rentices were carrying home
boxes for a ball that night. Thread was needed, and quickly. Harmony,
who did odds and ends of sewing, was most easily spared. She slipped on
her jacket and hat and ran down to the shop near by.

It was on the return that she met Georgiev coming down. The afternoon
was dark and the staircase unlighted. In the gloom one face was as
another. Georgiev, listening intently, hearing footsteps, drew back
into the embrasure of a window and waited. His swarthy face was tense,
expectant. As the steps drew near, were light feminine instead of
stealthy, the little spy relaxed somewhat. But still he waited,
crouched.

It was a second before he recognized Harmony, another instant before he
realized his good fortune. She had almost passed. He put out an unsteady
hand.

"Fraulein!"

"Herr Georgiev!"

The little Bulgarian was profoundly stirred. His fervid eyes gleamed.
He struggled against the barrier of language, broke out in passionate
Bulgar, switched to German punctuated with an English word here and
there. Made intelligible, it was that he had found her at last. Harmony
held her spools of thread and waited for the storm of languages to
subside. Then:--

"But you are not to say you have seen me, Herr Georgiev."

"No?"

Harmony colored.

"I am--am hiding," she explained. "Something very uncomfortable happened
and I came here. Please don't say you have seen me."

Georgiev was puzzled at first. She had to explain very slowly, with his
ardent eyes on her. But he understood at last and agreed of course. His
incredulity was turning to certainty. Harmony had actually been in the
same building with him while he sought her everywhere else.

"Then," he said at last, "it was you who played Sunday."

"I surely."

She made a move to pass him, but he held out an imploring hand.

"Fraulein, I may see you sometimes?"

"We shall meet again, of course."

"Fraulein,--with all respect,--sometime perhaps you will walk out with
me?"

"I am very busy all day."

"At night, then? For the exercise? I, with all respect, Fraulein!"

Harmony was touched.

"Sometime," she consented. And then impulsively: "I am very lonely, Herr
Georgiev."

She held out her hand, and the little Bulgarian bent over it and kissed
it reverently. The Herr Georgiev's father was a nobleman in his own
country, and all the little spy's training had been to make of a girl
in Harmony's situation lawful prey. But in the spy's glowin