observance from her underling, and one of Olga’s Sunday morning’s indulgences to oversleep and avoid the mass. Olga took the accusation meekly and without reply, being occupied at that moment in standing between Katrina and the extra pats of butter.
“For the lie,” said Katrina calmly, “thou shalt have no butter this morning. There, the Herr Doktor rings for water. Get it, wicked one!”
Katrina turned slowly in the doorway.
“The new Fraulein is American?”
“Ja.”
Katrina shrugged her shoulders.
“Then I shall put more water to heat,” she said resignedly. ” The Americans use much water. God knows it cannot be healthy!”
Olga filled her pitcher from the great copper kettle and stood with it poised in her thin young arms.
“The new Fraulein is very beautiful,” she continued aloud. “Thinkest thou it is the hot water?”
“Is an egg more beautiful for being boiled?” demanded Katrina. “Go, and be less foolish. See, it is not the Herr Doktor who rings, but the new American.”
Olga carried her pitcher to Harmony’s door, and being bidden, entered. The room was frigid and Harmony, at the window in her nightgown, was closing the outer casement. The inner still swung open. Olga, having put down her pitcher, shivered.
“Surely the Fraulein has not slept with open windows?”
“Always with open windows.” Harmony having secured the inner casement, was wrapping herself in the blue silk kimono with the faded butterflies. Merely to look at it made Olga shiver afresh. She shook her head.
“But the air of the night,” she said, “it is full of mists and illnesses! Will you have breakfast now?”
“In ten minutes, after I have bathed.”
Olga having put a match to the stove went back to the kitchen, shaking her head.
“They are strange, the Americans!” she said to latrine. “And if to be lovely one must bathe daily, and sleep with open windows—”
Harmony had slept soundly after all. Her pique at Byrne had passed with the reading of his note, and the sensation of his protection and nearness had been almost physical. In the virginal little apartment in the lodge of Maria Theresa the only masculine presence had been that of the Portier, carrying up coals at ninety Hellers a bucket, or of the accompanist who each alternate day had played for the Big Soprano to practice. And they had felt no deprivation, except for those occasional times when Scatchy developed a reckless wish to see the interior of a dancing-hall or one of the little theaters that opened after the opera.
But, as calmly as though she had never argued alone with a cabman or disputed the bill at the delicatessen shop, Harmony had thrown herself on the protection of this shabby big American whom she had met but once, and, having done so, slept like a baby. Not, of course, that she realized her dependence. She had felt very old and experienced and exceedingly courageous as she put out her light the night before and took a flying leap into the bed. She was still old and experienced, if a trifle less courageous, that Sunday morning.
Promptly in ten minutes Olga brought the breakfast, two rolls, two pats of butter—shades of the sleeping mistress and Katrina the thrifty—and a cup of coffee. On the tray was a bit of paper torn from a notebook:—
“Part of the prescription is an occasional walk in good company. Will you walk with me this afternoon? I would come in person to ask you, but am spending the morning in my bathrobe, while my one remaining American suit is being pressed.
“P. B.”
Harmony got the ink and her pen from her trunk and wrote below:—
“You are very kind to me. Yes, indeed.
“H. W.”
When frequent slamming of doors and steps along the passageway told Harmony that the pension was fully awake, she got out her violin. The idea of work obsessed her. Tomorrow there would be the hunt for something to do to supplement her resources, this afternoon she had rashly promised to walk. The morning, then, must be given up to work. But after all she did little.
For an hour, perhaps, she practiced. The little Bulgarian paused outside her door and listened, rapt, his eyes closed. Peter Byrne, listening while he sorted lecture memoranda at his little table in bathrobe and slippers, absently filed the little note with the others—where he came across it months later—next to a lecture on McBurney’s Point, and spent a sad hour or so over it. Over all the sordid little pension, with its odors of food and stale air, its spotted napery and dusty artificial flowers, the music hovered, and made for the time all things lovely.
In her room across from Harmony’s, Anna Gates was sewing, or preparing to sew. Her hair in a knob, her sleeves rolled up, the room in violent disorder, she was bending over the bed, cutting savagely at a roll of pink flannel. Because she was working with curved surgeon’s scissors, borrowed from Peter, the cut edges were strangely scalloped. Her method as well as her tools was unique. Clearly she was intent on a body garment, for now and then she picked up the flannel and held it to her. Having thus, as one may say, got the line of the thing, she proceeded to cut again, jaw tight set, small veins on her forehead swelling, a small replica of Peter Byrne sewing a button on his coat.
After a time it became clear to her that her method was wrong. She rolled up the flannel viciously and flung it into a corner, and proceeded to her Sunday morning occupation of putting away the garments she had worn during the week, a vast and motley collection.
On the irritability of her mood Harmony’s music had a late but certain effect. She made a toilet, a trifle less casual than usual, seeing that she put on her stays, and rather sheepishly picked up the bundle from the corner. She hunted about for a thimble, being certain she had brought one from home a year before, but failed to find it. And finally, bundle under her arm and smiling, she knocked at Harmony’s door.
