w York. The Big Soprano was very glad to be back and spent two
pages over her chances for concert work.

"... I could have done as well had I stayed at home. If I had had the
money they wanted, to go to Geneva and sing 'Brunnhilde,' it would have
helped a lot. I could have said I'd sung in opera in Europe and at least
have had a hearing at the Met. But I didn't, and I'm back at the church
again and glad to get my old salary. If it's at all possible, stay until
the master has presented you in a concert. He's quite right, you haven't
a chance unless he does. And now I'll quit grumbling.

"Scatchy met her Henry at the dock and looked quite lovely, flushed with
excitement and having been up since dawn curling her hair. He was rather
a disappointment--small and blond, with light blue eyes, and almost
dapper. But oh, my dear, I wouldn't care how pale a man's eyes were if
he looked at me the way Henry looked at her.

"They asked me to luncheon with them, but I knew they wanted to be alone
together, and so I ate a bite or two, all I could swallow for the lump
in my throat, by myself. I was homesick enough in old Wien, but I am
just as homesick now that I am here, for we are really homesick only for
people, not places. And no one really cared whether I came back or not."

Peter had been miserable all day, not with regret for the day before,
but with fear. What if Harmony should decide that the situation was
unpleasant and decide to leave? What if a reckless impulse, recklessly
carried out, were to break up an arrangement that had made a green oasis
of happiness and content for all of them in the desert of their common
despair?

If he had only let her go and apologized! But no, he had had to argue,
to justify himself, to make an idiot of himself generally. He almost
groaned aloud as he opened the gate end crossed the wintry garden.

He need not have feared. Harmony had taken him entirely at his word.
"I am not a beast. I'll let you alone," he had said. She had had a bad
night, as nights go. She had gone through the painful introspection
which, in a thoroughly good girl, always follows such an outburst as
Peter's. Had she said or done anything to make him think--Surely she had
not! Had she been wrong about Peter after all? Surely not again.

While the Portier's wife, waked, as may happen, by an unaccustomed
silence, was standing guard in the hall below, iron candlestick in
hand, Harmony, having read the Litany through in the