CHAPTER I. The old stucco house sat back in a garden, or what must once have been a garden when that part of the Austrian city had been a royal game-preserve. Tradition had it that the Empress Maria Teresa had used the building as a hunting lodge, and undoubtedly there was something royal in the proportions of the salon. With all the candles lighted in the great glass chandelier and no sidelights, so that the broken paneling was mercifully obscured by gloom, it was easy to believe that the great Empress herself had sat in one of the tall old chairs and listened to anecdotes of questionable character, even if tradition may be believed, related not a few herself. The chandelier was not lighted on this rainy November night. Outside in the garden the trees creaked and bent before the wind, and the heavy barred gate, left open by the last cummer, a piano student named Sketchet, and dubbed Sketch. The gate slammed to and fro monotonously, giving now and then just enough pause for a hope that it had latched itself, a hope that was always destroyed by the next gust. One candle burned in the salon, originally lighted for the purpose of enabling Miss Sketchet to locate the score of a Tchaikovsky Concerto, it had then moved to the small center table and had served to give light, if not festivity, to the afternoon coffee and cakes. It still burned, a gnarled and stubby fragment in its china holder, round it the disorder of the recent refreshment, three empty cups, a half a small cake, a crumpled napkin or two, there were never enough to go round, and on the floor the score of the Concerto clearly abandoned for the things of the flesh. The room was cold, the long casement windows creaked in time with the slamming of the gate and the candle flickered in response to a draft under the doors. The Concerto flapped and slid along the uneven floor, let the sound a girl in a black dress who had been huddled near the tile stove, rose impatiently, and picked it up. There was no impatience, however, in the way she handled the loose sheets. She put them together carefully, almost tenderly, and placed them on top of the grand piano, cranking them against the draft with a china dog from the stand. The room was very bare, a long mirror between two of the windows, half a dozen chairs, a stand or two, and in the corner the grand piano. There were no rugs, the bare floor stretched bleakly into dim corners and was lost. The crystal pendants of the great chandelier looked like stalactites in a cave. The girl touched the piano keys, they were ice under her fingers. The sort of desperation she drew a chair underneath the chandelier and armed with a handful of matches proceeded to the unheard of extravagance of lighting it, not here and there, but throughout as high as she could reach, standing perilously on her tiptoes on the chair. The resulting illumination revealed a number of things. It showed that the girl was young and comely and that she had been crying. It revealed the fact that the cold pail was empty and the stove almost so. It let the initiated into the secret that the blackish fluid in the cups had been made with coffee extract that had been made of heaven knows what, and it revealed in the cavernous corner near the door a number of trunks. The girl, having lighted all the candles, stood on the chair and looked at the trunks. She was very young, very tragic, very feminine. A door slammed down the hall and she stopped crying instantly. Diving into one of those receptacles that are a part of the mystery of the sex, she rubbed a chamois skin over her nose and her reddened eyelids. The situation was a difficult one, but hardly except a Harmony Wells, a tragedy. Few of us are so constructed that the sweet Arlesine will serve as a luncheon, or a faulty fingering of the Walthveben from Siegfried will keep us awake at night. Harmony had lain awake more than once over some crime against her namesake, had paid penances of early rising and two hours of scales before breakfast, working with stiffened fingers in her cold little room where there was no room for a stove, and sitting on the edge of the bed in a faded kimono where once pink butterflies sported in a once blue silk garden. Then coffee, rolls, and honey, and back again to work with little sketchet at the piano in the salon beyond the partition, wearing a sweater and fingerless gloves and holding a hot water bottle on her knees. Three rooms beyond, down the stone hall, the big soprano, doing madam butterfly in bad German, helped to make an encircling wall of sound in the center of which one might practice peacefully. Only the portier objected, morning after morning crawling out at dawn from under his feather bed in the lodge below, he opened his door and listened to Harmony doing penance above, and morning after morning he shook his fist up at the stone staircase. Got in himmo, he would say to his wife, fumbling with the knot of his mustache bandage, what people these Americans, so much noise and no music, and mad, grumbled his wife, all the day cold, cold to heat, and at night the windows open. Carl the milk boy has seen it. And now the little colony was breaking up. The big soprano was going back to her church, grand opera having found no place for her. Sketch was returning to be married, her heart full, indeed, of music, but her head much occupied with the trousseau in her trunks. The Harmer sisters had gone two weeks before, their funds having given out. Indeed funds were very low with all of them. The Bittesum Spiesen, of the little German maid, often called them to nothing more opulent than a stew of beef and carrots. Not that all had been sorted, the butter had gone for opera tickets, and never was butter better spent. And there had been Gala Days, a fruitcake from Harmony's mother, a venison steak at Christmas, and once or twice on birthday's real American ice cream at a fabulous price and worth it. Harmony had bought a suit, too, a marvel of tailoring and cheapness, and a willow plume that would have cost trouble its price in New York. Oh yes, Gala Days, indeed, to offset the butter and the rainy winter and the faltering technique and anxiety about money. For that they all had always the old tragedy of the American music student abroad, the expensive lessons, the delays in getting to the master himself, the contention against German greed or Austrian whim, and always, back in Winsmine, the home people, to whom one dares not confess that after nine months of waiting, or a year, one has seen the master once, or not at all, or, and one of the Harmer girls had carried back this year in her soul, to go back rejected as one of the unfit on whom even the undermasters refused to waste time. That has been, and often. Harmony stood on her chair and looked at the trunks. The big soprano was calling down the hall. Skatch, she was shouting briskly. Where is my hairbrush? Away all from Skatch from behind a closed door. I packed it, have a nose where. Do you need it, really? Haven't you got a comb? As soon as I get something on, I'm coming to shake you. Half the teeth are out of my comb. I don't believe you packed it. Look under the bed. Silence for a moment, while Skatch obeyed for the next moment. Here it is, she called joyously. And here are Harmony's bedroom slippers. Oh, Harry, I found your slippers. The girl got down off the chair and went to the door. Thanks, dear, she said. I'm coming in a minute. She went to the mirror, which had reflected the Empress Maria Teresa, and looked at her eyes. They were still red. Perhaps if she opened the window, the air would brighten them.  She flung the brush on the bed and closed the door. She held her shabby wrapper about her and listened just inside the door. There were no footsteps, only the banging of the gate and the wind. She turned to the big soprano, heating a curling iron in the flame of a candle, and held out her hand. Look, she said, under my bed, 10 cronin'. Without a word, the big soprano put down her curling iron and ponderously getting down on her knees, candle in hand, inspected the dusty floor beneath her bed. It revealed nothing but a cigarette, on which she pounced. Still squatting, she lighted the cigarette in the candle flame, and sat solemnly puffing it. The first for a week, she said, pull out the wardrobe, sketch, there may be another relic of my prosperous days. But little Skatch, it was not interested in Austrian cigarettes with a government monopoly and guilt tips. She was looking at the 10 cronin' peas. Where is the other, she asked in a whisper. In my powder box. Little Skatch, it lifted the china lid and dropped in the tiny gold peas.  Added to what she's got, makes just a little bit more. Have you thought of a place to leave it for her? If Rosa finds it, it's good-bye. Heaven knows it was hard enough to get together without losing it now. I'll have to jump overboard and swim ashore at New York. I haven't even a dollar for tips. New York, said Little Skatch, it, with her eyes glowing. If Henry meets me, I know he will. Tut, the big soprano got up, cumbriously, and stood looking down. You and your Henry. Skatchy child, has it occurred to your modeling young mind that money isn't the only thing harmony is going to need? She's going to be alone. And this is a bad town to be alone in. And she is not like us. You have your Henry. I'm a beefy person who has a stomach. And I'm thankful for it. But she's different. She's got the thing that you are as well without. The thing that my lack of is sending me back to fight in a church choir instead of grand opera. Little Skatch it was rather puzzled. Temperament, she asked. It had always been accepted in the little colony that harmony was a real musician, a star in their lesser firmament. The big soprano sniffed. If you like, she said, soul is a better word. Only the rich ought to have soul, Skatchy dear. This was over the younger girl's head, and anyhow harmony was coming down the hall. I thought under her pillow, she whispered, she'll find it. Harmony came in to find the big soprano heating a curler in the flame of a candle. End of chapter one. Chapter two 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 Robert's Reinhardt, chapter two. Harmony found the little hoard under her pillow that night when, having seen Skatch and the big soprano off at the station, she had come back alone to the apartment on the Siebensternstrasse. The trunks were gone now. Only the concerto score still lay on the piano, where Little Skatchet, mentally on the dock at New York with Harry's arms around her, had forgotten it. The candles in the great chandelier had died in tears of paraffin that spattered the floor beneath. One or two of the sockets were still smoking, and the sharp odor of burning wickens filled the room. Harmony had come through the garden quickly. She had had an uneasy sense of being followed, and the garden, with its moaning trees and slamming gate in the great dark house in the background, was a forbidding place at best. She had rung the bell and had stood, her back against the door, eyes and ears strained in the darkness. She had fancied that a figure had stopped outside the gate and stood looking in. The next moment the gate had swung to and the portier was fumbling at the lock behind her. The portier had put on his trousers over his night garments, and his moustache bandage gave him a sinister expression, rather augmented when he smiled at her. The portier liked Harmony, in spite of the early morning practicing. She looked like a singer at the opera for whom he cherished a hidden attachment. The singer had never seen him, but it was for her he wore the moustache bandage. Someday, hopefully, one must be ready. The portier gave Harmony a tiny candle, and Harmony held out his tip, the five hellers of custom. But the portier was keen, and Rosa was a niece of his wife and talked more than she should. He refused the tip with a gesture. "'Bid the froline,' he said, through the bandage. "'It is for me a pleasure to admit to you, and perhaps if the froline is cold, a basin of soup.' The portier was not pleasant to the eye. His night-shirt was open over his hairy chest, and his feet were bare to the stone floor. But to Harmony, that lonely night he was beautiful. She tried to speak, and could not, but she held out her hand in impulsive gratitude, and the portier, in his best manner, bent over and kissed it. As she reached the curve of the stone staircase, carrying her tiny candle, the portier was following her with his eyes. She was very like the girl of the opera. The clang of the door below and the rattle of the chain were comforting to Harmony's ears. From the safety of the darkened salon she peered out into the garden again, but no skulking figure detached itself from the shadows, and the gate remained, four marvel closed. It was when, having picked up her violin in a very passion of loneliness, only to put it down when she found that the familiar sounds echoed and re-echoed sadly through the silent rooms. It was when she was ready for bed that she found the money under her pillow, and a scrawl from sketchy, a breathless, apologetic scrawl, little sketch it having adored her from afar as the plain adored the beautiful, the mediocre the gifted. Dearest Harry, here a large plot, sketchy being addicted to plots. I am honestly frightened when I think what we are doing, but oh, my dear, if you could know how pleased we are with ourselves, you'd not deny us this pleasure. Harry, you have it, the real thing, you know, whatever it is. And I haven't. None of the rest of us had. And you must stay. To go now, just when lessons would mean everything, well, you must not think of it. We have scads to take us home, more than we need, both of us, or at least, well, I'm lying, and you know it. But we have enough by being careful, and we want you to have this. It isn't much, but it may help. Ten cronin of it I found tonight, under my bed, and it may be yours anyhow. Sadie. Sadie was the big soprano. Sadie keeps saying awful things about our leaving you here, and she has rather terrified me.  