Peter Byrne was entirely untroubled as to the wisdom of the course he had laid out for himself.  He followed no consecutive line of thought as he dressed.  When he was not smoking he was whistling, and when he was doing neither, and the needle proved refractory in his cold fingers, he was swearing to himself.  For there was no fire in the room.  The materials for a fire were there, and a white tile stove, as cozy as an obelisk in a cemetery, stood in the corner.  But fires are expensive, and hardly necessary when one sleeps with all one’s windows open—­one window, to be exact, the room being very small—­and spends most of the day in a warm and comfortable shambles called a hospital.

To tell the truth he was not thinking of Harmony at all, except subconsciously, as instance the button.  He was going over, step by step, the technic of an operation he had seen that afternoon, weighing, considering, even criticizing.  His conclusion, reached as he brushed back his hair and put away his sewing implements, was somewhat to the effect that he could have done a better piece of work with his eyes shut and his hands tied behind his back; and that if it were not for the wealth of material to work on he’d pack up and go home.  Which brought him back to Harmony and his new responsibility.  He took off the necktie he had absently put on and hunted out a better one.

He was late at supper—­an offense that brought a scowl from the head of the table, 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.