 CHAPTER XVI. Quite suddenly Peter's house, built on the sand, collapsed. The shock came on Christmas Day, after young McClain, now frankly infatuated, had been driven home by Peter. Peter did it after his own fashion. Harmony, with unflagging enthusiasm, was looking tired. Suggestions to this effect rolled off McClain's back like rain off a roof. Finally Peter gathered up the fur-lined coat, the velours hat, gloves and stick, and placed them on the piano in front of the younger man. I'm sorry you must go, said Peter calmly, but, as you say, Miss Wells is tired and there is supper to be eaten. Let me hurry you. The portier was at the door as McClain, laughing and protesting, went out. He brought a cable-gram for Anna. Peter took it to her door and waited uneasily while she read it. It was an urgent summons home. The old father was very low. He was calling for her, and a few days or weeks would see the end. There were things that must be looked after. The need of her was imperative. With the death the old man's pension would cease, and Anna was the breadwinner. Anna held the paper out to Peter and sat down. Her nervous strength seemed to have deserted her. All at once she was a stricken, elderly woman, with hope wiped out of her face and something nearer resentment than grief in its place. It has come, Peter, she said, dolly. I always knew it couldn't last. They've always hung about my neck, and now. Do you think you must go? Isn't there some way? If things are so bad, you could hardly get there in time, and you must think of yourself a little, Anna. I'm not thinking of anything else. Peter, I'm an uncommonly selfish woman, but I— Quite without warning she burst out crying, unlovely, audible weeping that shook her narrow shoulders. Harmony heard the sound and joined them. After a look at Anna, she sat down beside her and put a white arm over her shoulders. She did not try to speak. Anna's noisy grief subsided as suddenly as it came. She patted Harmony's hand in mute acknowledgment and dried her eyes. I'm not grieving, child, she said. I'm only realizing what a selfish old maid I am. I'm crying because I'm a disappointment to myself. Harry, I'm going back to America. And that, after hours of discussion, was where they ended. Anna must go at once. Peter must keep the apartment, having Jimmy to look after and to hide. What was a frightful dilemma to him and to Harmony, Anna took rather lightly. You'll find someone else to take my place, she said. If I had a day, I could find a dozen. And in the interval, Harmony asked, without looking at Peter. The interval? Tut, Peter is your brother, to all intents and purposes, and if you are thinking of scandal-mongers, who will know? Having determined to go, no arguments moved, Anna, nor could either of the two think of anything to urge beyond a situation she refused to see, or rather a situation she refused to acknowledge. She was not as comfortable as she pretended. During all that long night, while snow sifted down into the ugly yard and made it beautiful, while Jimmy slept and the white mice played, while Harmony tossed and tried to sleep, and Peter sat in his cold room and smoked his pipe. Anna packed her untidy belongings and added a name now and then to a list that was meant for Peter, a list of possible substitutes for herself in the little household. She left early the next morning, a grim little person who bent over the sleeping boy hungrily and insisted on carrying her own bag down the stairs. Harmony did not go to the station, but stayed at home, pale and silent, hovering around against Jimmy's awakening and struggling against a feeling of panic. Not that she feared Peter or herself, but she was conventional. Shielded girls are accustomed to lean for a certain support on the proprieties, as bridge-players depend on rules. Peter came back to breakfast, but ate little. Harmony did not even sit down but drank her cup of coffee standing, looking down at the snow below. Jimmy still slept. You sit down, said Peter. I'm not hungry, thank you. You can sit down without eating. Peter was nervous. To cover his uneasiness he was distinctly gruff. He pulled a chair out for her and she sat down. Now that they were face to face the tension was lessened. Peter laid Anna's list on the table between them and bent over it toward her. You're hurting me very much, Harry, he said. Do you know why? I? I am only sorry about Anna. I miss her. I was fond of her. So was I, but that isn't it, Harry. It's something else. I'm uncomfortable, Peter. So am I. I'm sorry you don't trust me, for that's it. Not at all. But, Peter, what will people say? A great deal if they know. Who is to know? How many people know about us? A handful at the most. McLean and Mrs. Boyer and one or two others. Of course I can go away until we get someone to take Anna's place, but you'd be here all alone at night, and if the youngster had an attack, oh no, don't leave him. It's holiday time. There are no clinics until next week. If you'll put up with me. Put up with you? When it's your apartment I use, your food I eat? She almost choked. Peter, I must talk about money. I'm coming to that. Don't you suppose you more than earn everything? Doesn't it humiliate me hourly to see you working here? Peter, would you rob me of my last vistage of self-respect? This being unanswerable, Peter fell back on his major premise. If you'll put up with me for a day or so, I'll take this list of Anna's and hunt up somebody. Just describe the person you desire and I'll find her. He assumed a certainty he was far from feeling, but it reassured the girl. A woman, of course. And not young. Not young, wrote Peter. Fat? Harmony recalled Mrs. Boyer's ample figure and shook her head. Not too stout and agreeable, that's most important. Agreeable, wrote Peter, although Anna was hardly agreeable in the strict sense of the word, was she? She was interesting and human. Human, wrote Peter, wanted a woman, not young, not too stout, agreeable and human. Shall I advertise? The stream was quite gone by that time. Harmony was smiling, Jimmy, waking, called for food, and the morning of the first day was under way. Peter was well content that morning, in spite of an undercurrent of uneasiness. Before this Anna had shared his proprietorship with him. Now the little household was his. His vicarious domesticity pleased him. He strutted about, taking a new view of his domain. He tightened a doorknob and fastened a noisy window. He inspected the coal supply and grumbled over its quality. He filled the copper kettle on the stove and 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 sick room read aloud and Jimmy put the wooden sentry into the cage to keep order, he got out his books and tried to study. After 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. McClain would resent the situation. Even the portier was a person to reckon with. The skepticism of the American colony was a thing to fear and avoid. But overall hung the incessant worry about money. He could just manage alone. He could not, by any method he knew of, stretch his resources to cover a separate arrangement for himself. But he had undertaken to shield a girl-woman and a child and shield them he would and could. Brave thoughts were Peters that snowy morning in the great salon of Maria Teresa, 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 Stuart that he would come as soon as he could and immediately after lunch departed for the club. Anna solicited his pocket, Harmony's requirements in mind. He paused at Jimmy's door on his way out. What shall it be today? He inquired, a postcard or crayon. I wish I could have a dog. We'll have a dog when you are better and can take him walking, wait until spring, son. Some more mice? You will have them, but not today. What holiday comes next? New Year's Day. Suppose I bring you a New Year's card. That's right, agreed Jimmy, one I can send to dad. Do you think he will come back this year? I think you'll surely see him this year, old man, he said huskily. Peter walked to the doctor's club. On the way he happened on the little Gjorgav, the Bulgarian, and they went on together. Peter managed to make out that Gjorgav was studying English and that he desired to know the state of health and the abode of the Frolheim Wells. Peter evaded the latter, but he didn't know what to do. He was just a young man, but he knew what to do. The little Bulgarian watched him earnestly, his smouldering eyes not without suspicion. There had been much talk in the pensionschfarts about the departure together of the three Americans. The Jew from Galicia still raved over Harmony's beauty. Gjorgav rather hoped, by staying by Peter, to be led toward his star, but Peter left him at the doctor's club, still amiable, but out of his mind, Gjorgav continued to the little spy's heart. The club was almost deserted, and 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 room, the girls and the boys were sitting in the room, and the girls were apt to meet for chocolate and to exchange the addresses of dressmakers was empty. In the reading room, he found Maclean. Although not a member, Maclean was a sort of honorary habit too, being allowed the privilege of the club in exchange for dependable willingness to play at entertainments of all sorts. It was in Peter's mind to enlist Maclean's assistance in his difficulties. Maclean knew a good many people. He was popular, good-looking, and in a colony where, like London and Paris, a great majority were people of moderate means, he was conspicuously well off. But he was also much younger than Peter, and intolerant with the insolence of youth. Peter was thinking hard as he took off his overcoat and ordered beer. The boy was in love with harmony already. Peter had seen that, as he saw many things. How far his love might carry him, Peter had no idea. It seemed to him, as he sat across the reading table and studied him over his magazine, that Maclean would resent bitterly the girl's position, and that when he learned it a crisis might be precipitated. One of three things might happen. He might bend all his energies to second Peter's efforts 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 Maclean would have required justification. Peter disliked the idea. He could humble himself, if necessary, to a woman. He could admit his assininity in assuming the responsibility for Jimmy, for instance, and any woman worthy of the name or worthy of living in the house with Harmony would understand. But Maclean was young, intolerant. He was more than that, although 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. Maclean, 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 youth, pursuing an idea to the ends of the earth and flaunting a lady's gurdon from spear or saddle-bow. The older men among them tucked the handkerchief or a bit of gauntlet of glove under jerkin or armor near the heart, and flung to the air the gurdon of some light of love. Maclean 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 Maclean, after a time that Peter, being at 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 preemptually 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 around, and Peter himself sat across deeply immersed in the magazine. Maclean rose, not stealthily, but without unnecessary noise. So far so good. Peter turned a page and went on reading. Maclean sauntered to a window, hands in pocket. He even whistled a trifle under his breath to prove how very