Running Sands Part 53

"But if you have not told him----Well, what I have to say is my excuse.

If he is in the church, that is the more reason that I should make haste in saying it."

He moved still nearer.

"I have told him," she said.

"No."

"Go away," said Muriel, but the menace had faded from her large eyes, her tone had ceased to challenge and begun to plead.

"In one moment, if he does not come out and detain me, I shall go," said von Klausen; "but now I must speak. I went to your hotel in Paris to tell you this; I have travelled here to tell you. I will not be denied.

I have the right. It is only this, the thing that I am come to say: I have learned the truth about myself and about our relations. Then I was in the power of something so new that I did not understand it. Now I know. I knew so soon as I left you that last evening, and the absence from you has taught me over and over the same lesson. I love you. No, do not draw away. When I told you in Paris that I loved you, I used that word 'love' in the basest of its senses; but now--now, _ach_, I know I love you truly; that I honour and adore you; that I hold you as sacred as the holy angels. I came only to tell you this and put myself right in your dear eyes; and you must see now that to love you thus truly is my punishment--for I have once approached foully something holy to me, and I know that, even could you care for me and forgive me, I should still be hopeless."

She tried to doubt his sincerity, but she could not. Her hand, though it rested on the warm parapet, shook as if she were trembling from the cold.

"Hopeless?" she repeated.

"You are married," he answered. "Nothing can alter that, for in the eyes of my religion nothing but death can separate you from your husband."

She remembered her teaching in the convent school.

"You came here to tell me this?" she asked.

"I came to tell you this and to ask if, though it will change no fact, you can forgive me for what I said in Paris."

She raised her eyes to answer. As she did so she saw Stainton turning the corner of the promenade.

"Here he is!" she whispered. "You are right: I didn't tell him anything.

Wait. There will be another chance for us: I must have one word alone with you before--before----"

"Before," concluded von Klausen, "we say good-bye for the rest of our lives."

The Austrian had not been wrong; Stainton came up smiling.

"Think of you running into us down here!" he said. "I'm glad to see you." He invited the Captain to dinner, and the Captain, after a furtive glance at Muriel, accepted the invitation.

Nor was the dinner unsuccessful. Muriel, resolutely shutting her mind to the thought of so soon losing von Klausen, yet salving her conscience with the brief reflection that, as no positive wrong had been done, so the future was to be clean even of temptation, was almost happy. The Austrian, it is true, was somewhat silent; but Jim held himself altogether at the best.

"The fact is," he explained to von Klausen, "I believe that I've been homesick for a long time without knowing."

"And now," asked the Captain, looking about the pleasant little dining-room, "you have a home, yes?"

"Not here," said Jim. "Not anywhere, in fact; but we soon shall have one. I was not referring to this place. It is all right enough, but we are here only for a few weeks. When I said 'home,' I meant the city that both my wife and I regard as home. I meant New York."

"Then you are returning soon?"

"Three weeks from to-day."

Muriel looked at Jim.

"Is not this a sudden decision?" the guest inquired.

"Not at all. Muriel and I talked it over the other day and quite agreed, didn't we, dear?"

She tried to say "yes," but, though her lips moved, she was mute. She could only nod.

"Mrs. Stainton," said von Klausen, looking narrowly at Muriel, "did not mention it to me when we met to-day."

"How did that happen, dear?" asked Jim. His eyes met hers. He smiled pleasantly. "You must have forgotten."

She wanted to ask him how he had taken her qualified a.s.sent to a departure a month hence to be an expression of willingness to sail in three weeks, but there seemed to be something underlying his obvious manner that made her wish to hide her surprise. She wondered if there were anything underlying his manner; she wondered if what troubled her were not the sense of her deception of him.

"I forgot," she said.

"I booked by telephone just fifteen minutes ago while you were dressing, my dear," said Stainton, "and when I was rude enough to leave the Captain for a few minutes with his _dubonais_. We have an outside stateroom on the upper deck of the _Prinzess Wilhelmina_, and we sail from Genoa."

He fell to talking of what he had heard of the advantages of the southern route for the return journey to America. Presently he produced another surprise.

"By the way, Captain," he said, "do you know anything about the trains to Lyons? I shall have to run up there to-morrow. I can't get back here until the next day, but I want to start as early as possible."

This time Muriel felt herself forced to speak.

"Why, Jim," said she, "you never mentioned this to me."

"Didn't I?" he said. "That's curious. Or, no, come to think of it, it's not curious, for the letter was waiting for me when we came in, and you had to to run right off to dress, you know."

"Why must you go?"

"Those French purchasers again."

"I thought you were through with them."

"So did I, my dear; but, you see, they have just discovered that they have bought the mine without the machinery, and they're angry because I wrote to them and fixed a price on that."

"You don't mean that you tricked them?"

"Certainly not. I mean only that they do not understand American ways of doing business."

"You didn't say you had written them."

"My dear, when do I bore you with business affairs?" Stainton turned to von Klausen. "I hate to leave the little girl alone," he said. "But perhaps you will be good enough to look in on her here to-morrow evening and see that she is not too much depressed."

Muriel tried to catch the Austrian's eye, but Jim's eye had immediately shifted to her, and von Klausen promised. She wanted to ask him where he was stopping, for she feared his coming to the house when she was alone there; she wanted to see him, but she wanted to see him in the open, and she wanted to get a note to him to tell him not to come to the house.

Yet she felt her fears growing; she was afraid to put her question, and the Austrian left without naming his hotel.

When the door closed on him, Jim continued to talk much about nothing, although he had lately been more than commonly silent in her company.

She bore it as long as she could. Then she asked: