liation. That would have to be a final,
desperate resort.

She felt a little more cheerful when she had had a cup of coffee. Jimmy
wakened about that time, and she went through the details of his morning
toilet with all the brightness she could assume--bath blankets, warm
bath, toenails, finger-nails, fresh nightgown, fresh sheets, and--final
touch of all--a real barber's part straight from crown to brow. After
that ten minutes under extra comforters while the room aired.

She hung over the boy that morning in an agony of tenderness--he was so
little, so frail, and she must leave him. Only one thing sustained her.
The boy loved her, but it was Peter he idolized. When he had Peter he
needed nothing else. In some curious process of his childish mind Peter
and Daddy mingled in inextricable confusion. More than once he had
recalled events in the roving life he and his father had led.

"You remember that, don't you?" he would say.

"Certainly I remember," Peter would reply heartily.

"That evening on the steamer when I ate so many raisins."

"Of course. And were ill."

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

And Peter would recall it all.

Peter would be left. That was the girl's comfort.

She made a beginning at gathering her things together that morning,
while the boy dozed and the white mice scurried about the little cage.
She could not take her trunk, or Peter would trace it. She would have
to carry her belongings, a few at a time, to wherever she found a room.
Then when Peter came back she could slip away and he would never find
her.

At noon came the Portier and the sentry, now no longer friends, and rang
the doorbell. Harmony was rather startled. McLean and Mrs. Boyer had
been her only callers, and she did not wish to see either of them. But
after a second ring she gathered her courage in her hands and opened the
door.

She turned pale when she saw the sentry in his belted blue-gray tunic
and high cap. She thought, of course, that Jimmy had been traced and
that now he would be taken away. If the sentry knew her, however, he
kept his face impassive and merely touched his cap. The Portier stated
their errand. Harmony's face cleared. She even smiled as the Portier
extended to her the thumbed score with its missing corner. What,
after all, does it matter which was right--whether it was A sharp or A
natural? What really matters is that Harmony, having se