casual were his intentions. Still whistling, he moved toward the door. Peter turned another page, which was curiously soon to have read two columns of small type without illustrations. Once out in the hall, Maclean's movements gained aim and precision. He got his coat, hat, and stick, flung the first over his arm and the second over his head, and, going out, asked Peter Conley? Yes, nothing to do here. I've read all the infernal old magazines until I'm sick of them, indignant, too, from his tone. Walking? Yes. Mind if I go with you? Not at all. Peter, taking down his old overcoat from its hook, turned and caught the boy's eye. It was a swift exchange of glances, but illuminating. Peter's whimsical, but with a sort of grim determination. Maclean's sheepish, but equally determined. Rotten afternoon, said Maclean as they started for the stairs. Half rain, half snow. Streets are ankle deep. I'm not particularly keen about walking, but I don't care for this tomb alone. Nothing was further from Maclean's mind than a walk with Peter that afternoon. He hesitated halfway down the upper flight. Don't care for cribbage, do you? Don't know anything about it. How about Pinnacle? They had both stopped, equally determined, equally hesitating. Pinnacle it is, acquiesced Maclean. I was only going because there was nothing to do. Things went very well for Peter that afternoon, up to a certain point. He beat Maclean unmercifully, playing with cold deliberation. Maclean wearied, fidgeted, railed at his bad luck. Peter played on grimly. The club filled up toward the coffee-hour. Two or three women, wives of members, a young girl to whom Maclean had been rather attentive before he met harmony and who bridled at the abstract bow he gave her. And finally, when Hope and Peter was dead, one of the women on Anna's list. Peter laying down pairs and marking up score went over harmony's requirements. Dr. Jennings seemed to fit them all, a woman, not young, not too stout, agreeable, and human. She was a large, almost bavinely placid person, not at all reminiscent of Anna. She was neat where Anna had been disorderly, well-dressed and breezy against Anna's doubtiness and sharpness. Peter having totaled the score rose and looked down at Maclean. "'You're a nice lad,' he said, smiling, some time I shall teach you the game.' "'How about a lesson tonight in Seven Star Street?' "'Tonight?' "'Why, I'm sorry. We have an engagement for tonight.' The we was deliberate and cruel. Maclean writhed. Also the statement was false, but the boy was spared that knowledge for the moment. Things went well. Dr. Jennings was badly off for quarters. She would make a change if she could better herself. Peter drew her off to a corner and stated his case. She listened attentively, albeit not without disapproval. She frankly discredited the altruism of Peter's motives when he told her about harmony. But as the recital went on she found herself rather touched. The story of Jimmy appealed to her. She scolded and lauded Peter in one breath, and what was more to the point she promised to visit the house in Siebensternstrasse the next day. "'So Anna Gates has gone home,' she reflected. "'When?' "'This morning.' "'Then the girl is there alone?' "'Yes. She's very young and inexperienced, and the boy. It's myocardiasis. She's afraid to be left with him.' "'Is she quite alone?' "'Absolutely, and without funds, except enough for her lessons. Our arrangement was that she should keep the house going. That was her share.' "'Dr. Jennings was impressed. It was impossible to talk to Peter and not believe him. Women trusted Peter always.' "'You've been very foolish, Dr. Byrne,' she said as she rose. But you've been disinterested enough to offset that and to put some of us to shame. Tomorrow at three, if it suits you. You said it was the Siebensternstrasse.' Peter went home, exultant. End of chapter 16 Chapter 17 of The Street of Seven Stars Christmas Day had had a softening effect on Mrs. Boyer. It had opened badly. It was the first Christmas she had spent away from her children, and there had been little of the holiday spirit in her attitude as she prepared the Christmas breakfast. After that, however, things happened. In the first place, under her plate, she had found a frivolous chain and pendant which she had admired. And when she had found a frivolous chain and pendant which she had admired, she had found a frivolous chain and pendant which she had admired. And when her eyes filled up, as they did whenever she was emotionally moved, the doctor had come round the table and put both his arms about her. "'Too young for you?' "'Not a bit,' he said heartily. "'You're better looking than you ever were, Jenny. And if you weren't, you're the only woman for me anyhow. Don't you think I realize what this exile means to you, and that you're doing it for me?' "'I—I don't mind it.' "'Yes, you do. Tonight we'll go out and make a night of it, shall we? Separate the grand, the theatre, and then the tabern, eh?' She loosened herself from his arms. "'What shall I wear? Those horrible things the children bought me. Throw them away.' "'They're not worn at all. Throw them out. Get rid of the things the children got you. Go out tomorrow and buy something you like. Not that I don't like you in anything, or without. Frank! Be happy, that's the thing. It's the first Christmas without the family, and I miss them too, but we're together, dear. That's the big thing. Merry Christmas.' An auspicious opening that, to Christmas Day, and they had carried out the program as outlined. Mrs. Boyer had enjoyed it, albeit a bit horrified at the Christmas gaity at the tabern. The next morning, however, she awakened with a keen reaction. Her head ached. She had a sense of taint over her. She was virtue-rampant again, as on the day she had first visited the old lodge in the Siebensternstrasse. It is hardly astonishing that by association of ideas Harmony came into her mind again, a brand that might even yet be snatched from the burning. She had been a bit hasty before, she admitted to herself. There was a woman doctor named Gates, although her address at the club was given as Pentium Schwartz. She determined to do her shopping early and then to visit the house in the Siebensternstrasse. She was not a hard woman for all her inflexible morality, and more than once she had had an uneasy memory of Harmony's bewildered, almost stricken face the afternoon of her visit. She had been a watchful mother over a not particularly handsome family of daughters. This lovely young girl needed mothering, and she had refused it. She would go back, and if she found she had been wrong and the girl was deserving and honest, she would see what could be done. The day was wretched, the snow had turned to rain, Mrs. Boyer, shopping, dragged wet skirts and damp feet from store to store. She found nothing that she cared for at all. The garments that looked chic in the windows or on mannequins in the shops were absurd on her. Her insistent bosom bulged, straight lines became curves or torturous zigzags, placets gaped, collars choked her or shocked her by their absence. In the mirror of Marie Jadlika, 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 modista, under the glare of a hundred lights, side by side with a slim Austrian sales girl who looked like a willow wand, Mrs. Boyer was grotesque, ridiculous, monstrous. She shuddered. She almost wept. It was bad preparation for a visit to the Siebensternstrasse. Mrs. Boyer, finding her vanity gone, convinced that she was an absurdity, physically, fell back for comfort on her soul. She had been a good wife and mother. She was chaste, righteous. God had been cruel to her in the flesh, but he had given her the spirit. Madame wishes not the gown. It is beautiful. See the embroidery, and the neck may be filled with chiffon. Young woman, she said grimly, I see the embroidery, and the neck may be filled with chiffon, but not for me, and when you have had five children, you will not buy clothes like that, either. All the kindness was gone from the visit to the Siebensternstrasse, only the determination remained. Wounded to the heart of her self-esteem, her pride in tatters, she took her way to the old lodge and climbed the stairs. She found a condition of mild excitement. Jimmy had slept long after his bath. Harmony practised, cut up a chicken for broth, air blankets for the chair into which Peter, on his return, was to lift the boy. She was called to inspect the mouse cage, which, according to Jimmy, had strawberries in it. Far back, he explained, there in the cotton, Harry. But it was not strawberries. Harmony opened the cage, and very tenderly took out the cotton nest. Eight tiny pink baby mice, clean washed by the mother, lay curled in a heap. It was a stupendous moment. The joy of vicarious parentage was Jimmy's. He named them all immediately and demanded food for them. On Harmony's delicate explanation that this was unnecessary, life took on new meaning for Jimmy. He watched the mother lest she slight one. His responsibility weighed on him. Also, his inquiry mind was very busy. But how did they get there, he demanded. God sent them just as he sends babies of all sorts. Did he send me? Of course. That's a good one on you, Harry. My father found me in a hollow tree. But don't you think God had something to do with it? Jimmy pondered this. I suppose, he reflected, God sent Daddy to find me so that I would be his little boy. You never happened to see any babies when you were out walking, did you, Harry? Not in stumps, but I probably wasn't looking. Jimmy eyed her with sympathy. You may someday, would you like to have one? Very much, said Harmony, and flushed delightfully. Jimmy was disposed to press the matter, to urge immediate maternity on her. You could lay it here on the bed, he offered, and I'd watch it. When they yell at you, you let them suck your finger. I know a woman once that had a baby and she did that, and it could watch Isabella. Isabella was the mother mouse, and when I'm better, I could take it walking. That, said Harmony gravely, is mighty fine of you, Jimmy boy. I, I'll think about it. She never denied Jimmy anything, so now she temporized. I'll ask Peter. Harmony had a half hysterical moment then. Wouldn't it be better, she asked, to keep anything of that sort a secret and to surprise Peter? The boy loved a secret. He played with it in lieu of other occupation. His uncertain future was sown thick with secrets that would never flower into reality. Thus Peter had shamelessly promised him a visit to the circus when he was able to go. Harmony not to be told until the tickets were bought. Anna had similarly promised to send him from America, a pitcher's glove, and a baseball bat. To this list of futurities, he now added Harmony's baby. Harmony brought in her violin and played softly to him, not to disturb the sleeping mice. She sang, too, a verse that the big soprano had been fond of and that Jimmy loved. Not much of a voice was Harmony's, but sweet and low and very true, as became her violinist's ear. How well for us all some sweet uplies deeply bathe from human eyes. She sang, her clear eyes luminous. And in the hereafter angels may roll the stone from its grave away. Mrs. Boyer mounted the stairs. She was in a very bad humor. She had snagged her skirt on a nail in the old gate, and although that very morning she had detested the suit, her round of shopping had again endeared it to her. She told