e back
to America with me--one coffee-house, one dozen military men for local
color, one dozen students ditto, and one proprietor's wife to sit in the
cage and shortchange the unsuspecting. I'll grow wealthy."

"But what about the medical practice?"

He leaned over toward her; his dark-gray eyes fulfilled the humorous
promise of his mouth.

"Why, it will work out perfectly," he said whimsically. "The great
American public will eat cinnamon cakes and drink coffee until the
feeble American nervous system will be shattered. I shall have an office
across the street!"

After that, having seen how tired she looked, he forbade conversation
until she had had her coffee. She ate the cakes, too, and he watched her
with comfortable satisfaction.

"Nod your head but don't speak," he said. "Remember, I am prescribing,
and there's to be no conversation until the coffee is down. Shall I or
shall I not open the cheese?"

But Harmony did not wish the cheese, and so signified. Something
inherently delicate in the unknown kept him from more than an occasional
swift glance at her. He read aloud, as she ate, bits of news from the
paper, pausing to sip his own coffee and to cast an eye over the crowded
room. Here and there an officer, gazing with too open admiration on
Harmony's lovely face, found himself fixed by a pair of steel-gray eyes
that were anything but humorous at that instant, and thought best to
shift his gaze.

The coffee finished, the girl began to gather up her wraps. But the
unknown protested.

"The function of a coffee-house," he explained gravely, "is twofold.
Coffee is only the first half. The second half is conversation."

"I converse very badly."

"So do I. Suppose we talk about ourselves. We are sure to do that well.
Shall I commence?"

Harmony was in no mood to protest. Having swallowed coffee, why choke
over conversation? Besides, she was very comfortable. It was warm
there, with the heater at her back; better than the little room with the
sagging bed and the doors covered with wall paper. Her feet had stopped
aching, too, She could have sat there for hours. And--why evade it?--she
was interested. This whimsical and respectful young man with his absurd
talk and his shabby clothes had roused her curiosity.

"Please," she assented.

"Then, first of all, my name. I'm getting that over early, because it
isn't much, as names go. Peter Byrne it is. Don't shudder."

"Certainly I'm not shuddering."

"I ha