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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Coast of Chance, by 
+Esther Chamberlain and Lucia Chamberlain
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Coast of Chance
+
+Author: Esther Chamberlain
+        Lucia Chamberlain
+
+Illustrator: Clarence F. Underwood
+
+Release Date: January 25, 2007 [EBook #20445]
+Last updated: March 2, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COAST OF CHANCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Alicia Williams, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE COAST OF CHANCE
+
+
+_By_
+
+ESTHER AND LUCIA CHAMBERLAIN
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+
+CLARENCE F. UNDERWOOD
+
+[Illustration: FLORA GILSEY.]
+
+NEW YORK
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP
+
+PUBLISHERS
+
+COPYRIGHT 1908
+
+THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+
+APRIL
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                               PAGE
+
+    I THE VANISHING MYSTERY              1
+
+   II A NAME GOES ROUND A TABLE         24
+
+  III ENCOUNTERS ON PARADE              63
+
+   IV FLOWERS BY THE WAY                82
+
+    V ON GUARD                          93
+
+   VI BLACK MAGIC                      105
+
+  VII A SPELL IS CAST                  129
+
+ VIII A SPARK OF HORROR                142
+
+   IX ILLUMINATION                     162
+
+    X A LADY UNVEILED                  175
+
+   XI THE MYSTERY TAKES HUMAN FORM     197
+
+  XII DISENCHANTMENT                   213
+
+ XIII THRUST AND PARRY                 216
+
+  XIV COMEDY CONVEYS A WARNING         231
+
+   XV A LADY IN DISTRESS               248
+
+  XVI THE HEART OF THE DILEMMA         285
+
+ XVII THE DEMIGOD                      293
+
+XVIII GOBLIN TACTICS                   330
+
+  XIX THE FACE IN THE GARDEN           345
+
+   XX FLIGHT                           361
+
+  XXI THE HOUSE OF QUIET               381
+
+ XXII CLARA'S MARKET                   410
+
+XXIII TOUCHE                           422
+
+ XXIV THE COMIC MASK                   435
+
+  XXV THE LAST ENCHANTMENT             451
+
+
+THE COAST OF CHANCE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE VANISHING MYSTERY
+
+
+Flora Gilsey stood on the threshold of her dining-room. She had turned
+her back on it. She swayed forward. Her bare arms were lifted. Her hands
+lightly caught the molding on either side of the door. She was looking
+intently into the mirror at the other end of the hall. All the lights in
+the dining-room were lit, and she saw herself rather keenly set against
+their brilliance. The straight-held head, the lifted arms, the short,
+slender waist, the long, long sweep of her skirts made her seem taller
+than she actually was; and the strong, bright growth of her hair and the
+vivacity of her face made her seem more deeply colored.
+
+She had poised there for the mere survey of a new gown, but after a
+moment of dwelling on her own reflection she found herself considering
+it only as an object in the foreground of a picture. That picture, seen
+through the open door, reflected in the glass, was all of a bright, hard
+glitter, all a high, harsh tone of newness. In its paneled oak, in its
+glare of cut-glass and silver, in the shining vacant faces of its floors
+and walls, there was not a color that filled the eye, not a shadow where
+imagination could find play. As a background for herself it struck her
+as incongruous. Like a child looking at the landscape upside down, she
+felt herself in a foreign country. Yet it was hers. She turned about to
+bring it into familiar association. There was nothing wrong with it. But
+its great capacity suggested large parties rather than close intimacies.
+In the high lift of its ceilings, the ample openings of its doors, the
+swept, garnished, polished beauty of its cold surfaces, it proclaimed
+itself conceived, created and decorated for large, fine functions. She
+thought whimsically that any one who knew her, coming into her house,
+would realize that some one other than herself had the ordering of it.
+
+She glanced over the table. It was set for three. It lacked nothing but
+the serving of dinner. She looked at the clock. It wanted a few minutes
+to the hour. Shima, the Japanese butler, came in softly with the evening
+papers. She took them from him. Nothing bored her so much as a paper,
+but to-night she knew it contained something she really wanted to see.
+She opened one of the damp sheets at the page of sales.
+
+There it was at the head of the column in thick black type:
+
+
+       AT AUCTION, FEBRUARY 18
+         PERSONAL ESTATE OF
+     ELIZABETH HUNTER CHATWORTH
+         CONSISTING OF----
+
+
+She read the details with interest down to the end, where the name of
+the "famous Chatworth ring" finished the announcement with a flourish.
+Why "famous"? It was very provoking to advertise with that vague
+adjective and not explain it.
+
+She turned indifferently to the first page. She read a sentence, re-read
+it, read it again. Then, as if she could not read fast enough, her eyes
+galloped down the column. Color came into her cheeks. The grasp of her
+hands on the edges of the paper tightened. It was the most extraordinary
+thing! She was bewildered with the feeling that what was blazing at her
+from the columns of the paper was at once the wildest thing that could
+possibly have happened, and yet the one most to have been expected.
+
+For, from the first the business had been sinister, from as far back as
+the tragedy--the end of poor young Chatworth and his wife--the Bessie,
+who, before her English marriage, they had all known so well. Her death,
+that had befallen in far Italian Alps, had made a sensation in their
+little city, and the large announcements of auction that had followed
+hard upon it had bred among the women who had known her a morbid
+excitement, a feverish desire to buy, as if there might be some special
+luck in them, the jewels of a woman who had so tragically died. They had
+been ready to make a social affair of the private view held in the
+"Maple Room" before the auction. And now the whole spectacular business
+was capped by a sensation so dramatic as to strain credulity to its
+limit. She could not believe it; yet here it was glaring at her from the
+first page. Still--it might be an exaggeration, a mistake. She must go
+back to the beginning and read it over slowly.
+
+The striking of the hour hurried her. Shima's announcement of dinner
+only sent her eyes faster down the page. But when, with a faint, smooth
+rustle, Mrs. Britton came in, she let the paper fall. She always faced
+her chaperon with a little nervousness, and with the same sense of
+strangeness with which she so frequently regarded her house.
+
+"It's fifteen minutes after eight," Mrs. Britton observed. "We would
+better not wait any longer."
+
+She took the place opposite Flora's at the round table. Flora sat down,
+still holding the paper, flushed and bolt upright with her news.
+
+"It's the most extraordinary thing!" she burst forth.
+
+Mrs. Britton paused mildly with a radish in her fingers. She took in the
+presence of the paper, and the suppressed excitement of her companion's
+face--seemed to absorb them through the large pupils of her light eyes,
+through all her smooth, pretty person, before she reached for an
+explanation.
+
+"What is the most extraordinary thing?" The query came bland and smooth,
+as if, whatever it was, it could not surprise her.
+
+"Why, the Chatworth ring! At the private view this afternoon it simply
+vanished! And--and it was all our own crowd who were there!"
+
+"Vanished!" Clara Britton leaned forward, peering hard in the face of
+this extraordinary statement. "Stolen, do you mean?" She made it
+definite.
+
+Flora flung out her hands.
+
+"Well, it disappeared in the Maple Room, in the middle of the
+afternoon, when everybody was there--and they haven't the faintest
+clue."
+
+"But how?" For a moment the preposterous fact left Clara too quick to be
+calm.
+
+Again Flora's eloquent hands. "That is it! It was in a case like all the
+other jewels. Harry saw it"--she glanced at the paper--"as late as four
+o'clock. When he came back with Judge Buller, half an hour after, it was
+gone."
+
+Flora leaned forward on her elbows, chin in hands. No two could have
+differed more than these two women in their blondness and their
+prettiness and their wonder. For Clara was sharp and pale, with silvery
+lights in eyes and hair, and confronted the facts with an alert and
+calculating observation; but Flora was tawny, toned from brown to ivory
+through all the gamut of gold--hair color of a panther's hide, eyes dark
+hazel, glinting through dust-colored lashes, chin round like a fruit.
+The pressure of her fingers accented the slight uptilt of her brows to
+elfishness, and her look was introspective. She might, instead of
+wondering on the outside, have been the very center of the mystery
+itself, toying with unthinkable possibilities of revelation. She looked
+far over the head of Clara Britton's annoyance that there should be no
+clue.
+
+"Why, don't you see," she pointed out, "that is just the fun of it? It
+might be anybody. It might be you, or me, or Ella Buller. Though I would
+much prefer to think it was some one we didn't know so well--some one
+strange and fascinating, who will presently go slipping out the Golden
+Gate in a little junk boat, so that no one need be embarrassed."
+
+Clara looked back with extraordinary intentness.
+
+"Oh, it's not possible the thing is stolen. There's some mistake! And if
+it were"--her eyes seemed to open a little wider to take in this
+possibility--"they will have detectives all around the water front by
+to-night. Any one would find it difficult to get away," she pointed out.
+"You see, the ring is an important piece of property."
+
+"Of course; I know," Flora murmured. A faint twitch of humor pulled her
+mouth, but the passionate romantic color was dying out of her face. How
+was it that one's romances could be so cruelly pulled down to earth? She
+ought to have learned by this time, she thought, never to fly her little
+flag of romance except to an empty horizon--never, at least, to fly it
+in Clara's face. It was always as promptly surrounded by Clara's common
+sense as San Francisco would be surrounded by the police. But still she
+couldn't quite come down to Clara. "At least," she sighed, "he has saved
+me an awful expense, whoever took it, for I should have had to have it."
+
+Mrs. Britton surveyed this statement consideringly. "Was it the most
+valuable thing in the collection?"
+
+Flora hesitated in the face of the alert question. "I--don't know. But
+it was the most remarkable. It was a Chatworth heirloom, the papers say,
+and was given to Bessie at the time of her marriage." The thought of the
+death that had so quickly followed that marriage gave Flora a little
+shiver, but no shade of the tragedy touched Clara. There was nothing but
+speculation in Clara's eyes--that, and a little disappointment. "Then
+they will put off the auction--if it is really so," she mused.
+
+"Oh, yes," Flora mourned, "they can put it off as long as they please.
+The only thing I wanted is gone--and I hadn't even seen it."
+
+"Well, I wouldn't be too sure. There may be some mistake about it. The
+papers love a sensation."
+
+"But there must be something in it, Clara. Why, they closed the doors
+and searched them--_that_ crowd! It's ridiculous!"
+
+Clara Britton glanced at the empty place. "Then that must be what has
+kept him."
+
+"Who? Oh, Harry!" It took Flora a moment to remember she had been
+expecting Harry. She hoped Clara had not noticed it. Clara always had
+too much the assumption that she was taking him only as the
+best-looking, best-natured, safest bargain presented. "He will be
+here," she reassured, "but I wish he would hurry. His dinner will be
+spoiled; and, poor dear, he likes his dinner so much!"
+
+The faint silver sound of the electric bell, a precipitate double peal,
+seemed to uphold this statement. The women faced each other in a
+moment's suspense, a moment of expectation, such as the advance column
+may feel at sight of a scout hotfoot from the field of battle. There
+were muffled movements in the hall, then light, even steps crossing the
+drawing-room. Those light steps always suggested a slight frame, and, as
+always, Flora was re-surprised at his bulk as now it appeared between
+the parted curtains, the dull black and sharp white of his evening
+clothes topped by his square, fresh-colored face.
+
+[Illustration: YES, HE WAS MAGNIFICENT, SHE THOUGHT.]
+
+"Well, Flora," he said, "I know I'm late," and took the hand she held to
+him from where she sat. Her face danced with pleasure. Yes, he was
+magnificent, she thought, as he crossed with his light stride to Mrs.
+Britton's chair. He could even stand the harsh lines and lights of
+evening clothes. He dominated their ugly convention with his height,
+his face so ruddy and fresh under the pale brown of his hair, his alert,
+assured, deft movement. His high good nature had the effect of
+sweetening for him even Clara Britton's flavorless manner. The "We were
+speaking of you," with which she saw him to his seat, had all the warmth
+of a smile, but a smile far in the background of Flora's immediate
+possession. Indeed, Flora had seldom had so much to say to Harry as at
+this moment of her excitement over what he had actually seen. For the
+evidence that he had seen something was vivid in his face. She had never
+found him so splendidly alive. She had never seen him, it came to her,
+quite like this before.
+
+She shook the paper at him. "Tell us everything, instantly!"
+
+He gaily acknowledged her right to make him thus stand and deliver. He
+shot his hands into the air with the lightening vivacity that was in him
+a sort of wit. "Not guilty," he grinned at her.
+
+"Harry, you know you were in it. The papers have you the most important
+personage."
+
+"Oh, not all that," he denied her allegation. "They had the whole lot of
+us cooped up together for investigation for as much as two hours. I
+thought I shouldn't have time to dress! I'm as hungry as a hawk!" He
+rolled it out with the full gusto with which he was by this time engaged
+on his first course.