the portier in English what she thought of him and climbed ponderously, pausing at each landing to examine the damage. Harmony, having sung Jimmy to sleep, was in the throes of an experiment. She was trying to smoke. A very human young person was Harmony, apt to be exceedingly wretched if her hat was of last year's fashion, anxious to be inconspicuous by doing what everyone else was doing, conventional as are the very young, fearful of being an exception. And nearly everyone was smoking. Many of the young women whom she met at the master's house had yellowed fingers and smoked in the ante-room. The big soprano had smoked, Anna and sketchy had smoked. In the coffee-houses, milleners' 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, and Anna had left a handful of cigarettes. Harmony was not smoking. She was experimenting. Peter and Anna had smoked together and it had looked camaraderie. Perhaps, without reasoning it out, Harmony was experimenting toward the end of establishing her relations with Peter still further on friendly and camaraderie grounds. Two men might smoke together, a man and a woman might smoke together as friends. According to Harmony's ideas, a girl pairing potatoes might inspire sentiment, but smoking a cigarette? Never. She did not like it. She thought, standing before her little mirror, that she looked fast, after all. She tried pursing her lips together as she had seen Anna do and blowing out the smoke in a thin line. She smoked very hard so that she stood in the center of a gray nimbus. She hated it, but she persisted. Perhaps it grew on one. Perhaps, also, if she walked about it would choke her less. She practiced holding the thing between her first and second fingers and found that easier than smoking. Then she went to the salon where there was more air and tried exhaling through her nose. It made her sneeze. On the sneeze came Mrs. Boyer's ring. Harmony thought very fast. It might be the bread or the milk, but again she flung the cigarette into the stove, shut the door and answered the bell. Mrs. Boyer's greeting was colder than she had intended. It put Harmony on the defensive at once, made her uncomfortable. Like all the innocent falsely accused, she looked guiltier than the guiltiest. Under Mrs. Boyer's searching eyes, the enormity of her situation overwhelmed her. And overall, through salon and passage, hung the damning odor of the cigarette. Harmony, leading the way in, was a sheet before her shearer. I'm calling on all of you, said Mrs. Boyer sniffing. I meant to bring Dr. Boyer's cards for everyone, including Dr. Byrne. I'm sorry, Dr. Byrne is out. And Dr. Gates? She, she is away. Mrs. Boyer raised her eyebrows and ostentiously 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 of 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 the proximity of Harmony's lovely head bent over her task, which was slightly more expensive. I ought to tell you something, Miss Wells, she said. You remember my other visit? Perfectly, Harmony bent still lower. I did you an injustice at that time. I've been sorry ever since. I thought that there was no Dr. Gates. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to deny it. People do things in this wicked city that they wouldn't do at home. I confess I misjudged Peter Byrne. You can give him my apologies, since he won't see me. But he isn't here, or of course he'd see you. Then demanded Mrs. Boyer grimly. If Peter Byrne is not here, who has been smoking cigarettes in this room? There's one still burning in that stove. Harmony's hand was forced. She was white as she cut the brown silk thread and rose to her feet. I think, she said, that I'd better go back a few weeks, Mrs. Boyer, and tell you a story, if you have a little time to listen. If it's not disagreeable, not at all. It's about Peter Byrne and myself and some others. It's really about Peter. Mrs. Boyer, will you come very quietly across the hall? Mrs. Boyer, expecting heaven knows what, rose with celerity. Harmony led the way to Jimmy's door and opened it. He was still asleep, a wasted small figure on the narrow bed. Beside him, the mice frolicked in their cage. The sentry kept guard over Peter's shameless letters from the Tyrol. The strawberry babies wiggled in their cotton. We are not going to have him very long, said Harmony softly. Peter is making him happy for a little while. Back in the salon of Maria Teresa, she told the whole story. Mrs. Boyer found it very affecting. Harmony sat beside her on a stool and she kept her hand on the girl's shoulder. When the narrative reached, Anna's going away, however, she took it away. From that point on, she sat uncompromisingly rigid and listened. Then you mean to say, she exploded when Harmony had finished, that you intend to stay on here, just the two of you? And Jimmy? Bah, what has the child got to do with it? We will find someone to take Anna's place. I doubt it, and until you do? There is nothing wicked in what we are doing. Don't you see, Mrs. Boyer, I can't leave the boy. Since Peter's so altruistic, let him hire a nurse. Bad as things were, Harmony smiled. A nurse, she said. Why, do you realize that he is keeping three people now on what is starvation for one? Then he is a fool, Mrs. Boyer rose in majesty. I'm not going to leave you here. I'm sorry, you must see. I see nothing but a girl deliberately putting herself in a compromising position, and worse. Mrs. Boyer, get your things on. I guess Dr. Boyer and I can look after you until we can send you home. I am not going home. Yet, said poor Harmony, biting her lip to steady it. Back and forth waged the battle. Mrs. Boyer assailing, Harmony offering little defense, but standing firm on her refusal to go as long as Peter would let her remain. It means so much to me, she ventured, goaded. And I earn my lodging and board. I work hard, and I make him comfortable. It costs him very little, and I give him something in exchange. All men are not alike. If the sort you have known are different. This was unfortunate. Mrs. Boyer stiffened. She ceased offensive tactics and retired grimly into the dignity of her high calling of virtuous wife and mother. She washed her hands of Harmony and Peter. She tied on her veil with shaking hands and prepared to leave Harmony to her fate. Give me your mother's address, she demanded. Certainly not. You absolutely refuse to save yourself? From what? From Peter? There are many worse people than Peter to save myself from, Mrs. Boyer. Uncharitable people and cruel people. Mrs. Boyer shrugged her plump shoulders. Meaning me, she retorted. My dear child, people are always cruel who try to save us from ourselves. Unluckily for Harmony, one of Anna's specious arguments must pop into her head at that instant in demand expression. People are living their own lives these days, Mrs. Boyer. Old standards have gone. It is what one's conscience condemns that is wrong, isn't it? Not merely breaking laws that were made to fit the average, not the exception. Anna, Anna. Mrs. Boyer flung up her hands. You are impossible, she snapped. After all, I do believe it is Peter who needs protection. I shall speak to him. She started down the staircase, but turned for a parting volley. And just a word of advice. Perhaps the old standards have gone. But if you really expect to find a respectable woman to chaperone you, keep your views to yourself. Harmony, a bruised and wounded thing, crept into Jimmy's room and sank on her knees beside the bed. One small hand lay on the coverlet. She dared not touch it for fear of waking him. But she laid her cheek close to it for comfort. When Peter came in, much later, he found the boy wide awake and harmony asleep in a crumpled heap beside the bed. I think she's been crying, Jimmy whispered. She's been sobbing in her sleep. And strike a match, Peter, there may be more mice. End of chapter 17. Chapter 18 of The Street of Seven Stars. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mary Ann. The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Reinhart, chapter 18. Mrs. Boyer, bursting with indignation, went to the doctor's 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 club rooms 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 fearless Peter forbid him the house permanently if he made the attempt. He had found a picture of the Fraulein Engel from the opera in a magazine, and was sitting with it open before him. Very deeply and really in love was McLean that afternoon, and the Fraulein Engel and harmony were not unlike. The double doors between the reading room and the reception room adjoining were open. McLean lost in a rosy future in which he and harmony sat together for indefinite periods, with no Peter to scowl over his books at them. A future in which life was one long piano violin duo, with the candles in the chandelier going out one by one, leaving them at last alone, in scented darkness together. McLean heard nothing until the mention of this Evenstein Strauss that aroused him. After that he listened. He heard that Dr. Jennings was contemplating taking Anna's place at the lodge, and he comprehended after a moment that Anna was already gone. Even then the significance of the situation was a little time in dawning on him. When it did, however, he rose with a stifled oath. Mrs. Boyer was speaking. "'It is exactly as I tell you,' she was saying. "'If Peter Byrne is trying to protect her reputation, "'he is late in doing it. "'Personally I have been there twice. "'I never saw Anna Gates. "'And she is registered here at the club "'as living at the Pensien-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 and addressed to him. The cab bumped along over the rough streets to an accompaniment of protests from its frantic passenger. The boy was white-lipped with wrath and fear. Peter silenced 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 clear vision of the moment. He recalled things that maddened him, the dozen intimacies of the little ménage, the caress in Peter's voice when he spoke to the girl, Peter's steady eyes in the semi-gloom of the salon while Harmony played. At a corner they must pause for the inevitable regiment. McLean cursed, bending out to see how long the delay would be. Peter had been gone for half an hour, perhaps, but Peter would walk. If he could only see the girl first, talk to her, tell her what she would be doing by remaining. He was there at last, flinging across the courtyard like a madman. Peter was already there, his footprints were fresh in the slush of the path. The house door was closed but not locked. McLean ran up the stairs. It was barely twilight outside, but the staircase well was dark. At the upper landing he was compelled to fumble for the bell. Peter admitted him. From the corridor was unlighted, but from the salon came a glow of lamplight. McLean, out of breath and furious, faced Peter. I want to see Harmony," he said without preface. Peter eyed him. He knew what had happened, had expected it when the bell rang, had anticipated it when Harmony told him of Mrs. Boyer's visit. In the second between the peel of the bell and his opening, the door, he had decided what to do. Come in. McLean stepped inside. He was smaller than Peter, not so much shorter as slenderer. Even Peter wince before the look in his eyes. Where is she? In the kitchen, I think. Come into the salon. McLean flung off his coat. Peter closed the door behind him and stood just inside. He had his pipe, as usual. I came to see