And Sadie says you have a soul, and I haven't. And that souls are deadly things to have. I feel tonight that in urging you to stay, I am taking the burden of your soul on me. Do be careful, Harry. If anyone you do not know speaks to you, call a policeman, and be sure you get into a respectable pension. There are queer ones. Sadie and I think that if you can get along on what you get from home, you said your mother would get insurance, didn't you? And we'll keep this as sort of a fun to take you home if anything should go wrong. But perhaps we are needlessly worried. In any case, of course it's a loan, and you can preserve that magnificent independence of yours by sending it back when you get to work and make your fortune.  I'm not saying goodbye. I can't. Sketch. That night, while the portier and his wife slept under their crimson feather beds, and the crystal of the chandelier in the salon shook in the draft as if the old Austrian court still danced beneath, Harmony fought her battle. And a battle it was. Sketchy and the big soprano had not known everything.  A married sister would care for her, but what then? Harmony had enough remaining of her letter of credit to take her home, and she had the hoard under the pillow. To go back and teach the violin, or to stay and finish under the master, be presented, as he had promised her, at a special concert in Vienna, with all the prestige at home that that would mean, and its resulting possibility of fame and fortune. Which? She decided to stay. There might be a concert or so, and she could teach English. The Viennese were crazy about English. Some of the stores advertised English spoken. It would be something to fall back on, a clerkship during the day. Toward Don she discovered that she was very cold, and she went into the big sopranos' deserted and disordered room. The tile stove was warm and comfortable, but on the toilet table there lay a disreputable comb with most of the teeth gone. Harmony kissed this unromantic object, which reveals the fact that, genius or not, she was only a young and rather frightened girl, and that every atom of her ached with loneliness. She did not sleep at all, but sat curled up on the bed with her feet under her, and thought things out. Let Don, the portier, crawling out of the coal from under his feathers, open the door into the hall and listened. She was playing, not practicing, and the music was the vercolla from the tales of Hoffman. Standing in the doorway in his night attire, his chest opened to the frigid morning air, his face upraised to the floor above. He hummed the melody in a throaty tenor. When the music had died away he went in and closed the door sheepishly.  She eyed him. So it is the American fraud I know. I did but hum a little. She drags out my heart with her music. He fumbled with his moustache bandage, which was knotted behind, keeping one eye on his wife whose morning pleasure it was to untie it for him.  Why? She's alone, Rosa says. She leaves to day. The knot was hopeless now, double tied and pulled to smooth compactness. The portier jerked at it. No fraud line stays here alone. It is not respectable. And what I saw last night, after she entered and you stood moon-gazing up the stair after her, a man in the gateway. The portier was angry. He snarled something through the bandage which had slipped down over his mouth and picked up a great knife. She will stay if she so desire, he muttered furiously. And, raising the knife, he cut the knotted string. His moustache, faintly gray and sweetly up curled, stood revealed. She will stay, he repeated, and when you see men at the gate, let me know, she's an angel. And she looks like the angel of the opera, Hein? This was a crushing blow. The portier wilted. Such things come from telling one's cousin who keeps a brush shop what's in one's heart. Yesterday his wife had needed a brush, and today, Himmel, the girl must go. Harmony knew also that she must go. The apartment was large and expensive. Rosa ate much and wasted more.  It is folly to practice with stiffened fingers. A room where her playing would not annoy people. That was important. She paid Rosa off that morning out of the money left for that purpose. Rosa wept. She said she would stay with a frailine for her keep, because it was not the custom for young ladies to be alone in the city. Girls of the people, of course, but beautiful young ladies? No. Harmony gave her an extra krona or two out of sheer gratitude, but she could not keep her. And at noon, having packed her trunk, she went down to interview the portier and his wife, who were agents under the owner for the old house. The portier, entirely subdued, was sweeping out the hallway. He looked past the girl, not at her, and observed impassively that the lease was up and it was her privilege to go. In the daylight she was not so like the angel, and after all she could only play the violin. The angel had a voice, such a voice. And besides, there was an eye at the crack of the door. The bit of cheer of the night before was gone. It was with a heavy heart that Harmony started on her quest for cheaper quarters. Winter, which had threatened for a month, had come at last. The cobblestones glittered with ice and the small puddles and the gutters were frozen. Across the street a spotted deer, shot in the mountains the day before and hanging from a hook, before a wild game shop, was frozen quite stiff. It was a pretty creature. The girl turned her eyes away. A young man, buying cheese and tin fish in the shop, watched after her. That's an American girl, isn't it? He asked in American German. The shopkeeper was valuable. Also Rosa had bought much from him and Rosa talked. When the American left the shop he knew everything of Harmony that Rosa knew, except her name. Rosa called her the beautiful one. Also he was short one krona for hellers in his change, which is readily done when a customer is plainly thinking of a beautiful one. Harmony searched all day for the little room with board and a stove and no objection to practicing. There were plenty, but the rates. The willow plume looked prosperous and she had a way of making the plainest garments appear costly. Landlady's looked at the plume in the suit and heard the soft swish of silk beneath, which marks only self-respect in the American woman but is extravagance in Europe, and added to their regular terms until poor Harmony's heart almost stood still, and then at last toward evening she happened on a gloomy little pension near the corner of the Alsarstrasse. And it being dark and the plume not showing, and the landlady missing the Russell owing to the cotton in her ears for earache, Harmony found terms she could meet for time. A mean little room enough but with a stove. The bed sagged in the center and the toilet-table had a mirror that made one eye appear higher than the other and twisted one's nose, but there was an odor of stewing cabbage in the air. Also alas, there was the odor of many previous stewed cabbages and of dusty carpets and stale tobacco. Harmony had had no lunch. She turned rather faint. She arranged to come at once and got out into the comparative purity of the staircase atmosphere and felt her way down. She reeled once or twice. At the bottom of the dark stairs she stood for a moment with her eyes closed to the dismay of a young man who had just come in with cheese and some tin fish under his arm. He put down his packages on the stone floor and caught her arm. Not ill, are you? He asked in English and them remembering. This duke-crunk? He colored violently at that, recalling too late the familiarity of the duke. Harmony smiled faintly. Only tired, she said in English. In the odor of cabbage her color had come back and she freed herself from his supporting hand. He whistled softly. He had recognized her. Cabbage, of course, he said. The pension upstairs is full of it. I live there, and I've eaten so much of it that I could be served up with pork. I'm going to live there. Is it as bad as that? He waved his hand toward the parcels on the floor. So bad, he observed, that I keep body and soul together by buying strong and odorous food at the delicatessens. Because only rugged flavors rise above the atmosphere up there. Cheese is the only thing that really knocks out the cabbage, and once or twice even cheese has retired, defeated. But I don't like cheese. In sheer relief from the loneliness of the day, her spirits were rising. Then coffee, but not there. Coffee at the coffee-house on the corner, I say. He hesitated. Yes? Would you? Don't you think a cup of coffee would set you up a bit? It sounds attractive, uncertainly. Coffee with whipped cream and some little cakes? Harmony hesitated. In the gloom of the hall she could hardly see this brisk, young American, young she knew by his voice, tall by his silhouette, strong by the way he had caught her. She could not see his face, but she liked his voice. Do you mean with you? I'm a doctor. I'm going to fill my own prescription. That's under reassuring. Doctors were not as other men. They were legitimate friends in need. I'm sure it is not proper, but proper, of course it is. I shall send you a bill for professional services. Besides, won't we be formally introduced tonight by the landlady? Come now. Do the coffee-house and the Paris edition of the Herald. But the next moment he paused her man his hand over his chin. I'm pretty disreputable, he explained. I've been in the clinic all day. And hang it all, I'm not shaved. What difference does that make? My dear young lady, he explained gravely, picking up the cheese and the tin fish. It makes a difference in me that I wish you to realize before you see me in a strong light. He rapped at the portiers door, with the intention of leaving his parcels there, but receiving no reply tucked them under his arm. A moment later, harmony was in the open air, rather days, the bit excited, and lovely with the color the adventure brought into her face. Her companion walked beside her, tall, slightly stooped. She essayed a fugitive little side-clance up at him, and, meeting his eyes, hastily averted hers. They passed to policemen, and suddenly there flashed into the girl's mind little sketch-it's letter. Two be careful, Harry. If anyone you do not know speaks to you, call a policeman. End of chapter two. Chapter three of The Street of Seven Stars. The coffee-house was warm and bright. Rounded small tables were gathered miscellaneous groups, here and there a woman, but mostly men. Uniformed officers, who made of the neighborhood coffee-house a sort of club, were under their breath they criticized the government and retailed small regimental gossip. Professors from the university, still wearing, under the beards of middle life, the fine horizontal scars of student days. Elderly doctors from the general hospital across the street, even a hofroth or two, drinking beer and reading the Fligenda Bleter and Simplissimus. In an alcove round a billiard table a group of noisy corp students, overall a permeating odor of coffee, strong black coffee, made with a fig or two to give it color. It rose even above the blue tobacco haze that dominated the atmosphere with its spicy and stimulating richness. A bustle of waiters, a hum of conversation, the rattle of newspapers, and the clink of billiard balls. This was the coffee-house. Harmony had never been inside one before. The little music colony had been a tight-closed corporation, retaining its American integrity, in spite of the salon of Maria Teresa and three expensive lessons a week in German. Harmony knew the art galleries and the churches, which were free, and the opera, thanks to no butter at supper, but of that backbone of Austrian life, the coffee-house, she was profoundly ignorant. Her companion found her a seat in a corner near a heater and disappeared for an instant on the search for the Paris edition of the herald. The girl followed him with her eyes. Seen under the bright electric lights, he was not handsome, hardly good-looking. His mouth was wide, his nose irregular, his hair a nondescript brown, but the mouth had humor, the nose character, and, thank heaven, there was plenty of hair. And that Harmony saw all this at once. As he tacked to and fro around the tables, with a knot here and a word there, she got a sort of ensemble effect, a tall man, possibly thirty, broad-shouldered, somewhat stooped, as tall men are apt to be, and shabby, undeniably shabby. The shabbiness was a shock. A much-braided officer, trimmed from the points of his mustache to the points of his shoes, rose to speak to him. The shabbiness was accentuated by the contrast. Possibly the revelation was an easement to the girl's nervousness. This smiling and unpressed individual, blithely waving aloft the Paris edition of the herald, and equally blithely ignoring the maledictions of the student from whom he had taken it, even Scacci could not have called him a vulture or threatened him with the police. He placed the paper before her and sat down at her side, not to interfere with her outlook over the room. Warmer, he asked. Very much. Coffee is coming, and cinnamon cakes with plenty of sugar. They know me here, and they know where I live. They save the sugaryest cakes for me.  Go on, and read. See which of the smartsets is getting a divorce, or is it always the same one?  I'd rather look around. It's curious, isn't it? Curious. It's heavenly. It's the one thing I'm going to take back to America with me. One coffee house, one dozen military men for local color, one dozen students, ditto, and one proprietor's wife to sit in the cage and shortchange the unsuspecting. I'll grow wealthy. But what about the medical practice? He leaned over toward her. His dark gray eyes fulfilled the humorous promise of his mouth. Why, it would work out perfectly, he said whimsically. The great American public will eat cinnamon cakes and drink coffee until the feeble American nervous system will be shattered. I shall have an office across the street. After that, having seen how tired she looked, he forbade conversation until she had had her coffee. She ate the cakes, too, and he watched her with comfortable satisfaction. Not your head, but don't speak, he said. Remember, I am prescribing, and there's to be no conversation until the coffee is down. Shall I, or shall I not, open the cheese? But Harmony did not wish the cheese, and so signified. Something inherently delicate and the unknown kept him from more than an occasional swift glance at her. He read aloud, as she ate, bits of news from the paper, pausing to sip his own coffee, and to cast an eye over the crowded room. Here and there an officer, gazing with too open admiration on Harmony's lovely face, found himself fixed by a pair of steel gray eyes that were anything but humorous at that instant, and thought best to shift his gaze. The coffee finished, the girl began to gather up her wraps, but the unknown protested. The function of a coffee-house, he explained gravely, is twofold. Coffee is only the first half, the second half is conversation. I converse very badly. So do I. Suppose we talk about ourselves. We are sure to do that well. Shall I commence? Harmony was in no mood to protest. Having swallowed coffee, why choke over conversation? Besides, she was very comfortable. It was warm there, with the heater at her back, better than the little room with the sagging bed and the doors covered with wallpaper. Her feet had stopped aching, too. She could have sat there for hours, and why evade it? She was interested. This whimsical and respectful young man, with his absurd talk and his shabby clothes, had roused her curiosity. Please, she assented. Then, first of all, my name. I'm getting that over early because it isn't much, as names go. Peter Byrne, it is. Don't shudder. Certainly, I'm not shuddering. I have another name, put in by my Irish father to conciliate a German uncle of my mother's. Augustus. It's rather a mess. What shall I put on my professional brass plate? If I put P. Augustus Byrne, nobody's fooled. They know my wretched first name is Peter. Or Patrick. I'd rather like Patrick, if I thought it might pass as Patrick. Patrick has possibilities. The Nominative is Pat, and that's not bad, but Peter. Do you know, Harmony confessed half-shily, I like Peter as a name. Peter it shall be then. I go down to posterity and fame as Peter Byrne. The rest doesn't amount to much, but I want you to know it since you've been good enough to accept me on faith. I'm here alone, from a little town in eastern Ohio, worked my way through a coeducational college in the west and escaped unmarried, did two years in a dry good store until, by saving and working in my vacations, I got through medical college and tried general practice. Didn't like it, always wanted to do surgery. A little legacy from the German uncle, trying to atone for the Augustus, gave me enough money to come here. I've got a chance with the days, surgeons you know, when I go back, if I can hang on long enough, that's all. Here's a traveler's check with my name on it to vouch for the truth of this thrilling narrative. Gaze on it with awe, there are only a few of them left. Harmony was as delicately strong, as vibratingly responsive as the strings of her own violin. And under the even lightness of his tone, she felt many things that met a response in her. Loneliness and struggle and the ever-present anxiety about money. Grim determination, hope and fear and even occasional despair. He was still young, but there were lines in his face and a hint of gray in his hair. Even had he been less frank, she would have known soon enough, the dingy little pension, the shabby clothes. She held out her hand. Thank you for telling me, she said simply. I think I understand very well because it's music with me, violin, and my friends have gone, so I'm alone too. He leaned his elbows on the table and looked out over the crowd without seeing it. It's curious, isn't it? he said. Here we are, you and I, meeting in the center of Europe, both lonely as the mischief, both working our heads off for an idea that may never pan out. Why aren't you at home tonight, eating a civilized beef steak and running upstairs to get ready for a nice young man to bring you a box of chocolates? Why am I not measuring out Calico in Shipley and Wests? Instead, we are going to frau Schwartz's to listen to cold ham and scorched compote, eaten in six different languages. Harmony may no immediate reply. He seemed to expect none.  Far back among the tables, a young man rose and yawned. Then, seeing Byrne, he waved a greeting to him. Byrne's eyes, from being introspective, became watchful. The young man was handsome in a florid, red-cheeked way with black hair and blue eyes. Unlike Byrne, he was foppishly neat. He was not alone. A slim little Austrian girl, exceedingly chic, rose when he did and threw away the end of a cigarette. Why do we go so soon? She demanded fretfully in German. It is early still. He replied in English. It was a curious way they had, an eminently satisfactory, each understanding better than he spoke the other's language. Because, my beloved, he said lightly, you are smoking a great many poisonous and highly expensive cigarettes. Also, I wish to speak to Peter. The girl followed his eyes and stiffened jealously. Who is that with Peter? We are going over to find out, little one, old Peter with a woman at last.  She touched an officer she passed him and paused to apologize to the officer's delight and her escort's irritation. And Peter Byrne watched and waited, a line of annoyance between his brows. The girl was ahead, that complicated things. When she was within a dozen feet at the table, he rose hastily with a word of apology and met the couple. It was adroitly done. He had taken the little Austrian's arm and led her by the table while he was still greeting her. He held her in conversation in his absurd German until they had reached the swinging doors while her companion followed helplessly. And he bowed her out, protesting his undying admiration for her eyes, while the flurried youth alternatively raged behind him and stared back at harmony, interested and unconscious behind her table. The little Austrian was on the pavement when Byrne turned, unsmiling to the other man. That won't do, you know, Stuart, he said gravely, but not unfriendly. The kid wouldn't bite her, will not argue about it. After a second's awkward pause, Stuart smiled. Certainly not, he agreed cheerfully. That is up to you, of course. I didn't know. We're looking for you tonight. A sudden repulsion for the evening's engagement rose in Byrne, but the situation following his ungraciousness was delicate. I'll be round, he said. I have a lecture and I may be late, but I'll come.  She moved off into the night, chin in air, angrily flushed. You saw, she choked when Stuart had overtaken her and slipped a hand through her arm. He protects her from me. It is because of you. Before I knew you. Before you knew me, little one, he said cheerfully. You were exactly what you are now. She paused on the curb and raised her voice. So, and what is that? Beautiful as the stars, only not so remote. In their curious bilingual talk, there was little room for subtlety. The beautiful calmed her, but the second part of the sentence roused her suspicion. Remote, what is that? I was thinking of Worthington. The name was a signal for war. Stuart repented, but too late. In the cold evening air, to the amusement of a passing detail of soldiers trundling a bread wagon by a rope, Stuart stood on the pavement and dodged verbal brickbats of Viennese idioms and German epithets. He drew his chin into the upturned collar of his overcoat and waited, an absurdly patient figure, until the hail of consonants had subsided into a rain of tears. Then he took the girl's elbow again and let her childishly weeping into a narrow side street beyond the prying eyes and ears of the Alsarstrasse. Byrne went back to Harmony. The incident of Stuart and the girl was closed and he dismissed it instantly. That situation was not his or of his making, but here in the coffee-house, lovely, alluring, rather puzzled at this moment, was also a situation, for there was a situation. He had suspected it that morning listening to the delicatessen seller's narrative of Rose's account of the disruptive colony across in the old lodge. He had been certain of it that evening, finding Harmony in the dark entrance to his own rather sordid pension. Now in the bright light of the coffee-house, surmising her poverty, seeing her beauty, the emotional coming and going of her colour, her frank loneliness and, God save the mark, her trust in him, he accepted the situation and adopted it, his responsibility, if you please. He straightened under it. He knew the old city fairly well, enough to love it and to loathe it in one breath. He had seen its tragedies and passed them by, or had, in his haphazard way, thrown a greeting to them or even a glass of native wine. And he knew the musical temperament, the all or nothing of its insistent demands, its heights that are higher than others, its wretchednesses that are hell. Once in