Drawing back from his passing figure as if his touch were contamination, Muriel waited until he had gone. She closed the door behind him; tried to bolt it; remembered that it secured itself by a spring lock which only a key could open from the hall; then, almost in a faint, fell into the wide arm-chair where she had sat when she sent von Klausen to the window. Stainton opened the door fifteen minutes later. He was fatigued from his day and haggard from his solitary confetti-beaten walk along the boulevards. He saw her nearly recumbent before him, limp and pale. "Muriel!" he cried. She opened her heavy eyes. "Jim!" He hurried to her, knelt beside her. He stroked her hair as a father strokes the hair of his weary child. "My poor little girl!" he said. Had she thought at all coherently about his coming, she had not meant to suffer his caresses until she had told him something of what had occurred. But, before she found time to begin a narrative of the truth, or the half truth, he began to pet her. She could not confess to him while he did that. "I thought you were lost," she said. "We looked, but couldn't find you anywhere. I thought you might have been run over. I thought--I hardly know what I thought." "My dear little girl!" he murmured. He patted her left hand. He reached for its fellow. "Why," he cried, "you've hurt yourself!" Muriel started. "No, no!" she said. "It's nothing. Truly, it's nothing. It's----" She laughed shrilly. "I asked Captain von Klausen to open the window. It stuck--the window, I mean. He put his hand through the glass and cut his wrist. I bandaged it. I scratched myself when I picked up some of the pieces from the floor." She realised that she had gone too far to retreat. She had lied again to her husband, and for no adequate reason. She had crossed the Rubicon of marital ethics. After that she was committed to silence. Every endeavour she made to draw back involved her in a new ambush, brought her to a new maze of deception. Truth became impossible. She wanted to tell the truth. The more impossible it became, the more bitterly she wanted to tell it. She hated von Klausen. She was sure that she had never loved her husband as she loved him now. The fact that her relations with the Austrian had begun and ended with a mere declaration of love did not, in her eyes, lessen the sin; the fact that von Klausen had misunderstood her attitude and had himself assumed an attitude far below that which she had at first expected, increased her antipathy against her lover and heightened her affection--call it love as she would, it would now be no more than affection--for Jim. She wanted to tell him, but every lapsing moment laid a new stone upon the wall that barred her way. She sat down in a chair before him and put her face in her hands. "Jim," she said in a low voice, "I am not going to have a baby."