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Page 95

"No?"

Harmony colored.

"I am--am hiding," she explained. "Something very uncomfortable
happened and I came here. Please don't say you have seen me."

Georgiev was puzzled at first. She had to explain very slowly,
with his ardent eyes on her. But he understood at last and agreed
of course. His incredulity was turning to certainty. Harmony had
actually been in the same building with him while he sought her
everywhere else.

"Then," he said at last, "it was you who played Sunday."

"I surely."

She made a move to pass him, but he held out an imploring hand.

"Fraulein, I may see you sometimes?"

"We shall meet again, of course."

"Fraulein,--with all respect,--sometime perhaps you will walk out
with me?"

"I am very busy all day."

"At night, then? For the exercise? I, with all respect,
Fraulein!"

Harmony was touched.

"Sometime," she consented. And then impulsively: "I am very
lonely, Herr Georgiev."

She held out her hand, and the little Bulgarian bent over it and
kissed it reverently. The Herr Georgiev's father was a nobleman
in his own country, and all the little spy's training had been to
make of a girl in Harmony's situation lawful prey. But in the
spy's glowing heart there was nothing for Harmony to fear. She
knew it. He stood, hat in hand, while she went up the staircase.
Then:--

"Fraulein!" anxiously.

"Yes?"

"Was there below at the entrance a tall man in a green velours
hat?"

"I saw no one there."

"I thank you, Fraulein."

He watched her slender figure ascend, lose itself in the shadows,
listened until she reached the upper floors. Then with a sigh he
clapped his hat on his head and made his cautious way down to the
street. There was no man in a green velours hat below, but the
little spy had an uneasy feeling that eyes watched him,
nevertheless. Life was growing complicated for the Herr Georgiev.

Life was pressing very close to Harmony also in those days, a
life she had never touched before. She discovered, after a day or
two in the work-room, that Monia Reiff's business lay almost
altogether among the demi-monde. The sewing-girls, of Marie's
type many of them, found in the customers endless topics of
conversation. Some things Harmony was spared, much of the talk
being in dialect. But a great deal of it she understood, and she
learned much that was not spoken. They talked freely of the
women, their clothes, and they talked a great deal about a
newcomer, an American dancer, for whom Monia was making an
elaborate outfit. The American's name was Lillian Le Grande. She
was dancing at one of the variety theaters.

Harmony was working on a costume for the Le Grande woman--a gold
brocade slashed to the knee at one side and with a fragment of
bodice made of gilt tissue. On the day after her encounter with
Georgiev she met her.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Sat 27th Dec 2025, 20:20

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart