hat he was smoking too much, and
resolutely--lighted another cigarette.

Two things had revealed Peter's condition to himself: McLean had said:
"You are crazy in love with her." McLean's statement, lacking subtlety,
had had a certain quality of directness. Even then Peter, utterly
miserable, had refused to capitulate, when to capitulate would have
meant the surrender of the house in the Siebensternstrasse. And the
absence from Harmony had shown him just where he stood.

He was in love, crazy in love. Every fiber of his long body glowed with
it, ached with it. And every atom of his reason told him what mad folly
it was, this love. Even if Harmony cared--and at the mere thought his
heart pounded--what madness for her, what idiocy for him! To ask her to
accept the half of--nothing, to give up a career to share his struggle
for one, to ask her to bury her splendid talent and her beauty under a
bushel that he might wave aloft his feeble light!

And there was no way out, no royal road to fortune by the route he had
chosen; nothing but grinding work, with a result problematical and years
ahead. There were even no legacies to expect, he thought whimsically.
Peter had known a chap once, struggling along in gynecology, who had
had a fortune left him by a G. P., which being interpreted is Grateful
Patient. Peter's patients had a way of living, and when they did drop
out, as happened now and then, had also a way of leaving Peter an unpaid
bill in token of appreciation; Peter had even occasionally helped to
bury them, by way, he defended himself, of covering up his mistakes.

Peter, sitting back in his corner, allowed the wonderful scenery to slip
by unnoticed. He put Harmony the Desirable out of his mind, and took
to calculating on a scrap of paper what could be done for Harmony the
Musician. He could hold out for three months, he calculated, and still
have enough to send Harmony home and to get home himself on a slow boat.
The Canadian lines were cheap. If Jimmy lived perhaps he could take him
along: if not--

He would have to put six months' work in the next three. That was not so
hard. He had got along before with less sleep, and thrived on it. Also
there must be no more idle evenings, with Jimmy in the salon propped in
a chair and Harmony playing, the room dark save for the glow from the
stove and for the one candle at Harmony's elbow.

All roads lead to Rome. Peter's thoughts, having traveled in a circle,
were back again