"I thank you," he said. "For your thought of me I thank you, and the more I thank you because, by keeping my secret, you made it ours."
"Oh, but I don't mean——" said Muriel.
She did not finish, for she saw Stainton come from the writing-room and stride rapidly toward them. He had written his letter and despatched it.
Although the three stood shoulder to shoulder in the customs-shed at Cherbourg later in the day and occupied the same first-class compartment in the fast express through the rolling Norman country to Paris, Muriel and von Klausen were not then given an opportunity to conclude their conversation. The Austrian bade the Staintons good-bye in the swirl of porters and chauffeurs at the Gare St. Lazare, and Muriel took it for granted that the interruption must be final.
XI
DR. BOUSSINGAULT
Muriel awoke in their apartments at the Chatham the next morning to find herself decidedly out of sorts. Well as she had borne the voyage, she no sooner put her feet from her one of the two little canopied beds to the floor than she felt again the motion of the ship, and there was a return of the nausea that she attributed to the trouble which silently weighed upon her. She crawled back to the bed.
"I can't get up," she said.