, broadshouldered, somewhat stooped, as tall men

The shabbiness was a shock. A muchbraided 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

iteven 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.

"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 divorceor is it always the same one? And who's President back home."

"Curious? It's heavenly! It's the one thing I am going to take back to America with meone coffeehouse,

one dozen military men for local color, one dozen students ditto, and one proprietor's wife to sit in the cage

He leaned over toward her; his darkgray 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

After that, having seen how tired she looked, he forbade conversation until she had had her coffee. She ate

"Nod your head but don't speak," he said. "Remember, I am prescribing, and there's to be no conversation

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 steelgray eyes that

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

"The function of a coffeehouse," he explained gravely, "is twofold. Coffee is only the first half. The second

"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. Andwhy evade it?she was interested. This whimsical and respectful young man with his

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

"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.

"I rather like Patrickif I thought it might pass as Patrick! Patrick has possibilities. The diminutive is Pat,

"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 italways 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

Dayssurgeons, you knowwhen 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

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 herloneliness and struggle, and the

everpresent 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

"Thank you for telling me," she said simply. "I think I understand very well becauseit's music with me:

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 tonight,

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',

Harmony made no immediate reply. He seemed to expect none. She was drawing on her gloves, her eyes, like

Far back among the tables a young man rose and yawned. Then, seeing Byrne, he waved a greeting to him.

The young man was handsome in a florid, redchecked 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

He replied in English. It was a curious way they had, and eminently satisfactory, each understanding better

"Because, my beloved," he said lightly, "you are smoking a great many poisonous and highly expensive

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

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

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

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

A sudden repulsion for the evening's engagement rose in Byrne, but the situation following his

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

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

In their curious bilingual talk there was little room for subtlety. The "beautiful" calmed her, but the second

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 upturned 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 coffeehouse, 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

delicatessenseller'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 coffeehouse, 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

He straightened under it. He knew the old city fairly wellenough 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

Perhaps the old coffeehouse 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

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 delicatessenseller 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

"I think I must go," she said hurriedly, after a glance at his determinedly altruistic profile. "I must finish

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

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

"Saw you this morning coming outdelicatessen 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 II saw you were an American, and that's not a good

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 handluggage and her

violin to the pension. He paid the trifling score, and followed by many eyes in the room they went out into

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

"She with whom you sing, old cracked voice! Whose money you refuse, because she reminds you of your

"It is the way of the young and beautifulthere is always a man," said the Portier, turning a chop.

"It is the same man whom I last night saw at the gate," she threw back over her shoulder. "I knew it from the

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

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

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 sidetable, 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

Peter Byrne was early in the diningroom. 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

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 openone window, to be exact, the room being very smalland spends most of the day in a warm

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

He was late at supperan 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

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 redpaper 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

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

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

"New girl, eh?" she said, with a birdlike nod toward the door. "Very gay, isn't she, to have just finished a

"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

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

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 himselfan 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

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 tomorrow 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

Boyer, a much older man, whose wife had come over with him, stopped under a street light to consult his

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

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

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

"'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 drivingarm 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

Stewart opened the door himself, long German pipe in hand, his coat replaced by a worn smokingjacket.

The little apartment was thick with smoke, and from a room on the right came the click of chips and the

Marie, restored to good humor, came out to greet them, and both men bowed ceremoniously over her hand,

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

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

Like the others who occasionally gathered in Stewart's unconventional menage, Byrne had adopted Stewart's

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

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.

"Not youthe 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

Stewart was a single man spending two years in postgraduate 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

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 thirdclass pension, stewing in summer, freezing in winter, starving always; or the alternative

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 sittingroom, now in chaotic disorder.

Byrne went directly to the sittingroom. 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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

"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 cardtable. Stewart was orating

"Exactly," he was saying, in reply to something gone before; "I used to come here Saturday nightsused 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

"Girl and all. Old Worth said she was straight, and, by Jove, she is. He came back last fall on his wedding

triphe married a wealthy girl and came to see us. I was out, but Marie was here. There was the deuce to

"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,

"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

However, a moment later he yawned, and said aloud, with considerable vigor, that he 'd be damned if he

wouldwhich 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

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 diningroom

the little chambermaid cut butter and divided it sparingly among a dozen breakfast trayson 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 butterand a hard heart.

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

"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

"For the lie," said Katrina calmly, "thou shalt have no butter this morning. There, the Herr Doktor rings for

"Then I shall put more water to heat," she said resignedly. " The Americans use much water. God knows it

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

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

"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?"

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

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 dancinghall 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 buttershades of the sleeping

mistress and Katrina the thriftyand 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

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. Tomorrow there would be the hunt for

something to do to supplement her resources, this afternoon she had rashly promised to walk. The morning,

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 otherswhere he came across it months laternext 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

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

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

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

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

Harmony's immaculate room and radiant person put her in good humor immediately. She borrowed a

thimblenot because she cared whether she had one or not, but because she knew a thimble was a part of the

gameand 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

"It's in the most damnable knot!" she said, and Harmony was suddenly aware that she was crying, and

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

"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 churchmouse and as

Harmony was very uncomfortable and just a little shocked. But the next moment Dr. Gates had wiped her

"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?"

"Scallops!" Dr. Gates gazed at the painfully cut pink edges and from them to Harmony. Then she laughed,

"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 PeterPeter'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

dressinggown for a little American boy at the hospital. "Although," she commented, "it looks more like a

Harmony offered to help her, and got out a sewingbox 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.

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

"Of course I do not mean money," she said. "There are such things as encouragement, andand

"One cannot eat encouragement," retorted Dr. Gates sagely. "And friendliness between you and any

"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

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

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.

Peter looked serious. He had put on the newly pressed suit and his best tie, and was looking distinguished and

"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,

"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."

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

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 diningtable were only half occupieda 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 weekhis

gleanings from nearby tables in coffeehouses or from the indiscreet hours after midnight in the cafe, where

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 volublyas 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

"I wish you had sent Olga to me for some tablets. No one needs to suffer from headache, when five grains or

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

"Good!" he responded heartily; and proceeded to make such a meal as he might, talking little, and nursing, by

It was when he had pushed his plate away and lighted a cigaretteaccording 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

Peter was clever. Harmony, expecting an invitation to walk, had nerved herself to a cool refusal. This took

"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

Dr. Gates, eating stewed fruit across the table, gave Peter a swift glance of admiration, which he caught and

"I'd rather like a short walk. It will make me sleep," said Harmony, who had missed the byplay. "And Old

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 thingsof 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

"Look here," he said, "you don't care a rap about spires. I don't believe you know anything about them. I

"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 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, butwe'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 youI'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."

"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?"

"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, moneyor its lacktheir

ambitions, their hopes, evenand here was intimacy, indeed!their disappointments, their failures of

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

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, heavyset 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.

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

"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

Peter Byrne was suddenly conscious of a complete void as to feminine names. He offered, in a sort of panic,

"Emma! What a nice, oldfashioned 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

The short halfhour 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

"Six months," he said, "and you will go back to your America and show them how over here we teach violin.

