st few days how the boy watched Harmony's every word, every
gesture. And, perhaps, when loneliness and hard work began to tell on
her, McLean's devotion would win its reward. McLean's devotion, with
all that it meant, the lessons again, community of taste, their common
youth! Peter felt old, very tired.

Nevertheless he went that night to the Wollbadgasse. He sent his gray
suit to the Portier's wife to be pressed, and getting out his surgical
case, as he had once before in the Pension Schwarz, he sewed a button
on his overcoat, using the curved needle and the catgut and working with
surgeon's precision. Then, still working very carefully, he trimmed the
edges of graying hair over his ears, trimmed his cuffs, trimmed his best
silk tie, now almost hopeless. He blacked his shoes, and the suit not
coming, he donned his dressing-gown and went into Jimmy's room to feed
the mice. Peter stood a moment beside the smooth white bed with his face
working. The wooden sentry still stood on the bedside table.

It was in Peter's mind to take the mice to Harmony, confess his defeat
and approaching retreat, and ask her to care for them. Then he decided
against this palpable appeal for sympathy, elected to go empty-handed
and discover merely how comfortable she was or was not. When the time
came he would slip out of her life, sending her a letter and leaving
McLean on guard.

Harmony was at home. Peter climbed the dark staircase--where Harmony
had met the little Georgiev, and where he had gone down to his
death--climbed steadily, but without his usual elasticity. The place
appalled him--its gloom, its dinginess, its somber quiet. In the
daylight, with the pigeons on the sills and the morning sunlight
printing the cross of the church steeple on the whitewashed wall, it was
peaceful, cloisterlike, with landings that were crypts. But at night it
was almost terrifying, that staircase.

Harmony was playing. Peter heard her when he reached the upper landing,
playing a sad little strain that gripped his heart. He waited outside
before ringing, heard her begin something determinedly cheerful, falter,
cease altogether. Peter rang.

Harmony herself admitted him. Perhaps--oh, certainly she had expected
him! It would be Peter, of course, to come and see how she was getting
on, how she was housed. She held out her hand and Peter took it. Still
no words, only a half smile from her and no smile at all from Peter, but
his heart in his eyes.

"I ho