her, not you, Byrne. So I gather. I'll let you see her, of course. But don't you want to see me first? I want to take her away from here. Why? Are you better able to care for her than I am? McLean stood rigid. He had thrust his clenched hands into his pockets. You're a scoundrel, Byrne, he said steadily. Why didn't you tell me this this afternoon? Because I knew, if I did, you'd do just what you are doing. Are you going to keep her here? Peter changed colour at the thrust, but he kept himself in hand. I'm not keeping her here, he said patiently. I'm doing the best I can under the circumstances. Then your best is pretty bad. Perhaps. You'd try to remember the circumstances, McLean, that the girl has no place else to go, practically no money, and that I— I remember one circumstance, that you are living here alone with her, and that you're crazy in love with her. That has nothing to do with you, as long as I treat her, bah. Will you be good enough to let me finish what I am trying to say? She is safe with me. When I say that, I mean it. She will not go away from here with you or with anyone else, if I can prevent it. And if you care enough about her to try and keep her happy, you'll not let her know you have been here. I've got a woman coming to take Anna's place. That ought to satisfy you. Dr. Jennings? Yes. She'll not come. Mrs. Boyer has been talking to her. Inside of an hour the whole club will have it. Every American in Vienna will know about it in a day or two. I tell you, Berndt, you're doing an awful thing. Peter drew a long breath. She had had his bad half-hour before McLean came. Had had to stand by, wordless, and see Harmony trying to smile. See her dragging about, languid and white. See her tragic attempts to greet him on the old familiar footing. Through it all he had been sustained by the thought that a day, or two days, would see the old footing re-established, another woman in the house, life again worth living, and Harmony smiling up frankly into his eyes. Now this hope had departed. You can't keep me from seeing her, you know, McLean persisted. I've got to put this thing to her. She's got to choose. What alternative have you to suggest? I'd marry her if she'd have me. After all, Peter had expected that, and if she cared for the boy, wouldn't that be best for her? What had he to offer against that? He couldn't marry her. He could only offer her shelter, against everything else. Even then he did not dislike McLean. He was a man, every slender inch of him, this boy-musician. Peter's heart sank, but he put down his pipe and turned to the door. I'll call her, he said. But since this concerns me vitally, I should like to be here while you put the thing to her. After that, if you like. He called Harmony. She had given Jimmy his supper and was carrying out a tray that seemed hardly touched. He won't eat to-night, she said miserably. Peter, if he stops eating, what can we do? He is so weak. Peter took the tray from her gently. Harry, dear, he said, I want you to come into the salon. Someone wishes to speak to you. To me? Yes. Harry, do you remember that evening in the kitchen when? Do you recall what I promised? Yes, Peter. You are sure you know what I mean? Yes. That's all right, then. McLean wants to see you. She hesitated, looking up at him. McLean? You are so grave, Peter, what is it? He will tell you. Nothing alarming. Peter gave McLean a minute alone after all while he carried the tray to the kitchen. He had no desire to play watchdog over the girl, he told himself savagely, only to keep himself straight with her and to save her from McLean's impetuosity. He even waited in the kitchen to fill and light his pipe. McLean had worked himself into a very fair passion. He was intense, almost theatrical, as he stood with folded arms waiting for Harmony. So entirely did the girl fill his existence that he forgot, or did not care to remember, how short a time he had known her. As Harmony she had dominated his life and his thoughts. As Harmony he addressed her when, rather startled, she entered the salon and stood just inside the closed door. Peter said you wanted to speak to me. McLean groaned. Peter, he said. It is always Peter. Look here, Harmony, you cannot stay here. It is only for a few hours, to-morrow someone is coming. And anyhow Peter is going to submarine. We know it is unusual, but what can we do? Unusual? It's... It's damnable. It's the appearance of the thing, don't you see that? I think it is rather silly to talk of appearance when there is no one to care. And how can I leave? Jimmy needs me all the time. There's another idiocy of Peter's. What does he mean by putting you in this position? I am one of Peter's idiocies. Peter entered on that. He took in the situation with a glance and Harmony turned to him. But if she had expected Peter to support her she was disappointed. Whatever decision she was to make must be her own, in Peter's troubled mind. He crossed the room and stood at one of the windows looking out, a passive participant in the scene. The day had been a trying one for Harmony. But she chose to consider Peter's defection was a fresh stab. She glanced from McLean, flushed and excited, to Peter's impassive back. Then she sat down, rather limp, and threw out her hands helplessly. What am I to do? She demanded. Everyone comes with cruel things to say, but no one tells me what to do. Peter turned away from the window. You can leave here, ventured McLean. That's the first thing. After that... Yes. And after that... what? McLean glanced at Peter. Then he took a step toward the girl. You could marry me, Harmony, he said unsteadily. I hadn't expected to tell you so soon, or before a third person. He faltered before Harmony's eyes, full of bewilderment. I'd be very happy if you... if you could see it that way. I care a great deal, you see. It seemed hours to Peter before she made any reply, and that her voice came from miles away. Is it really as bad as that? She asked. Have I made such a mess of things that someone, either you or Peter, must marry me to straighten things out? I don't want to marry anyone. Do I have to? Certainly you don't have to, said Peter. There was relief in his voice, relief and also something of exaltation. McLean, you mean well, but marriage isn't the solution. But we're getting along all right until our friends stopped in. Let Mrs. Boyer howl all over the colony. There will be one sensible woman somewhere to come and be comfortable here with us. In the interval we'll manage, unless Harmony is afraid, in that case. Afraid of what? The two men exchanged glances, McLean helpless, Peter triumphant. I do not care what Mrs. Boyer says, at least not much, and I'm not afraid of anything else at all. McLean picked up his overcoat. At least, he appealed to Peter. You'll come over to my place? No, said Peter. McLean made a final appeal to Harmony. If this gets out, he said, you are going to regret it all your life. I shall have nothing to regret, she retorted proudly. Had Peter not been there, McLean would have made a better case. He would have pleaded with her, would have made less of a situation that roused her resentment and more of his love for her. He was very hard hit, very young. He was almost hysterical with rage and helplessness. He wanted to slap her, to take her in his arms. He writhed under the restraint of Peter's steady eyes. He got to the door and turned, furious. Then it's up to you, he flung at Peter. You're old enough to know better, she isn't. And don't look so damn superior. You're human like the rest of us, and if any harm comes to her. Unexpectedly Peter held out his hand, and after a sheepish moment McLean took it. Good night, old man, said Peter, and don't be an ass. As was Peter's way, the words meant little, the tone much. McLean knew what in his heart he had known all along, that the girl was safe enough, that all that was to fear was the gospel of scandal-lovers. He took Peter's hand, and then going to Harmony stood before her very erect. I suppose I've said too much. I always do, he said contritely. But you know the reason. Don't forget the reason, will you? I am only sorry. He bent over and kissed her hand, lingeringly. It was a tragic moment for him, poor lad. He turned blindly and went out the door, and down the dark stone staircase. It was rather anti-climax, after all that, to have Peter discover he had gone without his hat, and toss it down to him a flight below. All the frankness had gone out of the relationship between Harmony and Peter. They made painful efforts at ease, talked during the meal of careful abstractions, such as Jimmy, and Peter's proposed trip to Simmering. Avoided each other's eyes, ate little or nothing. Once when Harmony passed Peter his coffee-cup their fingers touched, and between them they dropped the cup. Harmony was flushed and pallid by turns. Peter wretched and silent. Out of the darkness came one ray of light. Peter had wired from Simmering, urging Peter to come. He would be away for two days. In two days much might happen. Dr. Jennings might come, or someone else. In two days some of the restraint would have worn off. Things would never be the same, but they would be 48 hours better. Peter spent the early part of the evening with Jimmy, reading aloud to him. After the child had dropped to sleep he packed a valise for the next day's journey, and counted into an envelope half of the money he had with him. He labeled household expenses, and sat up on his table, leaning against his collar-box. There was no sign of Harmony about. The salon was dark except for the study lamp turned down. Peter was restless. He put on his shabby dressing gown and worn slippers and wandered about. The portier had brought coal to the landing, Peter carried it in. He inspected the medicine bottles on Jimmy's stand and wrote full directions for every emergency he could imagine. Then finding it still only nine o'clock, he turned up the lamp in the salon and wrote an exciting letter from Jimmy's father, in which a lost lamb, wandering on the 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 local parenitas, and because it seemed so inevitable that before long Jimmy would be in the arms of the shepherd, and, of course, because it had been a trying day all through, Peter's lips were none too steady as he folded up the letter. The fire was dead in the stove. Peter put out the salon lamp and closed the shutters. In the warm darkness he put out his hand to feel his way through the room. It touched a little sweater-coat of harmonies, hanging over the back of a chair. Peter picked it up in a very passion of tenderness and held it to him. "'Little girl,' he choked. "'My little girl! God help me!' He was rather ashamed, considerably startled. It alarmed him to find that the mere unexpected touch of a familiar garment could rouse such a storm in him. It made him pause. He put down the coat and pulled himself up sharply. McLean was right. He was only human stuff. Very poor human stuff. He put the little coat down hastily, only to lift it again, gently to his lips. "'Good night, dear,' he whispered. "'Good night, Harmony.' Frosch-Vortz had had two visitors between the hours of coffee and supper that day. The reason of their call proved to be neither rooms nor pensions. They came to make inquiries. The Frosch-Vortz made this out at last, and sat down on the edge of the bed in the room that had once been Peter's and that still lacked an occupant. Mrs. Boyer