“Nod your head but don’t speak,” he said.  “Remember, I am prescribing, and there’s to be no conversation until the coffee is down.  Shall I or shall I not open the cheese?”

But Harmony did not wish the cheese, and so signified.  Something inherently delicate in the unknown kept him from more than an occasional swift glance at her.  He read aloud, as she ate, bits of news from the paper, pausing to sip his own coffee and to cast an eye over the crowded room.  Here and there an officer, gazing with too open admiration on Harmony’s lovely face, found himself fixed by a pair of steel-gray eyes that were anything but humorous at that instant, and thought best to shift his gaze.

The coffee finished, the girl began to gather up her wraps.  But the unknown protested.

“The function of a coffee-house,” he explained gravely, “is twofold.  Coffee is only the first half.  The second half is conversation.”

“I converse very badly.”

“So do I. Suppose we talk about ourselves.  We are sure to do that well.  Shall I commence?”

Harmony was in no mood to protest.  Having swallowed coffee, why choke over conversation?  Besides, she was very comfortable.  It was warm there, with the heater at her back; better than the little room with the sagging bed and the doors covered with wall paper.  Her feet had stopped aching, too, She could have sat there for hours.  And—­why evade it?—­she was interested.  This whimsical and respectful young man with his absurd talk and his shabby clothes had roused her curiosity.

“Please,” she assented.

“Then, first of all, my name.  I’m getting that over early, because it isn’t much, as names go.  Peter Byrne it is.  Don’t shudder.”

“Certainly I’m not shuddering.”

“I have another name, put in by my Irish father to conciliate a German uncle of my mother’s.  Augustus!  It’s rather a mess.  What shall I put on my professional brassplate?  If I put P. Augustus Byrne nobody’s fooled.  They know my wretched first name is Peter.”

“Or Patrick.”

“I rather like Patrick—­if I thought it might pass as Patrick!  Patrick has possibilities.  The diminutive is Pat, and that’s not bad.  But Peter!”

“Do you know,” Harmony confessed half shyly, “I like Peter as a name.”

“Peter it shall be, then.  I go down to posterity and fame as Peter Byrne.  The rest doesn’t amount to much, but I want you to know it, since you have been good enough to accept me on faith.  I’m here alone, from a little town in eastern Ohio; worked my way through a coeducational college in the West and escaped unmarried; did two years in a drygoods store until, by saving and working in my vacations, I got through medical college and tried general practice.  Didn’t like it—­always wanted to do surgery.  A little legacy from the German uncle, trying to atone for the ‘Augustus,’ gave me enough money to come here.  I’ve got a chance with the Days—­surgeons, you know—­when I go back, if I can hang on long enough.  That’s all.  Here’s a traveler’s check with my name on it, to vouch for the truth of this thrilling narrative.  Gaze on it with awe; there are only a few of them left!”