+
+"Poor dear," said Flora with cooing mock-sympathy, "and did they starve
+it? But would it mind telling us, now that it has its food, what is
+true, and what was the gallant part it played this afternoon?"
+
+"Well," he followed her whimsical lead, "the chief detective and I were
+the star performers. I found the ring wasn't there, and he found he
+couldn't find it."
+
+"Don't you know any more than the paper?" Flora mourned.
+
+"Considerably less--if I know the papers." He grinned with a fine flash
+of even teeth. "What do you want me to say?"
+
+"Why, stupid, the adventures of Harry Cressy, Esquire. How did you
+feel?"
+
+"Thirsty."
+
+"Oh, Harry!" She glanced about, as if for a missile to threaten him
+with.
+
+"Upon my word! But look here--wait a minute!" he arrived deliberately at
+what was required of him. "Never mind how I felt; but if you want to
+know the way it happened--here's your Maple Room." He began a diagram
+with forks on the cloth before him, and Clara, who had watched their
+sparring from her point of vantage in the background, now leaned
+forward, as if at last they were getting to the point.
+
+"This is the case, furthest from the door." He planted a salt-cellar in
+his silver inclosure. "I come in very early, at half-past two, before
+the crowd; fail to meet you there." He made mischievous bows to right
+and left. "I go out again. But first I see this ring."
+
+"What was it like?" Flora demanded.
+
+"Like?" Harry turned a speculative eye to the dull glow of the
+candelabrum, as if between its points of flame he conjured up the
+vision of the vanished jewel. "Like a bit of an old gold heathen god
+curled round himself, with his head, which was mostly two yellow
+sapphires, between his knees, and a big, blue stone on top. Soft, yellow
+gold, so fine you could almost dent it. And carved! Even through a glass
+every line of it is right." He paused and ran the tip of his finger
+along the silver outline of his diagram, as if the mere memory of the
+precious eyes of the little god had power to arrest all other
+consideration. "Well, there he was," he pulled himself up, "and I can't
+remember when a thing of that sort has stayed by me so. I couldn't seem
+to get away from it. I dropped into the club and talked to Buller about
+it. He got keen, and I went back with him to have another look at it.
+Well, at the door Buller stops to speak to a chap going out--a crazy
+Englishman he had picked up at the club. I go on. By this time there's a
+crowd inside, but I manage to get up to the case. And first I miss the
+spot altogether. And then I see the card with his name; and then,
+underneath I see the hole in the velvet where the god has been."
+
+Flora gave out a little sigh of suspense, and even Clara showed a gleam
+of excitement. He looked from one to the other. "Then there were
+fireworks. Buller came up. The detective came up. Everybody came up.
+Nobody'd believe it. Lots of 'em thought they had seen it only a few
+minutes before. But there was the hole in the velvet--and nothing more
+to be found."
+
+"But does no one know anything? Has no one an idea?" Clara almost panted
+in her impatience.
+
+"Not the ghost of a glimmer of a clue. There were upward of two hundred
+of us, and they let us out like a chain-gang, one by one. My number was
+one hundred and ninety-three, and so far I can vouch there were no
+discoveries. It has vanished--sunk out of sight."
+
+Flora sighed. "Oh, poor Bessie Chatworth!" It came out with a quick
+inconsequence that made Clara--even in her impatience--ever so faintly
+smile. "It seems so cruel to have your things taken like that when
+you're dead, and can't help it," Flora rather lamely explained. "I
+should hate it."
+
+Harry stared at her. "Oh, come. I guess you wouldn't care." His eyes
+rested for a moment on the fine flare of jewels presented by Flora's
+clasped hands. "Besides,"--his voice dropped to a graver level--"the
+deuce of it is--" he paused, they, both rather breathless, looking at
+him. He had the air of a man about to give information, and then the air
+of a man who has thought better of it. His voice consciously shook off
+its gravity. "Well, there'll be such a row kicked up, the probability is
+the thing'll be returned and no questions asked. Purdie's keen--very
+keen. He's responsible, the executor of the estate, you see."
+
+But Clara Britton leveled her eyes at him, as if the thing he had
+produced was not at all the thing he had led up to. "Still, unless there
+was enormous pressure somewhere--and in this case I don't see where--I
+can't see what Mr. Purdie's keenness will do toward getting it back."
+
+Harry played a little sulkily with the proposition, but he would not
+pick up the thread he had dropped. "I don't know that any one sees. The
+question now is--who took it?"
+
+"Why, one of us," said Flora flippantly. "Of course, it is all on the
+Western Addition."
+
+"Don't you believe it!" he answered her. "It's a confounded fine
+professional job. It takes more than sleight of hand--it takes genius, a
+thing like that!"
+
+Flora gave him a quick glance, but he had not spoken flippantly. He was
+serious in his admiration. She didn't quite fancy his tone. "Why,
+Harry," she protested, "you talk as if you admired him!"
+
+At this he laughed. "Well, how do you know I don't? But I can tell you
+one thing"--he dropped back into the same tone again--"there's no local
+crook work in this affair. It should be some one big--some one--" He
+frowned straight before him. He shook his head and smiled. "There was a
+chap in England, Farrell Wand."
+
+The name floated in a little silence.
+
+"He kept them guessing," Harry went on recalling it; "did some great
+vanishing acts."
+
+"You mean he could take things before their eyes without people knowing
+it?" Flora's eyes were wide beyond their wont.
+
+"Something of that sort. I remember at one of the Embassy balls at St.
+James' he talked five minutes to Lady Tilton. Her emeralds were on when
+he began. She never saw 'em again."
+
+Flora began to laugh. "He must have been attractive."
+
+"Well," Harry conceded practically, "he knew his business."
+
+"But you can't rely on those stories," Clara objected.
+
+"You must this time," he shook his tawny head at her; "I give you my
+word; for I was there."
+
+It seemed to Flora fairly preposterous that Harry could sit there
+looking so matter-of-fact with such experiences behind him. Even Clara
+looked a little taken aback, but the effect was only to set her more
+sharply on.
+
+"Then such a man could easily have taken the ring in the Maple Room this
+afternoon? You think it might have been the man himself?"
+
+His broad smile of appreciation enveloped her. "Oh, you have a scent
+like a bloodhound. You haven't let go of that once since you started. He
+could have done it--oh, easy--but he went out eight, ten years ago."
+
+"Died?" Flora's rising inflection was a lament.
+
+"Went over the horizon--over the range. Believe he died in the
+colonies."
+
+"Oh," Flora sighed, "then I shall have to fancy he has come back again,
+just for the sake of the Chatworth ring. That wouldn't be too strange.
+It's all so strange I keep forgetting it is real. At least," she went on
+explaining herself to Harry's smile, "it seems as if this must be going
+on a long way off, as if it couldn't be so close to us, as if the ring I
+wanted so much couldn't really be the one that has disappeared." All
+the while she felt Harry's smile enveloping her with an odd,
+half-protecting watchfulness, but at the close of her sentence he
+frowned a little.
+
+"Well, perhaps we can find another ring to take the place of it."
+
+She felt that she had been stupid where she should have been most
+delicate. "But you don't understand," she protested, leaning far toward
+him as if to coerce him with her generous warmth. "The Chatworth ring
+was nothing but a fancy I had. I never thought of it for a moment as an
+engagement ring!"
+
+By the light stir of silk she was aware that Clara had risen. She looked
+up quickly to encounter that odd look. Clara's face was so smooth, so
+polished, so unruffled, as to appear almost blank, but none the less
+Flora saw it all in Clara's eye--a look that was not new to her. It was
+the same with which Clara had met the announcement of her engagement;
+the same look with which she had confronted every allusion to the
+approaching marriage; the same with which she now surveyed the mention
+of the engagement ring--a look neither approving nor dissenting, whose
+calm, considerate speculation seemed to repudiate all interest positive
+or negative in the approaching event except the one large question,
+"What is to become of me?" Many times Clara had held it up before her,
+not as a question, certainly not as an accusation; as a flat assertion
+of fact; but to-night Flora felt it so directly and imperatively aimed
+at her that it seemed this time to demand an audible response. And
+Clara's way of getting up, and standing there, with her gloves on,
+poised and expectant, as if she were only waiting an opportunity to take
+farewell, took on, in the light of her look, the fantastic appearance of
+a final departure. "I'm afraid," she mildly reminded them, "that Shima
+announced the carriage ten minutes ago."
+
+"Oh, dear, I'm so sorry!" Flora's eyes wavered apologetically in the
+direction of the waiting Japanese. Clara's flicker of amusement made her
+hate herself the moment it was out. She could always depend on herself
+when she knew she was on exhibition. She could be sure of the right
+thing if it were only large enough, but she was still caught at odd
+moments by the trifles, the web of a certain social habit into which she
+had slipped, full grown on the smooth surface of her father's millions.
+Clara's fleeting smile lit up these trifles to her now as enormous. It
+took advantage of her small deficit to point out to her more plainly
+than ever to what large blunders she might be liable when she had cut
+loose from Clara's guiding, reminding, prompting genius, and chose to
+confront the world without it.
+
+To be sure, she was not to confront it alone; but, looking at Harry, it
+came to her with a moment's qualm that she did not know him as well as
+she had thought.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A NAME GOES ROUND A TABLE
+
+
+For to-night, from the moment he had appeared, she had recognized an
+unfamiliar mood in him, and it had come out more the more they had
+discussed the Chatworth ring. It was not in any special word or action
+on his part. It was in his whole presence that she felt the difference,
+as if the afternoon's scandal had been a stimulant to him--not through
+its romantic aspect, as it had affected her, but merely by the daring of
+the theft itself.
+
+She wondered, as he heaped her ermine on her shoulders, if Harry might
+not have more surprises for her than she had supposed. Perhaps she had
+taken him too much for granted. After all, she had known him only for a
+year.
+
+She herself was but three years old in San Francisco, and to her new
+eyes Harry had seemed an old resident thoroughly established. So firmly
+established was he in his bachelor quarters, in his clubs, in the
+demands made upon him by the city's society, that it had never occurred
+to her he had ever lived anywhere else. Nor had he happened to mention
+anything of his previous life until to-night, when he had given her, in
+that mention of a London ball, one flashing glimpse of former
+experiences.
+
+Impulsively she summed up the possibilities of what these might have
+been. She gave him a look, incredulous, delighted, as he handed her into
+the carriage. She had actually got a thrill out of easy-going,
+matter-of-fact, well-tubbed Harry! It was a comradeship in itself. Not
+that she would have told him. This capacity of hers for thrills she had
+found need always to keep carefully covered. In the days when she was a
+shoeless child--those days of her father's labor in shaft and dump--she
+had dimly felt her world to be a creature of a keen, a fairly cruel
+humor, for all things that did not pertain to the essence of the life
+it struggled for. The wonder of the western flare of day, the magic in
+the white eyes of the stars before sunrise, the mystery in the pulse of
+the pounding mine heard in the dark--of such it had been as ruthless as
+this new world that looked as narrowly forth at as starved a prospect
+with even keener ridicule. Instinctively she had turned to both the
+hard, bright face they required. It seemed that in the world at large
+this faculty of hers was queer. And to be queer, to have anything that
+other people had not, except money, was to be open to suspicion. And yet
+from the first she had had to be queer.
+
+Fatherless, motherless, alone upon the pinnacle of her fortune, she had
+known that such an extraordinary entrance, even at this rather wide
+social portal, would only be acceptable if toned down, glossed over, and
+drawn out by a personality sufficiently neutral, sufficiently potent,
+and sufficiently in need of what she had to give. The successive
+flickers of the gas-lamps through the carriage window made of Clara's
+profile so hard and fine a little medallion that it was impossible to
+conceive it in need of anything. And yet it was just their mutual need
+that had drawn these two women together, and after three years it was
+still the only thing that held them. As much of a fight as she had put
+up with the rest--the people who had taken her in--she had put up the
+hardest with Clara. Yet of them all Clara was the only one she had
+failed to capture. Clara was always there in the middle of her affairs,
+but surveying them from a distance, and Flora's struggle with her had
+resolved itself into the attempt to keep her from seeing too much, from
+seeing more than she herself saw. Clara's seeing, thus far, had always
+been to help, but Flora sometimes wondered whether in an emergency this
+help could be depended on--whether Clara could give anything without
+exacting a price.
+
+Their dubious intimacy had created for Flora a special sort of
+loneliness--a loneliness which lacked the security of solitude; and it
+was partly as an escape from this that she had accepted Harry Cressy.
+By herself she could never have escaped. The initiative was not hers.
