“We should be home too quickly,” she observed naively.  “And we have so much to say about me.  Now I thought that perhaps by giving English lessons in the afternoon and working all morning at my music—­”

And so on and on, square after square, with Peter listening gravely, his head bent.  And square after square it was borne in on him what a precarious future stretched before this girl beside him, how very slender her resources, how more than dubious the outcome.

Poverty, which had only stimulated Peter Byrne in the past, ate deep into his soul that night.

Epochmaking as the walk had been, seeing that it had reestablished a friendship and made a working basis for future comradely relations, they were back at the corner of the Alserstrasse before ten.  As they turned in at the little street, a man, lurching somewhat, almost collided with Harmony.  He was a short, heavy-set person with a carefully curled mustache, and he was singing, not loudly, but with all his maudlin heart in his voice, the barcarolle from the “Tales” of Hoffmann.  He saw Harmony, and still singing planted himself in her path.  When Byrne would have pushed him aside Harmony caught his arm.

“It is only the Portier from the lodge,” she said.

The Portier, having come to rest on a throaty and rather wavering note, stood before Harmony, bowing.

“The Fraulein has gone and I am very sad,” he said thickly.  “There is no more music, and Rosa has run away with a soldier from Salzburg who has only one lung.”

“But think!” Harmony said in German.  “No more practicing in the early dawn, no young ladies bringing mud into your newscrubbed hall!  It is better, is it not?  All day you may rest and smoke!”

Byrne led Harmony past the drunken Portier, who turned with caution and bowed after them.

“Gute Nacht,” he called.  “Kuss die Hand, Fraulein.  Four rooms and the salon and a bath of the finest.”

As they went up the Hirschengasse they could hear him pursuing his unsteady way down the street and singing lustily.  At the door of the Pension Schwarz Harmony paused.

“Do you mind if I ask one question?”

“You honor me, madam.”

“Then—­what is the name of the girl back home?”

Peter Byrne was suddenly conscious of a complete void as to feminine names.  He offered, in a sort of panic, the first one he recalled:—­

“Emma.”

“Emma!  What a nice, old-fashioned name!” But there was a touch of disappointment in her voice.

Harmony had a lesson the next day.  She was a favorite pupil with the master.  Out of so much musical chaff he winnowed only now and then a grain of real ability.  And Harmony had that.  Scatchy and the Big Soprano had been right—­she had the real thing.

The short half-hour lesson had a way with Harmony of lengthening itself to an hour or more, much to the disgust of the lady secretary in the anteroom.  On that Monday Harmony had pleased the old man to one of his rare enthusiasms.