Then Stainton realised something of the bodily agony that had been hers while he was absent and of the mental agony that had driven her on their mad dash through Switzerland to Austria and Italy, the mental agony that lashed her now. He put aside, for the moment, his own suffering. He stooped and took her up and held her in his arms and, pressing her head against his breast and holding her sobbing body tight to his, tried to murmur broken, unthought words of comfort. Gradually, very gradually, she grew a little quieter. "My dear, my dear," he said in a voice so hoarse that he scarcely knew it for his own, "why did you keep torturing yourself? You should have had rest, and instead----Why didn't you tell me? Why?" "I was afraid," she said, simply. "Dearie!" he cried. "Of me?" Her words were a fresh stab. "Yes. I knew how much you wanted----And I was afraid." "You needn't have been. You see it now. You needn't have been. Tell me what I can do for you, dear. Only tell me." "Take me away from Paris!" sobbed Muriel. "I have come to hate the place. I can't stand it another day. I can't stand it. Some other time, perhaps----Only now--oh, take me away!" "We'll go home, Muriel," he said. "We'll sail by the first boat. Back to our own country. Back home." But at that she shuddered. "That would be worse," she said, rapidly. "It would be worse even than Paris. Don't you see? We left there happy, expecting----Not there. No, I couldn't bear that." Stainton had put her on a chair and was kneeling beside her, stroking her hair and wrists. His fingers touched the dried blood on her hand, brown and horrible. But he kissed the blood. She drew the hand from him. "Your poor little hand!" said Jim. "Let me see the cut." "It is--there is nothing to be seen. It was only a scratch. Let's talk about getting away." "I thought," said Stainton, "that you wanted to come back here when we were in Italy." "I did," she faltered. "It seemed there that it would be easier to tell you here, where it happened. But to-night scared me." "To-night? Why to-night, dearest? Not what has just happened? Not anything I have said about it?" "Not that. I don't know. Something before that----" "Because you lost me in the crowd?" "Yes, yes: because I lost you. Because I lost you for that hour on the boulevards. I don't like Paris any more. I'm afraid of Paris. I--I don't like the confetti. Let's go away, Jim. Please." He wished that she would go back to New York. He argued for them both that the return would be wise. When something terrible has occurred in unfamiliar surroundings, if one reverts to surroundings that are familiar, it is often possible to forget the terror, or, if it must be remembered, to remember it with pangs that are less acute than those which one suffers on the scene of the occurrence.