"Remote? What is that?"

"I was thinking of Worthington."

The name was a signal for war. Stewart repented, but too late.

In the cold evening air, to the amusement of a passing detail of
soldiers trundling a breadwagon by a rope, Stewart stood on the
pavement and dodged verbal brickbats of Viennese idioms and
German epithets. He drew his chin into the up-turned collar of
his overcoat and waited, an absurdly patient figure, until the
hail of consonants had subsided into a rain of tears. Then he
took the girl's elbow again and led her, childishly weeping, into
a narrow side street beyond the prying ears and eyes of the
Alserstrasse.

Byrne went back to Harmony. The incident of Stewart and the girl
was closed and he dismissed it instantly. That situation was not
his, or of his making. But here in the coffee-house, lovely,
alluring, rather puzzled at this moment, was also a situation.
For there was a situation. He had suspected it that morning,
listening to the delicatessen-seller's narrative of Rosa's
account of the disrupted colony across in the old lodge; he had
been certain of it that evening, finding Harmony in the dark
entrance to his own rather sordid pension. Now, in the bright
light of the coffee-house, surmising her poverty, seeing her
beauty, the emotional coming and going of her color, her frank
loneliness, and God save the mark!--her trust in him, he accepted
the situation and adopted it: his responsibility, if you please.