Anna, argumentative and reckless, talked on.  She tore away, in her resentment, every theory of existence the girl had ever known, and offered her instead an incredible liberty in the name of the freedom of the individual.  Harmony found all her foundations of living shaken, and though refusing to accept Anna’s theories, found her faith in her own weakened.  She sat back, pale and silent, listening, while Anna built up out of her discontent a new heaven and a new earth, with liberty written high in its firmament.

When her reckless mood had passed Anna was regretful enough at the girl’s stricken face.

“I’m a fool!” she said contritely.  “If Peter had been here he’d have throttled me.  I deserve it.  I’m a theorist, pure and simple, and theorists are the anarchists of society.  There’s only one comfort about us—­we never live up to our convictions.  Now forget all this rot I’ve been talking.”

Peter brought up the mail that afternoon, a Christmas card or two for Anna, depressingly early, and a letter from the Big Soprano for Harmony from New York.  The Big Soprano was very glad to be back and spent two pages over her chances for concert work.

“. . .  I could have done as well had I stayed at home.  If I had had the money they wanted, to go to Geneva and sing ‘Brunnhilde,’ it would have helped a lot.  I could have said I’d sung in opera in Europe and at least have had a hearing at the Met.  But I didn’t, and I’m back at the church again and glad to get my old salary.  If it’s at all possible, stay until the master has presented you in a concert.  He’s quite right, you haven’t a chance unless he does.  And now I’ll quit grumbling.

“Scatchy met her Henry at the dock and looked quite lovely, flushed with excitement and having been up since dawn curling her hair.  He was rather a disappointment—­small and blond, with light blue eyes, and almost dapper.  But oh, my dear, I wouldn’t care how pale a man’s eyes were if he looked at me the way Henry looked at her.

“They asked me to luncheon with them, but I knew they wanted to be alone together, and so I ate a bite or two, all I could swallow for the lump in my throat, by myself.  I was homesick enough in old Wien, but I am just as homesick now that I am here, for we are really homesick only for people, not places.  And no one really cared whether I came back or not.”

Peter had been miserable all day, not with regret for the day before, but with fear.  What if Harmony should decide that the situation was unpleasant and decide to leave?  What if a reckless impulse, recklessly carried out, were to break up an arrangement that had made a green oasis of happiness and content for all of them in the desert of their common despair?

If he had only let her go and apologized!  But no, he had had to argue, to justify himself, to make an idiot of himself generally.  He almost groaned aloud as he opened the gate end crossed the wintry garden.