It was when the three men who had conducted the search
had finished, when the boxes of ammunition had been
gathered in the hall, and the chattering sewing-girls
had gone back to work, that Harmony, on her way to
her dismantled room, passed through the upper passage.
She glanced down the staircase where little Georgiev
had so manfully descended.
“I carry always in my heart your image.
Always so long as I live.”
The clatter of soldiers on their way down to the street
came to her ears; the soft cooing of the pigeons,
the whirr of sewing-machines from the workroom.
The incident was closed, except for the heap of ammunition
boxes on the landing, guarded by an impassive soldier.
Harmony glanced at him. He was eying her steadily,
thumbs in, heels in, toes out, chest out. Harmony
put her hand to her heart.
“You!” she said.
The conversation of a sentry, save on a holiday is,
“Yea, yea,” and “Nay, nay.”
“Yes, Fraulein.”
Harmony put her hands together, a little gesture of
appeal, infinitely touching.
“You will not say that you have found, have
seen me?”
“No, Fraulein.”
It was in Harmony’s mind to ask all her hungry
heart craved to learn—of Peter, of Jimmy,
of the Portier, of anything that belonged to the old
life in the Siebensternstrasse. But there was
no time. The sentry’s impassive face became
rigid; he looked through her, not at her. Harmony
turned.
The man in the green hat was coming up the staircase.
There was no further chance to question. The
sentry was set to carrying the boxes down the staircase.
Full morning now, with the winter sun shining on the
beggars in the market, on the crowds in the parks,
on the flower sellers in the Stephansplatz; shining
on Harmony’s golden head as she bent over a
bit of chiffon, on the old milkwoman carrying up the
whitewashed staircase her heavy cans of milk; on the
carrier pigeon winging its way to the south; beating
in through bars to the exalted face of Herr Georgiev;
resting on Peter’s drooping shoulders, on the
neglected mice and the wooden soldier, on the closed
eyes of a sick child—the worshiped sun,
peering forth—the golden window of the
East.
Jimmy was dying. Peter, fighting hard, was beaten
at last. All through the night he had felt it;
during the hours before the dawn there had been times
when the small pulse wavered, flickered, almost ceased.
With the daylight there had been a trifle of recovery,
enough for a bit of hope, enough to make harder Peter’s
acceptance of the inevitable.
The boy was very happy, quite content and comfortable.
When he opened his eyes he smiled at Peter, and Peter,
gray of face, smiled back. Peter died many deaths
that night.
At daylight Jimmy fell into a sleep that was really
stupor. Marie, creeping to the door in the faint
dawn, found the boy apparently asleep and Peter on
his knees beside the bed. He raised his head
at her footstep and the girl was startled at the suffering
in his face. He motioned her back.