+But he had presented himself, he had insisted, had overruled her
+objections, had captured her before she knew whether she wanted it or
+not--and held her now, fascinated by his very success in capturing her,
+and by his beautiful ruddy masculinity. She did not ask herself whether
+women ever married for greater reasons than these. She only wondered
+sometimes if he did not stand out more brilliantly against Clara and the
+others than he intrinsically was. But these moments when she was obliged
+to defend him to herself were always when he was not with her. Even in
+the dusky carriage she had been as aware of the splendor of his
+attraction as now when they had stopped between the high lamps of the
+club entrance, and she saw clearly the broad lines of his shoulders and
+the stoop of his square-set head as he stepped swingingly to the
+pavement. After all, she ought to be glad to think that he was going to
+stand up as tall and protectingly between her and the world, as now he
+did between her and the press of people which, like a tide of water,
+swept them forward down the hall, sucked them back in its eddy, and
+finally cast them, ruffled like birds that have ridden a storm, on the
+more generous space of the wide, upward stair.
+
+From here, looking down on the current sweeping past them, the little
+islands of black coats seemed fairly drowned in the feminine sea around
+them--the flow of white, of pale blue and rose, and the high chatter,
+like a cage of birds, that for the evening held possession.
+
+"Ladies' Night!" Harry Cressy mopped his flushed face. "It's awful!"
+
+Flora laughed in the effervescence of her spirits. She wanted to know,
+teasingly, as they mounted, if this were why he had brought two more to
+add to the lot. He only looked at her, with his short note of laughter
+that made her keenly conscious of his right to be proud of her. She was
+proud of herself, inasmuch as herself was shown in the long trail of
+daring blue her gown made up the stair, and the powdery blue of the
+aigrette that shivered in her bright, soft puffs and curls--proud that
+her daring, as it appeared in these things, was still discriminating
+enough to make her right.
+
+She could recall a time when she had not even been quite sure of her
+clothes. Not Clara's subdued rustle at her side could make her doubt
+them now; but her security was still recent enough to be sometimes
+conscious of itself. It was so short a time since all these talking
+groups, that made a personage of her, had had the power to put her quite
+out of countenance. The women who craned over their shoulders to speak
+to her--how hard she had had to work to make them see her at all! And
+now she did not know which she felt more like laughing at, herself or
+them, for having taken it so seriously. For, when one thought of it,
+wasn't it absurd that people out of nowhere should suppose themselves
+exclusive? And people out of nowhere they were, herself and all the rest
+of them. From causes not far dissimilar they had drifted or scrambled to
+where they now stood. It was a question of squatter rights. The first on
+the ground were dictators, and how long they could hold their claim
+against invaders a dubious cast of fate. For there were for ever fresh
+invasions, and departures; swift risings from obscurity, sudden fallings
+back into oblivion, brilliant shootings through of strange meteors; and
+in the tide of fluctuation, the things that were established or
+traditional upon this coast of chance were mere islands in the wash of
+ocean. It was amazing, it was almost frightening, the fluid, unstable
+quality of life; the rapid, inconsequent changes; yet it was also this
+very quality of transformation that most stirred and delighted her.
+
+And to-night it was not the picture exhibition, nor the function itself
+that elated her, but the fancy she had as she looked over the moving
+mass below her that the crowning excitement of the day, the vanishing
+mystery, hovered over them all. It was fantastic, but it persisted; for
+had not the Chatworth ring itself proved that the most ordinary
+appearances might cover unimagined wonders? Which of those bland,
+satisfied faces might not change shockingly at the whisper "Chatworth"
+in its ear? She wanted to confide the naughty thought to Harry. But no,
+he wasn't the one. If Harry were apprehensive of anything at all it was
+only of being caught in too hot a crush. He saw no possibilities in the
+mob below except boredom. He saw no possibilities in the evening but his
+conventional duty; and Flora could read in his eye his intention of
+getting through that as comfortably as possible. His suggestion that
+they have a look at the pictures brought the two women's eyes together
+in a rare gleam of mutual mirth. They knew he suspected that the picture
+gallery would be the emptiest place in the club, since to have a look at
+the pictures was what they were all supposed to be there for. That was
+so infallibly the note of their life, Flora thought, as she followed up
+the wide sweep of the middle stair, and along the high-ceiled, gilded
+hall whose open arches overlooked the rooms below.
+
+The picture gallery was new, an addition; and the plain, narrow,
+unexpected door in this place, where all was high, arched, elaborate
+and flourished, was like a loophole through which to slip into a foreign
+atmosphere. This atmosphere was resinous of fresh wood; the light was
+thick with drifting motes; the carpets harshly new, slipping beneath the
+feet on the too polished floor; the bare bones of the place yet scarcely
+covered. But its quiet was after all comparative. There were plenty of
+people lingering in groups in the center of the gallery which was dusky,
+eclipsed by the great reflectors that circled the room, throwing out the
+pictures in a bright band of color around the walls. People leaning from
+this border of light back into the dusk to murmur together, vanished and
+reappeared with such fascinating abruptness that Flora caught herself
+guessing what sort of face, where this nearest group stood just on the
+edge of shadow, would pop out of the dark next.
+
+She was ready for something extraordinary, but now, when it came, she
+was taken aback by it. It gave her a start, that toss of black hair,
+that long, irregular, pale face whose scintillant, sardonic smile was
+mercilessly upon the poor, inadequate picture-face fronting him. His
+stoop above the rail was so abrupt that his long, lean back was almost
+horizontal, yet even thus there was something elegant in the swing of
+him--in the careless twist of his head, around, to speak to the woman
+behind him. The light above struck blind on the glass in one eye, but
+the other danced with a genial, a mad scintillation. The light of it
+caught like contagion, and touched the merest glancer at him with the
+spark of its warm, ironic mirth. The question which naturally rose to
+Flora's lips--"Who in the world is that?"--she checked; why, she didn't
+ask herself. She only felt as she followed Clara, trailing away across
+the floor, that the interest of the evening which had promised so well,
+beginning with the Chatworth ring, had been raised even a note higher.
+Her restive fancy was beginning again. All the footlights of her little
+secret stage were up.
+
+Clara turned to the right, following a beckoning fan, and Flora,
+dallying with her anticipation, reasoned that now they must circle the
+room before they should face him--the interesting apparition. It was a
+pilgrimage of which he on the other side was performing his half.
+Perfunctorily talking from group to group, conscious now and again of
+the lagging Clara or Harry, she could nevertheless keep a sly eye on the
+stranger's equal progress. The flash of jet, and the voluble,
+substantial shoulders of the lady so profusely introducing him, were an
+assurance of how that pilgrimage would terminate, since it was Ella
+Buller who was parading him. She even wondered before which of the
+florid pictures at the far, other end of the room, as before a shrine,
+the ceremony would take place.
+
+She kept her eyes fixed on the paintings before her, and as she moved
+down from one to another, and the voices of the approaching group drew
+nearer, one separated itself from the general murmur, so clear, so
+resonantly carried, so clean-clipped off the tongue, that it stood out
+in syllables on the blur of sound which was Ella Buller's conversation.
+It had color, that voice; it had a quality so sharp, so individual that
+it touched her with a mischievous wonder that he dared speak so
+differently from all the world about him. Then, six pictures away, she
+heard her own name.
+
+"Why, Flora Gilsey!" It was Ella's husky, boyish note. "I've been
+looking for you all the evening! How d'y'do, Harry?" She waved her hand
+at him. "Why, how d'y'do, Mrs. Britton? I wouldn't let papa go to supper
+until I'd found you. 'Papa,' I said, 'wait; Flora and Harry will be
+here.' Besides," she had quite reached Flora's side by this time and
+communicated it in an impressive whisper, "I want you to meet my
+Englishman." She looked over her shoulder, and largely beckoned to where
+the blunt and florid Buller and his companion, with their backs to what
+they were supposed to be looking at, were exchanging an anecdote of
+infinite amusement.
+
+Buller's expression came around slowly to his daughter's beckoning hand,
+but the Englishman's face seemed to flash at the instant from what he
+was enjoying to what was expected of him. In the flourish of
+introductions, across and across, Flora found herself thinking the
+reality less extraordinary than she had at first supposed. Now that Mr.
+Kerr was fairly before her, presented to her, and taking her in with the
+same lively, impersonal interest with which he took in the whole room,
+"as if," she put it vexedly to herself, "I were a specimen poked at him
+on the end of a pin," it stirred in her a vague resentment; and
+involuntarily she held him up to Harry. The comparison showed him a
+little worn, a little battered, a little too perfunctory in manner; but
+his genial eyes, deep under threatening brows, made Harry's eyes seem to
+stare rather coldly; and the fine form of his long, plain face, and the
+sensitive line of his long thin lips made Harry's beauty look,--well,
+how did it look? Hardly callous.
+
+This mixed impression the two men gave her was disconcerting. She was
+all the more ready to be wary of the stranger. She had begun with him in
+the way she did with every one--instinctively throwing out a breastwork
+of conversation from behind which she could observe the enemy. But
+though he had blinked at it, he had not taken her up, nor helped her
+out; but had merely stood with his head a little canted forward, as if
+he watched her through her defenses.
+
+"But San Francisco must seem so limited after London," she had wound up;
+and the way he had considered it, a little humorously, down his long
+nose, made her doubt the interest of cities to be reckoned in round
+numbers.
+
+"It's all extraordinary," he said. "You're quite as extraordinary in
+your way as we in ours."
+
+"Oh," she wondered, still vexed with his inventory, "I had always
+supposed us awfully commonplace. What _is_ our way, please?"
+
+"Ah," he said, measuring his long step to hers as they sauntered a
+little, "for one thing, you're so awfully good to a fellow. In
+London"--and he nodded back, as if London were merely across the
+room--"they're awfully good to the somebodies. It's the way you take in
+the nobodies over here that is so astonishing--the stray leaves that
+blow in with your 'trade,' and can't show any credentials but a letter
+or two, and their faces; and those"--his _diablerie_ danced out
+again--"sometimes such deucedly damaged ones."
+
+It was almost indecent, this parade of his nonentity! She wanted to say,
+"Oh, hush! Those are the things one only enjoys--never talks about." But
+instead, somewhere up at the top of her voice, she said: "Oh, we always
+lock up our silver!"
+
+"But even then," he quizzed her, "I wonder how you dare to do it?"
+
+"Perhaps we have to, because we ourselves are all--" ("without any
+credentials but those you mention,") she had been about to say--but
+there she caught herself on the very edge of giving herself and all the
+rest of them away to him; "--all so awfully bored," she mischievously
+ended with the daintiest, faintest possible yawn behind her spread fan.
+
+He looked as if she had taken him by surprise; then laughed out. "Oh,
+that is the way they don't do here," he provoked her. "You mustn't,
+when I'm not expecting it."
+
+"Then what are you expecting?" she inquired a little coolly.
+
+"Well," he deliberated, "not expecting you to get me ready for a sweet,
+and then pop in a pickle; and presently expecting, hoping, anxiously
+anticipating, what you really care to say."
+
+He was expecting, she looked maliciously, more than he was likely to
+get; but the fact that he did see through her to that extent was at once
+delightful and alarming. She swayed back into the shadow beyond the
+dazzling line of light. She wanted to escape his scrutiny, to be able to
+look him over from a safe vantage-ground. But he wouldn't have it. An
+instant he stood under the torrent of white radiance, challenging her to
+see what she could--then followed her into her retreat. "Shall we sit
+here?" he said, and she found herself hopelessly cut off and isolated
+with the enemy.
+
+She couldn't withhold a little grudging pleasure in the sharpness with
+which he had turned her maneuver, and the way it had detached them from
+the surrounding crowd. For there, in the dusky center of the room, it
+was as if they watched from safe covert the rest of their party exposed
+in the glare of light; though not, as Flora presently noted, quite
+escaping observation themselves. For an instant Harry turned and peered
+toward them with a look in his intentness that struck Flora as something
+new in him, and made her wonder if he could be jealous. She turned
+tentatively to see if Kerr had noticed it, and surprised his glance in a
+quick transition back to hers.
+
+"By your leave," he said, and took away her fan, which in his hand
+presently assumed such rhythmic motion that it ceased to be any more
+present to her than a delicate current of air upon her face. Her face,
+which in the first place he had so well looked over, he now looked into
+with something more personal in his quest, as if under the low brows and
+crowding lashes there was a puzzle to solve in the timid, unassured
+glances of such splendid eyes.
+
+He was not, she felt sure, in spite of his light manipulation of her
+fan, a person who cared to please women, but one of that devastating
+sort who care above everything to please themselves, and who are skilful
+without practice; too skilful, she feared, for her defenses to hold out
+against if he intended to find out what she really thought. "Aren't we
+supposed to be looking at the pictures?" she wanted to know.
+
+He turned his back on the wall and its attendant glare. "Why pictures,"
+he inquired, "when there are live people to look at? Pictures for places
+where they're all half dead. But here, where even the damnable dust in
+the street is alive, why should they paint, or write, or sculpt, or do
+anything but live?" His irascible brows shot the query at her.
