Anna held the paper out to Peter and sat down.  Her nervous strength seemed to have deserted her.  All at once she was a stricken, elderly woman, with hope wiped out of her face and something nearer resentment than grief in its place.

“It has come, Peter,” she said dully.  “I always knew it couldn’t last.  They’ve always hung about my neck, and now—­”

“Do you think you must go?  Isn’t there some way?  If things are so bad you could hardly get there in time, and—­you must think of yourself a little, Anna.”

“I am not thinking of anything else.  Peter, I’m an uncommonly selfish woman, but I—­”

Quite without warning she burst out crying, unlovely, audible weeping that shook her narrow shoulders.  Harmony heard the sound and joined them.  After a look at Anna she sat down beside her and put a white arm over her shoulders.  She did not try to speak.  Anna’s noisy grief subsided as suddenly as it came.  She patted Harmony’s hand in mute acknowledgment and dried her eyes.

“I’m not grieving, child,” she said; “I’m only realizing what a selfish old maid I am.  I’m crying because I’m a disappointment to myself.  Harry, I’m going back to America.”

And that, after hours of discussion, was where they ended.  Anna must go at once.  Peter must keep the apartment, having Jimmy to look after and to hide.  What was a frightful dilemma to him and to Harmony Anna took rather lightly.

“You’ll find some one else to take my place,” she said.  “If I had a day I could find a dozen.”

“And in the interval?” Harmony asked, without looking at Peter.

“The interval!  Tut!  Peter is your brother, to all intents and purposes.  And if you are thinking of scandal-mongers, who will know?”

Having determined to go, no arguments moved Anna, nor could either of the two think of anything to urge beyond a situation she refused to see, or rather a situation she refused to acknowledge.  She was not as comfortable as she pretended.  During all that long night, while snow sifted down into the ugly yard and made it beautiful, while Jimmy slept and the white mice played, while Harmony tossed and tried to sleep and Peter sat in his cold room and smoked his pipe, Anna packed her untidy belongings and added a name now and then to a list that was meant for Peter, a list of possible substitutes for herself in the little household.

She left early the next morning, a grim little person who bent over the sleeping boy hungrily, and insisted on carrying her own bag down the stairs.  Harmony did not go to the station, but stayed at home, pale and silent, hovering around against Jimmy’s awakening and struggling against a feeling of panic.  Not that she feared Peter or herself.  But she was conventional; shielded girls are accustomed to lean for a certain support on the proprieties, as bridgeplayers depend on rules.

Peter came back to breakfast, but ate little.  Harmony did not even sit down, but drank her cup of coffee standing, looking down at the snow below.  Jimmy still slept.