helplessly against
barriers of language, of strange customs, of stolidity that were not far
from absolute cruelty.

She held to her determination, however, at first with hope, then, as
the pension in advance and the lessons at fifty Kronen--also in
advance,--went on, recklessly. She played marvelously those days, crying
out through her violin the despair she had sealed her lips against. On
Thursday, playing for the master, she turned to find him flourishing
his handkerchief, and went home in a sort of daze, incredulous that she
could have moved him to tears.

The little Bulgarian was frankly her slave now. He had given up the
coffee-houses that he might spend that hour near her, on the chance of
seeing her or, failing that, of hearing her play. At night in the Cafe
Hungaria he sat for hours at a time, his elbows on the table, a bottle
of native wine before him, and dreamed of her. He was very fat, the
little Georgiev, very swarthy, very pathetic. The Balkan kettle was
simmering in those days, and he had been set to watch the fire. But
instead he had kindled a flame of his own, and was feeding it with stray
words, odd glances, a bit of music, the curve of a woman's hair behind
her ears. For reports he wrote verses in modern Greek, and through one
of those inadvertences which make tragedy, the Minister of War down in
troubled Bulgaria once received between the pages of a report in cipher
on the fortifications of the Danube a verse in fervid hexameter that
made even that grim official smile.

Harmony was quite unconscious. She went on her way methodically: so
many hours of work, so many lessons at fifty Kronen, so many afternoons
searching for something to do, making rounds of shops where her English
might be valuable.

And after a few weeks Peter Byrne found time to help. After one
experience, when Harmony left a shop with flaming face and tears in her
eyes, he had thought it best to go with her. The first interview,
under Peter's grim eyes, was a failure. The shopkeeper was obviously
suspicious of Peter. After that, whenever he could escape from clinics,
Peter went along, but stayed outside, smoking his eternal cigarette, and
keeping a watchful eye on things inside the shop.

Only once was he needed. At that time, suspecting that all was not
well, from the girl's eyes and the leer on the shopkeeper's face, he
had opened the door in time to hear enough. He had lifted the proprietor
bodily and flung him with a crash