“Too late for what?”

“Fraulein, if I may trouble you—­but glance from the window to the street below.  It is of an urgency, or I—­Please, Fraulein!”

Harmony glanced down into the half-light of the street.  Georgiev, behind her, watched her, breathless, expectant.  Harmony drew in her head.

“Only a man in a green hat,” she said.  “And down the street a group of soldiers.”

“Ah!”

The situation dawned on the girl then, at least partially.

“They are coming for you?”

“It is possible.  But there are many soldiers in Vienna.”

“And I with the pigeon—­Oh, it’s too horrible!  Herr Georgiev, stay here in this room.  Lock the door.  Monia will say that it is mine—­”

“Ah no, Fraulein!  It is quite hopeless.  Nor is it a matter of the pigeon.  It is war, Fraulein.  Do not distress yourself.  It is but a matter of—­imprisonment.”

“There must be something I can do,” desperately.  “I hear them below.  Is there no way to the roof, no escape?”

“None, Fraulein.  It was an oversight.  War is not my game; I am a man of peace.  You have been very kind to me, Fraulein.  I thank you.”

“You are not going down!”

“Pardon, but it is better so.  Soldiers they are of the provinces mostly, and not for a lady to confront.”

“They are coming up!”

He listened.  The clank of scabbards against the stone stairs was unmistakable.  The little Georgiev straightened, threw out his chest, turned to descend, faltered, came back a step or two.

His small black eyes were fixed on Harmony’s face.

“Fraulein,” he said huskily, “you are very lovely.  I carry always in my heart your image.  Always so long as I live.  Adieu.”

He drew his heels together, gave a stiff little bow and was gone down the staircase.  Harmony was frightened, stricken.  She collapsed in a heap on the floor of her room, her fingers in her ears.  But she need not have feared.  The little Georgiev made no protest, submitted to the inevitable like a gentleman and a soldier, went out of her life, indeed, as unobtrusively as he had entered it.

The carrier pigeon preened itself comfortably on the edge of the washstand.  Harmony ceased her hysterical crying at last and pondered what was best to do.  Monia was still breakfasting so incredibly brief are great moments.  After a little thought Harmony wrote a tiny message, English, German, and French, and inclosed it in the brass tube.

“The Herr Georgiev has been arrested,” she wrote.  An hour later the carrier rose lazily from the window-sill, flapped its way over the church roof and disappeared, like Georgiev, out of her life.  Grim-visaged war had touched her and passed on.

The incident was not entirely closed, however.  A search of the building followed the capture of the little spy.  Protesting tenants were turned out, beds were dismantled, closets searched, walls sounded for hidden hollows.  In one room on Harmony’s floor was found stored a quantity of ammunition.