“It has not made me happy.”

Perhaps nothing else she could have said would have been so effectual.  Love demands reciprocation; he could read no passion in her voice.  He knew then that he had left her unstirred.  He dropped his outstretched arms.

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to do it.”

“I would rather not talk about it, please.”

The banging of a door far off told them that Anna Gates had arrived and was taking off her galoshes in the entry.  Peter drew a long breath, and, after his habit, shook himself.

“Very well, we’ll not talk of it.  But, for Heaven’s sake, Harmony, don’t avoid me.  I’m not a cad.  I’ll let you alone.”

There was only time for a glance of understanding between them, of promise from Peter, of acceptance from the girl.  When Anna Gates entered the kitchen she found Harmony peeling potatoes and Peter filling up an already overfed stove.

That night, during that darkest hour before the dawn when the thrifty city fathers of the old town had shut off the street lights because two hours later the sun would rise and furnish light that cost the taxpayers nothing, the Portier’s wife awakened.

The room was very silent, too silent.  On those rare occasions when the Portier’s wife awakened in the night and heard the twin clocks of the Votivkirche strike three, and listened, perhaps, while the delicatessen seller ambled home from the Schubert Society, singing beerily as he ambled, she was wont to hear from the bed beside hers the rhythmic respiration that told her how safe from Schubert Societies and such like evils was her lord.  There was no sound at all.

The Portier’s wife raised herself on her elbow and reached over.  Owing to the width of the table that stood between the beds and to a sweeping that day which had left the beds far apart she met nothing but empty air.  Words had small effect on the Portier, who slept fathoms deep in unconsciousness.  Also she did not wish to get up—­the floor was cold and a wind blowing.  Could she not hear it and the creaking of the deer across the street, as it swung on its hook?

The wife of the Portier was a person of resource.  She took the iron candlestick from the table and flung it into the darkness at the Portier’s pillow.  No startled yell followed.

Suspicion thus confirmed, the Portier’s wife forgot the cold floor and the wind, and barefoot felt her way into the hall.

Suspicion was doubly confirmed.  The chain was off the door; it even stood open an inch or two.

Armed with a second candlestick she stationed herself inside the door and waited.  The stone floor was icy, but the fury of a woman scorned kept her warm.  The Votivkirche struck one, two, three quarters of an hour.  The candlestick in her hand changed from iron to ice, from ice to red-hot fire.  Still the Portier had not come back and the door chain swung in the wind.

At four o’clock she retired to the bedroom again.  Indignation had changed to fear, coupled with sneezing.  Surely even the Schubert Society—­What was that?