+
+Again the proposition of life--whatever that was--was held up before
+her, and as ever she faltered in the face of it. "I suppose they do it
+here," she murmured, with a vague glance at the paintings around her,
+"because people do it everywhere else."
+
+His disparagement was almost a snarl. "That's the rotten part of
+it--because they do it everywhere else! As if there wasn't enough
+monotony in the world already without every chap trying to be like the
+next instead of being himself!"
+
+"Ah!" Her small, uncertain smile in the midst of her outward splendor
+was pathetic. "But it is different to you. You're a man. You're not one
+of us."
+
+"One of what? I'm a man. I'm myself. Which, pardon me, dear lady, is
+just what you won't be--yourself."
+
+"But if you have to be what people expect?" She clung to her first
+principle of safety in the midst of this onslaught.
+
+"People don't want what they expect--if you care for that." He waved it
+away with his quick, white hand.
+
+"But you have to care, unless you want to be queer." Her poor little
+secret was out before she knew, and he looked at it, laughing
+immoderately, yet somehow delightfully.
+
+"Ah, if you think the social game is the game that counts! I had
+expected braver things of you. The game that counts, my girl," he
+preached it at her with his long white hand, "the game that is going on
+out here is the big, red game of life. That's the only one that's worth
+a guinea; and there's no winning or losing, there's no right or wrong to
+it, and it doesn't matter what a man is in it as long as he's a good
+one."
+
+"Even if he is a thief?" The question was out of Flora's lips before she
+could catch it. It was a challenge. She had meant to confound him; but
+he caught it as if it delighted him.
+
+"Well, what would you think?"
+
+He threw it back at her.
+
+What hadn't she thought! How persistently her fancy had played with the
+question of what sort of man that one might be who had so wonderfully
+put his hand under a glass case and drawn out the Chatworth ring. Why,
+outwardly, he must have been like all the crowd around him, to have
+escaped unnoticed; but, inwardly, how much superior in power and skill
+to have so completely overreached them!
+
+"Oh," she laughed dubiously, "I suppose he is a good one as long as he
+isn't caught."
+
+"What!" His face disowned her. "You think he's a renegade, do you? A
+chap in perpetual flight, taking things because he has to, more or less
+pursued by the law? Bah! It's a guild as old, and a deal more honorable,
+than the beggar's. Your good thief is born to it. It's his caste. It's
+in his blood. It isn't money that he wants. If he had a million he'd be
+the same. And it isn't a mania either. It's a profession." The
+Englishman leaned back and smiled at her over the elegance of his long,
+joined finger-tips.
+
+She looked at him with a delighted alarm, with an increasing elation;
+but whether these arose from his lawless declarations and the singular
+way they kept setting before her more vividly moment by moment the
+possible character of the present keeper of the Chatworth ring, or
+whether it was just the sight of Kerr himself as he sat there that
+stirred her, she didn't try to distinguish.
+
+"But suppose he was your own thief," she urged; "took your own things, I
+mean," she hastily amended, "and suppose he turned out to be--some one
+you knew and liked--" She hesitated. She had come at last to what she
+really wanted to say. She had brought out a question that had been
+teasing her fancy at intervals all the while he had been talking, and he
+hadn't even heard it. He wasn't even looking at her. She had caught him
+off his guard. He was looking across her shoulder straight down the dim
+vista of the room to the little blaze of bordering light. He was looking
+at Harry. No, Harry was looking at him. Harry was looking with a steady,
+an intent gaze, and Kerr meeting it--it might have been merely the blank
+glare of his monocle--seemed, to Flora, to meet it a little insolently.
+She fancied in the instant something to pass between the two men,
+something which, this time, she did not mistake for jealousy--a shade
+too dim for defiance or suspicion, a deep scrutiny that struggled to
+place something, some one.
+
+Flora felt a sudden wish to break that curious scrutiny. It had broken
+her little moment. It had shattered the personal, almost intimate note
+that had been sounded between them. The look Kerr turned back to her was
+vague, and stirred in her a dim resentment that he could drop it all so
+easily.
+
+"Shall we join the others?" It was the voice with which she had begun
+with him, but her eyes were hot through their light mist of lashes, and
+he threw her a comprehending glance of amusement.
+
+"Oh, no," he assured her, "we can't help ourselves. They are going to
+join us."
+
+Ella Buller, in the van of her procession, was already descending upon
+them. Her approach dissipated the last remnant of their personal moment.
+Her presence always insisted that there was nothing worth while but
+instant participation in her geniality, and whatever subject it might at
+the moment be taken up with. This conviction of Ella's had been wont to
+overawe Flora, and it still overwhelmed her; so that now, as she
+followed in the tail of Ella's marshaled force, she had a guilty feeling
+that there should be nothing in her mind but a normal desire for supper.
+
+Yet all the way down the great stair, "the Corridors of Time," where the
+white owl glared his glassy wisdom on the passings and counter-passings,
+she was haunted with the thought that Harry had seen the extraordinary
+Kerr before; not shaken hands with him, perhaps--perhaps not even heard
+his name; but somewhere, across some distance, once glimpsed him, and
+had never quite shaken the memory from his mind. For there was something
+marked, notable, unforgettable in that lean distinctiveness. Against the
+sleek form of the men they met and shook hands with, he flashed
+out--seemed in contrast fairly electric. She saw him, just ahead of her
+where the crowd was thickening in the door of the supper-room, making
+way for Clara through the press with that exasperating solicitude of
+his that was half ironic. And the large broadside offered by her
+elegant Harry, matter-of-factly towing Ella by the elbow, herself
+conscious of a curl or two awry, and Judge Buller tramping heavily at
+her side, all took on to her the aspect of a well-chosen peep-show with
+the satanic Kerr officiating as showman. Even the smooth and pallid
+Clara, who usually coerced by her sheer correctness, failed to dominate
+this fantastic image; rather, she took on, as she was handed into the
+supper-room, the aspect of his chief exhibit.
+
+The room, hot, polished, flaring reflections of electric lights from its
+glistening floor, announced itself the heart of high festivity, through
+the midst of which their entrance made an added ripple. The flushed
+faces of the women under their flowers, under their pale-tinted hats,
+with their smiling recognitions to Clara, to Flora, to Ella, smiled with
+a sharpened interest. It proclaimed that Kerr was a stranger, and, in a
+circle which found itself a little stale for lack of innovations, a
+desirable one. Exclamatory greetings, running into skirmishes of talk,
+here and there halted their progress, and even after they had settled
+about their table in the center of the room the attention of one and
+another was drawn over the shoulder to some special, trans-table
+recognition.
+
+Apparently the dominant note of their party was Ella's clamorous
+selection for the supper; but to Flora the more real thing was the
+atmosphere of excitement and mystery she had been moving in all the
+evening. She was pursued by the obsession of something more about to
+happen--something imminent--though, of course, nothing would; at least,
+how could anything happen here, to them? And by "them," she meant
+herself and these people around her so stupidly talking--the eternal
+repetition of the story she had read out that evening to Clara, and not
+one glimmer of light! She wondered if her obsession was all her own--or
+did it reach to one of them? Certainly not Ella; not Judge Buller,
+settled into his collar, choosing champagnes. Clara? She had to skip
+Clara. One never knew whether Clara had not more behind her smooth
+prettiness than ever she brought to light. Kerr? Perhaps. With him she
+felt potentialities enormous. Harry? Never. Harry was being appealed to
+by all the women who could get at him as to his part in the affair--what
+had been his sensations and emotions? But Flora knew perfectly well he
+had had none. He was only oppressed by the attention his fame in the
+matter, and the central position of their table, brought upon him.
+Protesting, he made his part as small as possible.
+
+"Oh, confound it, if I can't get at my oysters!" he complained, leaning
+back into his group again with a sigh.
+
+"You divide the honors with the mysterious unknown, eh?" Kerr inquired
+across the table.
+
+"Hang it, there's no division! I'd offer you a share!" Harry laughed,
+and it occurred to Flora how much Kerr could have made of it.
+
+"Purdie'd like to share something," Buller vouchsafed. "He's been pawing
+the air ever since Crew cabled, and this has blown him up completely."
+
+"Crew?" Flora wondered. Here was something more happening. Crew? She had
+not heard that name before. It made a stir among them all; but if Kerr
+looked sharp, Clara looked sharper. She looked at Harry and Harry was
+vexed.
+
+"Who's Crew?" said Ella; and the judge looked around on the silence.
+
+"Why, bless my soul, isn't it--Oh, anyway, it will all be out to-morrow.
+But I thought Harry'd told you. The Chatworth ring wasn't Bessie's."
+
+It had the effect of startling them all apart, and then drawing them
+closer together again around the table over the uncorked bottles.
+
+"Why," Judge Buller went on, "this ring is a celebrated thing. It's the
+'Crew Idol'!" He threw the name out as if that in itself explained
+everything, but the three women, at least, were blank.
+
+"Why celebrated?" Clara objected. "The stones were only sapphires."
+
+Kerr smiled at this measure of fame.
+
+"Quite so," he nodded to her, "but there are several sorts of value
+about that ring. Its age, for one."
+
+He had the attention of the table, as if they sensed behind his words
+more even than Judge Buller could have told them.
+
+"And then the superstition about it. It's rather a pretty tale," said
+Kerr, looking at Flora. "You've seen the ring--a figure of Vishnu bent
+backward into a circle, with a head of sapphire; two yellow stones for
+the cheeks and the brain of him of the one blue. Just as a piece of
+carving it is so fine that Cellini couldn't have equaled it, but no one
+knows when or where it was made. The first that is known, the Shah Jehan
+had it in his treasure-house. The story is he stole it, but, however
+that may be, he gave it as a betrothal gift to his wife--possibly the
+most beautiful"--his eyebrows signaled to Flora his uncertainty of that
+fact--"without doubt the best-loved woman in the world. When she died it
+was buried with her--not in the tomb itself, but in the Taj Mehal; and
+for a century or so it lay there and gathered legends about it as thick
+as dust. It was believed to be a talisman of good fortune--especially in
+love.
+
+"It had age; it had intrinsic value; it had beauty, and that one other
+quality no man can resist--it was the only thing of its kind in the
+world. At all events, it was too much for old Neville Crew, when he saw
+it there some couple of hundred years ago. When he left India the ring
+went with him. He never told how he got it, but lucky marriages came
+with it, and the Crews would not take the House of Lords for it. Their
+women have worn it ever since."
+
+For a moment the wonder of the tale and the curious spark of excitement
+it had produced in the teller kept the listeners silent. Clara was the
+first to return to facts. "Then Bessie--" she prompted eagerly.
+
+Kerr turned his glass in meditative fingers. "She wore it as young
+Chatworth's wife." He held them all in an increasing tension, as if he
+drew them toward him.
+
+"The elder Chatworth, Lord Crew, is a bachelor, but, of course, the
+ring reverted to him on Chatworth's death."
+
+"And Lord only knows," the judge broke in, "how it got shipped with
+Bessie's property. Crew was out of England at the time. He kept the
+wires hot about it, and they managed to keep the fact of what the ring
+was quiet--but it got out to-day when Purdie found it was gone. You see
+he was showing it--and without special permission."
+
+Flora had a bewildered feeling that this judicial summing up of facts
+wasn't the sort of thing the evening had led up to. She couldn't see, if
+this was what it amounted to, why Harry had changed his mind about
+telling them at the dinner table. She could not even understand where
+this belonged in the march of events in their story, but Clara took it
+up, clipped it out, and fitted it into its place.
+
+"Then there will be pressure--enormous pressure, brought to bear to
+recover it?"
+
+"Oh-o-oh!" Buller drew out the syllable with unctuous relish. "They'll
+rip the town inside out. They'll do worse. There'll be a string of
+detectives across the country--yes, and at intervals to China--so tight
+you couldn't step from Kalamazoo to Oshkosh without running into one.
+The thing is too big to be covered. The chap who took it will play a
+lone game; and to do that--Lord knows there aren't many who could--to do
+that he'd have to be a--a--"
+
+"Farrell Wand?" Flora flung it out as a challenge among these prosaic
+people; but the effect of it was even sharper than she had expected. She
+fancied she saw them all start; that Harry squared himself, that Kerr
+met it as if he swallowed it with almost a facial grimace; that Judge
+Buller blinked it hard in the face--the most bothered of the lot. He
+came at it first in words.
+
+"Farrell Wand?" He felt it over, as if, like a doubtful coin, it might
+have rung false. "Now, what did I know of Farrell Wand?"
+
+"Farrell Wand?" Kerr took it up rapidly. "Why, he was the great Johnnie
+who went through the Scotland Yard men at Perth in '94, and got off.
+Don't you remember? He took a great assortment of things under the most
+peculiar circumstances--took the Tilton emeralds off Lady Tilton's neck
+at St. James'."
