“Marie all right?”

“Fine.  Said if I saw you to ask you to supper some night this week.”

“Thanks.  Does it matter which night?”

“Any but Thursday.  We’re hearing ‘La Boheme.’”

“Say Friday, then.”

Byrne’s tone lacked enthusiasm, but Stewart in his after-dinner mood failed to notice it.

“Have you thought any more about our conversation of the other night?”

“What was that?”

Stewart poked him playfully in the ribs.

“Wake up, Byrne!” he said.  “You remember well enough.  Neither the Days nor any one else is going to have the benefit of your assistance if you go on living the way you have been.  I was at Schwarz’s.  It is the double drain there that tells on one—­eating little and being eaten much.  Those old walls are full of vermin.  Why don’t you take our apartment?”

“Yours?”

“Yes, for a couple of months.  I’m through with Schleich and Breidau can’t take me for two months.  It’s Marie’s off season and we’re going to Semmering for the winter sports.  We’re ahead enough to take a holiday.  And if you want the flat for the same amount you are spending now, or less, you can have it, and—­a home, old man.”

Byrne was irritated, the more so that he realized that the offer tempted him.  To his resentment was added a contempt of himself.

“Thanks,” he said.  “I think not.”

“Oh, all right.”  Stewart was rather offended.  “I can’t do more than give you a chance.”

They separated shortly after and Byrne went on alone.  The snow of Sunday had turned to a fine rain which had lasted all of Monday and Tuesday.  The sidewalks were slimy; wagons slid in the ooze of the streets; and the smoke from the little stoves in the street-cars followed them in depressing horizontal clouds.  Cabmen sat and smoked in the interior of musty cabs.  The women hod-carriers on a new building steamed like horses as they worked.

Byrne walked along, his head thrust down into his up-turned collar; moisture gathered on his face like dew, condensed rather than precipitated.  And as he walked there came before him a vision of the little flat on the Hochgasse, with the lamp on the table, and the general air of warmth and cheer, and a figure presiding over the brick stove in the kitchen.  Byrne shook himself like a great dog and turned in at the gate of the hospital.  He was thoroughly ashamed of himself.

That week was full of disappointments for Harmony.  Wherever she turned she faced a wall of indifference or, what was worse, an interest that frightened her.  Like a bird in a cage she beat helplessly against barriers of language, of strange customs, of stolidity that were not far from absolute cruelty.

She held to her determination, however, at first with hope, then, as the pension in advance and the lessons at fifty Kronen—­also in advance,—­went on, recklessly.  She played marvelously those days, crying out through her violin the despair she had sealed her lips against.  On Thursday, playing for the master, she turned to find him flourishing his handkerchief, and went home in a sort of daze, incredulous that she could have moved him to tears.