"So did I, my dear; but, you see, they have just discovered that they have bought the mine without the machinery, and they're angry because I wrote to them and fixed a price on that." "You don't mean that you tricked them?" "Certainly not. I mean only that they do not understand American ways of doing business." "You didn't say you had written them." "My dear, when do I bore you with business affairs?" Stainton turned to von Klausen. "I hate to leave the little girl alone," he said. "But perhaps you will be good enough to look in on her here to-morrow evening and see that she is not too much depressed." Muriel tried to catch the Austrian's eye, but Jim's eye had immediately shifted to her, and von Klausen promised. She wanted to ask him where he was stopping, for she feared his coming to the house when she was alone there; she wanted to see him, but she wanted to see him in the open, and she wanted to get a note to him to tell him not to come to the house. Yet she felt her fears growing; she was afraid to put her question, and the Austrian left without naming his hotel. When the door closed on him, Jim continued to talk much about nothing, although he had lately been more than commonly silent in her company. She bore it as long as she could. Then she asked: "Why are you going away to-morrow?" Jim was surprised. "For what reason in the world but the one I have just given?" "Then I think you might have told me when _he_ wasn't here." "My dear, you gave me no chance." "And you booked passage back, Jim?" "Passage home, yes." Muriel's mouth drooped. "Oh, I loathe New York!" she said. He came to her and took both her hands. His grave eyes looked searchingly into hers. "Won't you think about me," he asked, "a little?" "I know, Jim, but I never promised----" "I have tried to deserve consideration, Muriel." He had been kind. She reflected that he had been as kind as he knew how to be. She felt ashamed of her selfishness, and she felt, too, that, within a few hours, it would matter little to her whether she lived in France or America. "You're right," she said. "Forgive me. It's very late. You say you want to leave early. We had better go to bed." She thought it strange that he had not asked her to go with him to Lyons, for she remembered his vow never to leave her alone again. Yet she knew that, had he asked her to go with him, thus breaking his rule never to bring her into touch with business, she would have regarded that as a sign that he was suspicious. So she lay awake and was silent, and in the morning accompanied him up the hill to the station and watched him climb aboard his train.