At the lodge the doors stood wide, and a vigorous sound of scrubbing showed that the Portier’s wife was preparing for the inspection of possible new tenants.  She was cleaning down the stairs by the light of a candle, and the steam of the hot water on the cold marble invested her like an aura.  She stood aside to let them pass, and then went cumbrously down the stairs to where, a fork in one hand and a pipe in the other, the Portier was frying chops for the evening meal.

“What have I said?” she demanded from the doorway.  “Your angel is here.”

“So!”

“She with whom you sing, old cracked voice!  Whose money you refuse, because she reminds you of your opera singer!  She is again here, and with a man!”

“It is the way of the young and beautiful—­there is always a man,” said the Portier, turning a chop.

His wife wiped her steaming hands on her apron and turned away, exasperated.

“It is the same man whom I last night saw at the gate,” she threw back over her shoulder.  “I knew it from the first; but you, great booby, can see nothing but red lips.  Bah!”

Upstairs in the salon of Maria Theresa, lighted by one candle and freezing cold, in a stiff chair under the great chandelier Peter Byrne sat and waited and blew on his fingers.  Down below, in the Street of Seven Stars, the arc lights swung in the wind.

CHAPTER IV

The supper that evening was even unusually bad.  Frau Schwarz, much crimped and clad in frayed black satin, presided at the head of the long table.  There were few, almost no Americans, the Americans flocking to good food at reckless prices in more fashionable pensions; to the Frau Gallitzenstein’s, for instance, in the Kochgasse, where there was to be had real beefsteak, where turkeys were served at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and where, were one so minded, one might revel in whipped cream.

The Pension Schwarz, however, was not without adornment.  In the center of the table was a large bunch of red cotton roses with wire stems and green paper leaves, and over the side-table, with its luxury of compote in tall glass dishes and its wealth of small hard cakes, there hung a framed motto which said, “Nicht Rauchen,” “No Smoking,”—­and which looked suspiciously as if it had once adorned a compartment of a railroad train.

Peter Byrne was early in the dining-room.  He had made, for him, a careful toilet, which consisted of a shave and clean linen.  But he had gone further:  He had discovered, for the first time in the three months of its defection, a button missing from his coat, and had set about to replace it.  He had cut a button from another coat, by the easy method of amputating it with a surgical bistoury, and had sewed it in its new position with a curved surgical needle and a few inches of sterilized catgut.  The operation was slow and painful, and accomplished only with the aid of two cigarettes and an artery clip.  When it was over he tied the ends in a surgeon’s knot underneath and stood back to consider the result.  It seemed neat enough, but conspicuous.  After a moment or two of troubled thought he blacked the white catgut with a dot of ink and went on his way rejoicing.