had no German, Dr. Jennings very little and that chiefly medical. There is, however, a sort of code that answers instead of language frequently, when two or three women of later middle life are gathered together, a code born of mutual understanding, mutual disillusion, mutual distrust, a language of outspread hands, raised eyebrows, portentious shaking of the head. Frosch-Vortz, on the edge of Peter's tub-shaped bed, needed no English to convey the fact that Peter was a bad lot. Not that she resorted only to the sign language. "'The women were also wicked,' she said. "'Of a man, what does one expect? But of a woman!' And the younger one looked—hergot. She had the eyes of a saint. The little Gorgéva was mad for her. When the three of them left, disgraced, as one may say, he came to me. He threatened me. The Herrschwarze, God rest his soul, was a violent man, but never spoke he so to me. She says, interpreted Dr. Jennings, that they were a bad lot, that the younger one had made eyes of the Herrschwarze. Mrs. Boyer drew her ancient stables about her and put a tremulous hand on the other woman's arm. "'What an escape for you,' she said. If you had gone there to live and then found the establishment—queer!' From the kitchen of the pension Olga was listening and ear to the door. Behind her, also listening, but less advantageously, was Katrina. "'American ladies,' said Olga, two, old and fat. "'More hot water,' growled Katrina. "'Why do not the Americans stay in their own country, where the water, I have learned, comes hot from the earth?' Olga, bending forward, opened the door, cracked wider. They do not come for rooms. They inquire for the hair Dr. Byrne and the others. No. Of a certainty. Then let me to the door. A moment. She tells them everything and more. She says, how she is wicked, Katrina. She says the frail line 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 to 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 Frauschfortes is wrong,' cried Olga passionately in Vienna dialect. "'They were good, all of them. What in the world? And please, tell me where lives the frail line harmony. The hair-guergev eats not nor sleeps that he cannot find her.' Dr. Jennings was puzzled. "'She wishes to know where the girl lives,' she interpreted to Mrs. Boyer. A man wishes to know.' "'Naturally,' said Mrs. Boyer. "'Well, don't tell her.' Olga gathered from the tone rather than the words that she was not to be told. She burst into a despairing appeal in which the hair-guergev, 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 off, that Dr. Peter, by which I suppose she means Dr. Byrne, has left a necktie and that she'll be in hot water if she does not return it. Mrs. Boyer sniffed. "'In love with him, probably. Like the others,' she said.' End of Chapter 18 CHAPTER XIX of THE STREET OF SEVEN STARS. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Marianne. THE STREET OF SEVEN STARS by Mary Robert's Reinhardt. CHAPTER XIX Peter went to simmering the next morning, tiptoed out very early and without breakfast. He went in to cover Jimmy, lying diagonally across his small bed, amid a riot of tossed blankets. The communicating door into Harmony's room was open. Peter kept his eyes carefully from it, but his ears were less under control. He could hear her soft breathing. There were days coming when Peter would stand where he stood then and listen and find silence. He tore himself away at last, closing the outer door carefully behind him and lighting a match to find his way down the staircase. The portier was not awake. Peter had to rouse him and to stand by while he donned the trousers which he deemed necessary to the dignity of his position before he opened the street door. Reluctant as he had been to go, the change was good for Peter. The dawn grew rosy, promised sunshine, fulfilled its promise. The hurrying crowds at the depot interested him. He enjoyed his coffee, taken from a bare table in the station. The horizontal morning sunshine, shining in through marvelously clean windows, warmed the marble of the floor, made black shadows beside the heaps of hand luggage everywhere, turned into gold the hair of a toddling baby venturing on a tour of discovery. The same morning light, alas, revealed to Peter a break across the toe of one of his shoes. Peter sighed, then smiled. The baby was catching at the bits of dust that floated in the sunshine. Suddenly a great wave of happiness overwhelmed Peter. It was a passing thing, born of nothing, but for the instant that it lasted Peter was a king. Everything was well. The world was his oyster. Life was his to make it what he would. Youth and hope and joy. Under the beatific influence he expanded, grew, almost shown, youth and hope and joy that cometh in the morning. The ecstasy passed away, but without reaction. Peter no longer shone. He still glowed. He picked up the golden-haired baby and hugged it. He hunted out a beggar he had passed and gave him five hellers. He helped a suspicious old lady with an oil-cloth-covered bundle. He called the guard on the train's son and forced a grin out of that dignitary. Peter travelled third class, which was quite comfortable, and no bother about Nick Rachen's signs. His unreasonable cheerfulness persisted as far as Glognitz. There, with the increasing ruggedness of the scenery and his first view of the Rexalpa, came recollection of the urgency of Stuart's last message, of Marie Jettica, of the sort of 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 Stuart. 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 gutter snipe. The weather was beautiful. The sleet of the previous day in Vienna had been a deep snowfall on the mountains. The schwarze was frozen. The castle of Lichtenstein was gray against a white world. A little pilgrimage church far below seemed snowed in against the faithful. The third-class compartment filled with noisy skiing-parties. The old woman opened her oil-cloth bundle and taking a cat out of a box inside, fed it a sausage. Up and up, past the Vines-et-Avant and the station Brightenstein, across the highest viaduct, the Kalte Rinne and so at last to zimmering. 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. And he thought the cat might stifle in the oil-cloth, but the old woman too clearly distrusted him to make it possible to interfere. Anyhow he did not know the German for either cat or oil-cloth. He had wired Stuart, but the latter was not at the station. This made him vaguely uneasy. He hardly knew why. He did not know Stuart well enough to know whether he was particular in such matters or not. As a matter of fact he hardly knew him at all. It was because he had appealed to him that Peter was there, it being only necessary to Peter to be needed, and he was anywhere. The pension ball-time was well up the mountains. He shouldered his felice and started up. First long flights of steps through the pines, then a steep road. Peter climbed easily. Here and there he met groups coming down, men that he thought probably American, pretty women in tams and sweaters. He watched for Marie, but there was no sign of her. He was half an hour perhaps in reaching the ball-time. As he turned into the gate he noticed a sledge, with a dozen people following it, coming toward him. It was a singularly silent party. Peter, with his hand on the door-nogger, watched it approach with some curiosity. It stopped, and the men who had been following closed up round it. Even then Peter did not understand. He did not understand until he saw Stuart, limp and unconscious, lifted out of the straw, and carried toward him. It may be moral cowardice, but it requires physical bravery, and Marie was not brave. The balcony had attracted her. It opened possibilities of escape, unceasing regret and repentance for Stuart, 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, shuttering. To fall down, down onto the treetops, to be dropped from branch to branch, a broken thing, and perhaps even not yet dead, that was the unthinkable thing, to live for a time and suffer. Stuart was not ignorant of all that went on in her mind. She had threatened him with the balcony, just as, earlier in the winter, it had been a window-ledge with which she had frightened him. But there was this difference, whereas before he had drawn her back from the window and slapped her into sanity. Now he let her alone. At the end of one of their quarrels she had flung out onto the balcony, and there had watched him through the opening in the shutter. He had lighted a cigarette. Stuart 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 sowing, as the case might be. He returned in the evening to find her still sulking, still sowing. But Marie did not sulk all day, or so. She too was out, never far from Stuart, always watching. Many times she escaped discovery only by a miracle, as when she stopped behind an ox cart pretending to tie her shoe, or once when they all met face to face, and although she lowered her veil, Stuart must have known her instantly, had he not been so intent on helping Anita over a slippery gutter. She planned a dozen forms of revenge, and found them impossible of execution. Stuart himself was frightfully unhappy. For the first time in his life he was really in love, with all the humility of the condition. There were days when he would not touch Anita's hand, when he hardly spoke, when the girl herself would have been outraged at his conduct, had she not now and then caught him watching her, seen the wretchedness in his eyes. The form of Marie's revenge was unpremeditated after all. The light mountain snow was augmented by a storm. Roads were plowed through early in the morning, leaving great banks on either side. The hills were everywhere. Coasting parties made the steep roads a menace to the pedestrian. Every up-climbing slay carried behind it a string of sleds, going back to the starting point. Below the hotel was the serpentine coast, a long and dangerous course, full of high-banked curves, of sudden descents, of long straightaway dashes through the woodland. Two miles, perhaps three, it wound its torturous way down the mountain. Up by the high road to the crest again, only a mile or less. Thus it happened that the track was always clear, accepting for speeding sleds. No coasters, dragging sleds back up the slide, interfered. The track was crowded, every minute a sled set out, sped down the straightaway, dipped, turned, disappeared. A dozen would be lined up, waiting for the interval and the signal. And here, watching from the porch of the church, in the very shadow of the saints, Marie found her revenge. Stuart had given her a little wristwatch. Stuart 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 the snowbank. Beyond the snowbank there was a drop, fifteen feet, perhaps more, into the yard of a Russian villa. Stuart and Anita were twelfth. A man in a green stocking-cap was eleventh. The hillside was steep. Marie negotiated it by running from tree to tree, catching herself, steadying for a second, then down again. Once she fell and rolled a little distance. There was no time to think. Perhaps had she thought she would have weakened, she had no real courage, only desperation. As she reached the track the man in the green stocking-cap was in sight. A minute and a half she had then, not more. She looked about her hastily. A stone might serve her purpose, almost anything that would throw the sled out of its course. She saw a tree branch just above the