Now the delicacy, the culture, the civilization, the society, and the security belonging to them, had been invaded in an instant. By what?
The dust--you could almost see it springing into the air in these sandy stretches--had already settled thick over the dainty furniture, and as Dr. Dillon, standing by the table in the pink glow of the lamp, asked himself the question, he yielded to the imperious fascination which a smooth sand-surface has for humanity. But he did not write his name upon it; only the idle answer to the question.
"God knows."
The writing lay upon the table beside the latest fashions, staring up into the pink paper shade, after George Dillon had passed rapidly to Eugene's office to choose this, that, and the other, and make them into a bundle with a table-cloth.
When he returned to the drawing-room, Muriel Smith was standing by that writing in the sand: a fragile figure in a blue dressing-gown, all frilled and embroidered like the pictures in the paper. She looked more forlorn than frightened; forlorn and pathetic.
"Is it warm enough?" said the doctor, as he entered. "Your dress, I mean. There's a storm on, and it generally brings rain."
"It is flannel," she answered, and he nodded.
There was no excitement, no heroics. Only that. That, and the writing on the sand, and her forlornness--the forlornness of a delicate Dresden shepherdess set to drive a flock of real sheep to the shambles. But the needlessness, the pity of it, made Dr. Dillon set his teeth.
"Eugene will be here directly with Gladys," she said. "We thought it best not to wake her, and he said we had better start at once; for you see I can't walk nearly so fast as he does."
There was no trace of fear in her voice, but there was none of resistance either, and she turned at the door to look back with an almost reproachful acquiescence.