ed from iron to ice, from ice
to red-hot fire. Still the Portier had not come back and the door chain
swung in the wind.

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

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

She roused him, standing over him with the iron candlestick, now
lighted, and gazing at him with eyes in which alarm struggled with
suspicion.

"Thou hast been out of thy bed!"

"But no!"

"An hour since the bed was empty."

"Thou dreamest."

"The chain is off the door."

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER X

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

Anna Gates was not the best possible companion for Harmony, and this
with every allowance for her real kindliness, her genuine affection for
the girl. Life had destroyed her illusions, and it was of illusions
that Harmony's veil had been woven. To Anna Gates, worn with a thousand
sleepless nights, a thousand thankless days, withered before her time
with the struggling routine of medical practice, sapped with endless
calls for sympathy and aid, existence ceased to be spiritual and became
physiological.

Life and birth and death had lost their mysteries. T