track and dragged at it frantically. Someone was shouting at her from an upper window of the Russian villa. She did not hear. Stuart and Anita had made the curve above and were coming down at a frantic speed. Marie stood, her back to the oncoming rush of the sled, swaying slightly. When she could hear the singing of the runners she stooped and slid the tree branch out across the track. She had acted almost by instinct, but with a devilish skill. The sled swung to one side up the snow-bank and launched itself into the air. Marie heard the thud and the silence that followed it. Then she turned and scuttled like a hunted thing up the mountainside. Peter put in a bad day. Marie was not about, could not be located. Stuart, suffering from concussion, lay insensible all day and all the night. Peter could find no fracture, but felt it was wise to get another opinion. In the afternoon he sent four doctor from the Kerhouse and learned for the first time that Anita had also been hurt, a broken arm. Not serious, said the Kerhouse man. She is brave, very brave, the young woman. I believe they are engaged. Peter said he did not know and thought very hard. Where was Marie? Not gone, surely. Hear about him lay all her belongings, even her purse. After evening Stuart 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 Kerhouse, but he doubted Stuart's ability to stand any extra financial strain and Peter could not help any. The time for supper passed and no Marie. The landlady sent up a tray to Peter, stewed meat and potatoes, a salad, coffee. Peter sat in a corner with his back to Stuart and ate ravenously. He had had nothing since the morning's coffee. After that he sat down again by the bed to watch. There was little to do but watch. The meal had made him drowsy. He thought lovingly of his pipe. Perhaps if he got some fresh air and a smoke, he remembered the balcony. It was there on the balcony that he found Marie, a cowering thing that pushed his hands away when he would have caught her and broke into passionate crying. I cannot. I cannot. Cannot what? demanded Peter gently, watching her. So near was the balcony rail. Throw myself over. I've tried, Peter. I cannot. I should think not, said Peter sternly. Just now, when we need you, too. Come in and don't be a foolish child. But Marie would not go in. She held back, clinging tight to Peter's big hand, moaning out in the dialect of the people that always confused him, her story of the day, of what she had done, of watching Stuart brought back, of stealing into the house and through an adjacent room to the balcony, of her desperation and her cowardice. She was numb with cold, exhaustion, and hunger, quite childish, helpless. Peter stood out on the balcony with his arm round her, while the night wind beat about them and pondered what was best to do. He thought she might come in and care for Stuart, at least, until he was conscious. He could get her some supper. How can I, she was asked. I was seen. They are searching for me now. Oh, Peter. Peter. Who is searching for you? Who saw you? The people in the Russian villa. Did they see your face? I wore a veil. I think not. Then come in and change your clothes. There's a train down at midnight. You can take it. I have no money. This raised a delicate question. Marie absolutely refused to take Stuart's money. She had almost none of her own. And there were other complications. Where was she to go? The family of the injured girl did not suspect her since they did not know of her existence. She might get away without trouble, but after that, what? Peter pondered this on the balcony, while Marie in the bedroom was changing her clothing, soaked with a day in the snow. He came to the inevitable decision, the decision he knew at the beginning that he was going to make. If I could only put it up to Harmony first, he reflected, but she will understand when I tell her, she always understands. Standing there on the little balcony, with tragedy the thickness of a pine board beyond him, Peter experienced a bit of the glow of the morning, as of one who stumbling along in a dark place puts a hand on a friend. He went into the room. Stuart was lying very still and breathing easily. On her knees beside the bed knelt Marie. At Peter's step she rose and faced him. I am leaving him, Peter, for always. Good! said Peter heartily. Better for you and better for him. Marie drew a long breath. The night train, she said listlessly, is an express. I had forgotten. It is double fare. What of that, little sister? said Peter. What is a double fare when it means life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? And there will be happiness, little sister. He put his hand in his pocket. End of CHAPTER XXI. The portier was almost happy that morning. For one thing he had one honourable mention at the Schubert Society the night before. Or another. That night the Engel was to sing at Mignon, and the portier had spent his Christmas tips for a ticket. All day long he had been pouring over the score. Qu'est-ce tu d'as l'ent, faut-tu s'intrône en bluen? He sang with feeling while he polished the floors. He polished them with his feet, wearing felt boots for the purpose, and executing in the doing a sort of ungainly dance. A sprinkle of wax, right foot forward and back, left foot forward and back, both feet forward and back in a sort of double shuffle. More wax, more vigorous polishing, more singing, with longer pauses for breath. No esthah the land where the lemon trees bloom, he bellowed a sprinkle of wax, right foot, left foot, any foot at all. Now and then he took the score from his pocket and poured over it, humming the air, raising his eyebrows over the high notes, dropping his chin to the low ones. It was a wonderful morning, between greetings to neighbours he sang, a bit of talk, a bit of song. Qu'est-ce tu d'as l'ent? Good morning, sir, the old rags wears a crown. It will snow soon. Qu'est-ce tu d'as l'ent, faut-tu s'intrône en bluen? Ah, madame the milk-frow, and are the cows frozen up today like the pump? No? Marvelous. Does thou know that tonight is mignon at the opera, and that the angle sings? Qu'est-ce tu d'as l'ent? 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 portiers' tenor. Together they poured over the score, and even on their way to the beer-hall hummed together such bits as they were called. On one point they differed. The score was old and soiled with much thumbing. At one point, destroyed long sense, the sentries sang A sharp. The portiers insisted on A natural. They argued together over three steins of beer, the waiter referred to, decided for A flat. It was a serious matter to have one's teeth set, as one may say, for A natural, and then to be shocked with an unexpected half-tone up or down. It destroyed the illusion. It disappointed. It hurt. The sentries stuck to the sharp. It was sung so at the Salzburg opera. The portiers snapped his thumb at the Salzburg opera. Things were looking serious. They walked back to the lodge in silence. The sentry coughed. Possibly there was something, after all, in the one long rumour. It was then that the portiers 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 set up in bed with her chin in her hands and thought. In the pitiless dawn, with no Peter to restore her to cheerfulness, things looked black indeed. To what had she fallen, that first one man and then another must propose marriage to her, to save her? To save her from what? From what people thought, or each from the other? Were men so evil that they never trusted each other? Jane 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 foolishness. Perhaps that was it. That was it. They were afraid for her. She had thrown herself on Peter's hands, almost into his arms. She had made this situation. She must get away, of course. If only she had someone to care for Jimmy until Peter returned. But there was no one. The foretears' wife was fond of Jimmy, but not skilful. And suppose he were to wake in the night and call for her, and she would not come. She cried a little over this. At one time she patted across the room in her bare feet and got from a bureau drawer the money she had left. There was not half enough to take her home. She could write, the little mother might get some for her, but at infinite cost. Infinite humiliation. That would have been a final, desperate resort. She felt a little more cheerful when she had had a cup of coffee. Jimmy wakened about that time, and she went through the details of his morning toilette with all the brightness she could assume. Bath blankets, warm bath, toenails, fingernails, fresh nightgown, fresh sheets, and, final touch of all, a real barber's part straight from crown to brow. After that, ten minutes under extra comforters while the room aired. She hung over the boy that morning in an agony of tenderness. He was so little, so frail, and she must leave him. Only one thing sustained her. The boy loved her, but it was Peter he idolised. When he had Peter he needed nothing else. In some curious process of his childish mind Peter and Daddy mingled in extricable confusion. More than once he had recalled events in the roving life he and his father had led. You remember that, don't you, he would say? Certainly I remember, Peter would reply heartily. That evening on the steamer when I ate so many raisins. Of course, and we're ill. Not ill, not that time. But you said that I'd make a good pudding. You remember that, don't you? And Peter would recall it all. Peter would be left. That was the girl's comfort. She made a beginning at gathering her things together that morning, while the boy dozed and the white mice scurried about the little cage. She could not take her trunk, or Peter would trace it. She would have to carry her belongings, a few at a time, to wherever she found a room. Then when Peter came back she could slip away and he would never find her. At noon came the portier and the sentry, now no longer friends, and rang the doorbell. Harmony was rather startled, Maclean and Mrs. Boyer had been her only collars and she did not wish to see either of them. But after a second ring she gathered her courage in her hands and opened the door. She turned pale when she saw the sentry in his belted blue-gray tunic and high cap. She thought, of course, that Jimmy had been traced and that now he would be taken away. If the sentry knew her, however, he kept his face impassive and merely touched his cap. The portiers 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 page or two, turned to find the portier, ecstatic eyes upturned, hands folded on a ponch, enjoying a delirium of pleasure and the sentry nowhere in sight. He was discovered a moment later in the doorway of Jimmy's room, where, tack a return as ever, severe, marshal, he stood at attention, shoulders back, arms at his sides, thumbs in. In this position he was making, with amazing rapidity, a series of hideous grimaces for the benefit of the little boy in the bed. Marvelous faces they were, in which nose, mouth, and eyes seemed interchangeable, where features played leapfrog with one another. When all was over, perhaps when his repertoire was exhausted, the sentry returned his nose to the center of his face, replaced eyes and mouth, and wiped the ensemble with a blue cotton handkerchief. Then, still in silence, he saluted and withdrew, leaving the youngster and raptured, 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 bored there, and she knew. It