he had gone further: He had discovered, for the first time in the
three months of its defection, a button missing from his coat,
and had set about to replace it. He had cut a button from another
coat, by the easy method of amputating it with a surgical
bistoury, and had sewed it in its new position with a curved
surgical needle and a few inches of sterilized catgut. The
operation was slow and painful, and accomplished only with the
aid of two cigarettes and an artery clip. When it was over he
tied the ends in a surgeon's knot underneath and stood back to
consider the result. It seemed neat enough, but conspicuous.
After a moment or two of troubled thought he blacked the white
catgut with a dot of ink and went on his way rejoicing.

Peter Byrne was entirely untroubled as to the wisdom of the
course he had laid out for himself. He followed no consecutive
line of thought as he dressed. When he was not smoking he was
whistling, and when he was doing neither, and the needle proved
refractory in his cold fingers, he was swearing to himself. For
there was no fire in the room. The materials for a fire were
there, and a white tile stove, as cozy as an obelisk in a
cemetery, stood in the corner. But fires are expensive, and
hardly necessary when one sleeps with all one's windows open--one
window, to be exact, the room being very small--and spends most
of the day in a warm and comfortable shambles called a hospital.

To tell the truth he was not thinking of Harmony at all, except
subconsciously, as instance the button. He was going over, step
by step, the technic of an operation he had seen that afternoon,
weighing, considering, even criticizing. His conclusion, reached
as he brushed back his hair and put away his sewing implements,