Americans -- Austria -- Fiction; Love stories; Vienna (Austria) -- Fiction; Violinists -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
The little Bulgarian was profoundly stirred. His fervid eyes gleamed.
He struggled against the barrier of language, broke out in passionate
Bulgar, switched to German punctuated with an English word here and
there. Made intelligible, it was that he had found her at last. Harmony
held her spools of thread and waited for the storm of languages to
subside. Then:--
“But you are not to say you have seen me, Herr Georgiev.”
“No?”
Harmony colored.
“I am--am hiding,” she explained. “Something very uncomfortable happened
and I came here. Please don't say you have seen me.”
Georgiev was puzzled at first. She had to explain very slowly, with his
ardent eyes on her. But he understood at last and agreed of course. His
incredulity was turning to certainty. Harmony had actually been in the
same building with him while he sought her everywhere else.
“Then,” he said at last, “it was you who played Sunday.”
“I surely.”
She made a move to pass him, but he held out an imploring hand.
“Fraulein, I may see you sometimes?”
“We shall meet again, of course.”
“Fraulein,--with all respect,--sometime perhaps you will walk out with
me?”
“I am very busy all day.”
“At night, then? For the exercise? I, with all respect, Fraulein!”
Harmony was touched.
“Sometime,” she consented. And then impulsively: “I am very lonely, Herr
Georgiev.”
She held out her hand, and the little Bulgarian bent over it and kissed
it reverently. The Herr Georgiev's father was a nobleman in his own
country, and all the little spy's training had been to make of a girl
in Harmony's situation lawful prey. But in the spy's glowing heart there
was nothing for Harmony to fear. She knew it. He stood, hat in hand,
while she went up the staircase. Then:--
“Fraulein!” anxiously.
“Yes?”
“Was there below at the entrance a tall man in a green velours hat?”
“I saw no one there.”
“I thank you, Fraulein.”
He watched her slender figure ascend, lose itself in the shadows,
listened until she reached the upper floors. Then with a sigh he clapped
his hat on his head and made his cautious way down to the street. There
was no man in a green velours hat below, but the little spy had an
uneasy feeling that eyes watched him, nevertheless. Life was growing
complicated for the Herr Georgiev.
Life was pressing very close to Harmony also in those days, a life she
had never touched before. She discovered, after a day or two in the
work-room, that Monia Reiff's business lay almost altogether among the
demi-monde. The sewing-girls, of Marie's type many of them, found in
the customers endless topics of conversation. Some things Harmony was
spared, much of the talk being in dialect. But a great deal of it she
understood, and she learned much that was not spoken. They talked
freely of the women, their clothes, and they talked a great deal about
a newcomer, an American dancer, for whom Monia was making an elaborate
outfit. The American's name was Lillian Le Grande. She was dancing at
one of the variety theaters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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