+
+"Why, Harry, you--" Flora began. "You told us that," was what she had
+meant to say, but Harry stopped her. Stopped her just with a look, with
+a nod; but it was as if he had shaken his head at her. His tawny lashes,
+half drooped over watching eyes, gave him more than ever the look of a
+great, still cat; a domestic, good-humored cat, but in sight of
+legitimate prey. Her eyes went back to Kerr with a sense of
+bewilderment. His voice was still going on, expansively, brilliantly,
+juggling his subject.
+
+"He knew them all, the big-wigs up in Parliament, the big-wigs on
+'Change, the little duchesses in Mayfair, and they all liked him, asked
+him, dined him, and--great Scott, they paid! Paid in hereditary jewels,
+or the shock to their decency when the thing came out--but, poor devil,
+so did he!"
+
+And through it all Buller gloomed unsmiling, with out-thrust underlip.
+
+"No, no," he said slowly, "that's not my connection with Farrell Wand.
+What happened afterward? What did they do with him?"
+
+Kerr was silent, and Flora thought his face seemed suddenly at its
+sharpest.
+
+It was Clara who answered with another question. "Didn't he get to the
+colonies? Didn't he die there?"
+
+Judge Buller caught it with a snap of his fingers. "Got it!" he
+triumphed, and the two men turned square upon him. "They ran him to
+earth in Australia. That was the year I was there--'96. I got a snapshot
+of him at the time."
+
+It was now the whole table that turned on him, and Flora felt, with that
+unanimous movement, something crucial, the something that she had been
+waiting for; and yet she could in no way connect it with what had
+happened, nor understand why Clara, why Harry, why Kerr above all should
+be so alert. For more than all he looked expectant, poised, and ready
+for whatever was coming next.
+
+"What sort of a chap?" he mused and fixed the judge a moment with the
+same stare that Flora remembered to have first confronted her.
+
+"What sort? Sort of a criminal," the judge smiled. "They all look
+alike."
+
+"Still," Clara suggested, "such a man could hardly have been ordinary--"
+
+"In the chain-gang--oh, yes," said Buller with conviction.
+
+"Oh! Then the picture wasn't worth anything?"
+
+"Why, no," Buller admitted slowly, "though, come to think of it, it
+wasn't the chain-gang either. They were taking him aboard the ship. The
+crowd was so thick I hardly saw him, and--only got one shot at him. But
+the name was a queer one. It stuck in my mind."
+
+"But then," Clara insisted, "what became of him?"
+
+"Oh, gave them the slip," the judge chuckled. "He always did. Reported
+to have changed ships in mid-ocean. Hal, is that another bottle?"
+
+Harry stretched his hand for it, but it stayed suspended--and, for an
+instant, it seemed as if the whole table waited expectant. Had Buller's
+camera caught the clear face of Farrell Wand, or only a dim figure?
+Flora wondered if that was the question Harry wanted to ask. He
+wanted--and yet he hesitated, as if he did not quite dare touch it. He
+laughed and filled the glasses. He had dropped his question, and there
+was no one at the table who seemed ready to put another.
+
+And yet there were questions there, in all the eyes; but some impassable
+barrier seemed to have come between these eager people, and what, for
+incalculable reasons, they so much wanted to know. It was not the genial
+indifference with which Buller had dropped the subject for the
+approaching bottle. It seemed rather their own timidity that withheld
+them from touching this subject which at every turn produced upon some
+one of the eager three some fresh startling effect the others could not
+understand. They were restless; Clara notably, even under her calm.
+
+Flora knew she was not giving up the quest of Farrell Wand, but only
+setting it aside with her unfailing thrift, which saved everything. But
+why, in this case? And Harry, who had been so merry with the mystery at
+dinner--why had he suddenly tried to suppress her, to want to ignore the
+whole business; why had he hesitated over his question, and finally let
+it fall? And why, above all, was Kerr so brilliantly talking at Ella, in
+the same way he had begun at Flora herself? Talking at Ella as if he
+hardly saw her, but like some magician flinging out a brilliant train of
+pyrotechnics to hypnotize the senses, before he proceeds with his trick.
+And the way Ella was looking at him--her bewildered alacrity, the way
+she was struggling with what was being so rapidly shot at her--appeared
+to Flora the prototype of her own struggle to understand what reality
+these appearances around her could possibly shadow. Never before had her
+sense of standing on the outside edge of life been so strong. It seemed
+as though there were some large, impalpable thing growing in the midst
+of them, around the edges of which they were tiptoeing, daringly,
+fearfully, each one for himself. But though it loomed so large that she
+felt herself in the very shadow of it, rub her eyes as she would, she
+couldn't see it.
+
+Often enough in the crowds she moved among she had felt herself lonely
+and not wondered at it. But now and here, sitting among her close,
+intimate circle, her friends and her lover, it seemed like a horrible
+obsession--yet it was true. As clear as if it had been shown her in a
+revelation she saw herself absolutely alone.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+ENCOUNTERS ON PARADE
+
+
+Flora, before the mirror, gaily stabbing in her long hat-pins, confessed
+to herself that last night had been queer, as queer as queer could be;
+but this morning, luckily, was real again. Her fancy last night
+had--yes, she was afraid it really had--run away with her. And she
+turned and held the hand-mirror high, to be sure of the line of her
+tilted hat, gave a touch to the turn of her wide, close belt, a flirt to
+the frills of her bodice.
+
+The wind was lightly ruffling and puffing out the muslin curtains of the
+windows, and from the garden below came the long, silvery clash of
+eucalyptus leaves. She leaned on the high window-ledge to look downward
+over red roofs, over terraced green, over steep streets running
+abruptly to the broken blue of the bay. She tried to fancy how Kerr
+would look in this morning sun. He seemed to belong only beneath the
+high artificial lights, in the thicker atmosphere of evening. Would he
+return again, with renewed potency, with the same singular, almost
+sinister charm, as a wizard who works his will only by moonlight? When
+she should see him again, what, she wondered, would be his extraordinary
+mood? On what new breathless flights might he not take her--or would he
+see her at all? It was too fantastic. The sunlight thinned him to an
+impalpable ghost.
+
+It was Clara, standing at the foot of the stairs, who belonged to the
+morning, so brisk, so fresh, so practical she appeared. She held a book
+in her hand. The door, open for her immediate departure, showed, beyond
+the descent of marble steps, the landau glistening black against white
+pavements. It was unusual for this formal vehicle to put in an
+appearance so early.
+
+"I am going to drive over to the Purdies'," Clara explained. "I have an
+errand there."
+
+Flora smiled at the thought of how many persons would be having errands
+to the Purdies' now. It was refreshing to catch Clara in this weakness.
+She felt a throb of it herself when she recalled the breathless moment
+at the supper table last evening. "Oh, that will be a heavenly drive,"
+she said. "Please ask me to go with you. My errand can wait."
+
+"Why, certainly. I should like to have you," said Clara. But if she had
+returned a flat "no," Flora would not have had a dryer sense of
+unwelcome. Still, she had gone too far to retreat. After all, this was
+only Clara's manner, and her buoyant interest in the expedition was
+stronger than her diffidence.
+
+Mischievous reflections of the doctrine the Englishman had startled her
+with the night before flickered in her mind, as they drove from the
+door. Was this part of "the big red game," not being accommodating, nor
+so very polite? The streets were still wet with early fog, and, turning
+in at the Presidio gate, the cypresses dripped dankly on their heads,
+and hung out cobwebs pearled with dew. She was sure, even under their
+dripping, that the "damnable dust" was alive.
+
+Down the broad slopes that were swept by the drive all was green to the
+water's edge. The long line of barracks, the officers' quarters, the
+great parade-ground, set in the flat land between hills and bay, looked
+like a child's toy, pretty and little. They heard the note of a bugle,
+thin and silver clear, and they could see the tiny figures mustering;
+but in her preoccupation it did not occur to Flora that they were
+arriving just in time for parade. But when the carriage had crossed the
+viaduct, and swung them past the acacias, and around the last white
+curve into the white dust of the parade-ground, Clara turned, as if with
+a fresh idea.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to stop and watch it?"
+
+"Why, yes," Flora assented. The brilliance of light and color, the
+precision of movement, the sound of the brasses under the open sky were
+an intermezzo in harmony with her spirited mood.
+
+The carriage stopped under the scanty shadow of trees that bordered the
+walk to the officers' quarters. Clara, book in hand, alertly rose.
+
+"I'll just run up to the Purdies' and leave this," she said.
+
+"Then she really did want to be rid of me," Flora mused, as she watched
+the brisk back moving away; "and how beautifully she has done it!" Her
+eyes followed Clara's little figure retreating up the neat and narrow
+board walk, to where it disappeared in overarching depths of eucalyptus
+trees. Further on, beyond the trees, two figures, smaller than Clara's
+in their greater distance, were coming down. Flora almost grinned as she
+recognized the large linen umbrella that Mrs. Purdie invariably carried
+when abroad in the reservation, and presently the trim and bounding
+figure of Mrs. Purdie herself, under it. The Purdies were coming down to
+parade--at least Mrs. Purdie was. But the tall figure beside her--that
+was not the major. She took up her lorgnon. It was--no it could not
+be--yet surely it _was_ Harry! Lazy Harry, up and out, and squiring
+Mrs. Purdie to the review at half-past ten in the morning! "Are we all
+mad?" Flora thought.
+
+The three little figures, the one going up, the two coming down, touched
+opposite fringes of the grove--disappeared within it. On which side
+would they come out together? Flora wondered. They emerged on her side
+with Harry a little in advance. He came swingingly down the walk,
+straight toward her, and across the road to the carriage, his hat
+lifted, his hand out.
+
+"Well, Flora," he said, "this is luck!"
+
+"What in the world has got you out so early?" she rallied him.
+
+"Came out to see Purdie on business, and here you are all ready to drive
+me back."
+
+"That's your reward."
+
+He brushed his handkerchief over his damp forehead. "Well, there's one
+coming to me, for I haven't found Purdie."
+
+Her eyes were dancing with mischief. "Harry, I believe you're out here
+about the Crew Idol, too!"
+
+He shook his head at her, smiling. "I wouldn't talk too much about that,
+Flora. It flicks poor Purdie on the raw every time that--" His sentence
+trailed off into something else, for Mrs. Purdie and Clara had come up.
+
+The book had changed hands, together, evidently, with several
+explanations, and Mrs. Purdie, with her foot on the carriage step, was
+ready to make one of these over again.
+
+"The major'll be so sorry. He's gone in town. It's so unusual for him to
+get off at this hour, but he said he had to catch a man. As Mrs. Britton
+and I were saying, he's likely to be very busy until this dreadful
+affair is straightened out. If you can only wait a little longer, Mr.
+Cressy," she went on, "I am expecting him every moment."
+
+"Oh, it's of no importance," said Harry, but he looked at his watch with
+a fold between his brows, and then at the car that was coming in.
+
+"Well, at least, you'll have time to see the parade," said Mrs. Purdie.
+"I always think it's a pretty sight, though most of the women get tired
+of it."
+
+Clara's face showed that she belonged to the latter class; but Flora,
+too keenly attuned to sounds and sights not to be swayed by outward
+circumstances, was content for the time to watch, in the cloud of dust,
+the wheeling platoons and rhythmic columns.
+
+Yet through all--even when she was not looking at him--she was aware of
+Harry's restlessness, of his impatience; and as the last company swung
+barrackward, and the cloud began to settle over the empty field, he
+snapped his watch-case smartly, and remarked, "Still no major."
+
+"Why, there he is now!" Mrs. Purdie screamed, pointing across the
+parade-ground.
+
+Flora looked. Half-way down on the adjoining side of the parallelogram,
+back toward her, the redoubtable Kerr was standing. She recognized him
+on the instant, as if he were the most familiar figure in her life. Yet
+she was more surprised to see him here than she had been to see Harry.
+She felt inclined to rub her eyes. It took a moment for her to realize
+that his companion was indeed Major Purdie.
+
+The major had recognized his wife's signaling umbrella. Now he turned
+toward it, but Kerr, with a quick motion of hand toward hat, turned in
+the opposite direction. In her mind Flora was with the major who ran
+after him. The two men stood for a little, expostulating. Then both
+walked toward the landau and the linen umbrella.
+
+The carriage group waited, watching with flagging conversation, which
+finally fell into silence. But the two approaching strolled easily and
+talked. Even in cold daylight Kerr still gave Flora the impression that
+the open was not big enough to hold him, but she saw a difference in his
+mood, a graver eye, a colder mouth, and when he finally greeted them, a
+manner that was brusk. It showed uncivil beside the major's urbanity.
+
+The major was glad, very glad, to see them all. He was evidently also a
+little flurried. He seemed to know that they had all met Kerr before.
+Had it been at the moment of his attempted departure that Kerr had told
+him, Flora wondered? And had he given them as his excuse for going away?
