She was quite unconscious of McLean’s admiration.  She and Anna put Jimmy to bed.  The tree candles were burned out; Peter was extinguishing the dying remnants when Harmony came back.  McLean was at the piano, thrumming softly.  Peter, turning round suddenly, surprised an expression on the younger man’s face that startled him.

For that one night Harmony had laid aside her mourning, and wore white, soft white, tucked in at the neck, short-sleeved, trailing.  Peter had never seen her in white before.

It was Peter’s way to sit back and listen:  his steady eyes were always alert, good-humored, but he talked very little.  That night he was unusually silent.  He sat in the shadow away from the lamp and watched the two at the piano:  McLean playing a bit of this or that, the girl bending over a string of her violin.  Anna came in and sat down near him.

“The boy is quite fascinated,” she whispered.  “Watch his eyes!”

“He is a nice boy.”  This from Peter, as if he argued with himself.

“As men go!” This was a challenge Peter was usually quick to accept.  That night he only smiled.  “It would be a good thing for her:  his people are wealthy.”

Money, always money!  Peter ground his teeth over his pipestem.  Eminently it would be a good thing for Harmony, this nice boy in his well-made evening clothes, who spoke Harmony’s own language of music, who was almost speechless over her playing, and who looked up at her with eyes in which admiration was not unmixed with adoration.

Peter was restless.  As the music went on he tiptoed out of the room and took to pacing up and down the little corridor.  Each time as he passed the door he tried not to glance in; each time he paused involuntarily.  Jealousy had her will of him that night, jealousy, when he had never acknowledged even to himself how much the girl was to him.

Jimmy was restless.  Usually Harmony’s music put him to sleep; but that night he lay awake, even after Peter had closed all the doors.  Peter came in and sat with him in the dark, going over now and then to cover him, or to give him a drink, or to pick up the cage of mice which Jimmy insisted on having beside him and which constantly slipped off on to the floor.  After a time Peter lighted the night-light, a bit of wick on a cork floating in a saucer of lard oil, and set it on the bedside table.  Then round it he arranged Jimmy’s treasures, the deer antlers, the cage of mice, the box, the wooden sentry.  The boy fell asleep.  Peter sat in the room, his dead pipe in his teeth, and thought of many things.

It was very late when young McLean left.  The two had played until they stopped for very weariness.  Anna had yawned herself off to bed.  From Jimmy’s room Peter could hear the soft hum of their voices.

“You have been awfully good to me,” McLean said as he finally rose to go.  “I—­I want you to know that I’ll never forget this evening, never.”