her, without
losing it now. I'll have to jump overboard and swim ashore at New
York--I haven't even a dollar for tips."

"New York!" said little Scatchett with her eyes glowing. "If Henry meets
me I know he will--"

"Tut!" The Big Soprano got up cumbrously and stood looking down. "You
and your Henry! Scatchy, child, has it occurred to your maudlin young
mind that money isn't the only thing Harmony is going to need? She's
going to be alone--and this is a bad town to be alone in. And she is not
like us. You have your Henry. I'm a beefy person who has a stomach, and
I'm thankful for it. But she is different--she's got the thing that you
are as well without, the thing that my lack of is sending me back to
fight in a church choir instead of grand opera."

Little Scatchett was rather puzzled.

"Temperament?" she asked. It had always been accepted in the little
colony that Harmony was a real musician, a star in their lesser
firmament.

The Big Soprano sniffed.

"If you like," she said. "Soul is a better word. Only the rich ought to
have souls, Scatchy, dear."

This was over the younger girl's head, and anyhow Harmony was coming
down the hall.

"I thought, under her pillow," she whispered. "She'll find it--"

Harmony came in, to find the Big Soprano heating a curler in the flame
of a candle.

CHAPTER II

Harmony found the little hoard under her pillow that night when, having
seen Scatch and the Big Soprano off at the station, she had come back
alone to the apartment on the Siebensternstrasse. The trunks were
gone now. Only the concerto score still lay on the piano, where little
Scatchett, mentally on the dock at New York with Henry's arms about her,
had forgotten it. The candles in the great chandelier had died in tears
of paraffin that spattered the floor beneath. One or two of the sockets
were still smoking, and the sharp odor of burning wickends filled the
room.

Harmony had come through the garden quickly. She had had an uneasy sense
of being followed, and the garden, with its moaning trees and slamming
gate and the great dark house in the background, was a forbidding place
at best. She had rung the bell and had stood, her back against the door,
eyes and ears strained in the darkness. She had fancied that a figure
had stopped outside the gate and stood looking in, but the next moment
the gate had swung to and the Portier was fumbling at the lock behind
her.

The Portier had put on his trousers over hi