the
white bed, apathetic but sleepless. In vain Marie made flower fairies
for his pillow, in vain the little mice, now quite tame, played
hide-and-seek over the bed, in vain Peter paused long enough in his
frantic search for Harmony to buy colored postcards and bring them to
him.

He was contented enough; he did not suffer at all; and he had no
apprehension of what was coming. He asked for nothing, tried obediently
to eat, liked to have Marie in the room. But he did not beg to be
taken into the salon, as he once had done. There was a sort of mental
confusion also. He liked Marie to read his father's letters; but as
he grew weaker the occasional confusing of Peter with his dead father
became a fixed idea. Peter was Daddy.

Peter took care of him at night. He had moved into Harmony's adjacent
room and dressed there. But he had never slept in the bed. At night he
put on his shabby dressing-gown and worn slippers and lay on a haircloth
sofa at the foot of Jimmy's bed--lay but hardly slept, so afraid was he
that the slender thread of life might snap when it was drawn out to its
slenderest during the darkest hours before the dawn. More than once in
every night Peter rose and stood, hardly breathing, with the tiny lamp
in his hand, watching for the rise and fall of the boy's thin little
chest. Peter grew old these days. He turned gray over the ears and
developed lines about his mouth that never left him again. He felt gray
and old, and sometimes bitter and hard also. The boy's condition could
not be helped: it was inevitable, hopeless. But the thing that was
eating his heart out had been unnecessary and cruel.

Where was Harmony? When it stormed, as it did almost steadily, he
wondered how she was sheltered; when the occasional sun shone he hoped
it was bringing her a bit of cheer. Now and then, in the night, when the
lamp burned low and gusts of wind shook the old house, fearful thoughts
came to him--the canal, with its filthy depths. Daylight brought reason,
however. Harmony had been too rational, too sane for such an end.

McLean was Peter's great support in those terrible days. He was young
and hopeful. Also he had money. Peter could not afford to grease the
machinery of the police service; McLean could and did. In Berlin Harmony
could not have remained hidden for two days. In Vienna, however, it
was different. Returns were made to the department, but irregularly.
An American music student was missing. There were thousa