And there were few English and no tourists
in the sixteenth district. She was marketing a commodity for
which there was no demand.
She lunched at a Konditorei, more to rest her tired body than
because she needed food. The afternoon was as the morning. At six
o'clock, long after the midwinter darkness had fallen, she
stumbled back to the Wollbadgasse and up the whitewashed
staircase.
She had a shock at the second landing. A man had stepped into the
angle to let her pass. A gasjet dared over his head, and she
recognized the short heavy figure and ardent eyes of Georgiev.
She had her veil down luckily, and he gave no sign of
recognition. She passed on, and she heard him a second later
descending. But there had been something reminiscent after all in
her figure and carriage. The little Georgiev paused, halfway
down, and thought a moment. It was impossible, of course. All
women reminded him of the American. Had he not, only the day
before, followed for two city blocks a woman old enough to be his
mother, merely because she carried a violin case? But there was
something about the girl he had just passed--Bah!
A bad week for Harmony followed, a week of weary days and
restless nights when she slept only to dream of Peter--of his
hurt and incredulous eyes when he found she had gone; of
Jimmy--that he needed her, was worse, was dying. More than once
she heard him sobbing and wakened to the cooing of the pigeons on
the window-sill.
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