crowded toilet articles on the
dressing-table, where one of Marie's small slippers still lay where it
had fallen under the foot of the bed, where her rosary still hung over
the corner of the table. "Ring for the maid, Peter, will you! I've got
to get this junk out of here. Some of Anita's people may come."

During that afternoon ride, while the train clump-clumped down the
mountains, Peter thought of all this. Some of Marie's "junk" was in his
bag; her rosary lay in his breastpocket, along with the pin he had sent
her at Christmas. Peter happened on it, still in its box, which looked
as if it had been cried over. He had brought it with him. He admired it
very much, and it had cost money he could ill afford to spend.

It was late when the train drew into the station. Peter, encumbered with
Marie's luggage and his own, lowered his window and added his voice
to the chorus of plaintive calls: "Portier! Portier!" they shouted.
"Portier!" bawled Peter.

He was obliged to resort to the extravagance of a taxicab. Possibly
a fiacre would have done as well, but it cost almost as much and was
slower. Moments counted now: a second was an hour, an hour a decade. For
he was on his way to Harmony. Extravagance became recklessness. As soon
die for a sheep as a lamb! He stopped the taxicab and bought a bunch of
violets, stopped again and bought lilies of the valley to combine with
the violets, went out of his way to the American grocery and bought a
jar of preserved fruit.

By that time he was laden. The jar of preserves hung in one shabby
pocket, Marie's rosary dangled from another; the violets were buttoned
under his overcoat against the cold.

At the very last he held the taxi an extra moment and darted into the
delicatessen shop across the Siebensternstrasse. From there, standing
inside the doorway, he could see the lights in the salon across the way,
the glow of his lamp, the flicker that was the fire. Peter whistled,
stamped his cold feet, quite neglected--in spite of repeated warnings
from Harmony--to watch the Herr Schenkenkaufer weigh the cheese,
accepted without a glance a ten-Kronen piece with a hole in it.

"And how is the child to-day?" asked the Herr Schenkenkaufer, covering
the defective gold piece with conversation.

"I do not know; I have been away," said Peter. He almost sang it.

"All is well or I would have heard. Wilhelm the Portier was but just now
here."

"All well, of course," sang Peter, eyes on the co