The Portier's wife came to the doorway with a cooking fork in her hand. “A cab,” she announced, “with a devil's imp on the box. Perhaps it is that American dancer. Run and pretty thyself!” It was too late for more than an upward twist of a mustache. Harmony was at the door, but not the sad-eyed Harmony of a week before or the undecided and troubled girl of before that. A radiant Harmony, this, who stood in the doorway, who wished them good-morning, and ran up the old staircase with glowing eyes and a heart that leaped and throbbed. A woman now, this Harmony, one who had looked on life and learned; one who had chosen her fate and was running to meet it; one who feared only death, not life or anything that life could offer. The door was not locked. Perhaps Peter was not up--not dressed. What did that matter? What did anything matter but Peter himself? Peter, sorting out lectures on McBurney's Point, had come across a bit of paper that did not belong there, and was sitting by his open trunk, staring blindly at it:-- “You are very kind to me. Yes, indeed. “H. W.” Quite the end now, with Harmony running across the room and dropping down on her knees among a riot of garments--down on her knees, with one arm round Peter's neck, drawing his tired head lower until she could kiss him. “Oh, Peter, Peter, dear!” she cried. “I'll love you all my life if only you'll love me, and never, never let me go!” Peter was dazed at first. He put his arms about her rather unsteadily, because he had given her up and had expected to go through the rest of life empty of arm and heart. And when one has one's arms set, as one may say, for loneliness and relinquishment it is rather difficult--Ah, but Peter got the way of it swiftly. “Always,” he said incoherently; “forever the two of us. Whatever comes, Harmony?” “Whatever comes.” “And you'll not be sorry?” “Not if you love me.” Peter kissed her on the eyes very solemnly. “God helping me, I'll be good to you always. And I'll always love you.” He tried to hold her away from him for a moment after that, to tell her what she was doing, what she was giving up. She would not be reasoned with. “I love you,” was her answer to every line. And it was no divided allegiance she promised him. “Career? I shall have a career. Yours!” “And your music?” She colored, held him closer. “Some day,” she whispered, “I shall tell you about that.” Late winter morning in Vienna, with the school-children hurrying home, the Alserstrasse alive with humanity--soldiers and chimney-sweeps, housewives and beggars. Before the hospital the crowd lines up along the curb; the head waiter from the coffee-house across comes to the doorway and looks out. The sentry in front of the hospital ceases pacing and stands at attention. In the street a small procession comes at the double quick--a handful of troopers, a black van with tiny, high-barred windows, more troopers.