Hofstadt Theatre, where he had bought standing room, he had seen a girl he had known in Berlin, where he was taking clinics and where she was cooking her own meals. She had been studying singing. In the Hofstadt Theatre, she had worn a sable coat and had avoided his eyes. Perhaps the old coffee-house had seen nothing more absurd in its years of coffee and billiards and munch in her beer than Peter's new resolution that night, this poverty adopting poverty, this youth adopting youth, with the altruistic purpose of saving it from itself. And this, mind you, before Peter Byrne had heard Harmony's story or knew her name, Rosa having called her the beautiful one in her narrative and the delicatessen seller being literal in his repetition. Back to the beautiful one went Peter Byrne and, true to his new part of protector and guardian, squared his shoulders and tried to look much older than he really was and responsible. The result was a grimness that alarmed Harmony back to the forgotten proprieties. I think I must go, she said hurriedly after a glance at his determinedly altruistic profile. I must finish packing my things. The portier has promised. Go, why you haven't even told me your name. Fragefarts will present you tonight, primly and rising, Peter Byrne rose too. I'm going back with you. You should not go through that lonely yard alone after dark. Yard? How do you know that? Byrne was picking up the cheese which he had thoughtlessly set on the heater in which proved to be in an alarming state of dissolution. It took a moment to re-wrap and incidentally furnished an inspiration. He indicated it airily. Saw you this morning coming out, delicatessen shop across the street, he said ghibly, and then in an outburst of honesty which the girl's eyes seemed somehow to compel. That's true, but it's not all the truth. I was on the bus last night and when you got off alone I saw you were an American and that's not a good neighborhood. I took the liberty of following you to your gate. He need not have been alarmed. Harmony was only grateful and said so. And in her gratitude she made no objection to his suggestion that he see her safely to the old lodge and help her carry her hand luggage and her violin to the pension. He paid the trifling score and followed by many eyes in the room they went out into the crisp night together. At the lodge the door stood wide and a vigorous sound of scrubbing showed that the porter's wife was preparing for the inspection of possible new tenants. She was cleaning down the stairs by the light of a candle and the stream of the hot water on the cold marble invested her like an aura. She stood aside to let them pass and then went cumbersome down the stairs to wear a fork in one hand and a pipe in the other. The porter was frying chops for the evening meal. What have I said? She demanded from the doorway. Your angel is here. So?  She is again here and with a man. It is the way of the young and beautiful. There is always a man. Said the porter turning a chop. His wife wiped her steaming hands on her apron and turned away exasperated. It is the same man who I last night saw at the gate. She threw back over her shoulder. I knew it from the first but you great booby can see nothing but red lips. Bah. Upstairs in this lawn of Maria Teresa lighted by one candle in freezing cold in a stiff chair under the great chandelier Peter Byrne sat and waited and blew on his fingers. Down below in the street of seven stars the arc light swung in the wind. End of chapter three. Chapter four of the street of seven stars. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Marianne. The street of seven stars by Mary Roberts Reinhart. Chapter four. The supper that evening was unusually bad. Frau Schwartz much crimped and clad in frayed black satin presided at the head of the long table. There were few, almost no Americans. The Americans flocking to good food at reckless prices in more fashionable pensions. To the Frau Galizensteins, for instance, in the Cuch Gassa, where there was to be had real beef steak, where turkeys were served at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and where, were once so minded, one might revel in whipped cream. The pensions Schwartz, however, was not without adornment. In the center of the table was a large bunch of red cotton roses with wire stems and green paper leaves, and over the side table with its luxury of compote in tall glass dishes and its wealth of small hard cakes there hung a framed motto which said, nicht Rauchen, no smoking, and which looked suspiciously as if it had once adorned a compartment of a railroad train. Peter Byrne was early in the dining room. He had made, for him, a careful toilette, which consisted of a shave and clean linen. But he had gone further. He had discovered, for the first time in the three months of its defection, a button missing from his coat and had set about to replace it. He had cut a button from another coat by the easy method of amputating it with a surgical bistory and had sewn it in its new position with a curved surgical needle and a few inches of sterilized cat-cut. The operation was slow and painful and accomplished only with the aid of two cigarettes and an artery clip. When it was over, he tied the ends in a surgeon's knot underneath and stood back to consider the result. It seemed neat enough, but conspicuous. After a moment or two of troubled thought, he blacked the white cat-cut with a dot of ink and went on his way rejoicing. Peter Byrne was entirely untroubled as to the wisdom of the course he had laid out for himself. He followed no consecutive line of thought as he dressed. When he was not smoking, he was whistling. And when he was doing neither and the needle proved refractory in his cold fingers, he was swearing to himself. For there was no fire in the room. The materials for a fire were there and a white tile stove, as cozy as an obelisk in a cemetery, stood in the corner. But fires are expensive and hardly necessary when one sleeps with all one's windows open, one window, to be exact, the room being very small and spends most of the day in a warm and comfortable shambles called a hospital. To tell the truth, he was not thinking of harmony at all, except subconsciously, as instance, the button. He was going over, step by step, the technique of an operation he had seen that afternoon, weighing, considering, even criticizing. His conclusion, reached as he brushed back his hair and put away his sewing implements, was somewhat to the effect that he could have done a better piece of work with his eyes shut and his hands tied behind his back, and that if it were not for the wealth of material to work on, he'd pack up and go home, which brought him back to harmony and his new responsibility. He took off the necktie he had absently put on and hunted out a better one. He was late at supper, an offence that brought a scowl from the head of the table, a scowl that he met with a cheerful smile. Harmony was already in her place, seated between the little Belgian and a Jewish student from Galicia. She was almost immediately struggling in a sea of language into which she struck out now and then tentatively, only to be again submerged. Byrne had bowed to her conventionally, even coldly, aware of the sharp eyes and tongues around the table, but Harmony did not understand. She had expected moral support from his presence and, failing that, she sank back into the loneliness and depression of the day. Her bright color faded, her eyes looked tragic and rather aloof. She ate almost nothing and left the table before the others had finished. What curious little dramas of the table are played under unseeing eyes. What small tragedies begin with the soup and end with the dessert. What heartaches with a salad. Small tragedies of averted eyes, looking away from appealing ones. Lips that tremble with wretchedness nibbling daintily at a morsel. Smiles that sear. Foolish bits of talk that mean nothing except to one and to that one everything. Harmony, freezing at Peter's formal bow and gazing obstinately ahead during the rest of the meal, or no near Peter than the red paper roses, and Peter, showering the little Belgian next to her with detestable German in the hope of a glance, and overall the odor of cabbage salad and the Nichtrauchen sign and an acrimonious discussion on eugenics between an American woman doctor named Gates and a German matron who had 15 children and who reduced every general statement to a personal insult. Peter followed harmony as soon as he dared. Her door was closed and she was playing very softly so as to disturb no one. Defiantly, too, had he only known it, her small chin up and her collar high again, playing the humorous of all things in the hope, of course, that he would hear it and guess from her choice the wild merriment of her mood. Peter wrapped once or twice but obtained no answer, save that the humorous rose a bit higher and Dr. Gates, coming along the hall just then, he was forced to light a cigarette to cover his pausing. Dr. Gates, however, was not suspicious. She was a smallish woman of 40 or thereabout, with keen eyes behind glasses and a masculine disregard of clothes and she paused by Byrne to let him help her into her Ulster. "'New girl, eh?' she said, "'With a bird-like nod toward the door. "'Very gay, isn't she? "'To have just finished a supper like that. "'Honestly, Peter, what are we going to do?' "'Growl and stay on as we have for six months.  "'Oh, darn money anyhow,' she said. "'Come and walk to the corner with me. "'I have a lecture.' Peter promised to follow in a moment and hurried back to his room. There, on a page from one of his lecture notebooks, he wrote, "'Are you ill? "'Or have I done anything?' "'P.B.' "'This, with great care, he was pushing under Harmony's door "'when the little Bulgarian came along and stopped, smiling. "'He said nothing, nor did Peter, "'who rose and dusted his knees. "'The little Bulgarian spoke no English and little German. "'Between them was the wall of language, "'but higher than this barrier "'was the understanding of their common sex. "'He held out his hand, still smiling, "'and Peter, grinning sheepishly, took it. "'Then he followed the woman doctor down the stairs. "'To say that Peter Byrne was already in love with Harmony "'would be absurd. "'She attracted him as any beautiful and helpless girl "'attracts an unattracted man. "'He was much more concerned, "'now that he feared he had offended her, "'than he would have been without this Philip "'to his interest. "'But even his concern did not prevent his taking copious "'and intelligent notes at his lecture that night, "'or interfere with his enjoyment of the stein of beer "'with which, after it was over, "'he washed down its involved German. "'The engagement at Stewart's irked him somewhat. "'He did not approve of Stewart, exactly, "'not from any dislike of the man, "'but from a lack of fineness in the man himself. "'An intangible thing that seems to be "'a matter of that unfashionable essence, "'the soul is against the clay, "'of the thing contained by an inverse metonymy "'for the container. "'Boyer, a nerve man from Texas, met him on the street, "'and they walked to Stewart's apartment together. "'The frosty air and the rapid exercise "'combined to drive away Byrne's irritation, "'that and the recollection that it was Saturday night "'and that tomorrow there would be no clinics, "'no lectures, no operations, "'that the great shambles would be closed down "'and that priests would read mass "'to convalescence in the chapels. "'He was whistling as he walked along. "'Boyer, a much older man whose wife had come over "'with him, stopped under a streetlight "'to consult his watch. "'Almost ten,' he said. "'I hope you don't mind, Byrne, "'but I told Jenny I was going to your pension. "'She detests Stewart. "'Oh, that's all right. "'She knows you're playing poker. "'Yes, she doesn't object to poker. "'It's the other. "'You can't make a good woman understand "'that sort of thing.' "'Thank God for that.' "'After a moment of silence, Byrne took up "'his whistling again. "'It was the humorous.' "'Stewart's apartment was on the third floor. "'At mission at that hour was to be gained "'only by ringing, and Boyer touched the bell. "'The lights were still on, however, in the hallways, "'revealing not-overclean stairs and, for a wonder, "'an electric elevator. "'This, however, a card announced as out-of-order. "'Boyer stopped and examined the card grimly. "'Out-of-order,' he observed, "'out-of-order since last spring, judging by that card. "'Forvarts.' "'They climbed easily, deliberately, "'at home in God's country Boyer played golf, "'as became the leading specialist of his county. "'Byrne, with a driving arm like the rod of a locomotive, "'had been obliged to forswear the more expensive game "'for tennis, with a resulting muscular development "'that his slight stoop belied. "'He was as hard as nails without an ounce of fat, "'and he climbed the long, steep flights "'with an elasticity that left even Boyer a step or so behind. "'Stewart opened the door himself, "'long German pipe in hand, "'his coat replaced by a worn smoking jacket. "'The little apartment was thick with smoke, "'and from a broom on the right came the click of chips "'and the sound of beer mugs on wood. "'Marie, restored to good humor, came out to greet them, "'and both men bowed ceremoniously over her hand, "'clicking their heels together and bowing from the waist. "'Bern sniffed. "'What do I smell, Marie?' he demanded. "'Surely not sausages.' "'Marie dimpled. "'It was an old joke, "'to be greeted as one greets an old friend. "'It was always sausages.' "'Sausages, of a truth, fat ones. "'But surely not with mustard.' "'Ah, yeah, English mustard.' "'Stewart and Boyer had gone on ahead. "'Marie laid a detaining hand on Bern's arm. "'I was very angry with you today, with me. "'Like the others who occasionally gathered "'in Stewart's unconventional menage, "'Bern had adopted Stewart's custom "'of addressing Marie in English "'while she repeated in her own tongue. "'Yeah, I wished to see near "'the American Fraulein hat and you. "'She is rich, so?' "'I really don't know. "'I think not. "'And good?' "'Yes, of course. "'Marie was small.   "'It was not even hard. "'Rather, there was a sort of weariness "'as of age and experience. "'She had put on a white dress, cut out of the neck, "'and above her collarbones were small, "'couple-like hollows. "'She was very thin. "'I was sad tonight,' she said plaintively. "'I wished to jump out the window. "'Bern was startled, but the girl "'was smiling at the recollection. "'And I made you feel like that? "'Not you, the other Fraulein. "'I was dirt to her, I.' "'She stopped tragically, then sniffled. "'The sausages,' she cried, "'and gathering upper skirts ran toward the kitchen. "'Bern went on into the sitting room. "'Stuart was a single man spending two years "'in postgraduate work in Germany and Austria, "'not so much because the Germans and Austrians "'could teach what could not be taught at home, "'but because of the wealth of clinical material. "'The great European hospitals, filled to overflowing, "'offered unlimited choice of cases. "'The contempt for human life of overpopulated cities, "'coupled with the extreme poverty "'and helplessness of the masses, "'combined to form that tragic part of the world "'which dies that others may live. "'Stuart, like Bern, was doing surgery, "'and the very lack of fineness "'which Bern felt in the man promised something in his work, "'a sort of ruthlessness, a singleness of purpose, "'good or bad, an overwhelming egotism "'that in his profession might only be "'a necessary self-reliance. "'His singleness of purpose had, "'at the beginning of his residence in Vienna, "'devoted itself to making him comfortable. "'With the narrow means of his control, "'he had the choice of two alternatives, "'to live, as Bern was living, in a third-class pension, "'stewing in summer, freezing in winter, "'starving always, or the alternative he had chosen. "'The Stuart apartment had only three rooms, "'but it possessed that luxury of luxuries, a bath. "'It was not a bath in the usual sense of water on tap, "'and shining nickel plate, but a bath for all that, "'where, with premeditation and forethought, one might bathe. "'The room had once been a fuel and storeroom, "'but now boasted a tin tub and a stove "'with a reservoir on top, "'where water might be heated to the boiling point, "'at the same time bringing up the atmosphere to a point, "'where the tin tub sizzled if one touched it. "'Behind the bathroom, a tiny kitchen "'with a brick stove, next a bedroom, "'the whole incredibly neat, "'along one side of the wall, a clothes-press, "'which the combined wardrobes of two did not fill. "'And beyond that again, opening through an arch "'with a dingy Chanel curtain, the sitting-room, "'now in chaotic disorder.' "'Bern went directly to the sitting-room. "'There were four men already there, Stuart and Boyer, "'a pathology man named Wallace Hunter, "'doing research work at the General Hospital, "'and a young piano student from Tennessee named McClain. "'The cards had already been dealt, "'and Bern stood by waiting for the hand to be played. "'The game was a small one, "'as befitted the means of the majority. "'It was a regular Saturday night affair, "'as much a custom as the beer that sat in steins "'on the floor beside each man, "'or as Marie's boiled vener sausages. "'The blue chips represented a crona, "'the white ones five hellers. "'McClain, who was hardly more than a boy, "'was winning, drawing in chips with quick gestures "'of his long, peonous fingers. "'Bern sat down and picked up his cards. "'Stuart was staying out, and so, after a glance, did he. "'The other three drew cards and fell to bedding. "'Stuart leaned back and filled his long pipe, "'and after a second's hesitation, Bern turned to him. "'I don't know just what to say, Stuart.' "'He began in an undertone. "'I'm sorry. "'I didn't want to hurt Marie, but... "'Oh, that's all right,' Stuart drew at his pipe "'and bent forward to watch the game "'with an air of ending the discussion. "'Not at all. "'I did hurt her, and I want to explain. "'Marie has been kind to me, and I like her. "'You know that.' "'Don't be an ass,' Stuart turned on him sharply. "'Marie is a little fool, that's all. "'I didn't know it was an American girl. "'Bern played in bad luck. "'His mind was not on the cards. "'He stayed out of the last hand, "'and with a cigarette wandered about the room. "'He glanced into the tiny bedroom and beyond "'to where Marie hovered over the stove. "'She turned and saw him. "'Come,' she called. "'Watch the supper for me while I go down for more beer.' "'But no,' he replied, imitating her tone. "'Watch the supper for me while I go down for more beer.' "'I love thee,' she called merrily. "'Tell the hair doctor I love thee. "'And here is the pitcher.' "'When he returned, the supper was already laid "'in the little kitchen. "'The cards were put away, and young McLean "'and Wallace Hunter were replacing the cover "'and the lamp on the card table. "'Stuart was orating from a pinnacle of proprietorship.' "'Exactly,' he was saying, "'and replied to something gone before. "'I used to come here Saturday nights, "'used to come early and take a bath. "'Wirthington had rented it furnished for a song. "'Used to sit in a corner and envy Wirthington his bathtub. "'And that lamp there, and decent food, "'and a bed that didn't suffer from necrosis in the center. "'Then when he was called home, I took it.' "'Girl in awe, wasn't it?' "'Girl in awe. "'Old Wurst said she was straight, and by Joe she is. "'He came back last fall on his wedding trip. "'He married a wealthy girl and came to see us. "'I was out, but Merri was here. "'There was a deuce to pay.' "'He lowered his voice. "'The men had gathered around him in a group. "'Jellice, eh?' from Hunter. "'Jellice, no. "'He tried to kiss her, and she hit him,' "'said he didn't respect her.' "'It's a curious coat of honor,' said Boyer thoughtfully, "'and indeed to none but Stuart did it seem amusing. "'This little girl of the streets, "'driven by God knows what necessity "'to make her own coat and, having made it, "'living up to it with every fiber of her.' "'Bitte zum Speisen,' called Marie Gailey, "'from her brick stove, "'and the men trooped out to the kitchen. "'The supper was spread on the table "'with a pitcher of beer in the center. "'There were Swiss cheese and cold ham and rolls, "'and above all, sausages and mustard. "'Peter drank a great deal of beer, as did the others, "'and sang German songs with a frightful accent "'and much vigor and sentiment, as also did the others.' "'Then he went back to the cold room "'in the pension schwarz and told himself "'he was a fool to live alone "'when one could live like a prince "'for the same sum properly laid out. "'He dropped into the hollow center of his bed, "'where his big figure fitted as comfortably "'as though it lay in a wash tub, "'and before his eyes there came a vision of Stuart's flat "'and the slippers by the fire, "'which was eminently human. "'However, a moment later he yawned "'and said aloud with considerable vigor "'that he'd be damned if he would, "'which was eminently Peter Byrne. "'Almost immediately, with the bed coverings "'augmented by his overcoat, "'drawn snug to his chin "'and the better necktie swinging from the gas jet "'in the air from the opened window, "'Peter was asleep. "'For four hours he had entirely forgotten harmony.'     CATRINA CAME TO THE DOOR. "'The hot water is ready,' she announced, "'and the coffee also, has thubbed into mass.' "'Yeah.' "'That is a lie!' This quite ungeneral principle, it being one of the cook's small tyrannies to exact religious observance from her underling, and one of Olga's Sunday morning indulgences, to oversleep and avoid the mass. Olga took the accusation meekly, and without reply, being occupied at the moment in standing between Katrina and the extra pets of butter. "'For the lie,' said Katrina calmly, "'thou shalt have no butter this morning. "'There, the hair-doctor rings for water. Get it, wicked one.' Katrina turned slowly in the doorway. "'The new frailine is American?' "'Yeah,' Katrina shrugged her shoulders. "'Then I shall put more water on to heat,' she said resignedly. "'The Americans use much water. God knows it cannot be healthy.' Olga filled her pitcher from the great copper kettle, and stood with it poised in her thin, young arms. "'The new frailine is very beautiful,' she continued aloud. "'Thinks thou it is the hot water?' "'Is an egg more beautiful for being boiled?' demanded Katrina. "'Go, and be less foolish. See, it is not the hair-doctor who rings, but the new American.'" Olga carried her pitcher to Harmony's door, and, being bitten, entered. The room was frigid, and Harmony, at the window in her nightgown, was closing the outer casement. The innards still swung open. Olga, having put down her pitcher, shivered. Surely the frailine has not slept with open windows. Always with open windows. Harmony, having secured the inner casement, was wrapping herself in the blue silk kimono with the faded butterflies. Merely to look at it made Olga shiver afresh. She shook her head. "'But the air of the night,' she said, "'it is full of myths and illnesses. Will you have breakfast now?' "'In ten minutes, after I have bathed.'" Olga, having put a match to the stove, went back to the kitchen, shaking her head. "'They are strange, the Americans,' she said to Katrina. "'And if to be lovely, one must bathe daily and sleep with open windows.'" Harmony had slept soundly after all. Her peak, at Byrne, had passed with the reading of his note, and the sensation of his protection and nearness had been almost physical. In the virginal little apartment of the Lodge of Maria Teresa, the only masculine presence had been that of the portier, carrying up coals at ninety hellers a bucket, or of the accompanist, who each alternate day had played for the big soprano to practice. And they had felt no deprivation, except for those occasional times when Scacci developed a reckless wish to see the interior of a dancing hall, or one of the little theaters that opened after the opera. But, as calmly as though she had never argued alone with a cabman or disputed the bill at the delicatessen shop, Harmony had thrown herself on the protection of this shabby big American whom she had met but once, and, having done so, slept like a baby. Not, of course, that she realized her dependence. She had felt very old and experienced and exceedingly courageous as she put out her light the night before and took a flying leap into the bed. She was still old and experienced, if a trifle less courageous, that Sunday morning. Promptly in ten