He had taken to making a daily round, to the master’s, to the Frau Professor Bergmeister’s, along the Graben and the Karntnerstrasse, ending up at the Doctors’ Club in the faint hope of a letter.  Wrath still smouldered deep in Peter; he would not enter a room at the club if Mrs. Boyer sat within.  He had had a long hour with Dr. Jennings, and left that cheerful person writhing in abasement.  And he had held a stormy interview with the Frau Schwarz, which left her humble for a week, and exceedingly nervous, being of the impression from Peter’s manner that in the event of Harmony not turning up an American gunboat would sail up the right arm of the Danube and bombard the Pension Schwarz.

Schonbrunn having failed them, McLean and, Peter went back to the city in the street-car, neither one saying much.  Even McLean’s elasticity was deserting him.  His eyes, from much peering into crowds, had taken on a strained, concentrated look.

Peter was shabbier than ever beside the other man’s ultrafashionable dress.  He sat, bent forward, his long arms dangling between his knees, his head down.  Their common trouble had drawn the two together, or had drawn McLean close to Peter, as if he recognized that there were degrees in grief and that Peter had received almost a death-wound.  His old rage at Peter had died.  Harmony’s flight had proved the situation as no amount of protestation would have done.  The thing now was to find the girl; then he and Peter would start even, and the battle to the best man.

They had the car almost to themselves.  Peter had not spoken since he sat down.  McLean was busy over a notebook, in which he jotted down from day to day such details of their search as might be worth keeping.  Now and then he glanced at Peter as if he wished to say something, hesitated, fell to work again over the notebook.  Finally he ventured.

“How’s the boy?”

“Not so well to-day.  I’m having a couple of men in to see him to-night.  He doesn’t sleep.”

“Do you sleep?”

“Not much.  He’s on my mind, of course.”

That and other things, Peter.

“Don’t you think—­wouldn’t it be better to have a nurse.  You can’t go like this all day and be up all night, you know.  And Marie has him most of the day.”  McLean, of course, had known Marie before.  “The boy ought to have a nurse, I think.”

“He doesn’t move without my hearing him.”

“That’s an argument for me.  Do you want to get sick?”

Peter turned a white face toward McLean, a face in which exasperation struggled with fatigue.

“Good Lord, boy,” he rasped, “don’t you suppose I’d have a nurse if I could afford it?”

“Would you let me help?  I’d like to do something.  I’m a useless cub in a sick-room, but I could do that.  Who’s the woman he liked in the hospital?”

“Nurse Elisabet.  I don’t know, Mac.  There’s no reason why I shouldn’t let you help, I suppose.  It hurts, of course, but—­if he would be happier—­”