The Portier had put on his trousers over his night garments, and his mustache bandage gave him a sinister expression, rather augmented when he smiled at her.  The Portier liked Harmony in spite of the early morning practicing; she looked like a singer at the opera for whom he cherished a hidden attachment.  The singer had never seen him, but it was for her he wore the mustache bandage.  Perhaps some day—­hopefully!  One must be ready!

The Portier gave Harmony a tiny candle and Harmony held out his tip, the five Hellers of custom.  But the Portier was keen, and Rosa was a niece of his wife and talked more than she should.  He refused the tip with a gesture.

“Bitte, Fraulein!” he said through the bandage.  “It is for me a pleasure to admit you.  And perhaps if the Fraulein is cold, a basin of soup.”

The Portier was not pleasant to the eye.  His nightshirt was open over his hairy chest and his feet were bare to the stone floor.  But to Harmony that lonely night he was beautiful.  She tried to speak and could not but she held out her hand in impulsive gratitude, and the Portier in his best manner bent over and kissed it.  As she reached the curve of the stone staircase, carrying her tiny candle, the Portier was following her with his eyes.  She was very like the girl of the opera.

The clang of the door below and the rattle of the chain were comforting to Harmony’s ears.  From the safety of the darkened salon she peered out into the garden again, but no skulking figure detached itself from the shadows, and the gate remained, for a marvel, closed.

It was when—­having picked up her violin in a very passion of loneliness, only to put it down when she found that the familiar sounds echoed and reechoed sadly through the silent rooms—­it was when she was ready for bed that she found the money under her pillow, and a scrawl from Scatchy, a breathless, apologetic scrawl, little Scatchett having adored her from afar, as the plain adore the beautiful, the mediocre the gifted:—­

Dearest Harry [here a large blot, Scatchy being addicted to blots]:  I am honestly frightened when I think what we are doing.  But, oh, my dear, if you could know how pleased we are with ourselves you’d not deny us this pleasure.  Harry, you have it—­the real thing, you know, whatever it is—­and I haven’t.  None of the rest of us had.  And you must stay.  To go now, just when lessons would mean everything—­well, you must not think of it.  We have scads to take us home, more than we need, both of us, or at least—­well, I’m lying, and you know it.  But we have enough, by being careful, and we want you to have this.  It isn’t much, but it may help.  Ten Kronen of it I found to-night under my bed, and it may be yours anyhow.

“Sadie [Sadie was the Big Soprano] keeps saying awful things about our leaving you here, and she has rather terrified me.  You are so beautiful, Harry,—­although you never let us tell you so.  And Sadie says you have a soul and I haven’t, and that souls are deadly things to have.  I feel to-night that in urging you to stay I am taking the burden of your soul on me!  Do be careful, Harry.  If any one you do not know speaks to you call a policeman.  And be sure you get into a respectable pension.  There are queer ones.