was far from the Stott, far from the fashionable part of town, a neighborhood of small shops, a frank indigence. There surely she could find a room, and perhaps in one of the small stores, what she failed to secure in the larger, a position. Rosa, having taken the soldier away, Harmony secured to the porter'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 cave-like, cobble-paved court under the building, filled with wagons, feeding horses, quarrelsome and swearing teamsters. From the side a stone staircase took off and led, twisting from one landing-cave to another, to the upper floor. Here lived the dressmaker, amid the constant whirring of sewing-machines, the babble of work-people. Harmony, seeking not a home but a hiding-place, took the room at once. She was asked for no reference. In a sort of agony, lest this haven fail her, she paid for a week in advance. The wooden bed, the cracked mirror over the table, even the pigeons outside on the window-sell were hers for a week. The dressmaker was friendly, almost careless. I will have it cleaned, she explained. I have been so busy. The masquerade season is on. The froline is American, is she not? Yes. One knows the Americans, they are chic, not like the English. I have some American customers. Harmony started. The dressmaker was shrewd. Many people hid in the sixteenth district. She hastened to reassure the girl. They will not disturb you, and just now I have but one, a dancer. I shall have the room cleaned. Goodbye froline. So far, good. She had a refuge now, one spot that the venom of scandal could not poison, where she could study and work. Work hard, although there could be no more lessons. One spot where Peter would not have to protect her, where Peter indeed would never find her. This thought, which should have brought comfort, brought only new misery. Peace seemed dearly bought all at once. Shabby, wholesome, hearty Peter, with his rough hair and quiet voice, his bulging pockets and steady eyes. She was leaving Peter forever, exchanging his companionship for that of a row of pigeons on a windowsill. He would find someone, of course, but who would know that he liked toast made hard and plenty of butter, or to leave his bed-clothing loose at the foot? Peter being very long and apt to lop over. The lopping-over brought a tear or two, a very teary and tragic young heroine, this Harmony, prone to go about for the last day or two with a damp little handkerchief tucked in her sleeve. She felt her way down the staircase and into the cave below. It hangs by a very slender thread sometimes. If a wagon had not lumbered by, 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 Gjorgiv, waiting to ascend. But the wagon was there. Harmony lowered her veil. The little Gjorgiv, passing a veiled young woman in the gloom, went up the staircase with even pulses and calm and judicial bearing. Up to the tiny room, a floor or two below Harmony's, where he wrote reports to the Minister of War and mixed them with sonnets, to Harmony. Harmony went back to the Siebensternstrasse, having accomplished what she had set out to do and being very wretched in consequence. Because she was leaving the boy so soon she strove to atone for her coming defection by making it a gala evening. The child was very happy. She tucked him up in the salon, lighted all the candles, served him the daintiest of suppers there. She brought in the mice and tied tiny bows on their necks. She played checkers with him while the supper dishes waited and went down to defeat in three hilarious games. And last of all she played to him, joyous music at first, then slower, drowsy airs, until his heavy head drooped on his shoulder and she gathered him up in tender arms and carried him to bed. It was dawn when Marie arrived. Harmony was sleeping soundly when the bell rang. Her first thought was that Peter had come back, but Peter carried a key. The bell rang again and she slipped on the old kimono and went to the door. Is it Peter? She called, hand on knob. I come from Peter. I have a letter in German. Who is it? You do not know me, Marie Jellica. Please let me come in. The wildered Harmony opened the door and like a gray ghost Marie slipped by her and into the hall. There was a gaslight burning very low. Harmony turned it up and faced her visitor. She recognized her at once. The girl Dr. Stewart had been with in the coffee house. Something has happened to Peter. No, he is well. He sent this to the Frawline Wells. I am the Frawline Wells. Marie held out the letter and staggered. Harmony put her in a chair. She was bewildered, almost frightened. Crisis of some sort was written on Marie's face. Harmony felt very young, very incapable. The other girl refused coffee and would not even go into the salon until Peter's letter had been read. She was a fugitive, a criminal. The Austrian law is severe to those that harbor criminals. Let Harmony read. Dear Harry, will you forgive me for this and spread the wings of your splendid charity over this poor child? Perhaps I am doing wrong in sending her to you, but just now it is all I can think of. If she wants to talk, let her talk. It will probably help her. Also feed her, will you? And if she cannot sleep, give her one of the blue powders I fixed for Jimmy. I'll be back late to-day if I can make it, Peter. Harmony glanced up from the letter. Marie sat drooping in her chair. Her eyes were sunken in her head. She had recognized her at once, but any surprise she may have felt at finding Harmony in Peter's apartment was sunk in a general apathy, a compound of nervous reaction and fatigue. During the long hours in the express she had worn herself out with fright and remorse. There was nothing left now but exhaustion. Harmony was bewildered but obedient. She went back to the cold kitchen and lied to the 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 waves and strays and shouldering their burdens for them. Decidedly, life with Peter was full of surprises. She remembered, as she hurried into her clothes, the boys' club back in America and the spelling matches. Decidedly, also, Peter was in occupation, a state of mind, a career. No musician, hoping for a career of her own, could possibly marry Peter. That was a curious morning in the old lodge of Maria Teresa, while steward in the pension valtime 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 McClain ate his heart out in wretchedness in his hotel. Marie told her story over the early breakfast, sitting with her thin elbows on the table, her pointed chin in her palms. And now I am sorry, she finished. It has done no good. If it had only killed her, but she was not much hurt, I saw her rise and bend over him. Harmony was silent. She had no stock of aphorisms for the situation, no worldly knowledge, only pity. Did Peter say he would recover? Yes, they will both recover, and go to America, and he will marry her. Perhaps Harmony would have been less comfortable, Marie less frank, had Marie realized that this establishment of Peter's was not on the same basis as Steward's had been, or had Harmony divine her thought. The presence of the boy was discovered by his waking. Marie was taken in and presented. She looked stupefied. Certainly the Americans were a marvelous people, to have taken into their house and their hearts the strange child. If he were strange, Marie's suspicious little slum mind was not certain. In the safety and comfort of the little apartment, the Viennese expanded, cheered. She devoted herself to the boy, telling him strange folk tales, singing snatch of songs for him. The youngster took a liking to her at once, it seemed to Harmony, going about her morning routine, that Marie was her solution, and Peter's. During the afternoon she took a package to the branch post office, and mailed it by parcel post, to the Volbad Gasa. On the way she met Mrs. Boyer face to face. That lady looked severely ahead, and Harmony passed her with her chin well up, and the eyes of a wounded animal. Maclean sent a great box of flowers that day. She put them, for lack of a vase, in a pitcher beside Jimmy's bed. At dusk a telegram came to say that Stuart was better and that Peter was on his way down to Vienna. He would arrive at eight. Time was very short now. Seconds flashed by, minutes galloped. Harmony stewed a chicken for supper, and creamed the breast for Jimmy. She fixed the table, flowers in the center, the best cloth, Peter's favorite cheese. Six o'clock, six thirty, seven. Marie was telling Jimmy a fairy tale, and making the fairies out of rose buds. The study lamp was lighted, the stove glowing. Peter's slippers were out, his old smoking coat, his pipe. A quarter past seven, Peter would be near Vienna now and hungry, if he could only eat his supper before he learned. But that was impossible. He would come in, as he always did, and slam the outer door, and open it again to close it gently, as he always did. And then he would look for her, going from room to room until he found her. Only tonight he would not find her. She did not say good-bye to Jimmy. She stood in the doorway, and said a little prayer for him. Marie had made the flower fairies on needles, and they stood about his head on the pillow. Pink and yellow and white elves with fluffy skirts. Then, very silently, she put on her hat and jacket, and closed the outer door behind her. In the courtyard she turned and looked up. The great chandelier in the salon was not lighted, but from the casement windows shown out the comfortable glow of Peter's lamp. Peter had had many things to think over during the ride down the mountains. He had the third class compartment to himself, and sat in a corner, soft hat over his eyes. Life had never been particularly simple to Peter. His own life, yes, a matter of three meals a day, he had had fewer, a rough, clothing. But other lives had always touched him closely, and at the contact points Peter glowed, fused, amalgamated. Thus he had been many people, good, indifferent, bad, but all needy. Thus also Peter had committed vicarious crimes, suffered vicarious illnesses, starved, died, loved, vicariously. And now, after years of living for others, Peter was living at last for himself and suffering. Not that he understood exactly what ailed him, he thought he was tired, which was true enough, having had little sleep for two or three nights. Also he explained to himself that he was smoking too much, and resolutely lighted another cigarette. Two things had revealed Peter's condition to himself. McLean had said, You are crazy in love with her. McLean's statement, lacking subtlety, had had a certain quality of directness. Even then Peter, utterly miserable, had refused to capitulate, when to capitulate would have meant the surrender of the house in the Zeppinsternstrasse. And the absence from harmony had shown him just where he stood. He was in love, crazy in love. Every fiber of his long body glowed with it, ached with it, and every atom of his reason told him what mad folly it was, this love, even if harmony cared, and at the mere thought his heart pounded, what madness for her, what idiocy for him. To ask her to accept the half of… nothing, to give up a career to share his struggle for one, to ask her to bury her splendid talent in her beauty under a bushel that he might wave aloft his feeble light. And there was no way out, no royal road to fortune by the route he had chosen, nothing but grinding work, with a result problematical and years ahead. There