+It hurt her; though why should she be hurt because a stranger had not
+wanted to cross the parade-ground to shake hands with her? He was less
+interested in her than he was in Harry, at whom he had looked keenly.
+
+But Harry's nervousness had left him, now that Purdie was within his
+reach. He returned the glance indifferently. He stood close to the
+major--his hand on his shoulder. The major, with his bland blue eyes
+twinkling from Clara to Flora, seemed the only man ready to devote
+himself to the service of the ladies.
+
+"And what's the news from the front?" said Clara gaily. Kerr gave her a
+rapid glance; but the major blinked as if the allusion had got by him.
+
+"I mean the mystery--the Chatworth ring," she explained. However
+lightly and sweetly Clara said it, it was a little brazen to fling such
+a question at poor Purdie, whose responsibility the ring had been.
+
+He received it amicably enough, but conclusively. "No news whatever, my
+dear Mrs. Britton."
+
+She smiled. "We're all rather interested in the mystery. Flora has made
+a dozen romances about it."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes," said the major indulgently. "It will do for young ladies
+to make romances about. It'll be a two days' wonder, and then you'll
+suddenly find out it's something very tame indeed."
+
+"Why, have they fixed the suspicion?" said Clara.
+
+There was a restless movement from Kerr.
+
+"No, no, nothing of that sort," said the major quickly.
+
+Harry passed his hand through his arm. "May I see you for five minutes,
+Major?"
+
+The excellent major looked harassed.
+
+"Suppose we all step up to the house," he suggested. "Why, you're not
+going, man?" he objected, for Kerr had fallen back a step, and, with
+lifted hat and balanced cane, was signaling his farewells.
+
+"Do let us go up to the house," said Clara. "And Mrs. Purdie, won't you
+drive up with me? Flora wants to walk."
+
+Flora stood up. She had a confused impression that she had expressed no
+such desire, and that there was room for three in the landau; but the
+mental shove that Clara had administered gave her an impetus that
+carried her out of the carriage before she realized what she was about.
+Some one had offered a hand to help her, and when she was on the ground
+she saw it was Kerr, who had come back and was standing beside her. He
+was smiling quizzically.
+
+"I feel rather like walking, myself," he said. "Do you want a
+companion?"
+
+She turned to him with gratitude. "I should be glad of one," she said
+quickly. She was touched. She had not thought he could be so gentle.
+
+Harry was already moving off up the board walk with the major. The
+carriage was turning. Kerr looked at the backs of the two women being
+driven away, and then at Flora. "Very good," he said, raising her
+parasol; "you are the deposed heir, and I am your faithful servant."
+
+"But indeed I do want to walk," she protested, a little shy at the way
+he read her case.
+
+"But you didn't think of it until she gave you the suggestion, eh?" he
+quizzed.
+
+"She probably had something to say to Mrs. Purdie that--"
+
+"My dear child," he caught her up earnestly, "don't think I'm
+criticizing your friend's motive. I am only saying I saw something done
+that was not pretty, though really, if you will forgive me--it was very
+funny."
+
+Flora smiled ruefully. "It must have been--absurd. I am afraid I often
+am. But what else could I have done?"
+
+He seemed to ponder a moment. "I fancy _you_ couldn't have done anything
+different. That's why I came back for you," he volunteered gaily.
+
+The casual words seemed in her ears fraught with deeper meaning. Her
+cheeks were hot behind her thin veil. They were strolling slowly up the
+board walk, and for a moment she could not look at him. She could only
+listen to the flutter of the fringes of the parasol carried above her
+head. She felt herself small and stupid. She could not understand what
+he could see in her to come back to. Then she gave a side glance at him.
+She saw an unsmiling profile. The lines in his face were indeed
+extraordinary, but none was hard. She liked that wonderful mobility that
+had survived the batterings of experience.
+
+As if he were conscious of her eyes, he looked down and smiled; but
+vaguely. He did not speak; and she was aware that it was at her
+appearance he had smiled, as if that only reached him through his
+preoccupation and pleased him. And since he seemed content with this
+vague looking, she was content to move beside him silent, a mere image
+of youth and--since he liked it--of prettiness, with a fleeting color
+and a gust of little curls blowing out under a fluttering veil.
+
+But what was he thinking about so seriously between those smiling
+glances? Not her problem, she was sure.
+
+Yet he had stayed for her when he had not meant to stay. He had been
+anxious to get away since he had first sighted them. Surely he must like
+her more than he disliked some other member of her party. Or had he
+simply reached forth out of his kindness to rescue her, as he might have
+rescued a blind kitten that he pitied? "No," he had said, "_you_ could
+not have done anything different."
+
+They had almost reached the major's gate, and it was now or never to
+find out what he thought of her. She looked up at him suddenly, with
+inquiring eyes.
+
+"Do you think I am weak?" she demanded.
+
+The lines of his face broke up into laughter. "No," he said, "I think
+you are misplaced."
+
+She knitted her brows in perplexity, but his hand was on the white
+picket gate, and she had to walk through it ahead of him as he set it
+open for her.
+
+Of their party only the two women were in sight waiting on the
+diminutive veranda. Clara had a mild domestic appearance, rocking there
+behind the potted geraniums. All the windows were open into the little
+shell of a house. Trunks still stood in the hall, though the Purdies had
+been quartered at the Presidio for nine months. From the rear of the
+house came the sound of bowl and chopper, where the Chinese cook was
+preparing luncheon, and the major's man appeared, walking around the
+garden to the veranda, with a cluster of mint juleps on a copper tray.
+
+In this easy atmosphere, how was it that the thread of restraint ran so
+sharply defined? Clara and Mrs. Purdie were matching crewels; and,
+sitting on the top step Flora instructed Kerr as to the composition of
+the tropical glacier they were drinking. Ten girls had probably so
+instructed him before, but it would do to fill up the gap. It was so,
+Flora thought, they were all feeling. Even the carriage, driving slowly
+round and round the rectangle of officers' row, added its note of
+restlessness.
+
+Like a stone plumped into a pool the major and Harry reëntered this
+stagnation. They were brisk and buoyant. Harry, especially, had the air
+of a man who sees stimulating business before him. Immediately all
+talked at once.
+
+"Now that we've got you here, you must all stay to luncheon," Mrs.
+Purdie determined.
+
+It looked as if they were about to accept her invitation unanimously,
+but Harry demurred. He had to be at Montgomery Street and Jackson by one
+o'clock. "I hoped," he added, glancing at Flora, "that some one was to
+drive me--part of the way, at least."
+
+Flora, with an unruly sense of disappointment, yet opened her lips for
+the courteous answer. But Clara was quicker. She rose.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I'll drive you back with pleasure."
+
+Harry's glimmer of annoyance was comic.
+
+"I have to be at the house for luncheon," Clara explained to her hostess
+as she buttoned her glove, "but there is no reason why Flora shouldn't
+stay."
+
+"Oh, I should love to," Flora murmured, not knowing whether she was more
+embarrassed or pleased at this high-handed dispensation which placed her
+where she wanted to be.
+
+But the way Clara had leaped at her opportunity! Flora looked curiously
+at Harry.
+
+He seemed uneasy at being pounced upon, but that might be merely because
+he was balked of a tête-à-tête with herself. For while Clara went on to
+the gate with their hostess he lingered a moment with Flora.
+
+"May I see you to-night?"
+
+"All you have to do is to come."
+
+She gave him an oblique, upward glance, and had a pleasant sense of
+power in seeing his face relax and smile. She had a dance for that
+evening; but she thrust it aside without regret. For suppose Harry
+should have something to tell her about the Chatworth ring? She wondered
+if Clara would get it out of him first on the way home.
+
+The four left on the veranda watched the two driving away with a sudden
+clearing of the social atmosphere. In vain Flora told herself it was
+only the relief she always felt in getting free of Clara. For in the
+return of the major's elderly blandishments, in Kerr's kindlier mood, as
+well as in her own lightened spirits, she had the proofs that, with them
+all, some tension had relaxed. It seemed to her as if those two,
+departing, were bearing away between them the very mystery of the Crew
+Idol.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+FLOWERS BY THE WAY
+
+
+Flora liked this funny little dining-room with walls as frail as
+box-boards, low-ceiled and flooded with sun. It recalled surroundings
+she had known later than the mining camp, but long before the great red
+house. It seemed to her that she fitted here better than the Purdies.
+She looked across at Kerr, sitting opposite, to see if perhaps he fitted
+too. But he was foreign, decidedly. He kept about him still the hint of
+delicate masquerade that she had noticed the night before. Out of doors,
+alone with her, he had lost it. For a moment he had been absolutely off
+his guard. And even now he was more off his guard than he had been last
+night. She was surprised to see him so unstudied, so uncritical, so
+humorously anecdotal. If she and the major, between them, had dragged
+him into this against his will he did not show it. She rose from the
+table with the feeling that in an hour all three of them had become
+quite old friends of his, though without knowing anything further about
+him.
+
+"We must do this again," Mrs. Purdie said, as they parted from her in
+the garden.
+
+"Surely we will," Kerr answered her.
+
+But Flora had the feeling that they never, never would. For him it had
+been a chance touching on a strange shore.
+
+But at least they were going away together. They would walk together as
+far as the little car, whose terminal was the edge of the parade-ground.
+But just outside of the gate he stopped.
+
+"Do you especially like board walks?" he asked.
+
+It was an instant before she took his meaning. Then she laughed. "No. I
+like green paths."
+
+He waved with his cane. "There is a path yonder, that goes over a
+bridge, and beyond that a hill."
+
+"And at the top of that another car," Flora reminded him.
+
+"Ah well," he said, "there are flowers on the way, at least." He looked
+at her whimsically. "There are three purple irises under the bridge. I
+noticed them as I came down."
+
+She was pleased that he had noticed that for himself--pleased, too, that
+he had suggested the longer way.
+
+The narrow path that they had chosen branched out upon the main path,
+broad and yellow, which dipped downward into the hollow. From there came
+the murmur of water. Green showed through the white grass of last
+summer. The odor of wet evergreens was pungent in their nostrils. They
+looked at the delicate fringed acacias, at the circle of hills showing
+above the low tree-tops, at the cloudless sky; but always their eyes
+returned to each other's faces, as if they found these the pleasantest
+points of the landscape. Sauntering between plantations of young
+eucalyptus, they came to the arched stone bridge. They leaned on the
+parapet, looking down at the marshy stream beneath and at the three
+irises Kerr had remarked, knee-deep in swamp ground.
+
+"Now that I see them I suppose I want them," Flora remarked.
+
+"Of course," he assented. "Then hold all these."
+
+He put into her hands the loose bunch of syringa and rose plucked for
+her in the Purdies' garden, laid his hat and gloves on the parapet;
+then, with an eye for the better bank, walked to the end of the bridge.
+
+She watched him descending the steep bank and issuing into the broad
+shallow basin of the stream's way. The sun was still high enough to fill
+the hollows with warm light and mellow the doubles of trees and grass in
+the stream. In this landscape of green and pale gold he looked black and
+tall and angular. The wind blew longish locks of hair across his
+forehead, and she had a moment's pleased and timorous reflection that
+he looked like Satan coming into the Garden.
+
+He advanced from tussock to tussock. He came to the brink of the marsh.
+The lilies wavered what seemed but a hand's-breadth from him. But he
+stooped, he reached--Oh, could anything so foolish happen as that he
+could not get them! Or, more foolish still, plunge in to the knees! He
+straightened from his fruitless effort, drew back, but before she could
+think what he was about he had leaned forward again, flashed out his
+cane, and with three quick, cutting slashes the lilies were mown. It was
+deftly, delicately, astonishingly done, but it gave her a singular
+shock, as if she had seen a hawk strike its prey. He drew them cleverly
+toward him in the crook of his cane, took them up daintily in his
+fingers, and returned to her across the shallow valley. She waited him
+with mixed emotions.
+
+[Illustration: HE TOOK THE LILIES UP DAINTILY, AND RETURNED TO HER.]
+
+"Oh, how could you!" she murmured, as he put them into her hand.
+
+He looked at her in amused astonishment. "Why, aren't they right?"
+
+They were as clean clipped off and as perfect as if the daintiest hand
+had plucked them.
+
+"Oh, yes," she admitted, "they're lovely, but I don't like the way you
+got them."
+
+"I took the means I had," he objected.
+
+"I don't think I like it."
+
+His whole face was sparkling with interest and amusement. "Is that so?
+Why not?"
+
+"You're too--too"--she cast about for the word--"too terribly
+resourceful!"
+
+"I see," he said. If she had feared he would laugh, it showed how little
+she had gauged the limits of his laughter. He only looked at her rather
+more intently than he had before.
+
+"But, my good child, resourcefulness is a very natural instinct. I am
+afraid you read more into it than is there. You wanted the flowers, I
+had a stick, and in my youth I was taught to strike clean and straight.
