“I’ll ask Peter.”

Harmony had a half-hysterical moment; then: 

“Wouldn’t it be better,” she asked, “to keep anything of that sort a secret?  And to surprise Peter?”

The boy loved a secret.  He played with it in lieu of other occupation.  His uncertain future was sown thick with secrets that would never flower into reality.  Thus Peter had shamelessly promised him a visit to the circus when he was able to go, Harmony not to be told until the tickets were bought.  Anna had similarly promised to send him from America a pitcher’s glove and a baseball bat.  To this list of futurities he now added Harmony’s baby.

Harmony brought in her violin and played softly to him, not to disturb the sleeping mice.  She sang, too, a verse that the Big Soprano had been fond of and that Jimmy loved.  Not much of a voice was Harmony’s, but sweet and low and very true, as became her violinist’s ear.

  “Ah, well!  For us all some sweet hope lies
   Deeply buried from human eyes,”

she sang, her clear eyes luminous.

  “And in the hereafter, angels may
   Roll the stone from its grave away!”

Mrs. Boyer mounted the stairs.  She was in a very bad humor.  She had snagged her skirt on a nail in the old gate, and although that very morning she had detested the suit, her round of shopping had again endeared it to her.  She told the Portier in English what she thought of him, and climbed ponderously, pausing at each landing to examine the damage.

Harmony, having sung Jimmy to sleep, was in the throes of an experiment.  She was trying to smoke.

A very human young person was Harmony, apt to be exceedingly wretched if her hat were of last year’s fashion, anxious to be inconspicuous by doing what every one else was doing, conventional as are the very young, fearful of being an exception.

And nearly every one was smoking.  Many of the young women whom she met at the master’s house had yellowed fingers and smoked in the anteroom; the Big Soprano had smoked; Anna and Scatchy had smoked; in the coffee-houses milliners’ apprentices produced little silver mouth-pieces to prevent soiling their pretty lips and smoked endlessly.  Even Peter had admitted that it was not a vice, but only a comfortable bad habit.  And Anna had left a handful of cigarettes.

Harmony was not smoking; she was experimenting.  Peter and Anna had smoked together and it had looked comradely.  Perhaps, without reasoning it out, Harmony was experimenting toward the end of establishing her relations with Peter still further on friendly and comradely grounds.  Two men might smoke together; a man and a woman might smoke together as friends.  According to Harmony’s ideas, a girl paring potatoes might inspire sentiment, but smoking a cigarette—­never!