The little Georgiev hardly ate or slept.  Much hammering went on all day in the small room below Harmony’s on the Wollbadgasse.  At night, when the man in the green velours hat took a little sleep, mysterious packages were carried down the whitewashed staircase and loaded into wagons waiting below.  Once on her window-sill Harmony found among the pigeons a carrier pigeon with a brass tube fastened to its leg.

On the morning after Harmony’s flight from the garden in the Street of Seven Stars, she received a visit from Georgiev.  She had put in a sleepless night, full of heart-searching.  She charged herself with cowardice in running away from Peter and Jimmy when they needed her, and in going back like a thief the night before.  The conviction that the boy was not so well brought with it additional introspection—­her sacrifice seemed useless, almost childish.  She had fled because two men thought it necessary, in order to save her reputation, to marry her; and she did not wish to marry.  Marriage was fatal to the career she had promised herself, had been promised.  But this career, for which she had given up everything else—­would she find it in the workroom of a dressmaker?

Ah, but there was more to it than that.  Suppose—­how her cheeks burned when she thought of it!—­suppose she had taken Peter at his word and married him?  What about Peter’s career?  Was there any way by which Peter’s poverty for one would be comfort for two?  Was there any reason why Peter, with his splendid ability, should settle down to the hack-work of general practice, the very slough out of which he had so painfully climbed?

Either of two things—­go back to Peter, but not to marry him, or stay where she was.  How she longed to go back only Harmony knew.  There in the little room, with only the pigeons to see, she held out her arms longingly.  “Peter!” she said.  “Peter, dear!”

She decided, of course, to stay where she was, a burden to no one.  The instinct of the young girl to preserve her good name at any cost outweighed the vision of Peter at the window, haggard and tired, looking out.  It was Harmony’s chance, perhaps, to do a big thing; to prove herself bigger than her fears, stronger than convention.  But she was young, bewildered, afraid.  And there was this element, stronger than any of the others—­Peter had never told her he loved her.  To go back, throwing herself again on his mercy, was unthinkable.  On his love—­that was different.  But what if he did not love her?  He had been good to her; but then Peter was good to every one.

There was something else.  If the boy was worse what about his mother?  Whatever she was or had been, she was his mother.  Suppose he were to die and his mother not see him?  Harmony’s sense of fairness rebelled.  In the small community at home mother was sacred, her claims insistent.

It was very early, hardly more than dawn.  The pigeons cooed on the sill; over the ridge of the church roof, across, a luminous strip foretold the sun.  An oxcart, laden with vegetables for the market, lumbered along the streets.  Puzzled and unhappy, Harmony rose and lighted her fire, drew on her slippers and the faded silk kimono with the pink butterflies.