ed Peter gently. "To go to
heaven, where there is no more death or dying, where it is always summer
and the sun always shines?"

No reply for a moment. The little mouse sat up on the pillow and rubbed
its nose with a pinkish paw. The baby mice in the cage nuzzled their
dead mother.

"Is there grass?"

"Yes--soft green grass."

"Do--boys in heaven--go in their bare feet?" Ah, small mind and heart,
so terrified and yet so curious!

"Indeed, yes." And there on his knees beside the white bed Peter painted
such a heaven as no theologue has ever had the humanity to paint--a
heaven of babbling brooks and laughing, playing children, a heaven of
dear departed puppies and resurrected birds, of friendly deer, of trees
in fruit, of speckled fish in bright rivers. Painted his heaven with
smiling eyes and death in his heart, a child's heaven of games and
friendly Indians, of sunlight and rain, sweet sleep and brisk awakening.

The boy listened. He was silent when Peter had finished. Speech was
increasingly an effort.

"I should--like--to go there," he whispered at last.

He did not speak again during all the long afternoon, but just at dusk
he roused again.

"I would like--to see--the sentry," he said with difficulty.

And so again, and for the last time, Rosa's soldier from Salzburg with
one lung.

Through all that long day, then, Harmony sat over her work, unaccustomed
muscles aching, the whirring machines in her ears. Monia, upset over the
morning's excitement, was irritable and unreasonable. The gold-tissue
costume had come back from Le Grande with a complaint. Below in the
courtyard all day curious groups stood gaping up the staircase, where
the morning had seen such occurrences.

At the noon hour, while the girls heated soup and carried in pails of
salad from the corner restaurant, Harmony had fallen into the way of
playing for them. To the music-loving Viennese girls this was the hour
of the day. To sit back, soup bowl on knee, the machines silent, Monia
quarreling in the kitchen with the Hungarian servant, and while the
pigeons ate crusts on the window-sills, to hear this American girl play
such music as was played at the opera, her slim figure swaying, her
whole beautiful face and body glowing with the melody she made, the
girls found the situation piquant, altogether delightful. Although she
did not suspect it, many rumors were rife about Harmony in the workroom.
She was not of the people, they said--the dau