I will a letterletters give you, and you shall put on the programme, of your concerts that you are my

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

"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

Whereupon the lady secretary put a redink cross before Harmony's name. There were many such crosses on

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

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

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

Byrne's tone lacked enthusiasm, but Stewart in his afterdinner mood failed to notice it.

"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 oneeating little and being eaten much. Those old walls are full of vermin. Why

"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, anda home,

Byrne was irritated, the more so that he realized that the offer tempted him. To his resentment was added a

"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 streetcars followed them in depressing horizontal clouds. Cabmen sat

and smoked in the interior of musty cabs. The women hodcarriers on a new building steamed like horses as

Byrne walked along, his head thrust down into his upturned 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.

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 Kronenalso 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

The little Bulgarian was frankly her slave now. He had given up the coffeehouses 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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,

"I hardly saw her that day in the coffeehouse; but she's rather handsome, isn't she?"

"Aren't there any kids in the American colony who want lessons? There's usually some sort of infant prodigy

"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?"

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

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

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

He argued the thing over. In the unlikely contingency of the girl's being willing, was Stewart rightcould

two people live as cheaply as one? Marie was an Austrian and knew how to managethat 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 mindhis 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

The night was very cold. Gusts of wind from the snowcovered Schneeberg drove along the streets, making

each corner a fortress defended by the elements, a battlement to be seized, lost, seized again. Peter Byrne

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

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 redflannel 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.

Harmony, in the blue kimono, gave a little gasp, and flung round her shoulders the mass of pink on which she

"You are covered," returned Anna Gates. "That's all that any sort of clothing can do. Don't mind her, Peter,

Peter, however, did not sit down. He stood just inside the closed door and stared at HarmonyHarmony 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

"I had something to say to you. II dare say it is hardly pension etiquette for you to go over to your room

"Fiddlesticks!" said Dr. Gates, rising. "I'll go over, of course, but not for long. There's no fire."

"Please!" she implored. "I am not dressed and I'd rather not." She turned to Peter. "You can say it before her,

"It was merely an idea I had. I saw a little apartment furnishedyou could learn to use the stove, unless, of

course, you don't like housekeepingand food is really awfully cheap. Why, at these delicatessen places and

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 poorwell, you know. Itit was the apartment that gave me the

"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

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

"It is only"she gasped a little for breath"it is only youryour 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

And here, Harmony being an emotional young person, the tears beat the laughter to the surface and had to be

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

younot 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

"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

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

At midnight, just as Peter, rolled in the bedclothing, had managed to warm the cold concavity of his bed and

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 sixinch plait down her back. She had no glasses, and over the candleframe she

"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

"Both yesterday and today he asked for it and today he fretted a little. The nurse found him crying."

"The poor little devil!" said Peter contritely. "Overdue, is it? I'll fix it tonight."

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

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

The letter finished, he put it in a muchused envelope addressed to Jimmy Conroyan envelope that

stamped the whole episode as authentic, bearing as it did an undecipherable date and the postmark of a tiny

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?"

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

"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 aa chamois, and he writes of it."

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 never theless gone. Peter and Anna Gates remained, and the

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 muchthat's the worst of those heart

conditions. Sometimes, while I've been working on this thing, I've wonderedWell, 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

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 thendied. It

"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

Peter! It was always Peter. Peter did this. Peter said that. Peter thought thus. A very large part of Harmony's

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 allit 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 dowdinessHimmel! And she could copy the

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 aweinspiring 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

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.

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

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.

"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 nearaccident was wonderfully graphic; the description of

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 mediumsized 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 was one of my papers slipped in by mistake," remarked Dr. Gates, with dignity, and flashing a wild

"I think," observed Harmony, leaning forward, "that little boys must not ask too many questions, especially

For Peter, having in one letter unwisely recorded the slaughter of a boar, had been obliged to ransack Vienna

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 vith the nurse, and came back, looking

The visit to the hospital was a good thing for Harmonyto 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.

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.

"Inside that third window is a small boy and he is very ill. I do not thinkperhaps he will never be well

"Ah, the gun!" He smiled and nodded in comprehension, then, as an officer appeared in the door of a

coffeehouse across the street, he stiffened into immobility and stared past Harmony into space. But the girl

That day brought good luck to Harmony. The wife of one of the professors at the hospital desired English

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 selfconfidence,

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 musiclesson. 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

girlonly, of course, he said "das Kindchen" or some other German equivalent for chitand 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

Harmony's world came crashing about her ears. She stared stupidly at the envelope in her hand, at the

Two girl students waiting their turn, envelopes in hand, giggled together. Harmony saw them and flushed

"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 wellbeloved pupil. Tonight he will not eat for grief that he has hurt

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 workwould come to one of

them next, perhaps. And they had much in commonthe struggle, their faith, the everlasting loneliness, the

Vaguely comforted, but with the light gone out of her day of days, Harmony went down the three long flights

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

"I had an hour or two," he explained, "and I thought I'd walk. But walking is a social habit, like drinking. I

"Oh, if that's all that's necessary" He stopped in the center of the busy Ring with every evident intention of

"Never owned anything taxable except a dogand that wasn't a tax anyhow; it was a license. Can't you

"Well, I've got something to say on that." He pulled from his overcoat pocket a largish bundlePeter always

bulged with packagesand 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 today the equivalent of ten dollars in duty. I offered them the tobacco on

Under this lightness Harmony sensed the real anxiety. Ten dollars was fifty Kronen, and fifty Kronen was a

"I might cut down on my tailor bills." He looked down at himself whimsically. "Or on ties. I'm positively

They walked on in silence. A detachment of soldiery, busy with that eternal military activity that seems to get

"Bosnians," he observed. "Raw, halffed troops from Bosnia, nine out of ten of them tubercular. It's a rotten

Peter flushed. "I expect it was pretty poor stuff," he apologized. "I've never seen the Alps except from a train

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

Peter glowed. The small irritation of the customhouse 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

"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 glovesmy 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

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 travelingbag. 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

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

"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?"

"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 huntinglodge of Maria

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.

MidDecember found Harmony back and fully established in the lodge of Maria Theresa on the Street of

Seven Starsback, 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 weathercasing. 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 whitetiled

stove gleamed warm with fire. On the table by the lamp were the combined medical books of Peter and Anna

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

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.

"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

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

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

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

The girl had become a woman. Who knows the curious psychology by which such changes comenot 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

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 vainwhen the street was

deserted and there was none to noticehe went through a bit of the manual of arms on the pavement outside,

In vain had Peter exhausted himself in literary efforts, climbing unheardof peaks, taking walkingtours

through such a Switzerland as never was, shooting animals of various sorts, but all hornless, as he carefully

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

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

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

Jimmy drew a long breath. "It's very funny. He's mostly so quick. If I had the horns, Sister Elisabet would tie

Harmony had a great piece of luck that day. As she went home she saw hanging in front of the wildgame

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 wildgame seller was obdurate. He would sell the deer entire, or he would

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

Peter built the fire. The winter dusk was falling and Harmony made a movement to light the candles. Peter

"Can't we have the firelight for a little while? You are always beautiful, butyou are lovely in the firelight,

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

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 fullfed 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

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

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

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

"Not more than usual. Don't mind me. I'll probably end in a roaring bad temper and smash something. My

Harmony put down the paringknife, and going over to where he sat rested a hand on his shoulder. Peter

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

"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 selfcontrol were

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 selfrestraint 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

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

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"

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

The banging of a door far off told them that Anna Gates had arrived and was taking off her galoshes in the

"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

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

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 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

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 upthe floor was cold and a wind blowing. Could she not hear it and the creaking of the deer across the

The wife of the Portier was a person of resource. She took the iron candlestick from the table and flung it into

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

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 redhot fire. Still the Portier had not come

At four o'clock she retired to the bedroom again. Indignation had changed to fear, coupled with sneezing.

