--well, I'm lying, and you know it. But we have enough, by being
careful, and we want you to have this. It isn't much, but it may help.
Ten Kronen of it I found to-night under my bed, and it may be yours
anyhow.

"Sadie [Sadie was the Big Soprano] keeps saying awful things about our
leaving you here, and she has rather terrified me. You are so beautiful,
Harry,--although you never let us tell you so. And Sadie says you have
a soul and I haven't, and that souls are deadly things to have. I feel
to-night that in urging you to stay I am taking the burden of your soul
on me! Do be careful, Harry. If any one you do not know speaks to you
call a policeman. And be sure you get into a respectable pension. There
are queer ones.

"Sadie and I think that if you can get along on what you get from
home--you said your mother would get insurance, didn't you?--and will
keep this as a sort of fund to take you home if anything should go
wrong--. But perhaps we are needlessly worried. In any case, of course
it's a loan, and you can preserve that magnificent independence of yours
by sending it back when you get to work to make your fortune. And if you
are doubtful at all, just remember that hopeful little mother of yours
who sent you over to get what she had never been able to have for
herself, and who planned this for you from the time you were a kiddy and
she named you Harmony.

"I'm not saying good-bye. I can't.

"SCATCH."

That night, while the Portier and his wife slept under their crimson
feather beds and the crystals of the chandelier in the salon shook in
the draft as if the old Austrian court still danced beneath, Harmony
fought her battle. And a battle it was. Scatchy and the Big Soprano had
not known everything. There had been no insurance on her father's life;
the little mother was penniless. A married sister would care for her,
but what then? Harmony had enough remaining of her letter of credit to
take her home, and she had--the hoard under the pillow. To go back and
teach the violin; or to stay and finish under the master, be presented,
as he had promised her, at a special concert in Vienna, with all the
prestige at home that that would mean, and its resulting possibility of
fame and fortune--which?

She decided to stay. There might be a concert or so, and she could
teach English. The Viennese were crazy about English. Some of the stores
advertised "English Spoken." That would be something to fall back on, a
clerkship