"My Austrian? Why mine?"
"By right of discovery. You discovered him, didn't you?"
"You mean that he discovered me. I don't like Captain von Klausen."
He attempted to argue against her prejudice, and they came near to quarrelling. In the end, Muriel protested with tears that she hated all Austrians and all Austria, and that they must move on to Italy at once.
Stainton obtained only a day's respite in Innsbruck. They drove to the Triumphal Gate at the extremity of the Maria-Theresien-Strasse and then across to the scene of the Tyrolese battles at Berg Isel, returning by way of the Stadthaus Platz, where the band was playing in the pale spring sunshine and where, in rôles of gallants to the fashionable ladies of the city, strolled, in uniforms of grey, of green, and of light blue, scores of dapper, slim-waisted Austrian officers. But Muriel said that the women were dowdy and their escorts effeminate; she scorned the "Golden Roof" because the gilt was disappearing and the copper showing through; she pronounced the Old Town, with its mediæval roofed-streets, unwholesome; she would not stop for beer at the Goldene Adler, where Hofer drank. That worn and tarnished Hofkirche, "the Westminster of the Tyrol," with its grotesque statues and its empty tomb of Maximilian, she dismissed as "a dirty barn."
Muriel was cold; she said that she wanted to find warm weather. Stainton was tired; he said that he wanted to find a place where they could loaf. So they left for Verona, feeling certain that they would there secure these things—and "sunny Italy" welcomed them with a snowstorm.
Muriel was again in tears.
"It's no use," she sobbed; "we can't get what we want anywhere."
"Of course we can," sighed Stainton, "and the snowstorm will clear. Cheer up, dear; we've only to look hard enough or wait a bit."
"But I'm tired of looking and waiting—we've been doing that ever since we went away. Let's go back to Paris."