She roused him, standing over him with the iron candlestick, now lighted, and gazing at him with eyes in

"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

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.

Early the next morning Harmony, after a restless night, opened the door from the salon of Maria Theresa into

On the floor, just outside, lay the antlers from the deer across the street. Tied to them was a bit of paper, and

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

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

In her hardworking, 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

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

On the day after the incident in the kitchen such an argument took placehardly 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

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

"When there is any love in music, any heart, one always feels it, exactly as in booksthe difference between

"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."

Anna smiled. "My dear child," she said, "you substitute the code of a gentleman for the Mosaic Law. Of

"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. Today in our part of the globe there is one womanand a fifth

overfor every man. Each man gets one woman, and for every five couples there is a derelict like myself,

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 uswe never live

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

". . . 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

"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 disappointmentsmall 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

"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

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

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

thinkSurely 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 huntinglodge 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

"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

"Suppose I refuse?" he questioned. "Youyou haven't been very friendly with me today, Harry."

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

His steady eyes met hers. In them there was a renewal of his yesterday's promise, abasement, regret.

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

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

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

brickandsheetiron 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'

"Father wants to go," she said. "You children are big enough now to be left. He's always wanted to do it, but

"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

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 hometown 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

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

So curious a thing is the mind masculine, such an order of disorder, so conventional its defiance of

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

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 dresssuit he

had worn once to the Embassy, a hat that folded, strange American shoes, and booksalways 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

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 lowlying 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

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,

The small singletrucked 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 pinkandblue houses and churches with gilded spires. There were vistas of

snowpeak and avalanche shed, and always there were tunnels. Marie, so wise in some things, was a child in

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

"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

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

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 redletter 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

"Thou suspicious one!" she pouted. "I must take off the skin to assure thee! When the Herr Doktor says no

"You're a good child." He stooped over and kissed one scarlet cheek and then being very comfortable and the

When he awakened they were still higher. The snowpeak 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

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

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

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 handluggage 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 strawlined sledge, their luggage about them, a robe over their knees,

and a noisy driver high above them on the drivingseat. Stewart spoke to her then, the first time for half an

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 againand 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

Across the valley and far aboveMarie 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

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

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

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

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 tonight, dear. I'm going to the hotel."

"Yes. I know a chap who went to college with the brotherwith 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

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

That was a memorable night for Walter Stewart, with his own kind once morea perfect dinner, brisk and

clever conversation, enlivened by a bit of sweet champagne, an hour or two on the terrace afterward with the

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.

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 pintray, 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 pintray 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

"I'm so sorry!" Harmony exclaimed. "It was stupid of me; but the windIs 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.

Mrs. Boyer, having finished her brushing and responded to this humble apology in her own tongue,

"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

"One of the women here has a small boy who wishes to take violin lessons and I offered to come. The mother

"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

They went in together, Harmony chatting gayly as she ran ahead, explaining this bit of the old staircase, that

walledup 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 thingsher mother, her church, her small gayeties. She had thought at first that Frau Professor

Bergmeister might allay her longing for these comfortable, middleaged, placideyed 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 nameday of her first husband while her second was safely out of

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

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,

Peter turned at that and rose instantly. It was rather dark in the salon and he did not immediately recognize

Mrs. Boyer. But that keeneyed 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. "II must really get home. Dr. Boyer will be there, and wondering"

"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

childrenalways 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 tealover. 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.

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

"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.

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."

"I really think the boy's mother must attend to that herself. But I shall tell her where to find you, and"here

Peter had no finesse. He escorted Mrs. Boyer across the yard and through the gate with hardly a word. With

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.

"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"

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

"You called heryou 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 streetcar 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

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.

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

"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

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

She told her husband over the suppertable and found him less shocked than she had expected.

Dr. Boyer sighed over a cup of very excellent coffee. Much living with a representative male had never

"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

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 footwas it not encased at that moment in Mrs.

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

Harmony was sitting sidewise in a chair by the teatable 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

Harmony sat up and looked at him. She still wore her hat, now more than ever askew, and some of the dye

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

"She did not believe there was an Anna. Not that it matters," he added hastily. "I'll make Anna go to her and

"I'll take Anna tonight 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

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

"We could marry. If you cared for me even a little itit might not be so bad for you."

"But I am not in love with you. I care for you, of course, butnot that way, Peter. And I do not wish to

"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.

And in the face of his poverty and the little he could offer, compared with what she must lose, he did not urge

"It would be a rotten match for you," he agreed. "I only thought, perhapsYou are right, of course; you

"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

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

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

"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

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 windowledge a

"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 shipWhat is bulging your pocket,

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

salvagetwo 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

The Dozent was waiting for Peter. In the amiable conspiracy which kept the boy happy he was archplotter.

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,

"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.

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.

"Something from the papers I found. She left when the boy was a babywent on the stage, I think. He has

no recollection of her, which is a good thing. She seems to have been a bad lot."

"Of course it is impossible," said Peter savagely. "She's not going to see the child if I can help it. She left

becauseshe's the boy's mother, but that's the best you can say of her. This letterWell, you've read it."

"Absolutely. She will come in mourninglook at that black borderand tell him his father is dead, and kill

The canary chipped at his sugar; the red beard of the Dozent twitched, as does the beard of one who plots.

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

"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

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

"I can give orders that the woman be not admitted today," said the Dozent. "That gives us a few hours. She

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

"She will not. She will buy him garments and she will travel with him through the Riviera and to Nice. She

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 musichall 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 towelall 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

"She tears my heart from my bosom," muttered the Portier, sighing, and almost swallowed a screw that he

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

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

Anna was preoccupied. Instead of her cheery greeting she came somberly back to the kitchen, a letter in her

"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

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:

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

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

heartsearching 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

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

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

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

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,

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

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

Perhapsit is just possiblethe 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

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

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,

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

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 sleighbells, 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

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 belowfor what? For forgiveness? For a better life? Not at all. She prayed that the heels

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 determinedthe Americans went toward the Sonnwendstein. She would advise against the

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

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

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

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,

"It's not that," said Stewart hastily. "I suppose once does not matter. But we can't be seen together all the

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

"What you mean," she said with pale lips, "is that we must not be seen together at all. Must Ido you wish

"For Heaven's sake," he broke out brutally, "don't make a scene. There are men cutting ice over there. Of

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

Stewart himself was wretchedly uncomfortable. Marie's tragedy was his predicament. He disliked himself

very cordially, loathing himself and his situation with the newborn 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

She grew obstinate, too. When in his desperation Stewart suggested that they go back to Vienna she openly

"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."

