But little Scatchett was not interested in Austrian cigarettes with a government monopoly and gilt tips.  She was looking at the ten-kronen piece.

“Where is the other?” she asked in a whisper.

“In my powder-box.”

Little Scatchett lifted the china lid and dropped the tiny gold-piece.

“Every little bit,” she said flippantly, but still in a whisper, “added to what she’s got, makes just a little bit more.”

“Have you thought of a place to leave it for her?  If Rosa finds it, it’s good-bye.  Heaven knows it was hard enough to get together, without losing it now.  I’ll have to jump overboard and swim ashore at New York—­I haven’t even a dollar for tips.”

“New York!” said little Scatchett with her eyes glowing.  “If Henry meets me I know he will—­”

“Tut!” The Big Soprano got up cumbrously and stood looking down.  “You and your Henry!  Scatchy, child, has it occurred to your maudlin young mind that money isn’t the only thing Harmony is going to need?  She’s going to be alone—­and this is a bad town to be alone in.  And she is not like us.  You have your Henry.  I’m a beefy person who has a stomach, and I’m thankful for it.  But she is different—­she’s got the thing that you are as well without, the thing that my lack of is sending me back to fight in a church choir instead of grand opera.”

Little Scatchett was rather puzzled.

“Temperament?” she asked.  It had always been accepted in the little colony that Harmony was a real musician, a star in their lesser firmament.

The Big Soprano sniffed.

“If you like,” she said.  “Soul is a better word.  Only the rich ought to have souls, Scatchy, dear.”

This was over the younger girl’s head, and anyhow Harmony was coming down the hall.

“I thought, under her pillow,” she whispered.  “She’ll find it—­”

Harmony came in, to find the Big Soprano heating a curler in the flame of a candle.

CHAPTER II

Harmony found the little hoard under her pillow that night when, having seen Scatch and the Big Soprano off at the station, she had come back alone to the apartment on the Siebensternstrasse.  The trunks were gone now.  Only the concerto score still lay on the piano, where little Scatchett, mentally on the dock at New York with Henry’s arms about her, had forgotten it.  The candles in the great chandelier had died in tears of paraffin that spattered the floor beneath.  One or two of the sockets were still smoking, and the sharp odor of burning wickends filled the room.

Harmony had come through the garden quickly.  She had had an uneasy sense of being followed, and the garden, with its moaning trees and slamming gate and the great dark house in the background, was a forbidding place at best.  She had rung the bell and had stood, her back against the door, eyes and ears strained in the darkness.  She had fancied that a figure had stopped outside the gate and stood looking in, but the next moment the gate had swung to and the Portier was fumbling at the lock behind her.