g heart there
was nothing for Harmony to fear. She knew it. He stood, hat in hand,
while she went up the staircase. Then:--

"Fraulein!" anxiously.

"Yes?"

"Was there below at the entrance a tall man in a green velours hat?"

"I saw no one there."

"I thank you, Fraulein."

He watched her slender figure ascend, lose itself in the shadows,
listened until she reached the upper floors. Then with a sigh he clapped
his hat on his head and made his cautious way down to the street. There
was no man in a green velours hat below, but the little spy had an
uneasy feeling that eyes watched him, nevertheless. Life was growing
complicated for the Herr Georgiev.

Life was pressing very close to Harmony also in those days, a life she
had never touched before. She discovered, after a day or two in the
work-room, that Monia Reiff's business lay almost altogether among the
demi-monde. The sewing-girls, of Marie's type many of them, found in
the customers endless topics of conversation. Some things Harmony was
spared, much of the talk being in dialect. But a great deal of it she
understood, and she learned much that was not spoken. They talked
freely of the women, their clothes, and they talked a great deal about
a newcomer, an American dancer, for whom Monia was making an elaborate
outfit. The American's name was Lillian Le Grande. She was dancing at
one of the variety theaters.

Harmony was working on a costume for the Le Grande woman--a gold brocade
slashed to the knee at one side and with a fragment of bodice made of
gilt tissue. On the day after her encounter with Georgiev she met her.

There was a dispute over the gown, something about the draping. Monia,
flushed with irritation, came to the workroom door and glanced over the
girls. She singled out Harmony finally and called her.

"Come and put on the American's gown," she ordered. "She wishes--Heaven
knows what she wishes!"

Harmony went unwillingly. Nothing she had heard of the Fraulein Le
Grande had prepossessed her. Her uneasiness was increased when she found
herself obliged to shed her gown and to stand for one terrible moment
before the little dressmaker's amused eyes.

"Thou art very lovely, very chic," said Monia. The dress added to
rather than relieved Harmony's discomfiture. She donned it in one of the
fitting-rooms, made by the simple expedient of curtaining off a corner
of the large reception room. The slashed skirt embarrassed her; the low
cut made her