minutes Olga brought the breakfast, two rolls, two pats of butter, shades of the sleeping mistress and Katrina the thrifty, and a cup of coffee. On the tray was a bit of paper torn from a notebook. Part of the prescription is an occasional walk in good company. Will you walk with me this afternoon? I would come in person to ask you, but I'm spending the morning in my bathrobe while my one remaining American suit is being pressed, P.B. Harmony got the ink and her pen from her trunk and wrote below. You are very kind to me. Yes, indeed. H.W. When frequent slamming of doors and steps along the passageway told Harmony that the pension was fully awake, she got out her violin. The idea of work obsessed her. Tomorrow there would be the hunt for something to do to supplement her resources. This afternoon she had rashly promised to walk. The morning, then, must be given up to work. But after all, she did little. For an hour, perhaps, she practiced. The little Bulgarian paused outside her door and listened, wrapped. His eyes closed. Richard Byrne, listening while he sorted lecture memoranda at his little table in bathrobe and slippers, absently filed the little note with the others, where he came across it months later, next to a lecture on McBurney's point, and spent a sad hour or so over it. Over all the sorted little pension, with its odours of food and stale air, its spotted nappery and dusty artificial flowers, the music covered and made for the time all things lovely. In her room, across from harmonies, Anna Gates was sewing, or preparing to sew. Her hair in a knob, her sleeves rolled up, the room in violent disorder. She was bending over the bed, cutting savagely at a roll of pink flannel. Because she was working with curved surgeon scissors, barred from Peter, the cut edges were strangely scalloped. Her method as well as her tools was unique. Clearly she was intent on a body garment, for now and then she picked up the flannel and held it to her. And thus, as one may say, got the line of the thing, she proceeded to cut again, jaw tight set, small veins on her forehead swelling, a small replica of Peter Burns sewing a button on his coat. After a time it became clear to her that her method was wrong. She rolled up the flannel viciously and flung it into a corner, and proceeded to her Sunday morning occupation of putting away the garments she had worn during the week, a vast and motley collection. On the irritability of her mood, harmony's music had a late but certain effect. She made a toilette, a trifle less casual than usual, seeing that she put on her stays, and rather sheepishly picked up the bundle from the corner. She hunted about for a thimble, being certain she had brought one from home a year before, but failed to find it. And finally, bundle under her arm and smiling, she knocked at Harmony's door. "'Would you mind letting me sit with you?' she asked. "'I'll not stir. I want to sew, and my room is such a mess.'" She hurriedly threw the door wide. "'You will make me very happy, if only my practicing does not disturb you.'" Dr. Gates came in and closed the door. "'I'll probably be the disturbing element,' she said. I'm a noisy sewer." Harmony's immaculate room and radiant person put her in good humour immediately. She borrowed a thimble, not because she cared whether she had one or not, but because she knew a thimble was part of the game, and settled herself in a corner, her ragged pieces on her lap. For an hour she plodded along and Harmony played. Then the girl put down her bow and turned to the corner. The little doctor was jerking at a knot in her thread. "'It's the most damnedable knot,' she said, and Harmony was suddenly aware that she was crying and heartily ashamed of it. "'Please don't pay any attention to me,' she implored. "'I hate to sew. That's the trouble. Or perhaps it's not all the trouble.  I hate being over here in this place. I hate fleas and German cooking and clinics.   Harmony was very uncomfortable and just a little shocked, but the next moment Dr. Gates had wiped her eyes with a scrap of the flannel and was smiling up through her glasses. "'The plain truth really is that I have indigestion. I daresay I'm really weeping in anticipation over the Sunday dinner. The food's bad and I can't afford to live anywhere else. I'd take a room and do my own cooking, but what time have I?' She spread out the pieces of flannel on her knee. "'Does this look like anything to you?' "'A petticoat, isn't it?' I didn't intend it as a petticoat. I thought, on account of the scallops.' "'Scallops?' Dr. Gates gazed at the painfully cut pink edges and from them to Harmony. Then she laughed, peel after peel of joyous mirth. "'Scallops,' she gasped at last. Oh, my dear, if you'd seen me cutting them and with Peter Byrne's scissors. Now here at last they were on common ground. Harmony, delicately flushed, repeated the name, clung to it conversationally, using little adroitness to bring the talk back to him. All roads of talk led to Peter, Peter's future, Peter's poverty, Peter's refusing to have his hair cut, Peter's encounter with a major of the guards, and the duel Peter almost fought. It developed that Peter, as the challenged, had had the choice of weapons and had chosen fists, and that the major had been carried away. Dr. Gates grew rather weary of Peter at last and fell back on the pink flannel. She confided to Harmony that the various pieces, united, were to make a dressing-gown for a little American boy at the hospital. Although, she commented, it looks more like a chair cover. Harmony offered to help her and got out a sewing-box that was lined with a piece of her mother's wedding-dress. And as she straightened the crooked edges, she told the doctor about the wedding-dress and about the mother who had called her Harmony because of the hope in her heart. And soon, by dint of skillful listening, which is always better than questioning, the faded little woman doctor knew all the story. She was rather aghast. But suppose you cannot find anything to do? I must, simply. It's such a terrible city for a girl alone. I'm not really alone. I know you now. An impoverished spinster, much how by shall be. And there's Peter Byrne. Peter, Dr. Gates sniffed. Peter is poorer than I am, if there's any comparison in destitution. Of course I do not mean money, she said. There are such things as encouragement and friendliness. One cannot eat encouragement, retorted Dr. Gates sagely. And friendliness between you and any man, va, even Peter is only human, my dear. I am sure he's very good. So he is. He is very poor, but you are very attractive. There. I'm a skeptic about men, but you can trust Peter. Only don't fall in love with him. It will be years before he can marry. And don't let him fall in love with you. He probably will. Whereupon Dr. Gates, taking herself and her pink flannel off to prepare for lunch, Harmony sent a formal note to Peter Byrne, regretting that a headache kept her from taking the afternoon walk as she had promised. Also to avoid meeting him, she did without dinner and spent the afternoon crying herself into a headache that was real enough.  While she made her few preparations for dinner she repented bitterly what she had said to Harmony. It is difficult for the sophistry of forty to remember and cherish the innocence of twenty. For illusions it is apt to substitute facts, the material for the spiritual, the body against the soul. Dr. Gates, from her School of General Practice, had come to view life along physiological lines. With her customary frankness she approached Peter after the meal. I've been making mischief, Peter. I've been talking too much as usual. You're not about me, Doctor, out of my blameless life.  Peter looked serious. He had put on the newly pressed suit in his best tie and was looking distinguished and just now rather stern. To whom? To the young Wells person. Frankly, Peter, I daresay at this moment she thinks you are everything you shouldn't be, because I said you are only human. Why it should be evil to be human, or human to be evil? I cannot imagine, said Peter slowly, the reason for any conversation about me. Nor I, when I look back, we seem to talk about other things but always ended up with you. Perhaps you were our one subject in common. Then she irritated me by her calm confidence. The world was good, everybody was good, she would find a safe occupation and all would be well. So you warned her against me, said Peter grimly. I told her you were human and that she was attractive. Shall I make way with myself? See bono, demanded Peter, smiling in spite of himself. The mischief is done. Dr. Gates looked up at him. I'm in love with you myself, Peter, she said gratefully. Perhaps it is the tie. Did you ever eat such a meal? CHAPTER VI A very pale and dispirited harmony it was who bathed her eyes in cold water that evening and obeyed little Olga's, Bitta, Zumschweizen. The chairs around the dining table were only half occupied, a free concert had taken some, Sunday excursions others. The little Bulgarian, secretly considered to be a political spy, was never about on this one evening of the week. Rumour had it that on these evenings, secreted in an attic room far off in the sixteenth district, he wrote and sent off reports of what he had learned during the week, his gleaning from nearby tables and coffee-houses or from the indiscreet hours after midnight in the cafe, where the Austrian military was wont to gather and drink. Into the empty chair beside harmony Peter slid his long figure and met a tremulous bow and silence. From the head of the table Frauschvarts was talking volubly, as if by mere sound to distract attention from the scantiness of the meal. Under the cover of Babel Peter spoke to the girl, having had his warning his town was friendly without a hint of the intimacy of the day before. Better? Not entirely, somewhat. I wish you had sent Olga to me for some tablets. No one needs to suffer from headache when five grains or so of powder will help them. I'm afraid of headache tablets. Not when your physician prescribes them, I hope. This was the right note. Harmony brightened a little. After all, what had she to do with the man himself? He had constituted himself her physician. That was all. The next time I shall send Olga. Good! He responded heartily, and proceeded to make such a meal as he might, talking little and nursing, by careful indifference, her new growing confidence. It was when he had pushed his plate away and lighted a cigarette, according to the custom of the pension, which accorded the Nick Rauchen sign the same attention that it did to the portrait of the deceased Herr Schwarz, that he turned to her again. I am sorry that you are not able to walk. It promises a nice night. Peter was clever. Harmony, expecting an invitation to walk, had nerved herself to a cool refusal. This took her off guard. Then you did not prescribe air? That's up to how you feel. If you care to go out and don't mind my going along as a sort of old dog-tree, I haven't anything else to do. Dr. Gates, eating stewed fruit across the table, gave Peter a swift glance of admiration, which he caught and acknowledged. He was rather exultant himself. Certainly he had bent a droid. I'd rather like a short walk. It will make me sleep, said Harmony, who had missed the by-play. And old dog-tree would be a very nice companion, I'm sure. It is doubtful, however, if Anna Gates would have applauded Peter had she followed the two in their rambling walk that night. Direction mattering little, and companionship everything, they wandered on, talking of immaterial things, of the rough pavements, of the shop windows, of the gray medieval buildings. They came to a full stop in front of the Vodekirche and discussed gravely the twin gothic spires and the bank sculptures on the façade, and there in the open square, casting diplomacy to the winds, Peter Byrne turned to Harmony and blurted out what was in his heart. Look here, he said. You don't care a wrap about spires. I don't believe you know anything about them. I don't.  