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

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

ChristmasEve in the saloon of Maria Theresa! ChristmasEve, with the great chandelier recklessly ablaze

and a pig's head with cranberry eyes for supper! ChristmasEve, with a twofoot tree gleaming with candles

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

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 ChristmasEve 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

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 lectureroom, 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, candlelighted. There was no other illumination in the

room. The semidarkness, 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 addressall caught Harmony by the throat. Peter, keenly alive to everything she did,

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

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 ChristmasEve into mourning! Stop them!"

The music came to an end at last. Tears were dried. Followed recitations, gifts, a speech of thanks from Nurse

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

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

Visions came to Peter that afternoon in the darkness, visions in which his poverty was forgotten or mattered

not at all. Visions of a ChristmasEve in a home that he had earned, of a tree, of a girlwoman, of a still and

"Nur das traute, hoch heilige Paar Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar Schlaf' in himmlischer Ruh', Schlaf' in

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

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

The extra expense was not much, but it told. Peter's carefully calculated expenditures felt the strain. He gave

up a course in Xray on which he had set his heart and cut off his hour in the coffeehouse as a luxury. There

was no hardship about the latter renunciation. Life for Peter was spelling itself very much in terms of

There were anxieties of a different sort also. Anna's father was failing. He had written her a feeble,

halfsenile 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 ChristmasEve 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

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 ChristChild within.

Young McLean came to call that eveningcame 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

For that one night Harmony had laid aside her mourning, and wore white, soft white, tucked in at the neck,

It was Peter's way to sit back and listen: his steady eyes were always alert, goodhumored, 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

"As men go!" This was a challenge Peter was usually quick to accept. That night he only smiled. "It would be

Money, always money! Peter ground his teeth over his pipestem. Eminently it would be a good thing for

Harmony, this nice boy in his wellmade 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

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

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 nightlight, 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

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. "II want you to know that I'll

"It has been splendid, hasn't it? Since little Scatchy left there has been no one for the piano. I have been

"How soon would be proper? I dare say tomorrow you'll be busyChristmas and all that."

"In the afternoon would be pleasant, I think. And then Jimmy can listen. He loves music."

McLean, having found his furlined 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,

"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 coffeehouse 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,

Quite suddenly Peter's house, built on the sand, collapsed. The shock came on ChristmasDay, after young

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 furlined 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

The Portier was at the door as McLean, laughing and protesting, went out. He brought a cablegram for Anna.

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

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

"It has come, Peter," she said dully. "I always knew it couldn't last. They've always hung about my neck, and

"Do you think you must go? Isn't there some way? If things are so bad you could hardly get there in time,

"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

"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

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

"You'll find some one else to take my place," she said. "If I had a day I could find a dozen."

"The interval! Tut! Peter is your brother, to all intents and purposes. And if you are thinking of

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

Peter came back to breakfast, but ate little. Harmony did not even sit down, but drank her cup of coffee

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

"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

"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

"I'm coming to that. Don't you suppose you more than earn everything? Doesn't it humiliate me hourly to see

"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.

"'Agreeable,'" wrote Peter. "Although Anna was hardly agreeable, in the strict sense of the word, was she?"

"'Human!'" wrote Peter. "Wanted, a woman, not young, not too stout, agreeable and human. Shall I

The strain was quite gone by that time. Harmony was smiling. Jimmy, waking, called for food, and the

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 coalsupply 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

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

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

"We'll have a dog when you are better and can take him walking. Wait until spring, son."

"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.

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

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

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 readingtable and studied him over

his magazine, that McLean would resent bitterly the girl's position, and that when he learned it a crisis might

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

saddlebow. 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

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

Once out in the hall McLean's movements gained aim and precision. He got his coat, hat and stick, flung the

"Yes, nothing to do here. I've read all the infernal old magazines until I 'm sick of them." Indignant, too, from

Peter, taking down his old overcoat from its hook, turned and caught the boy's eye. It was a swift exchange of

glances, but illuminatingPeter's whimsical, but with a sort of grim determination; McLean's sheepish, but

"Rotten afternoon," said McLean as they started for the stairs. "Half rain, half snow. Streets are ankledeep."

Nothing was further from McLean's mind than a walk with Peter that afternoon. He hesitated halfway down

"Pinochle it is," acquiesced McLean. "I was only going because there was nothing to do."

Things went very well for Peter that afternoonup 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 coffeehour. 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.

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

The "we" was deliberate and cruel. McLean writhed. Also the statement was false, but the boy was spared

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

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

"Yes. She is very young and inexperienced, and the boyit's myocarditis. She's afraid to be left with him."

"Absolutely, and without funds, except enough for her lessons. Our arrangement was that she should keep the

Dr. Jennings was impressed. It was impossible to talk to Peter and not believe him. Women trusted Peter

"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. Tomorrow at three, if it suits you. You said the Siebensternstrasse?"

ChristmasDay 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

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

"Too young for you? Not a bit!" he said heartily. "You're betterlooking 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

"Yes, you do. Tonight we'll go out and make a night of it, shall we? Supper at the Grand, the theater, and

"Throw them out. Get rid of the things the children got you. Go out tomorrow and buy something you

"Be happy, that's the thing. It's the first Christmas without the family, and I miss them too. But we're together,

An auspicious opening, that, to ChristmasDay. 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

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

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

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 beautifulsee the embroidery! And the neck may be filled with

"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 selfesteem, her pride in tatters, she took her way to the old lodge and climbed

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 mousecage, which, according to Jimmy, had strawberries in it.

But it was not strawberries. Harmony opened the cage and very tenderly took out the cotton nest. Eight tiny

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

"I suppose," he reflected, "God sent Daddy to find me so that I would be his little boy. You never happened

"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

"That," said Harmony gravely, "is mighty fine of you, Jimmy boy. II'll think about it." She never denied

"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

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

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

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

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 coffeehouses milliners' apprentices produced little silver mouthpieces 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.

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

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

On the sneeze came Mrs. Boyer's ring. Harmony thought very fast. It might be the bread or the milk, but

againShe 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. Harmany, 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,

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?"

"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

"Then," demanded Mrs. Boyer grimly, "if Peter Byrne is not here, who has been smoking cigarettes in this

Harmony's hand was forced. She was white as she cut the brownsilk 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

"Not at all. It is about Peter Byrne and myself, andsome others. It is really about Peter. Mrs. Boyer, will

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

"We are not going to have him very long," said Harmony softly. "Peter is making him happy for a little

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

"There is nothing wicked in what we are doing. Don't you see, Mrs. Boyer, I can't leave the boy."

"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 see nothing but a girl deliberately putting herself in a compromising portion and worse."

"Get your things on. I guess Dr. Boyer and I can look after you until we can send you home."

Back and forth waged the battle, Mrs. Boyer assailing, Harmony offering little defense but standing firm on

"It means so much to me," she ventured, goaded. "And I earn my lodging and board. I work hard andI

make him comfortable. It costs him very little and I give him something in exchange. All men are not alike. If

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

"From what? From Peter? There are many worse people than Peter to save myself from, Mrs.