were even no legacies to expect, he thought whimsically. Peter had known a chap once, struggling along in gynecology, who had had a fortune left him by a GP, which being interpreted is grateful patient. Peter's patients had a way of living, and when they did drop, 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 himself home on a slow boat. The Canadian lines were cheap. If Jimmy lived, perhaps he could take him along, if not. He would have to put six months' work in the next three, that was not so hard. He had got along before with less sleep, and thrived on it. Also there must be no more idle evenings with Jimmy and the salon propped in a chair and harmony playing, the room dark saved for the glow from the stove and the one candle at Harmony's elbow. All roads lead to Rome. Peter's thoughts, having traveled in a circle, were back again to Harmony the desirable. Harmony playing in the firelight. Harmony flushed over the brick stove. Harmony paring potatoes that night in the kitchen when he— Harmony, Harmony. Stewart knew all about the accident and its cause. Peter had surmised as much when the injured man failed to ask for Marie. He tested him finally by bringing Marie's name into the conversation. Stewart ignored it, accepted her absence, refused to be drawn. That was at first. During the day, however, as he gained strength, he grew restless and uneasy. As the time approached for Peter to leave, he was clearly struggling with himself. The landlady had agreed to care for him and was bustling about the room. During one of her absences he turned to Peter. I suppose Marie hasn't been around. She came back last night. Did she tell you? Yes, poor child. It's a devil, Stewart said in lay silent. Then I saw her shoot that thing out in front of us, but there was no time. Where is she now? Marie? I sent her to Vienna. Stewart fell back, relieved, not even curious. Thank heaven for that, he said. I don't want to see her again. I'd do something I'd be sorry for. The kindest thing to say for her is that she was not sane. No, Peter said gravely. She was hardly sane. Peter caught his steady gaze and glanced away. For him Marie's little tragedy had been written and erased. He would forget it magnanimously. He had divided what he had with her, and she had repaid him by attempting his life, and not only his life, but Anita's. Peter followed his line of reasoning easily. It's quite a frequent complication, Stewart, he said, but every man to whom it happens regards himself more or less as a victim. She fell in love with you, that's all. Her conduct is contrary to the ethics of the game, but she's been playing poor cards all along. Where is she? That doesn't matter, does it? Stewart had lain back and closed his eyes. No, it didn't matter. A sense of great relief overwhelmed him. Marie was gone, frightened into hiding. It was as if a band that had been about him was suddenly loosed. He breathed deep. He drew out his arms and laughed from sheer reaction. Then, catching Peter's not particularly approving eyes, he colored. Good Lord Peter, he said, you don't know what I've been through with that little devil, and now she's gone. He glanced round the disordered room, where bandages and medicines crowded toilet articles on the dressing table, where one of Marie's small slippers still lay where it had fallen under the foot of the bed, where her rosaries still hung over the corner of the table. Ring for the maid, Peter, will you? I've got to get this junk out of here. Some of Anita's people may come. During that afternoon ride, while the train clumped-clumped down the mountains, Peter thought of all this. Some of Marie's junk was in his bag. Her rosary lay in his breast pocket, 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. Porteer! Porteer! they shouted. Porteer! bawled Peter. He was obliged to resort to the extravagance of a taxicab, possibly if Yasser 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 back to harmony. Patience became recklessness, as soon die for a sheep as a lamb. He stopped the taxicab and bought a bunch of violets. Stopped again and bought lilies of the valley to combine with the violets. Went out of his way to the American grocery and bought a jar of preserved fruit. By that time he was laden, the jar of preserves hung in one shabby pocket. Marie's rosary dangled from another. The violets were buttoned under his overcoat against the cold. At the very last he held the taxi an extra moment and darted into the delicatessen shop across the Siebensternstrasse. From there, standing inside the doorway, he could see the lights in the salon across the way. The glow of his lamp, the flicker that was the fire. Peter whistled, stamped his cold feet, quite neglected, in spite of repeated warnings from harmony, to watch the Herr Schenkenkaufer weigh the cheese, excepted without a glance, a ten-chronum piece with a hole in it. And how is the child today? asked the Herr Schenkenkaufer, covering the defective gold piece with conversation. I do not know. I have been away, said Peter. He almost sang it. All is well, or I would have heard. Wilhelm the portier was but just now here. All well, of course, sang Peter, his eyes on the comfortable glow of his lamp and the flicker that was the fire. Alpheter Zahn, Herr Schenkenkaufer. Alpheter Zahn, Herr Doctor. The lights, lilies of the valley, cheese, rosary luggage, of us 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 creek to betray him. Would stand in a doorway until someone, harmony perhaps. Ah, Peter. Would turn and see him. She had a way of putting one slender hand over her heart when she was startled. Peter put down the jar of preserved peaches outside. It was to be a second surprise. Also he put down the flowers. They were to be brought in last of all. One surprise after another is a cumulative happiness. Peter did not wish to swallow all his cake in one bite. For once he did not slam the outer door, although he very nearly did and only caught it at the cost of a bruised finger. Inside he listened. There was no clatter of dishes, no scurrying back and forth from table to stove in the final excitement of dishing up. There was, however, a highly agreeable odor of stewing chicken, a crisp smell of baking biscuit. In the dark and tall Peter had to pause to study himself. For he had a sudden mad impulse to shout harmony's name, to hold Huddy's arms, to call her to him there in the warm darkness, and when she had come to catch her to him, to tell his love in one long embrace, his arms about her, his rough cheek against her soft one. Wonder he grew somewhat dizzy and had to pull himself together. The silence rather surprised him, until he recalled that harmony was probably sewing in the salon as she did sometimes when dinner was ready to serve. The boy was asleep, no doubt. He stole along on tiptoe, hardly breathing, to the first doorway, which was Jimmy's. Jimmy was asleep. Round him were the pink and yellow and white flower fairies with violet heads. Peter saw them and smiled. Then his eyes, growing accustomed to the light, he saw Marie, face down on the floor, her head on her arms. Still as she was, Peter knew she was not sleeping, only fighting her battle over again and losing. Some of the joyousness of his return fled from Peter, never to come back. The two silent figures were too close to tragedy. Peter, with a long breath, stole past the door and on to the salon. No harmony there, but the great room was warm and cheery. The table was drawn near the stove and laid for up-and-descent. The white porcelain coffee pot had boiled and extinguished itself according to its method, and now gently steamed. On to the kitchen, much odour of food here, two candles lighted but burning low, a small platter with money on it, quite a little money. Almost all he had left harmony when he went away. Peter was dazed at first. Even when Marie, hastily summoned, had discovered that harmony's clothing was gone, when a search of the rooms revealed the absence of her violin and her music. When it last the fact stared them, incontestable in the face, Peter refused to accept it. He sat for a half hour or even more by the fire in the salon, obstinately refusing to believe that 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. When he was all alive, said he wrecked, ears straining for her hand on the knob of the outer door. The numbness of the shock passed at last, to be succeeded by alarm. During all the time that followed, that condition persisted, fright, almost terror, harmony alone in the city, helpless, dependent, poverty stricken, harmony seeking employment under conditions Peter knew too well, but with his alarm came rage. We had never seen Peter angry. She shrank from this gaunt and gray-faced man who raved up and down the salon, questioning the frightened portier, swearing fierce oaths, bringing accusation after accusation against some unnamed woman to whom he applied epithas that Marie's English luckily did not comprehend. Not a particularly heroic figure was Peter that night, a frantic, disheveled individual, before whom the portier cowered, who struggled back to sanity through a berserk haze and was liable to swift relapses into fury again. To this succeeded at last the mental condition that was to be Peter's for many days. Hopelessness and alarm, and a grim determination to keep on searching. There were no clues. The portier made inquiries of all the cabstands in the neighborhood. Harmony had not taken a cab. The delicatessen seller had seen her go out that afternoon with a bundle and return without it. She had been gone only an hour or so. That gave Peter a ray of hope that she might have found a haven in the neighborhood until he recalled the parcel post. One possibility he clung to, Mrs. Boyer had made mischief, but she had also offered the girl a home. She might be at the Boyers. Peter, flinging on hat and without his overcoat, went to the Boyers. Time was valuable, and he had wasted an hour, two hours, in useless rage. So he took a taxicab, and being by this time utterly reckless of cost let it stand while he interviewed the Boyers. Boyer himself, partially undressed, opened the door to his ring. Peter was past explanation or ceremonial. "'Is Harmony here?' he demanded. "'Harmony?' "'Harmony Wells. She's disappeared, missing.' "'Come in,' said Boyer, alive to the strain in Peter's voice. "'I don't know. I haven't heard anything. I'll ask Mrs. Boyer.' During the interval that 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 sake of 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 unstage figure, listened. I thought, finished Peter, that since you had offered her a refuge from me, she might have come here. I offered her a refuge, before I had been to the Pensieng-Schwarz. "'Ah,' said Peter slowly. "'And what about the Pensieng-Schwarz?' "'Need you ask? I learned that you were all put out there. I'm obliged to say, Dr. Byrne, that under the circumstances had the girl come here, I could hardly—Frank, I will speak. I could hardly have taken her in.' Boyer went white and ducked as from a physical blow, stumbling out into the hall again. There he thought of something to say and reply. Repudiation—thought better of it—started down the stairs. Boyer followed him helplessly. At the street door, however, he put his hand on Peter's shoulder. "'You know, old man, I don't believe that. These women—' "'I know,' said Peter simply. "'Thank you. Good night.' End of chapter 21