They had no quarrels. There was only one matter in which she deviated so much as a hair's breadth from his ideal of her and there was but one occasion when she was hurt by any act of his.
The first of these affairs sprang from a conversation started by a letter with a blue French twenty-five-centime stamp upon it, which their always discreet waiter brought to the rooms one morning with the coffee. It had been forwarded from New York.
"What's that?" asked Muriel.
Stainton had been reading with his iron-grey brows in a pucker and a smile on his lips.
"It is a Frenchman trying to write English," he said. "He doesn't succeed."
"Yes, but what is it?"
"Only business, dear."
"Then I ought to see it," said Muriel.
Stainton laughed.
"What?" he said.