+I am really a very simple fellow."
+
+Looking him in the eyes, which were of a clear, candid gray, she was
+ready to believe it. It seemed as if he had let her look for a moment
+through his manner, his ironies, his armor of indifference, to the frank
+foundations of his nature.
+
+"But, you see, the trouble is you don't in the least look it," she
+argued.
+
+"So you think because I have a long face and wild hair that I am a
+sinister person? My dear Miss Gilsey, the most desperate character I
+ever knew was five feet high and wore mutton-chop whiskers. It is an
+uncertain business judging men by their appearance."
+
+She could not help smiling. "But most people do."
+
+"I don't class you with most people."
+
+She gave him a quick look. "You _did_ the first night."
+
+"Possibly--but less and less ever since. You have me now in the state of
+mind where I don't know what you'll be at next."
+
+This was fortunate, she thought, since she had not the least idea
+herself, beyond a teasing desire to find out more about him. He had
+shown her many fleeting phases which, put together, seemed
+contradictory. She could not connect this man, so mild and amusing,
+strolling beside her, with the alert, whetted, combative person of the
+night before, or even with the aloof and reticent figure on the
+parade-ground. His very attitude toward herself had changed from the
+amused scrutiny of the first night into something more indulgent, more
+sympathetic. There was only one attitude on his part that had remained
+the same--one attitude toward one person--and her mind hovered over
+this. On each occasion it had stirred her curiosity and, though she had
+not admitted it, made her uneasy. Why not probe him on the subject, now
+that she had him completely to herself? But as soon as silence fell
+between them she saw that wave of preoccupation which had submerged him
+during their walk from the parade-ground to the Purdies' rising over him
+again and floating him away from her. He no longer even looked at her.
+His eyes were on the ground, and it was not until they had crossed the
+open expanse of the shallow valley and were climbing toward the avenue
+of cypress that she found courage to put her question.
+
+"Have you and Mr. Cressy met before?"
+
+He raised his head with a jerk and looked at her a moment in
+astonishment.
+
+"Do you mind if I answer your question American fashion by asking
+another?" he said presently. "What put it into your head that we may
+have met before?"
+
+"The way you looked at each other at the club, and again this morning."
+
+Kerr shook his head. "You are an observant young person! The fact is,
+I've never met him--of that I'm certain, but I believe I've seen him
+before, and for the life of me, I can't think where. At the moment you
+spoke I was trying to remember."
+
+"Was it in this country?" Flora prompted, hopeful of fishing something
+definite out of this vagueness.
+
+"No, it was years ago. It must have been in England." He looked at her
+inquiringly, as if he expected her to help him.
+
+"Oh, Harry's been in England," she said quickly; and then, with a
+flashing thought, came to her the one scene Harry had mentioned in his
+English experience. Was it at a ball? The question came to her lips, but
+she checked it there. She remembered how Harry had stopped her the night
+before with a nod, with a look, from mentioning that very thing. Still
+she hesitated--for the temptation was strong. But no; it was only loyal
+to Harry to speak to him first.
+
+"So you're not going to tell me?" Kerr remarked, and she came back to a
+sudden consciousness of how her face must have reflected her thought.
+
+"No--not this time!" she said, smiling, though somewhat flushed.
+
+He knitted his brows at her. They had reached the arched gate, and the
+car that would carry her home was approaching.
+
+"Ah, then, I am afraid it will be never," he said.
+
+Was it possible this was their last meeting? Did he mean he was going
+away? The questions formed in her mind, but there was no time for words.
+He had stopped the car with a flick of his agile cane, and handed her in
+as if he had handed her into a carriage; and not a word as to whether
+they would see each other again, though she hoped and hesitated to the
+last moment.
+
+Her hand was in his for the fraction of a minute. Then the car was
+widening the distance between them, and she was no longer looking into
+his face, which had seemed at their last moment both merry and wistful,
+but back at his diminishing figure, showing black against the pale
+Presidio hills.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+ON GUARD
+
+
+He had so disturbed her, his presence had so obliterated other presences
+and annihilated time, that it took an encounter with Clara to remind her
+of her arrangement for the evening. The dance? No, she had given that
+up. She had promised Harry to be at home. Clara wanted to know rather
+austerely what she intended to do about the dinner. This was dreadful!
+Flora had forgotten it completely. Nothing to be done but go, and leave
+a message for Harry--apology, and assurance that she would be home
+early. She wondered if she were losing her memory.
+
+She appeared to be changing altogether, for the dinner--a merry
+one--bored her. What she wanted was to get away from it as soon as
+possible for that interesting evening. When she had made the
+appointment with Harry she had been excited by the thought that he might
+tell her whether he had learned anything from the major that morning in
+the matter of the ring. But now she was more engrossed with the idea of
+asking about Kerr--whether Harry had really met him--if so, where; and,
+finally, why did not Harry want her to mention that Embassy ball?
+
+Primed with these questions, she left immediately after coffee, arriving
+at her own red stone portal at ten. But coming in, all a-flutter with
+the idea of having kept him waiting when she had so much to ask, she
+found her note as she had left it. She questioned Shima. There had been
+no message from Mr. Cressy. Her first annoyance was lost in wonder. What
+could be the matter? If this was neglect on Harry's part--well, it would
+be the first time. But she did not believe it was neglect. He had been
+too eager that morning.
+
+She went into the drawing-room--a dull-pink, stupendous chamber--knelt a
+moment before the flashing wood fire, then rose, and crossing to the
+window, looked anxiously out. She had a flight of fancy toward
+accidents, but in that case she would certainly have heard. The French
+clock on the mantel rang half-past ten. The sound had hardly died in the
+great spaces before she heard the fine snarl of the electric bell.
+
+She restrained an impulse to dash into the hall, and stood impatient in
+the middle of the room.
+
+He came in hastily, his lips all ready with words which hesitated at
+sight of her.
+
+"Why, you're going out!" he said.
+
+She had forgotten the cloak that still hung from her shoulders.
+
+"No, I've just come in, and all my fine apologies for being out are
+wasted. How long do you think Clara'll let you stop at this hour?"
+
+"Clara isn't here," he said.
+
+"Well, then your time is all the shorter." She was nettled that he
+should be oblivious of his lapse. Their relation had never been
+sentimental, but he had always been punctilious.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said, arriving at last at his apology. "I couldn't help
+being late. I've had a day of it." He drew his hands across his
+forehead, and she noticed that he was in his morning clothes and looked
+as rumpled and flurried as a man just from the office.
+
+She relented. "Poor dear! You do look tired! Don't take that chair. It's
+more Louis Quinze than comfortable. Come into the library. And
+remember," she added, when Shima had set the decanter and glasses beside
+him, "you are to stay just twenty minutes."
+
+He took a sip of his drink and looked at her over the top of his glass.
+"I may have to stay longer if you want to hear about it."
+
+"Oh, Harry, you really know something? All the evening I've heard
+nothing but the wildest rumors. Some say Major Purdie couldn't speak
+because some one 'way up knows more than she should about it. And
+somebody else said it wasn't the real ring at all that was taken, only a
+paste copy, and that is why they're not doing more about getting it
+back."
+
+"Not doing more about getting it back?" Harry laughed. "Is that the idea
+that generally prevails? Why, Flora--" He stopped, waited a moment while
+she leaned forward expectant. "Flora," he began again, "are you mum?"
+
+She nodded, breathless.
+
+"Not a word to Clara?"
+
+"Oh, of course not."
+
+"Well--" He twisted around in his chair the better to face her.
+"To-morrow there will be published a reward of twenty thousand dollars
+for the return of the Crew Idol, and no questions asked."
+
+"Oh!" she said. And again, "Oh, is that all!" She was disappointed. "I
+don't see why you and the major should have been so mysterious about
+that."
+
+"You don't, eh? Suppose you had taken the ring--wouldn't it make a
+difference to you if you knew twenty-four hours ahead that a reward of
+twenty thousand dollars would be published? Wouldn't you expect every
+man's hand to be against you at that price? If you had a pal, wouldn't
+you be afraid he'd sell you up? Wouldn't you be glad of twenty-four
+hours' start to keep him from turning state's evidence? Well--it's just
+so that he shan't have the start that the authorities are keeping so
+almighty dark about the reward. They want to spring it on him."
+
+Flora leaned forward with knitted brows. "Yes, I can see that, but
+still, just among ourselves, this morning--"
+
+Harry smiled. "You've lost sight of the fact that it is just among
+ourselves the thing has happened."
+
+"Oh, oh! Now you're ridiculous!"
+
+"I might be, if the thing had happened anywhere but in this town; but
+think a moment. How much do we know of the people we meet, where they
+were, and who they were, before they came here? There's a case in point.
+It was not quite 'among ourselves' this morning."
+
+"Harry, how horrid of you!" She was on the point of declaring that she
+knew Kerr very well indeed; but she remembered this might not be the
+thing to say to Harry.
+
+"My dear girl, I'm not saying anything against him. I only remarked that
+we did not know him."
+
+"Don't _you_, Harry?"
+
+He gave her a quick look. "Why, what put that into your head?"
+
+"I--I don't know. I thought you looked at him very hard last night in
+the picture gallery. And afterward, at supper, don't you remember, you
+did not want me to mention your connection with something or other he
+was talking about?"
+
+"Something or other he was talking about?" Harry inquired with a
+frowning smile.
+
+"I think it was about that Embassy ball--"
+
+"_I_ didn't want you to mention the Embassy ball?" he repeated, and now
+he was only smiling. "My dear child, surely you are dreaming."
+
+She looked at him with the bewildered feeling that he was flatly
+contradicting himself. And yet she could remember he had not shaken his
+head at her. He had only nodded. Could it be that her cherished
+imagination had played her a trick at last? But the next moment it
+occurred to her that somehow she had been led away from her first
+question.
+
+"Then _have_ you seen him, Harry?" she insisted.
+
+"No!" He jerked it out so sharply that it startled her, but she stuck to
+her subject.
+
+"And you wouldn't have minded my telling him you had been at that ball?"
+
+There was a pause while Harry looked at the fire. Then--"Look here," he
+burst out, "did he ask you about it?"
+
+"Oh, no," she protested. "I only just happened to wonder."
+
+He stared at her as if he would have liked to shake her. But then he
+rose from his frowning attitude before the fire, came over to her, sat
+on the arm of her chair, and, with the tip of one finger under her chin,
+lifted her face; but she did not lift her eyes. She heard only his
+voice, very low, with a caressing note that she hardly knew as Harry's.
+
+"It isn't that I care _what_ you say to him. The fact is, Flora, I
+suppose I was a little jealous, but I naturally don't like the
+suggestion that you would discuss me with a stranger."
+
+She knew herself properly reproved, and she reproached herself, not for
+what she had actually said to Kerr of Harry--that had been trivial
+enough--but for that wayward impulse she had to confide in this
+clear-eyed, whimsical stranger, as it had never occurred to her to
+confide in Harry.
+
+She raised her eyes. "Certainly I shall not discuss you with him."
+
+"Is that a promise?"
+
+"Harry, how you do dislike him!"
+
+"Well, suppose I do?" he shrugged.
+
+"You've used up twice your twenty minutes," she said, "and Clara will be
+scandalized."
+
+He stopped the caressing movement of his hand on her hair. "Are you
+afraid of Clara?" he asked.
+
+"Mercy, yes!" She was half in earnest and half laughing. "But then I'm
+afraid of every one."
+
+He put his arm affectionately around her. "But not of me?"
+
+"Oh," she told him, "you're a great big purring pussy-cat, and I am your
+poor little mouse."
+
+He thought this reply immensely witty, and Flora thought what a great
+boy he was, after all.
+
+"Now, really, you must go home," she urged, trying to rise.
+
+"But look here," he protested, still on the arm of her chair, "there's
+another thing I want to ask you about." And by the tip of one finger he
+lifted her left hand shining with rings. "You will have to have another
+one of these, you know. It's been on my mind for a week. Is there any
+sort you haven't already?"
+
+She held up her hand to the light and fluttered its glitter.
+
+"Any one that you gave me would be different from the others, wouldn't
+it?" she asked prettily.
+
+"Oh, that's very nice of you, Flora, but I want to find you something
+new. When shall we look for it? To-morrow, in the morning?"
+
+"Yes, I should love it," she answered, but with no particular
+enthusiasm, for the idea of shopping with Harry, and shopping at
+Shrove's, did not present a wide field of possibility. "But I have a
+luncheon to-morrow," she added, "so we must make it as early as ten."
+
+"Oh, you two!"
+
+At Clara's mildly reproving voice so close beside them both started like
+conspirators. They had not heard her come in, yet there she was, just
+inside the doorway, still wrapped in her cloak. But there was none of
+the impetus of arrested motion in her attitude. She stood at repose as
+if she might have waited not to interrupt them.
