, a scowl that he met with a cheerful smile. Harmony was
already in her place. Seated between a little Bulgarian and a Jewish
student from Galicia, she was almost immediately struggling in a sea of
language, into which she struck out now and then tentatively, only to
be again submerged. Byrne had bowed to her conventionally, even coldly,
aware of the sharp eyes and tongues round the table, but Harmony did
not understand. She had expected moral support from his presence, and
failing that she sank back into the loneliness and depression of the
day. Her bright color faded; her eyes looked tragic and rather aloof.
She ate almost nothing, and left the table before the others had
finished.

What curious little dramas of the table are played under unseeing eyes!
What small tragedies begin with the soup and end with dessert! What
heartaches with a salad! Small tragedies of averted eyes, looking
away from appealing ones; lips that tremble with wretchedness nibbling
daintily at a morsel; smiles that sear; foolish bits of talk that mean
nothing except to one, and to that one everything! Harmony, freezing at
Peter's formal bow and gazing obstinately ahead during the rest of the
meal, or no nearer Peter than the red-paper roses, and Peter, showering
the little Bulgarian next to her with detestable German in the hope of a
glance. And over all the odor of cabbage salad, and the "Nicht Rauchen"
sign, and an acrimonious discussion on eugenics between an American
woman doctor named Gates and a German matron who had had fifteen
children, and who reduced every general statement to a personal insult.

Peter followed Harmony as soon as he dared. Her door was closed, and she
was playing very softly, so as to disturb no one. Defiantly, too, had he
only known it, her small chin up and her color high again; playing the
"Humoresque," of all things, in the hope, of course, that he would
hear it and guess from her choice the wild merriment of her mood. Peter
rapped once or twice, but obtained no answer, save that the "Humoresque"
rose a bit higher; and, Dr. Gates coming along the hall just then, he
was forced to light a cigarette to cover his pausing.

Dr. Gates, however, was not suspicious. She was a smallish woman of
forty or thereabout, with keen eyes behind glasses and a masculine
disregard of clothes, and she paused by Byrne to let him help her into
her ulster.

"New girl, eh?" she said, with a birdlike nod toward the door. "Very
gay, isn'