She felt unutterably forlorn and wretched. If only she could do something! She told herself, with a sensation of recoil and revolt, that she could never face another day of suspense and waiting spent as had been the whole of yesterday afternoon and evening.
Going up to the brass-rimmed round table, she took up a book which was lying there. It was a guide to Paris, arranged on the alphabetical principle. Idly she began turning over the leaves, and then suddenly Nancy Dampier's cheeks, which had become so pale as to arouse Senator Burton's commiseration, became deeply flushed. She turned over the leaves of the guide-book with feverish haste, anxious to find what it was that she now sought there before the return of Gerald Burton.
At last she came to the page marked M.
Yes, there was what she at once longed and dreaded to find! And she had just read the last line of the paragraph when Gerald Burton came back into the room.
Looking at him fixedly, she said quietly and in what he felt to be an unnaturally still voice, "Mr. Burton? There is a place in Paris called the Morgue. Do you not think that I ought to go there, to-day? It says in this guide-book that people who are killed in the streets of Paris are taken straight to the Morgue."
The young American nodded gravely. The Commissary of Police had mentioned the Morgue, had in fact suggested that those who were seeking John Dampier would do well to go there within a day or two.
Nancy went on:—"Could I go this morning? I would far rather go by myself, I mean without saying anything about it to either your father or to your sister."
He answered quickly, but so gently, so kindly, that the tears sprang to her eyes, "Yes, I quite understand that. But of course you must allow me to go with you."
And she answered, again in that quiet, unnaturally still voice, "Thank you. I shall be grateful if you will." Then after a moment, "Couldn't we start soon—I mean now?"
"Why yes, certainly—if you wish it."