At first he did not understand her. He thought that the sight of blood had shaken her nerves and that she was recurring to the distaste for motherhood that she had expressed to him in Aiken. "Don't worry, dearie," he said. "It can't be helped now, but there is really no reason for you to worry." She did not look up, but she shook her head. "I am not," she repeated. He came to her, stood before her, and patted a little patch of her cheek, which her hands left bare. "There, there," he said. At his touch she broke into convulsive sobbing. "You don't understand me," she sobbed. "It is over. It is all over." He withdrew his hand quickly; he caught his breath. "What--what----" he stammered. "O, Jim!" she cried. "Muriel," he besought her, "tell me. What--how? When? You don't mean----" "Yes, yes," she moaned, her hands still tight before her face. Stainton stood erect. He clenched his fists in an effort to control himself. He pleaded to his ears that they had not heard correctly; his reason declared that, if his ears had heard aright, this was the fancy of an ailing woman; but his frame trembled, and his voice shook as he began again: "You don't mean----" "I do, I do. Oh, let me alone! Don't ask me any more!" He had built for years upon his desire for physical immortality. Now the edifice that he had reared was shattered, and Stainton shook with its fall. He clutched the back of a frail chair that stood opposite Muriel's. Perceptibly he swayed. "When?" he whispered out of dry lips. His mouth worked; his iron-grey brows fought their way to a meeting. "When?" Her head sank lower in her hands. "While you were at Lyons," she said. "The very day you left." "Is that why you didn't go to the Boussingaults'?" "I suppose so." "You suppose?" Almost anger shot from his eyes. "Don't you know? You must know! How did this happen?" Muriel's head nearly rested on her knees; her shoulders twitched. Her only reply was an inarticulate noise that seemed to tear itself from her breast. "Answer me!" he demanded. She rose and stumbled a few steps toward him. She held out her arms. Her face was like a sheet, and her eyes and mouth were like holes burnt into a sheet. "I fell," she mumbled, and her words seemed to strike him. "I went for a drive. Coming back--here at the hotel--I fell from the cab--getting out. I got up to the bedroom. And it happened. I sent for a doctor--_not_ Boussingault. He treated me, and I paid him. The nurse, too. They said it was easy--They said I would be all right in a week.--I thought I was--But I have suffered--O, Jim, Jim! Don't look like that! Don't, please, think----" She crashed to the floor at his feet.