I don't know what you mean. You do very well, and I'm going to set you right. She starts out with two premises. I'm a man, and you're young and attractive. Then she draws some sort of fool deduction. You know what I mean? I don't see why we need to discuss it, said poor Harmony, or how you know. I know because she told me. She knew she had been a fool, and she came to me. I don't know whether it makes any difference to you or not, but we'd started out so well, and then to have it spoiled. My dear girl, you are beautiful, and I know it. That's all the more reason why, if you'll stand for it, you need someone to look after you. I'll not say like a brother because all the ones I ever knew were darned poor brothers to their sisters, but someone who will keep an eye on you and who isn't going to fall in love with you. I didn't think you were falling in love with me. Certainly not, besides I, here Peter Byrne had another inspiration, not so good as the first. Besides, there is somebody at home.  That makes it all right, doesn't it? A girl at home? A girl, said Peter, lying manfully. How very nice, said Harmony, and put out her hand. Peter, feeling all sorts of a cheat, took it, and got his reward in a complete restoral of their former camaraderie relations. From abstractions of church towers and street paving they went, with the directness of the young, to themselves. Thereafter, during that memorable walk, they talked blissful personalities, Harmony's future, Peter's career, money, or its lack, their ambitions, their hopes, even, and here was intimacy indeed, their disappointments, their failures of courage, their occasional loss of faith in themselves. The first real snow of the year was falling as they turned back toward the pensionsch farts, a damp snow that stuck fast and melted with a chilly cold that had in it nothing but depression. The upper spires of the votive Kierke were hidden in a gray mist. The trees in the park took on, against the gloom of the city hall, a snowy luminosity. Save for an occasional pedestrian, making his way home under an umbrella, the streets were deserted. Burn and Harmony had no umbrella, but the girl rejected his offer of a taxicab. We should be home too quickly, she observed naively, and we have so much to say about me. Now I thought that perhaps by giving English lessons in the afternoon and working all morning at my music, and so on and on, square after square, with Peter listening gravely, his head bent, and square after square it was borne in on him what a precarious future stretched before this girl beside him, how very slender her resources, how more than dubious the outcome. Poverty, which had only stimulated Peter Byrne in the past, ate deep into his soul that night. Epic making as the walk had been, seeing that it had re-established a friendship, and made a working basis for future camaraderie relations, they were back at the corner of the Alserstraße before ten. As they turned in at the little street, a man, lurching somewhat, almost collided with Harmony. He was a short, heavyset person, with a carefully curled mustache, and he was singing, not loudly, but with all his modlin heart in his voice, the barracola from the tails of Hoffman. He saw Harmony, and, still singing, planted himself in her path. When Byrne would have pushed him aside, Harmony caught his arm. It's only the portier from the lodge, she said. The portier, having come to rest on a throaty and rather wavering note, stood before Harmony, bowing. The froline has gone, and I am very sad, he said thickly. There is no more music, and Rosa has run away with a soldier, from Salzburg who has only one lung. But think, said Harmony in German. No more practicing in the early dawn, no young ladies bringing mud into your new scrubbed hall. It is better, is it not? All day you may rest and smoke. Byrne led Harmony past the drunken portier, who turned with caution and bowed after them. Gute Nacht, he called.  Four rooms and the salon, and a bath of the finest. As they went up the Hirschengasse, they could hear him pursuing his unsteady way down the street and singing lustily. At the door of the pension schwarz, Harmony paused. Do you mind if I ask one question? You honor me, madam. Then what is the name of the girl back home? Peter Byrne was suddenly conscious of a complete void as to feminine names. He offered, in a sort of panic, the first one he recalled, Emma. Emma, what a nice old-fashioned name. But there was a touch of disappointment in her voice. Harmony had a lesson the next day. She was a favorite pupil with the master. Out of so much musical chaff, he winnowed only now and then a grain of real ability. And Harmony had that. Sketchy and the big soprano had been right. She had the real thing. The short half-hour lesson had a way with Harmony of lengthening itself to an hour or more, much to the disgust of the lady secretary in the enter room. On that Monday Harmony had pleased the old man to one of his rare enthousiasms. "'Six months,' he said, and you will go back to your America and show them how over here we teach violin. I will a letter. Letters? Give you, and you shall put on the program of your concerts that you are my pupil. Is it not so?' Harmony was drawing on her worn gloves. Her hands trembled a little with the praise and excitement. If I can stay so long,' she answered, unsteadily. "'You must stay. Have I so long labored, and now before it is finished you talk of going?' Goat in himmel. "'It is a matter of money. My father is dead, and unless I find something to do I shall have to go back.' The master had heard many such statements. They never ceased to rouse his ire against a world that had money for everything but music. He spent five minutes in indignant protest. Then, but you are clever and young, child. You will find a way to stay. Perhaps I can now and then find a concert for you.' It was allure he had thrown out before, a hook without a bait. It needed no bait, being always eagerly swallowed. And no more talk of going away. I refuse to allow it. You shall not go.' Harmony paid the lady secretary on her way out. The master was interested. He liked Harmony, and he believed in her. The fifty cronin is fifty cronin, and South American beef is high of price. He followed Harmony into the outer room and bowed her out of his studio. The frailine has paid. He demanded turning sharply to the lady secretary. Always. After the lesson. Yah, Herr Professor. It is better, said the master, that she pay hereafter before the lesson. Yah, Herr Professor. Whereupon the lady secretary put a red ink cross before Harmony's name, there were many such crosses on the ledger. End of chapter six. Chapter seven 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 seven. For three days Byrne hardly saw Harmony. He was off early in the morning, hurried back to the midday meal, and was gone again the moment it was over. He had lectures in the evenings, too. And although he lingered for an hour or so after supper, it was to find Harmony taken possession of by the little Bulgarian, seized with a sudden thirst for things American. On the evening of the second day he had left Harmony, and meshed and helpless in a tangle of language, trying to explain to the little Bulgarian the reason American women wished to vote. Byrne flung down the stairs and out into the street, almost colliding with Stuart. They walked on together, Stuart with the comfortably rolling gate of the man who has just signed well, and Byrne with his heavy, rather solid tread. The two men were not congenial, and the frequent intervals without speech between them were rather for lack of understanding than for that completeness of it which often fathers long silences. Byrne was the first to speak after their greeting. Marielle, right? Fine, said if I saw you to ask you to supper some night this week. Thanks. Does it matter which night? Any but Thursday. We're hearing La Bohème. Say Friday, then. Byrne's tone lacked enthusiasm, but Stuart, in his after-dinner mood, failed to notice it. Have you thought any more about our conversation of the other night? What was that? Stuart poked him playfully in the ribs. Wake up, Byrne, he said. You remember well enough.  I was at Schwartz's. It's the double drain there that tells them when, eating little and being eaten much, those old walls are full of vermin. Why don't you take our apartment? Yours? Yes, for a couple of months. I'm thruish like, and Breidao can't take me for two months. It's Marie's off-season, and we're going to Semmering for the winter sports. We're ahead enough to take a holiday, and if you want the flat for the same amount you are spending now, or less, you can have it, and a home, old man. Byrne was irritated. And more so that he realized that the offer tempted him. To his resentment was added a contempt of himself. Thanks, he said, I think not. Oh, all right. Stuart was rather offended. I can't do more than give you a chance. They separated shortly after, and Byrne went on alone. The snow of Sunday had turned to a fine rain which had lasted all of Monday and Tuesday. The sidewalks were slimy, wagons slid in the ooze of the streets, and the smoke from the little stoves in the streetcars followed them in depressing horizontal clouds. Cab men sat and smoked in the interior of musty calves. The women hot carriers on a new building steamed like horses as they worked.  As he walked there came before him a vision of the little flat on the Kochgasse, with the lamp on the table and the general air of warmth and cheer, and a figure presiding over the brick stove in the kitchen. Byrne shook himself like a great dog, and turned in at the gate of the hospital. He was thoroughly ashamed of himself. That week was full of disappointments for harmony. Wherever she turned she faced a wall of indifference, or, what was worse, an interest that frightened her. Like a bird in a cage she beat helplessly against the barriers of language, of strange customs, of hostility that were not far from absolute cruelty. She held to her determination, however, at first with hope, then, as the pension in advance, and the lessons of fifty Cronin, also in advance, went on, recklessly. She played marvelously those days, crying out through her violin the despair she had sealed her lips against. On Thursday, playing for the master, she turned to find him flourishing his handkerchief and went home in a sort of days, incredulous that she could have moved him to tears. The little Bulgarian was frankly her slave now. He had given up the coffee-houses that he might spend that hour near her, on the chance of seeing her, or, failing that, of hearing her play. At night in the café Hungaria he sat for hours at a time, his elbows on the table, a bottle of native wine before him, and dreamed of her. He was very fat, the little Georgiv, very swarthy, very pathetic. The Balkan kettle was simmering in those days, and he had been set to watch the fire. But instead he had kindled a flame of his own, and was feeding it with stray words, odd glances, a bit of music, the curve of a woman's hair behind her ears. For reports he wrote verses in modern Greek, and through one of those inadvertences which make tragedy, the minister of war down in troubled Bulgaria once received, between the pages of a report in Cypher on the fortifications of the Danube, a verse inferred at hexameter that made even that grim official smile. Harmony was quite unconscious. She went on her way methodically, so many hours of work, so many lessons at fifty Cronin, so many afternoons searching for something to do, making rounds of shops where her English might be valuable. After a few weeks Peter Byrne found time to help. After one experience, when Harmony left a shop with flaming face and tears in her eyes, he had thought it best to go with her. The first interview, under Peter's grim eyes, was a failure. The shopkeeper was obviously suspicious of Peter. After that, whenever he could escape from clinics, Peter went along, but stayed outside, smoking his eternal cigarette and keeping a watchful eye on things inside the shop. Only once was he needed, at that time, suspecting that all was not well, from the girl's eyes and the leer on the shopkeeper's face, he had opened the door in time to hear enough. He had lifted the proprietor bodily and flung him with a crash into a glass showcase of ornaments for the hair. Then entirely cheerful and happy and unmolested by the frightened clerks, he led Harmony outside and, in a sort of altavistic triumph, bought her a bunch of vali-lilies. Nevertheless, in his sane moments Peter knew that things were very bad indeed. He was still not in love with the girl, he analyzed his own feelings very carefully, and that was his conclusion. Nevertheless