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In the gloom one face was as another. Georgiev, listening intently, hearing footsteps, drew back into the embrasure of a window and waited. His swarthy face was tense, expectant. As the steps drew near, were light feminine instead of stealthy, the little spy relaxed somewhat. But still he waited, crouched.
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.
I know you are resentful, but I know that you understand. The little Georgiev was in trouble those days. The Balkan engine was threatening to explode, but continued to gather steam, with Bulgaria sitting on the safety-valve.
After a little thought Harmony wrote a tiny message, English, German, and French, and inclosed it in the brass tube. "The Herr Georgiev has been arrested," she wrote. An hour later the carrier rose lazily from the window-sill, flapped its way over the church roof and disappeared, like Georgiev, out of her life. Grim-visaged war had touched her and passed on.
Full morning now, with the winter sun shining on the beggars in the market, on the crowds in the parks, on the flower sellers in the Stephansplatz; shining on Harmony's golden head as she bent over a bit of chiffon, on the old milkwoman carrying up the whitewashed staircase her heavy cans of milk; on the carrier pigeon winging its way to the south; beating in through bars to the exalted face of Herr Georgiev; resting on Peter's drooping shoulders, on the neglected mice and the wooden soldier, on the closed eyes of a sick child the worshiped sun, peering forth the golden window of the East.
Austria was mobilizing troops, and there were long conferences in the Burg between the Emperor and various bearded gentlemen, while the military prayed in the churches for war. The little Georgiev hardly ate or slept. Much hammering went on all day in the small room below Harmony's on the Wollbadgasse.
"Fraulein, if I may trouble you but glance from the window to the street below. It is of an urgency, or I Please, Fraulein!" Harmony glanced down into the half-light of the street. Georgiev, behind her, watched her, breathless, expectant. Harmony drew in her head. "Only a man in a green hat," she said. "And down the street a group of soldiers." "Ah!"
"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."
"They were good, all of them!" "What in the world " "And, please, tell me where lives the Fraulein Harmony. The Herr Georgiev eats not nor sleeps that he cannot find her." Dr. Jennings was puzzled. "She wishes to know where the girl lives," she interpreted to Mrs. Boyer. "A man wishes to know." "Naturally!" said Mrs. Boyer. "Well, don't tell her."
On Sunday Harmony played, and Georgiev in the room below, translating into cipher a recent conference between the Austrian Minister of War and the German Ambassador, put aside his work and listened. She played, as once before she had played when life seemed sad and tragic, the "Humoresque."
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