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Page 40

"Could--could you talk about whatever it is? That helps
sometimes."

"You wouldn't understand."

"You haven't quarreled with Anna?" Harmony asked, real concern in
her voice.

"No. Good Lord, Harmony, don't ask me what's wrong! I don't know
myself."

He got up almost violently and set the little chair back against
the wall. Hurt and astonished, Harmony went back to the table.
The kitchen was entirely dark, save for the firelight, which
gleamed on the bare floor and the red legs of the table. She was
fumbling with a match and the candle when she realized that Peter
was just behind her, very close.

"Dearest," he said huskily. The next moment he had caught her to
him, was kissing her lips, her hair.

Harmony's heart beat wildly. There was no use struggling against
him. The gates of his self-control were down: all his loneliness,
his starved senses rushed forth in tardy assertion.

After a moment Peter kissed her eyelids very gently and let her
go. Harmony was trembling, but with shock and alarm only. The
storm that had torn him root and branch from his firm ground of
self-restraint left her only shaken. He was still very close to
her; she could hear him breathing. He did not attempt to speak.
With every atom of strength that was left in him he was fighting
a mad desire to take her in his arms again and keep her there.

That was the moment when Harmony became a woman.

She lighted the candle with the match she still held. Then she
turned and faced him.

"That sort of thing is not for you and me, Peter," she said
quietly.

"Why not?"

"There isn't any question about it."

He was still reckless, even argumentative; the crying need of her
still obsessed him. "Why not? Why should I not take you in my
arms? If there is a moment of happiness to be had in this grind
of work and loneliness--"

"It has not made me happy."

Perhaps nothing else she could have said would have been so
effectual. Love demands reciprocation; he could read no passion
in her voice. He knew then that he had left her unstirred. He
dropped his outstretched arms.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it."

"I would rather not talk about it, please."

The banging of a door far off told them that Anna Gates had
arrived and was taking off her galoshes in the entry. Peter drew
a long breath, and, after his habit, shook himself.

"Very well, we'll not talk of it. But, for Heaven's sake,
Harmony, don't avoid me. I'm not a cad. I'll let you alone."

There was only time for a glance of understanding between them,
of promise from Peter, of acceptance from the girl. When Anna
Gates entered the kitchen she found Harmony peeling potatoes and
Peter filling up an already overfed stove.

That night, during that darkest hour before the dawn when the
thrifty city fathers of the old town had shut off the street
lights because two hours later the sun would rise and furnish
light that cost the taxpayers nothing, the Portier's wife
awakened.

The room was very silent, too silent. On those rare occasions
when the Portier's wife awakened in the night and heard the twin
clocks of the Votivkirche strike three, and listened, perhaps,
while the delicatessen seller ambled home from the Schubert
Society, singing beerily as he ambled, she was wont to hear from
the bed beside hers the rhythmic respiration that told her how
safe from Schubert Societies and such like evils was her lord.
There was no sound at all.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Mon 22nd Dec 2025, 17:45

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart