He stood with his back to the room and his face to the mountains. The moon was still below the horizon, but stars blazed everywhere with a marvellous brightness. It was a night for dreams, and he thought with a quickening heart of the nights that were coming when they two would be alone once more among the hills, no longer starved and fleeing for their lives, but wandering happily together in an enchanted world where the past was all forgotten, and the future gleamed like the peaks of Paradise.
At sound of a quiet footfall, he turned back into the room. Muriel had entered and was closing the door behind her. At first sight he fancied that she was ill, so terribly did her deep mourning and heavy hair emphasise her pallor. But as she moved forward he reassured himself. It was growing late. Doubtless she was tired.
He went impetuously to meet her, and in a moment he had her hands in his; but they lay in his grasp cold and limp, with no responding pressure. Her great eyes, as they looked at him, were emotionless and distant, remote as the lights of a village seen at night across a far-reaching plain. She gave him no word or smile of welcome.
A sudden dark suspicion flashed through his brain, and he drew her swiftly to the light, looking at her closely, searchingly.
"What have you been doing?" he said.
She fathomed his suspicion, and faintly smiled. "Nothing—nothing whatever. I have never touched opium since the night you—"
He cut in sharply, as if the reminiscence hurt him. "I beg your pardon. Well, what is it then? There's something wrong."
She did not contradict him. Merely with a slight gesture of weariness, she freed herself and sat down.
Nick remained on his feet, looking down at her, waiting grimly for enlightenment.
It did not come very readily. Seconds had passed into minutes before she spoke, and then her words did not bear directly upon the matter in hand.