"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

"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

"You are impossible!" she snapped. "After all, I believe it is Peter who needs protection! I shall speak to

"And just a word of advice: Perhaps the old standards have gone. But if you really expect to find a

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 himbut 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

"I think she's been crying," Jimmy whispered. "She's been sobbing in her sleep. And strike a match, Peter;

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 pianoviolin duo, with the candles in the

chandelier going out one by one, leaving them at last alone in scented darkness togetherMcLean heard

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.

"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 whitelipped 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 semigloom of the

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

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

Peter admitted him. The corridor was unlighted, but from the salon came a glow of lamplight. McLean, out of

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

McLean stepped inside. He was smaller than Peter, not so much shorter as slenderer. Even Peter winced

McLean flung off his coat. Peter closed the door behind him and stood just inside. He had his pipe as usual. "I

"So I gather. I'll let you see her, of course, but don't you want to see me first?"

"You're a scoundrel, Byrne," he said steadily. "Why didn't you tell me this this afternoon?"

"I'm not keeping her here," he said patiently. "I'm doing the best I can under the circumstances."

"Perhaps. If you would try to remember the circumstances, McLean,that the girl has no place else to go,

"I remember one circumstance, that you are living here alone with her and that you're crazy in love with her."

"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

"She'll not come. Mrs. Boyer has been talking to her. Inside of an hour the whole club will have itevery

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 halfhour 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

"You can't keep me from seeing her, you know," McLean persisted. "I've got to put this thing to her. She's got

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

"I'll call her," he said. "But, since this concerns me very vitally, I should like to be here while you put the

He called Harmony. She had given Jimmy his supper and was carrying out a tray that seemed hardly touched.

"He won't eat tonight," she said miserably. "Peter, if he stops eating, what can we do? He is so weak!"

"Harry dear," he said, "I want you to come into the salon. Some one wishes to speak to you."

"Yes. Harry, do you remember that evening in the kitchen whenDo you recall what I promised?"

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 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.

McLean groaned. "Peter!" he said. "It is always Peter. Look here, Harmony, you cannot stay here."

"It is only for a few hours. Tomorrow some one is coming. And, anyhow, Peter is going to Semmering. We

"Unusual! It'sit'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

"That's another idiocy of Peter's. What does he mean by putting you in this position?"

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

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,

"What am I to do?" she demanded. "Every one comes with cruel things to say, but no one tells me what to

"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 youif you could

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"

"I do not care what Mrs. Boyer says, at least not much. And I am not afraid of anything else at all."

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

"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.

As was Peter's way, the words meant little, the tone much. McLean knew what in his heart he had known all

alongthat the girl was safe enough; that all that was to fear was the gossip of scandallovers. He took

"I suppose I've said too much; I always do," he said contritely. "But you know the reason. Don't forget the

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

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 coffeecup their fingers

touched, and between them they dropped the cup. Harmony was flushed and pallid by turns, Peter wretched

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

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 collarbox.

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 dressinggown 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 mountainside, 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,

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.

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

Frau Schwarz had had two visitors between the hours of coffee and supper that day. The reason of their call

The Frau Schwarz made this out at last, and sat down on the edge of the bed in the room that had once been

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 tubshaped

bed, needed no English to convey the fact that Peter was a bad lot. Not that she resorted only to the sign

"The women were also wicked," she said. "Of a man what does one expect? But of a woman! And the

younger one lookedHerr 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

"She says," interpreted Dr. Jennings, "that they were a bad lotthat the younger one made eyes at the Herr

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 establishmentqueer!"

From the kitchen of the pension, Olga was listening, an ear to the door. Behind her, also listening, but less

"More hot water!" growled Katrina. "Why do not the Americans stay in their own country, where the water, I

"Sh! They do not come for rooms. They inquire for the Herr Doktor Byrne and the others!"

"A moment. She tells them everything and more. She sayshow 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

"And, please, tell me where lives the Fraulein Harmony. The Herr Georgiev eats not nor sleeps that he cannot

"She wishes to know where the girl lives," she interpreted to Mrs. Boyer. "A man wishes to know."

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. Peterby which I suppose she means Dr.

Byrnehas left a necktie, and that she'll be in hot water if she does not return it."

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

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

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 wouldyouth and hope and joy. Under the beatific influence he expanded, grew, almost shone.

The ecstasy passed away, but without reaction. Peter no longer shone; he still glowed. He picked up the

goldenhaired 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 oilclothcovered bundle; he called the guard on the train "son" and

Peter traveled thirdclass, 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 thirdclass 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

Up and up, past the Weinzettelwand and the Station Breitenstein, across the highest viaduct, the Kalte Rinne,

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

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

The Pension Waldheim was well up the mountains. He shouldered his valise and started upfirst 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

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

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 deadthat was the unthinkable

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 windowledge 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

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

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

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

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. Sleighbells

were everywhere. Coasting parties made the steep roads a menace to the pedestrian; every upclimbing

Below the hotel was the Serpentine Coast, a long and dangerous course, full of highbanked 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,

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

Stewart had given her a little wrist watch. Stewart and Anita were twelfth in line. By the watch, then, twelve

minutes down the mountainside, 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

stockingcap 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 stockingcap 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

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

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

hurta 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

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

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

The meal had made him drowsy. He thought of his pipe. Perhaps if he got some fresh air and a smoke! He

It was there on the balcony that he found Marie, a cowering thing that pushed his hands away when he would

"Cannot what?" demanded Peter gently, watching her. So near was the balcony rail!

"I should think not!" said Peter sternly. "Just now when we need you, too! Come in and don't be a foolish

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

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!"

"Then come in and change your clothes. There is a train down at midnight. You can take it."

This raised a delicate question. Marie absolutely refused to take Stewart's money. She had almost none of her

own. And there were other complicationswhere 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,

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

"If I could only put it up to Harmony first!" he reflected. "But she will understand when I tell her. She always

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 drew a long breath. "The night train," she said listlessly, "is an express. I had forgotten. It is double

"What of that, little sister?" said Peter. "What is a double fare when it means life, liberty and the pursuit of

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

"'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

dancea 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 bellowedsprinkle 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.

"'Kennst du das Land'Goodmorning, sirthe 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 today like the pump? No?

Marvelous! Dost thou know that tonight is Mignon at the Opera, and that the Engel sings? 'Kennst du das

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 halftone up or down! It destroyed the illusion; it

The sentry stuck to the sharpit 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.

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

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?

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 handsalmost 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

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 assumebath blankets, warm

bath, toenails, fingernails, fresh nightgown, fresh sheets, andfinal touch of alla 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 tendernesshe 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.

"Not illnot that time. But you said I'd make a good pudding! You remember that, don't you?"

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

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

She turned pale when she saw the sentry in his belted bluegray 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

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 overperhaps when his repertoire was exhaustedthe 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

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, cobblepaved 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

Here lived the dressmaker, amid the constant whirring of sewingmachines, the Babel of workpeople.

Harmony, seeking not a home but a hidingplace, 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

"I will have it cleaned," she explained. "I have been so busy: the masquerade season is on. The Fraulein is

"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

"They will not disturb you. And just now I have but one, a dancer. I shall have the room cleaned. Goodbye,

So far, good. She had a refuge now, one spot that the venom of scandal could not poison, where she could

study and workwork hard, although there could be no more lessonsone 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 eyesshe was leaving Peter forever, exchanging

his companionship for that of a row of pigeons on a windowsill. 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 bedclothing 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

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 sonnetsto 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 backbut Peter carried a key. The bell rang again, and she slipped on the old kimono

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

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

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

She remembered, as she hurried into her clothes; the boys' club back in America and the spellingmatches.

Decidedly, also, Peter was an occupation, a state of mind, a career. No musician, hoping for a career of her

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

Marie told her story over the early breakfast, sitting with her thin elbows on the table, her pointed chin in her

"And now I am sorry," she finished. "It has done no good. If it had only killed her but she was not much hurt.

Harmony was silent. She had no stock of aphorisms for the situation, no worldly knowledge, only pity.

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

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 peopleto have taken into their house and their hearts

this strange childif 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 postoffice and mailed it by parcelpost to the

Wollbadgasse. On the way she met Mrs. Boyer face to face. That lady looked severely ahead, and Harmony

McLean sent a great box of flowers that day. She put them, for lack of a vase, in a pitcher beside Jimmy's

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 nowseconds 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, sixthirty, 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

A quarter past seven. Peter would be near Vienna now and hungry. If he could only eat his supper before he

learnedbut 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

She did not say goodbye 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 pillowpink 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

Peter had had many things to think over during the ride down the mountains. He had the thirdclass

compartment to himself, and sat in a corner, soft hat over his eyes. Life had never been particularly simple to

Peterhis own life, yes; a matter of three meals a dayhe had had fewera roof, clothing. But other lives

had always touched him closely, and at the contact points Peter glowed, fused, amalgamated. Thus he had

been many peoplegood, indifferent, bad, but all needy. Thus, also, Peter had committed vicarious crimes,

And now, after years of living for others, Peter was living at last for himselfand 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

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 caredand at the mere thought his

heart poundedwhat madness for her, what idiocy for him! To ask her to accept the half ofnothing, to

give up a career to share his struggle for one, to ask her to bury her splendid talent and her beauty under a

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

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

All roads lead to Rome. Peter's thoughts, having traveled in a circle, were back again to Harmony the

DesirableHarmony playing in the firelight, Harmony Hushed over the brick stove, Harmony paring

Stewart knew all about the accident and its cause. Peter had surmised as much when the injured man failed to

He tested him finally by bringing Marie's name into the conversation. Stewart ignored it, accepted her

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.

"She's a devil!" Stewart said, and lay silent. Then: "I saw her shoot that thing out in front of us, but there was

"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

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,

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

"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

dressingtable, 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

During that afternoon ride, while the train clumpclumped 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!"

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 tray 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

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

neglectedin spite of repeated warnings from Harmonyto watch the Herr Schenkenkaufer weigh the

"And how is the child today?" asked the Herr Schenkenkaufer, covering the defective gold piece with

"All well, of course," sang Peter, eyes on the comfortable Floor of his lamp, the flicker that was the fire. "Auf

Violets, liliesofthevalley, cheese, rosary, luggagethus 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 perhapsah, Peter!would turn and see him. She had a way of

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

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,

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

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

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

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 coffeepot 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

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 halfhour 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, povertystricken.

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 grayfaced 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

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

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

Boyer himself, partially undressed, opened the door to his ring. Peter was past explanation or ceremonial.

"Come in," said Boyer, alive to the strain in Peter's voice. "I don't know, I haven't heard anything. I'll ask

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 refugefrom meshe might have come here."

"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 hardlyFrank, I will speak!I could hardly have taken her

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,

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

And into this city of contrastsof gray women of the night hugging gratings for warmth and accosting

passersby 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 frostnipped flesh, destitution sauntering along the

fashionable Prater for lack of shelter, gilt wheels of royalty and yellow wheels of courtesansHarmony had

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 goneher faith.

Mrs. Boyer had seen to that. In the autumn Harmony had faced the city cleareyed and unafraid; now she

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 hidingplace 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

The pigeons, cooing on the windowsill, 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

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 coursethe 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

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

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 passedBah!

A bad week for Harmony followed, a week of weary days and restless nights when she slept only to dream of

Peterof his hurt and incredulous eyes when he found she had gone; of Jimmythat he needed her, was

worse, was dying. More than once she heard him sobbing and wakened to the cooing of the pigeons on the

windowsill. She grew thin and sunkeneyed; took to dividing her small hoard, half of it with her, half under

This, as it happened, was serious. One day, the sixth, she came back wet to the skin from an allday 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

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

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 wearyperhaps the boy

was worse. Perhaps PeterHer heart contracted. But that was absurd, of course, Peter was always well and

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

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

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 Harmany, another instant before he realized his good fortune. She had

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

"I amam hiding," she explained. "Something very uncomfortable happened and I came here. Please don't

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

"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

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,

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 workroom, that Monia Reiff's business lay almost altogether among the

demimonde. The sewinggirls, 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 womana 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

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 wishesHeaven 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

"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 fittingrooms, 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

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

"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

"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

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 redbearded

doctorI'd like to poison him. Separating mother and child! I'm going to find him, if only to show them they

In her anger she had lapsed into English. Harmony, behind her curtain, had clutched at her heart. Jimmy's

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 breakingup 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

hideandseek over the bed, in vain Peter paused long enough in his frantic search for Harmony to buy

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 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 dressinggown and worn slippers and lay on a haircloth

sofa at the foot of Jimmy's bedlay 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

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 himthe 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 coffeehouses. McLean offered a reward and

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

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 foodwhat 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

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

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 feareda pretty little violin student, indeed, who had been

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 1 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

Schonbrunn having failed them, McLean and, Peter went back to the city in the streetcar, neither one saying

much. Even McLean's elasticity was deserting him. His eyes, from much peering into crowds, had taken on a

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 deathwound. 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

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

"Not so well today. I'm having a couple of men in to see him tonight. He doesn't sleep."

"Don't you thinkwouldn'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

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 sickroom, but I could do that.

"Nurse Elisabet. I don't know, Mac. There's no reason why I shouldn't let you help, I suppose. It hurts, of

"That's settled, then," said McLean. "Nurse Elisabet, if she can come. Andlook 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

"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 asHarmony 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

At a crossstreet 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 Schwarzand 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

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

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

The third girl had not spoken; she was wrapping in tissue a great golden rose made for the hair. She placed it

"Foolishness! Does a police officer sigh always? Or a spy have such sadness in his face? And he grows thin

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

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

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 herhad not even known it, to be exact. Nor had Harmony realized what Peter

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

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

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

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

She ate no supper. She was too tired to eat, and there was the pain. She put on her wraps and crept down the

The paved courtyard below was to be crossed and it was poorly lighted. She achieved the street, however,

without molestation. To the streetcar was only a block, but during that block she was accosted twice. She

The Siebensternstrasse at last. The street was always dark; the delicatessen shop was closed, but in the

wildgame store next a light was burning low, and a flame flickered before the little shrine over the money

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 regularit 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 wildgame 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

Not all the windows of the suite opened on the street. Jimmy's windowsand Peter'sopened toward the

back of the house, where in a brickpaved 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 windowsill 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

Ah, this was better! Lights all along the apartment floor and moving shadows; on Jimmy's windowsill a jar

Peter was singing, droning softly, as one who puts a drowsy child to sleep. Slower and slower, softer and

Slower and slower, softer and softer, until it died away altogether. Peter, in his old dressinggown, 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

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:

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,

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

Stewart, lying in bed, had watched him. "Just how much talk do you suppose this has made, Byrne?" he

"Haven't an idea. Some probably. The people in the Russian villa saw it, you know."

Stewart groaned. Peter closed Marie's American trunk of which she had been so proud, and coming over

"I know, of course, it wouldn't be easy, butyou can't get away with it, Stewart. That's one way of looking at

"Starting with a clean slate. If she's the sort you want to marry, and not a prude, she'll understand, not at first,

"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 girlthe right girlcomes 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."

Peter smiled. "Quite a few," he said cheerfully. "It's a wrong system, of course; but we can get a little truth

"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

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

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

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

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

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

Tonight 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,

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

He had decided on a way to tell the girl the storya 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

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.

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 drawingroom 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

But he could not woo as men woo. The barrier of his own weakness stood between them and must be

"I'm afraid this is stupid for you," said Anita out of the silence. "Would you like to go to the musicroom?"

"That's hardly the way I meant to put it. You've changed everything for me. I care for youa very great

He was still carefully in hand, his voice steady. And still he did not touch her. Other men had made love to

"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?"

"No. There's a certain proportion of accidents that occur at all these places, isn't there?"

"The branch of a tree was thrown out in front of the sled to send us over the bank. It was murder, if intention

"Both of us, I believe. It was done by a womana 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

itthe courage of the man who faces a cannon. And here, where a lesspoised 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

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

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."

"It was at first. I never dreamed of any thing else. I swear that, Anita. But lately, in the last month or two,

A sudden memory came to Anita, of a slim young girl, who had watched her with wide, almost childish eyes.

"In Vienna. I have not heard from her. Byrne, the chap who came up to see me after theafter the accident,

"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

No love, no passion in the interview now. A clear statement of fact, an offerhis 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 heror was it the chill?to shivering.

Stewart glanced across the valley to where the cluster of villas hugged the mountainside 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

The involuntary exclamation did more for him than any plea he could have made. Anita rose and held out her

"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. II cared a great deal, too."

"But if you are going awayI'm afraid to leave you. You'll think this thing over, alone, and all the rules of

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

"I want you to try to remember, past what I have told you, to the thing that concerns us bothI love you. I

never loved the other woman. I never pretended I loved her. And there will be nothing more like that."

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

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

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

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.

"Please don't be alarmed. I have lost the path." Stewart's voice was almost equally nervous. "Is it to the right

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

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

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

Stewart was too preoccupied to notice Peter's expression. He shook the rain off his hat, smiling.

"Pretty good, except for a headache when I'm tired. What sort of a place have you got here anyhow, Byrne?"

"Old huntinglodge of Maria Theresa," replied Peter, still preoccupied with Marie and what was coming.

"Rather," commented Stewart, "with goddesses in the garden and all the usual stunts."

"Ran into one just now among the trees. 'A woman I forswore, but thou being a goddess I forswore not thee.'

Peter was staring at him incredulously; now he bent forward and grasped his arm in fingers of steel.

Stewart was amused and interested. It was not for him to belittle a situation of his own making, an incident of

"I lost my way in your garden, wandered among the trees, broke through a hedgerow or two, struck a match

"There was a girl there," he said shortly. "Couldn't see her. She spoke English. Said she didn't live here, and

The next moment he was alone. Peter in his dressinggown 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

"The boy above is worse," he said briefly. "A strange doctor has just come, and but now the Herr Doktor

"What can one expect?" she demanded. "The good Herr Gott has forbidden theft and Rosa says the boy was

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

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, whitefaced. 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

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

"No, no, not that, Walter. He has given me shelter, that is all. I swear it. I look after the boy."

"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

"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 aftereverything."

"No. It's over, Marie. I wanted to know where you were, that's all; to see that you were comfortable and not

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.

"Peter will be here in a minute." He bent over the table and eyed her with his old, halfbullying, halfplayful

She stood stubbornly still, and Stewart, still smiling, took a step or two toward her. Then he stopped, ceased

"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.

"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 youif you'll take it. It's all I

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

"Good!" Stewart held out his hand and Marie took it. With a quick gesture she held it to her cheek, dropped

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, andshe had come back! She had cared then enough to come back.

Tomorrow he would commence again, would comb the city fine, and when he had found her he would bring

He found Stewart gone, and Marie feverishly overhauling her few belongings by the salon lamp. She turned

"Alone, Peter, to work, to be very good, to be something. I am very happy, althoughPeter, may I kiss

"Certainly," said Peter, and took her caress gravely, patting her thin shoulder. His thoughts were in the garden

"Life," said Peter soberly, "life is just one damned thing after another, isn't it?"

"I have been thinking things over, Walter, and I am going to hurt you very muchbut 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

"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 tonight, that all my little rules of life are inadequate.

Individual liberty was onebut there is no liberty of the individual. Lifeother livespress too closely.

You, living your life as seemed best and easiest, and carrying down with you into shipwreck the little Marie

"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 deepseated 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.

Butand forgive me this, it insists on coming up in my mindwere you honest, really? You told me, and it

took courage, but wasn't it partly fear? What motive is unmixed? Honestyand fear, Walter. You were

"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

"I am not a child, and I am not unreasonable. But I ask a great deal of this life of mine that stretches ahead,

Walterhome 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, butI know that you understand.

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 safetyvalve. 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 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

windowsill 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 heartsearching. 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 introspectionher 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 elsewould she find it in the

Ah, but there was more to it than that. Supposehow 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 hackwork of general practice, the very slough out of which he had so painfully

Either of two thingsgo 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

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

othersPeter had never told her he loved her. To go back, throwing herself again on his mercy, was

unthinkable. On his lovethat was different. But what if he did not love her? He had been good to her; but

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

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

In the next room the dressmaker still slept, dreaming early morning dreams of lazy apprentices, overdue bills,

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, toilettable, coffeepot, 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

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

"Pardon!" said the Bulgarian in a whisper. "I listened until I heard you moving about. Ah, Fraulein, that I

"Not yet. I fear it is about to happen. Fraulein, do me the honor to open your window. My pigeon comes now

Harmony opened the window. The wild pigeons scattered at once, but the carrier, flying out a foot or two,

Evidently the defection of the carrier had been serious. A handful of grain on a wrong windowsill, 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

"What have I done?" cried Harmony. "Oh, what have I done? If I had known about the pigeon"

"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

Monia Reiff, from the next room, called loudly for more coffee. The sulky Hungarian brought it without a

"Fraulein, if I may trouble youbut glance from the window to the street below. It is of an urgency, or

Harmony glanced down into the halflight of the street. Georgiev, behind her, watched her, breathless,

"Only a man in a green hat," she said. "And down the street a group of soldiers."

"And I with the pigeonOh, it's too horrible! Herr Georgiev, stay here in this room. Lock the door. Monia

"Ah no, Fraulein! It is quite hopeless. Nor is it a matter of the pigeon. It is war, Fraulein. Do not distress

"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

"Pardon, but it is better so. Soldiers they are of the provinces mostly, and not for a lady to confront."

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.

"Fraulein," he said huskily, "you are very lovely. I carry always in my heart your image. Always so long as I

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

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

"The Herr Georgiev has been arrested," she wrote. An hour later the carrier rose lazily from the windowsill,

flapped its way over the church roof and disappeared, like Georgiev, out of her life. Grimvisaged war had

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 sewinggirls had gone back to work, that Harmony, on her way

The clatter of soldiers on their way down to the street came to her ears; the soft cooing of the pigeons, the

whirr of sewingmachines from the workroom. The incident was closed, except for the heap of ammunition

Harmony glanced at him. He was eying her steadily, thumbs in, heels in, toes out, chest out. Harmony put her

Harmony put her hands together, a little gesture of appeal, infinitely touching.

It was in Harmony's mind to ask all her hungry heart craved to learnof 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

The man in the green hat was coming up the staircase. There was no further chance to question. The sentry

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 childthe

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

The boy was very happy, quite content and comfortable. When he opened his eyes he smiled at Peter, and

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

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 insistentthe 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

In the morning he sent a note to McLean, asking him to try to trace the mother and inclosing the musichall

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

Peter was instantly awake and on his feet. The boy's eyes were open and fixed on him.

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!

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

"One is sick, Jimmy boy," he said, and placed the mate, forlorn and shivering, on the pillow. After a

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

"Would that be so terrible, Jimmy boy?" asked Peter gently. "To go to heaven, where there is no more death

No reply for a moment. The little mouse sat up on the pillow and rubbed its nose with a pinkish paw. The

"Doboys in heavengo 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 painta 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

The boy listened. He was silent when Peter had finished. Speech was increasingly an effort.

He did not speak again during all the long afternoon, but just at dusk he roused again.

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

goldtissue 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 musicloving 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 windowsills, 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 saidthe

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 garmentsof 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

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

But it was not Peter. Standing in the upper hall, much as he had stood that morning over the ammunition

Harmony's first thought was of Georgiev and more searching of the building. Then she saw that the sentry's

Harmony clutched at the iron stairrail for support. "You are sure? You are not telling me so that I will go

"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."

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 delayto secure the Le Grande's

address from Monia. Then out into the night, Harmony to the Siebensternstrasse, the tall soldier to find the

Harmony took a taxicabnothing must be spared nowbribed 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, tragiceyed. 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

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 everywherepipes, 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 redbearded Dozent

with the lady of the photograph. They were drinking cheap native wines and were very happy.

"In the boxdon't stare, Liebchen, he looksis the princeling I have told you of. Roses, of course. Last

"I have been told, Liebchen. Each night he sits there, and when she finishes her song he rises in the box,

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 sentinental ditties and the artificial forms of grand opera. And there was another

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 redvelvet 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

She wore the gold dress, decolletee, slashed to the knee over rhinestonespangled stockings. And back of her

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,

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

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

Le Grande made her way into the wings, surrounded by her little troupe. A motherly colored woman took

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 bluegray uniform confronted each other. Then the

Jimmy died an hour after midnight, quite peacefully, died with one hand in Harmony's and one between

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

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

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

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

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!

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

He had found the letter on his dressingtable, 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

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. Onlyto go

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

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 dressinggown and

went into Jimmy's room to feed the mice. Peter stood a moment beside the smooth white bed with his face

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 emptyhanded and

discover merely how comfortable she was or was not. When the time came he would slip out of her life,

Harmony was at home. Peter climbed the dark staircasewhere Harmony had met the little Georgiev, and

where he had gone down to his deathclimbed steadily, but without his usual elasticity. The place appalled

himits 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,

Harmony herself admitted him. Perhapsoh, 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.

"Where customers wait." She still carried her violin, and slipped back to her room to put it away. Peter had a

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 fittingrooms of the corners were pushed back. Peter saw only a big room with empty corners, and

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 tonguetied. Only one thing in

"Why should I be angry? You came, like an angel of light, when I needed you. Only, of course,"

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

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"

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

"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

"You will never come back, Peter. You have spent all your money on others, and now you are going back just

"You are alone, anyhow," said Peter, "making your own way and getting along. And McLean will be here."

"Do you remember the night in Anna's room at the Schwartz when you proposed to me?"

Peter turned and looked at her, at her slender, swaying young figure, her luminous eyes, her parted, childish

"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 meand a sight I was with worry and frightand he warned me off, Harmony.

Nevertheless Peter's refusal and the master's speech had told somewhat. She was colder, less vibrant. Peter

"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 youI 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 eartheven my God, I'm afraid. But I will

"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 jealousjealous of every

"And you make the choice!" said Harmony proudly. "Very well, Peter, I shall do as you say. But I think it is a

"I wonder," Peter cried, "if you realize what love it is that loves you enough to give you up."

"I'm afraid to ask," said Peter, and picking up his hat he made for the door. There he turned, looked back, was

"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

"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.

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 redink 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 rosefields 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

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

Early morning at the Gottesacker, or God's acre, whence little Jimmy had started on his comfortable journey.

Early morning on the frostcovered 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 labortook her problem and

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

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:

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,

Le Grande placed her flowers on the grave. They almost covered it, quite eclipsed Harmony's.

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

"And I resented it. But Dr. Byrne was rightI was not a fit person toto have him."

"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 careerand 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!"

"Who knows, I being I? And my husband did not love me. It was the boy always. There is only one thing

"But supposing that one has real abilityI mean some achievement already, and a promise"

"My child," she said, "if one man in all the world looked at me as your doctor looks at you, II would be a

Peter was packing: wrapping medical books in old coats, putting clean collars next to boots, folding pajamas

and suchlike 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 asidethe 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

The Portier below was polishing floors, right foot, left foot, any foot at all. And as he polished he sang in a

"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 wildgame 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

"A cab," she announced, "with a devil's imp on the box. Perhaps it is that American dancer. Run and pretty

It was too late for more than an upward twist of a mustache. Harmony was at the door, but not the sadeyed

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 goodmorning, 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

The door was not locked. Perhaps Peter was not upnot dressed. What did that matter? What did anything

Peter, sorting out lectures on McBurney's Point, had come across a bit of paper that did not belong there, and

Quite the end now, with Harmony running across the room and dropping down on her knees among a riot of

garmentsdown on her knees, with one arm round Peter's neck, drawing his tired head lower until she could

"Oh, Peter, Peter, dear!" she cried. "I'll love you all my life if only you'll love me, and never, never let me

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 difficultAh, but Peter got the way of it swiftly.

"Always," he said incoherently; "forever the two of us. Whatever comes, Harmony?"

He tried to hold her away from him for a moment after that, to tell her what she was doing, what she was

"I love you," was her answer to every line. And it was no divided allegiance she promised him. "Career? I

Late winter morning in Vienna, with the schoolchildren hurrying home, the Alserstrasse alive with

humanitysoldiers and chimneysweeps, housewives and beggars. Before the hospital the crowd lines up

along the curb; the head waiter from the coffeehouse across comes to the doorway and looks out. The sentry

In the street a small procession comes at the double quicka handful of troopers, a black van with tiny,

Inside the van a Bulgarian spy going out to deatha 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