encircling wall of sound in the center of which one might
practice peacefully.

Only the Portier objected. Morning after morning, crawling out at
dawn from under his featherbed in the lodge below, he opened his
door and listened to Harmony doing penance above; and morning
after morning he shook his fist up the stone staircase.

"Gott im Himmel!" he would say to his wife, fumbling with the
knot of his mustache bandage, "what a people, these Americans! So
much noise and no music!"

"And mad!" grumbled his wife. "All the day coal, coal to heat;
and at night the windows open! Karl the milkboy has seen it."

And now the little colony was breaking up. The Big Soprano was
going back to her church, grand opera having found no place for
her. Scatch was returning to be married, her heart full, indeed,
of music, but her head much occupied with the trousseau in her
trunks. The Harmar sisters had gone two weeks before, their funds
having given out. Indeed, funds were very low with all of them.
The "Bitte zum speisen" of the little German maid often called
them to nothing more opulent than a stew of beef and carrots.

Not that all had been sordid. The butter had gone for opera
tickets, and never was butter better spent. And there had been
gala days--a fruitcake from Harmony's mother, a venison steak at
Christmas, and once or twice on birthdays real American ice cream
at a fabulous price and worth it. Harmony had bought a suit, too,
a marvel of tailoring and cheapness, and a willow plume that