e Grande made her way into the wings, surrounded by her little troupe.
A motherly colored woman took them, shooed them off, rounded them up
like a flock of chickens.

And there in the wings, grimly impassive, stood a private soldier of the
old Franz Josef, blocking the door to her dressing room. For a moment
gold dress and dark blue-gray uniform confronted each other. Then the
sentry touched his cap.

"Madam," he said, "the child is in the Riebensternstrasse and to-night
he dies."

"What child?" Her arms were full of flowers.

"The child from the hospital. Please to make haste."

Jimmy died an hour after midnight, quite peacefully, died with one hand
in Harmony's and one between Peter's two big ones.

Toward the last he called Peter "Daddy" and asked for a drink. His eyes,
moving slowly round the room, passed without notice the grayfaced woman
in a gold dress who stood staring down at him, rested a moment on the
cage of mice, came to a stop in the doorway, where stood the sentry,
white and weary, but refusing rest.

It was Harmony who divined the child's unspoken wish.

"The manual?" she whispered.

The boy nodded. And so just inside the door of the bedroom across from
the old salon of Maria Theresa the sentry, with sad eyes but no lack of
vigor, went again through the Austrian manual of arms, and because he
had no carbine he used Peter's old walking-stick.

When it was finished the boy smiled faintly, tried to salute, lay still.

CHAPTER XXVII

Peter was going back to America and still he had not told Harmony he
loved her. It was necessary that he go back. His money had about given
out, and there was no way to get more save by earning it. The drain of
Jimmy's illness, the inevitable expense of the small grave and the tiny
stone Peter had insisted on buying, had made retreat his only course.
True, Le Grande had wished to defray all expenses, but Peter was
inexorable. No money earned as the dancer earned hers should purchase
peaceful rest for the loved little body. And after seeing Peter's eyes
the dancer had not insisted.

A week had seen many changes. Marie was gone. After a conference between
Stewart and Peter that had been decided on. Stewart raised the money
somehow, and Peter saw her off, palpitant and eager, with the pin he had
sent her to Semmering at her throat. She kissed Peter on the cheek in
the station, rather to his embarrassment. From the lowered window, as
the train pulled out, she wav