The window was indeed open. The curtain, however, remained drawn.
She put out her hand and seized his own with a slight gash across the knuckles--a gash from which a little of the blood flowed over her white fingers and marked them with a bright stain.
That handclasp finished what the spring sunshine of the morning had begun. She stood there, swaying a little, her lithe body still immature; the electric light from overhead falling directly upon her blue-black hair and level brows; her damp red lips parted; her face white, but warm and dusky, and her great dark eyes wide, half-terrified, seeing things they had never seen before.
Von Klausen's boyish face glowed. His blue gaze sparkled as if with electric fire. His wounded hand closed about her fingers.
"I love you!" he whispered, and he took her in his arms.
From somewhere, somewhere that seemed far, far away, Muriel heard a voice that answered him and knew that it was her own voice:
She clung to him; she held him fast. She knew. It was a knowledge beyond reason. There was no need to reason why these things should be so, when they were. She was aware only that in the kisses falling upon her lips, in the hands holding her tight, in the heart pounding against her breast there was a power that she missed in Stainton: a power that answered to the force in her own true being.
"But--but it can't be! It can't be!" she sobbed.
Von Klausen kissed her again: the long, long kiss of youth and love.
"But Jim----You don't know him. I can't hurt him. He is too good. He is far, far too good for either of us."
Von Klausen's reply was another kiss, but this time a light, an almost merry kiss.
She leaped from his arms. She sprang a yard away. Her face went rigid.
"You--you----" she said. "What do you mean? I tell you that I could never ask Jim to divorce me, and you say that he needn't know!"
It was the Austrian who was amazed now. He was frankly at sea.
"Divorce?" he echoed. "Who spoke of divorce?"
Muriel's face was crimson. She drew herself to her full height. She pointed to the door. Her finger shook with anger; her eyes shone with hate and shame.
"But what does this mean? I love you. You love me. Yet you tell me go."
"Love?" The word seemed to sicken her. "Love? You don't know what the word means. You don't know! You don't know!" She passed her hand across her face. "Oh, leave here!" she cried. "Leave here at once!"