and back again
to Peter and Harmony. For some time she had been suspicious of Peter.
From her dozen years of advantage in age and experience she looked down
on Peter's thirty years of youth, and thought she knew something that
Peter himself did not suspect. Peter being unintrospective, Anna did his
heart-searching for him. She believed he was madly in love with Harmony
and did not himself suspect it. As she watched the girl over her teacup,
revealing herself in a thousand unposed gestures of youth and grace, a
thousand lovelinesses, something of the responsibility she and Peter had
assumed came over her. She sighed and felt for her letter.

"I've had rather bad news," she said at last.

"From home?"

"Yes. My father--did you know I have a father?"

"You hadn't spoken of him."

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

Harmony turned a startled face to her.

"You are not going back to America?"

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

The lunch was a silent meal. Anna was hurrying off as Peter came in, and
there was no time to discuss Peter's new complication with her. Harmony
and Peter ate together, Harmony rather silent. Anna's unfortunate
comment about Peter had made her constrained. After the meal Peter, pipe
in mouth, carried the dishes to the kitchen, and there it was that he
gave her the letter. What Peter's slower mind had been a perceptible
time in grasping Harmony comprehended at once--and not only the
situation, but its solution.

"Don't let her have him!" she said, putting down the letter. "Bring him
here. Oh, Peter, how good we must be to him!"

And that after all was how the thing was settled. So simple, so obvious
was it that these three expatriates, these waifs and estrays, banded
together against a common poverty, a common loneliness, should share
without question whatever was theirs to divide. Peter and Anna gave
cheerfully of their substance, Harmony of her labor, that a small boy
should be saved a tragic knowledge until he was well enough to bear it,
or until, if God so willed, he might learn it himself without pain.

The friendly sentry on duty again that night proved singularly blind.
Thus it happened that, although the night was clear when the twin dials
of the Votivkirche showed nine o'clock, he did not notice a cab that
halted across the stre