ry to save us from ourselves."

Unluckily for Harmony, one of Anna's specious arguments must pop into
her head at that instant and demand expression.

"People are living their own lives these days, Mrs. Boyer; old standards
have gone. It is what one's conscience condemns that is wrong, isn't
it? Not merely breaking laws that were made to fit the average, not the
exception."

Anna! Anna!

Mrs. Boyer flung up her hands.

"You are impossible!" she snapped. "After all, I believe it is Peter who
needs protection! I shall speak to him."

She started down the staircase, but turned for a parting volley.

"And just a word of advice: Perhaps the old standards have gone. But if
you really expect to find a respectable woman to chaperon YOU, keep your
views to yourself."

Harmony, a bruised and wounded thing, crept into Jimmy's room and sank
on her knees beside the bed. One small hand lay on the coverlet; she
dared not touch it for fear of waking him--but she laid her cheek close
to it for comfort. When Peter came in, much later, he found the boy wide
awake and Harmony asleep, a crumpled heap beside the bed.

"I think she's been crying," Jimmy whispered. "She's been sobbing in her
sleep. And strike a match, Peter; there may be more mice."

CHAPTER XVIII

Mrs. Boyer, bursting with indignation, went to the Doctors' Club. It was
typical of the way things were going with Peter that Dr. Boyer was not
there, and that the only woman in the clubrooms should be Dr. Jennings.
Young McLean was in the reading room, eating his heart out with jealousy
of Peter, vacillating between the desire to see Harmony that night and
fear lest Peter forbid him the house permanently if he made the attempt.
He had found a picture of the Fraulein Engel, from the opera, in a
magazine, and was sitting with it open before him. Very deeply and
really in love was McLean that afternoon, and the Fraulein Engel and
Harmony were not unlike. The double doors between the reading room and
the reception room adjoining were open. McLean, lost in a rosy future in
which he and Harmony sat together for indefinite periods, with no Peter
to scowl over his books at them, a future in which life was one long
piano-violin duo, with the candles in the chandelier going out one by
one, leaving them at last alone in scented darkness together--McLean
heard nothing until the mention of the Siebensternstrasse roused him.

After that he listened. He heard that Dr. Jennings w