he did a chaotic thing, which was Peter, of course, all over. He took supper with Stuart and Marie on Friday, and the idea came to him there, hardly came to him, being Marie's originally. The little flat was cozy and bright, Marie, having straightened her kitchen, brought in a waist she was making, and sat sewing while the two men talked. Their conversation was technical, a new extirpation of the thyroid gland, a recent nephrectomy. In her curious way Marie liked Peter and respected him. She struggled with the technicalities of their talk as she sewed, finding here and there a comprehensive fit. At those times she sat, needle-poised, intelligent eyes on the speakers, until she lost herself again in the mazes of their English. At ten o'clock she rose and put away her sewing. Peter saw her get the stone pitcher and knew she was on her way for the evening beer. He took advantage of her absence to broach the matter of Harmony. She's up against it as a matter of fact, he finished. It ought to be easy enough for her to find something, but it isn't. I hardly saw her that day in the coffee-house, but she's rather handsome, isn't she? That's one of the difficulties, yes. Stuart smoked and reflected. No friends here at all? None. There were three girls at first, two have gone home. Could she teach violin? I should think so. Aren't there any kids in the American colony who want lessons? There's usually some sort of infant prodigy ready to play at any entertainments of the doctor's club. They don't want an American teacher, I fancy, but I suppose I could put a card up in the club rooms. Damn it all, cried Peter with a burst of honest resentment. Why do I have to be poor? If you were rolling in gold you could hardly offer her money, could you? Peter had not thought of that before. It was the only comfort he found in his poverty. Marie had brought in the beer and was carefully filling the mugs. Why do you not marry her? She asked unexpectedly. Then you could take this flat. We are going to Semmering for the winter sports. I would show her about the stove. Marry her, of course, said Peter gravely. Just pick her up and carry her to church. The trifling fact that she does not wish to marry me need have nothing to do with it. Ah, but does she not wish it? demanded Marie.  Do not women always love you? Because as the thought was, Peter pondered it as he went back to the pension Schwarz. About himself he was absurdly modest, almost humble. It had never occurred to him that women might care for him, for himself. In his struggling life there had been little time for women, but about himself, as the solution of a problem, that was different. He argued the thing over, and the unlikely contingency of the girls being willing, was Stuart right? Would two people live as cheaply as one? Marie was an Austrian, and knew how to manage. That was different. And another thing troubled him. He dreaded to disturb the delicate adjustment of their relationship. The terra incognita of a young girl's mind daunted him. There was another consideration which he put resolutely in the back of his mind, his career. He had seen many a promising one killed by early marriage, men driven to the hack work of the profession by the scourge of financial necessity. But that was a matter of the future. The necessity was immediate. The night was very cold. Gusts of wind from the snow-covered Schneeberg drove along the streets, making each corner a fortress defended by the elements, a battlement to be seized, lost, seized again. Peter Byrne battled valiantly, but mechanically. And as he fought, he made his decision. He acted with characteristic promptness. Possibly, too, he was afraid of the strength of his own resolution. By morning sanity might prevail, and in cold daylight he would see the absurdity of his position. He almost ran up the winding staircase. At the top his cold fingers fumbled the key, and he swore under his breath. He slammed the door behind him. Peter always slammed doors, and had an apologetic way of opening the door again, and closing it gently, as if to show that he could. Harmony's room was dark, but he had surprised her once into a confession that when she was very John Trotten she liked to sit in the dark and be very blue indeed. So he stopped and knocked. There was no reply, but from Dr. Gates' room across there came a hum of conversation. He knew at once that Harmony was there. Peter hardly hesitated. He took off his soft hat and ran a hand over his hair, and he straightened his tie. These preliminaries to a proposal of marriage being disposed of, he wrapped at the door. Anna Gates opened it. She wore a hideous red flannel wrapper and, in deference to Harmony, a thimble. Her flat breast was stuck with pins and pinkish threads revealed the fact that the bathrobe was still under way. Peter, she cried, come in and get warm. Harmony in the blue kimono gave a little gasp and flung round her shoulders the mass of pink on which she had been working. Please go out, she said, I'm not dressed. You are covered, returned Anna Gates, that's all any sort of clothing can do. Don't mind her, Peter, and sit on the bed, look out for pins. Peter, however, did not sit down. He stood just inside the closed door and stared at Harmony. Harmony in the red light from the little open door of the stove, Harmony in blue and pink and a bit of white petticoat. Harmony with her hair over her shoulders and tied out of her eyes with an encircling band of rosy flannel. Do sit, cried Anna Gates. You fill the room so.  No man likes to know his collar is soiled, especially on the eve of proposing marriage to a pink and blue and white vision. Peter, seated now in the bed, writhed. I wrapped at Miss Wells' door, he said. You are not there. This last, of course, to Harmony. Anna Gates sniffed. Naturally.  I daresay it is hardly pensive and etiquette for you to go over to your room and let me say it there. Harmony smiled above the flannel. Could you call it through the door? Hardly. Fiddlesticks. Said Dr. Gates rising. I'll go over, of course, but not for long. There's no fire. With her hand on the knob, however, Harmony interfered. Please, she implored. I'm not dressed, and I'd rather not. She turned to Peter. You can say it before her, can't you? I have told her all about things. Peter hesitated. He felt ridiculous for the second time that night. Then it was merely an idea I had. I saw a little apartment furnished. You could learn to use the stove, unless, of course, you don't like housekeeping. And food is really awfully cheap. Why, at these delicatessen places and bake shops, here he paused for breath and found Dr. Gates' quizzical glance fixed on him, and Harmony startled eyes. What I'm trying to say, he exploded, is that I believe if you would marry me, it would solve some of your troubles anyhow. He was talking for time now, against Harmony's incredulous face. You'd be taking on others, of course. I'm not much, and I'm as poor—well, you know, it—it was the apartment that gave me the idea. And the stove, said Harmony, and suddenly burst into joyous laughter. After a rather shocked instant, Dr. Gates joined her. It was real mirth with Harmony, the first laugh of days, that curious laughter of women that is not far from tears. Peter sat on the bed uncomfortably. He grinned sheepishly, and made a last feeble attempt to stick to his guns. I mean it.  Lord knows I need someone to look after me. And Emma? There is no Emma. I made her up. Harmony sobered at that. It is only—she gasped a little for breath. It is only your—your transparency, Peter. It was the first time she had called him, Peter. You know how things are with me, and you want to help me, and out of your generosity you are willing to take on another burden. Oh, Peter! And here, Harmony being an emotional young person, the tears beat the laughter to the surface and had to be wiped away under the cover of mirth. Anna Gates, having recovered herself, sat back and surveyed them both sternly through her glasses. Once for all, she said brusquely, let such foolishness end. Peter, I am ashamed of you. Marriage is not for you, not yet, not for a dozen years. Any man can saddle himself with a wife. Not every man can be what you may be if you keep your senses and stay single. And the same is true for you, girl. To tide over a bad six months you would sacrifice the very thing you are both struggling for. I'm sure we don't intend to do it, replied Harmony meekly. Not now. Someday you may be tempted. When that time comes remember what I say. Metrimonially speaking each of you is fatal to the other. Now go away and let me alone. I'm not accustomed to proposals of marriage. It was in some confusion of mine that Peter Byrne took himself off to the bedroom, with the cold, tiled stove, and the bed that was as comfortable as a wash-tup. Undeniably he was relieved. So Harmony's problem was yet unsolved. Also she had called him Peter. Also he had said he was not in love with her. Was he so sure of that? At midnight, just as Peter, rolled in the bed-clothing, had managed to warm the cold cavity of his bed, and had dozed off, and a gates knocked at his door. Yes, said Peter, still comfortably asleep. It is Dr. Gates. Sorry, Doctor. Have to excuse me, mumble Peter from the blanket. Peter? Peter roused to a chilled and indignant consciousness and sat up in bed. Well? Open the door just a crack. Resignedly Peter crawled out of bed, carefully turning the coverings up to retain as much heat as possible. An icy blast from the open window blew round to him, setting everything movable in the little room to quivering. He fumbled in the dark for his slippers, failed to find them, and yawning noisily went to the door. Anna Gates, with a candle, was outside. Her short, graying hair was out of its hard knot, and hung in an equally uncompromising six-inch plate down her back. She had no glasses, and over the candle frame she peered short-sightedly at Peter. It's about Jimmy, she said. I don't know what's got into me, but I've forgotten for three days. It's a good bit more than time for a letter. Great Scott! Both yesterday and today he asked for it, and today he fretted a little. The nurse found him crying. The poor little devil, said Peter contritely. Overdue, is it? I'll fix it tonight. Leave it under the door where I can get it in the morning. I'm off at seven. The envelope? Here it is, and take my candle. I'm going to bed. That was at midnight, or shortly after. Half after one struck from the twin clocks of the vote of Kirke, and echoed from the Stevens plots across the city. It found Peter with the window closed, sitting up in bed, a candle balanced on one knee, a writing tablet on the other. He was writing a spirited narrative of a chamois hunt, in which he had taken part that day, including a detailed description of the quarry, which weighed, according to Peter, two hundred and fifty pounds, Peter being strong on imagination, and short on facts as regards to the Alpine chamois. Then, trying to read the letter from a small boys' point of view, and deciding that it lacks snap, he added by way of postscript, a harrowing incident of avalanche, rope, guide, and ice axe. He ended in a sort of glow of authorship, and after some thought, took fifty pounds off the chamois. The letter just finished, he put it in a much-used envelope addressed to Jimmy Conroy, an envelope that stamped the whole episode as authentic, bearing as it did an undecipherable date and the postmark of a tiny village in the Austrian triole. It was almost two when Peter put out the candle and settled himself to sleep. It was just two o'clock when the nightners, making rounds in her ward in the General Hospital, found a small boy very much awake on his pillow, and taking off her felt slipper, shook it at him in pretended fury. Now, thou bad one, she said, awake when her doctor orders sleep, shall I use the slipper? The boy replied in German with a strong English accent. I cannot sleep. Yesterday the Frawlein Elizabeth said that in the mountains there are accidents, and that sometimes the Frawlein Elizabeth is a great fool. Tomorrow comes thy letter of a certainty. The post has been delayed with great snows. My father has perhaps captured a great boar or a chemie, and he writes of it. Do chemies have horns? Yeah, great horns, so. He will send them to me, and there are no accidents? None. Now sleep, or the slipper. End of chapter 7.