+
+"Don't scold Flora," said Harry, rising. "It's my fault. She sent me
+away half an hour ago. But it is so comfortable here!"
+
+Flora couldn't tell whether he was simply natural, or whether he was
+giving this domestic color to their interview on purpose. She rather
+thought it was the latter.
+
+"To-morrow at ten, then!" he said cheerfully to Flora. The stiff
+curtains rustled behind him and the two women were left together.
+
+"What an important appointment," said Clara lightly, "to bring a man at
+this hour to make it."
+
+"Oh, it is, awfully!" Flora answered in the same key. "To choose my
+engagement ring."
+
+Clara's delicate brows flew upward, and though Clara herself made no
+comment, the quick facial movement said, "I don't believe it."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+BLACK MAGIC
+
+
+The memory of Clara's incredulous glance remained with her as something
+curious, and she was not unprepared to be challenged when, the next
+morning, she hurried down the hall, drawing on her gloves. Clara's door
+did open, but the lady herself, yawning lightly on the threshold, had
+this time no questions for her. "Remember the luncheon," she advised,
+"and by the way, Ella wants us to sit in their box to-night. Don't
+forget to tell Harry."
+
+Flora threw back a gay "All right," but she was in danger of forgetting
+even the object of their errand, once she and Harry were out in the
+bright glare of the street. The wind, keen and resinous from the wet
+Presidio woods, blew at their back down the short block of pavement,
+and buffeted them, broadside, as they waited on the corner for the
+slow-crawling little car. In spite of the blustering air Flora insisted
+on the side seat of the "dummy," and, catching her hat with one hand,
+pressing down her fluttering skirts with the other, she laughed, now
+sidelong at Harry, now out at the dancing face of the bay.
+
+Each succeeding cross-street gave up a flash of blue water. The short
+blocks slid by, first stone fronts and fresh lawns, stucco and tiles;
+then here and there corner lots, the great gray, towered, wooden
+mansions the stock-brokers of the "seventies" built, and below them,
+like a contingent of shabby-genteel relations, the narrow gray wooden
+faces of what was "smart" in the "sixties". It was a continuous progress
+backward toward the old, the original town. There was no stately
+nucleus. This town was a succession of widening ripples of progress,
+each newer, more polished than the last, but not different in quality
+from the old center that still teemed--a region of frail wooden
+rookeries full of foreign contending interests, haunted with the
+adventures of its feverish past. It had built itself on the hopes of a
+moment, and what spread from it still was the spell of the new, the
+changing, and the reckless. It drew still from the ends of the earth.
+The broad road in over the mountains, the broad road out over the ocean
+made it where it stood, touching all trades, a road-house of the world.
+
+Some dim perception of this touched Flora as the houses, gliding past,
+grew older, grayer, with steeper gardens, narrower streets, here and
+there even trees, lone, sentinel, at the edge of cobbled gutters. From
+the crest of the last hill they had looked a mile down the long gray
+throat of the street to where the ferry building lay stretched out with
+its one tall tower pricked up among the masts of shipping. Half-way
+between their momentary perch and the ferry slips the street suddenly
+thickened, darkened, swarmed, flying a yellow pennon high above
+blackened roofs. And now, as they slipped down the long decline into
+the foreign quarter the pungent oriental breath of Chinatown was blown
+up to them. She breathed it in readily. It was pleasant because it was
+strange, outlandish, suggesting a wide web of life beyond her own
+knowledge. She wondered what Harry was thinking of it, as he sat with
+his passive profile turned from her to the heathen street ahead. She
+guessed, by the curl of his nostril, that it was only present to him as
+an unpleasant odor to be got through as quickly as possible; but she was
+wrong. He had another thought. This time, oddly enough, a thought for
+her.
+
+He gave it to her presently, abrupt, matter-of-fact, material. "That
+Chinese goldsmith down there has good stuff now and then. How'd you like
+to look in there before we go on to what-you-call-'em's,--the regular
+place?"
+
+"You mean for a ring?" She was doubtful only of his being in earnest.
+
+"You have so many of the Shrove kind," he explained. "I thought you
+might like it, Flora; you're so romantic!" he laughed.
+
+"Like it!" she cried, too touched at his thought for her to resent the
+imputation. "I should love it! But I didn't know they had such things."
+
+"Now and then--though it is a rare chance."
+
+"But that will be just the fun of it," she hastened, half afraid lest
+Harry should change his mind, "to see if we can possibly find one that
+will be different from all these others."
+
+She kept this little feeling of exploration close about her, as they
+left the car, a block above the green trees of the plaza, and entered
+one of the narrow streets that was not even a cross-street, but an
+alley, running to a bag's end, with balconies, green railings and
+narcissi taking the sun.
+
+A slant-eyed baby in a mauve blouse stared after them; and a white face
+so poisoned in its badness that it gave Flora a start, peered at them
+from across the street. It made her shrink a little behind Harry's broad
+shoulder and take hold of his arm. The mere touch of that arm was
+security. His big presence, moving agilely beside her, seemed to fill
+the street with its strength, as if, by merely flinging out his arms,
+Samson-like, he could burst the dark walls asunder.
+
+In the middle of the block, sunk a little back from the fronts of the
+others, the goldsmith's shop showed a single, filmed window; and the
+pale glow through it proclaimed that the worker in metals preferred
+another light to the sun's. The threshold was worn to a hollow that
+surprised the foot; and the interior into which it led them gloomed so
+suddenly around them after the broad sunlight, that it was a moment
+before they made out the little man behind the counter, sitting hunched
+up on a high stool.
+
+"Hullo, Joe," said Harry, in the same voice that hailed his friends on
+the street-corners; but the goldsmith only nodded like a nodding
+mandarin, as if, without looking up, he took them in and sensed their
+errand. He wore a round, blue Chinese cap drawn over his crown; a pair
+of strange goggles like a mask over his eyes, and his little body seemed
+to poise as lightly on his high stool as a wisp, as if there were no
+more flesh in it than in his long, dry fingers that so marvelously
+manipulated the metal. Save for that glitter of gold on his glass plate,
+and the grin of a lighted brazier, all was dark, discolored and
+cluttered.
+
+And the way Harry bloomed upon this background of dubious antiquity! He
+leaned on the little counter, which creaked under his weight, in his
+big, fresh coat, with his clear, fresh face bent above the shallow tray
+of trinkets--doubtful jades, dim-eyed rings, dull clasps and coins--his
+large, fastidious finger poked among. He was the one vital thing in the
+shop.
+
+Over everything else was spread a dimness of age like dust. It enveloped
+the little man behind the counter, not with the frailness that belongs
+to human age, but with that weathered, polished hardness which time
+brings to antiques of wood and metal. Indeed, he appeared so like a
+carved idol in a curio shop that Flora was a little startled to find
+that he was looking at her. Chinamen had always seemed to her blank
+automatons; but this one looked keenly, pointedly, as if he personally
+took note. She told herself whimsically that perhaps it was his
+extraordinary glasses that gave point to that expression; and presently
+when he took them off she was surprised to see it seemed verily true.
+His little physiognomy had no more expression than a withered nut. But
+there was something about it more disturbing than its vanishing
+intelligence, something unexpected, and out of harmony with the rest of
+him, yet so illusive that, flit over him as her eye would, she failed to
+find it.
+
+"Harry," she murmured to Cressy, who was still stirring the contents of
+the box with a disdainful forefinger, "this little man gives me the
+shivers."
+
+"Old Joe?" Harry smiled indulgently. "He's a queer customer. Been quite
+a figurehead in Chinatown for twenty years. Say, Joe, heap bad!" and
+with the back of his hand he flicked the tray away from him.
+
+The little man undoubled his knees and descended the stool. He stood
+breast-high behind the counter. He dropped a lack-luster eye to the box.
+"Velly nice," he murmured with vague, falling inflection.
+
+"Oh, rotten!" Harry laughed at him.
+
+"You no like?"
+
+"No. No like. You got something else--something nice?"
+
+"No." It was like a door closed in the face of their hope--that falling
+inflection, that blank of vacuity that settled over his face, and his
+whole drooping figure. He seemed to be only mutely awaiting their
+immediate departure to climb back again on his high stool. But Harry
+still leaned on the counter and grinned ingratiatingly. "Oh, Joe, you
+good flen'. You got something pretty--maybe?"
+
+The curtain of vacuity parted just a crack--let through a gleam of
+intense intelligence. "Maybe." The goldsmith chuckled deeply, as if
+Harry had unwittingly perpetrated some joke--some particularly clever
+conjurer's trick. He sidled out behind the counter, past the grinning
+brazier, and shuffled into the back of the shop where he opened a door.
+
+Flora had expected a cupboard, but the vista it gave upon was a long,
+black, incredibly narrow passage, that stretched away into gloom with
+all the suggestion of distance of a road going over a horizon. Down this
+the goldsmith went, with his straw slippers clapping on his heels, until
+his small figure merged in the gloom and presently disappeared
+altogether, and only the faint flipper-flap of his slippers came back
+growing more and more distant to them, and finally dying into silence.
+In the stillness that followed while they waited they could hear each
+other breathe. The little shop with the water-stained walls and the
+ancient odor--ancient as the empire of China--inclosed them like a spell
+cast around them by a vanishing enchanter to hold them there mute until
+his returning. They did not look at each other, but rather at the
+glowing brazier, at the gold on the glass plates, at the forms of people
+passing in the street, moving palely across the dim window pane, as
+distant to Flora's eye as though they moved in another world. Then came
+the flipper-flap of the goldsmith's slippers returning. The sound
+snapped their tension, and Harry laughed.
+
+"Lord knows how far he went to get it!"
+
+"Across the street?" Flora wondered.
+
+"Or under it. And it won't be worth two bits when it gets here." He
+peered at the little man coming toward them down the passage, flapping
+and shuffling, and carrying, held before him in both hands, a square,
+deep little box.
+
+It was a worn, nondescript box that he set down before them, but the
+jealous way he had carried it had suggested treasure, and Flora leaned
+eagerly forward as he raised the cover, half expecting the blaze of a
+jewel-case. She saw at first only dull shanks of metal tumbled one upon
+the other. But, after a moment's peering, between them she caught gleams
+of veritable light. Her fingers went in to retrieve a hoop of heavy
+silver, in the midst of which was sunk a flawed topaz. She admired a
+moment the play of light over the imperfection.
+
+"But this isn't Chinese," she objected, turning her surprise on Harry.
+
+"Lots of 'em aren't. These men glean everywhere. That's pretty." He held
+up a little circle of discolored but lusterful pearls--let it fall
+again, since it was worth only a glance. He leaned on the counter,
+indifferent to urge where value seemed so slight. He seemed amused at
+Flora's enthusiasm for clouded opals.
+
+"They look well enough among this junk," he said, "but compare them with
+your own rings and you'll see the difference."
+
+She heard him dreamily. She was wishing, as she turned over the tumble
+of damaged jewels, that things so pretty might have been perfect. To
+find a perfect thing in this place would be too extraordinary to hope
+for. Yet, taking up the next, and the next, she found herself wishing it
+might be this one--this cracked intaglio. No? Then this blue one--say.
+The setting spoke nothing for it. It was a plain, thin, round hoop of
+palpable brass, and the battered thing seemed almost too feeble to hold
+the solitary stone. But the stone! She looked it full in the eye, the
+big, blazing, blue eye of it. What was the matter with this one? A flaw?
+She held it to the light.
+
+She felt Harry move behind her. She knew he couldn't but be looking at
+it. For how, by all that was marvelous, had she for a moment doubted it?
+Down to its very heart, which was near to black, it was clear fire, and
+outward toward the facets struck flaming hyacinth hues with zigzag white
+cross-lights that dazzled and mesmerized. Just the look of it--the
+marvelous deep well of its light--declared its truth.
+
+"Harry," she breathed, without taking her gaze from the thing in her
+hand, "do look at this!"
+
+She felt him lean closer. Then with an abrupt "Let's see it," he took it
+from her--held it to the light, laid it on his palm, looking sharply
+across the counter at the shopkeeper, then back at the ring with a long
+scrutiny. His face, too, had a flush of excitement.
+
+"Is it--good?" Flora faltered.
+
+"A sapphire," he said, and taking her third finger by the tip, he slid
+on the thin circle of metal.
+
+She breathed high, looking down at the stone with eyes absorbed in the
+blue fire. There was none of the cupidity of women for jewels in her
+look. It was the intrinsic beauty of this drop of dark liquid light that
+had captured her. It had mystery, and her imagination woke to it--the
+wistful mystery of perfect beauty. And perfect beauty in such a place!
+It was too beautiful. The feeling it brought her was too sharp for pure
+pleasure. It was dimly like fear. Yet instinctively she shut her hand
+about the ring. She murmured out her wonder.
+
+"How in the world did such a thing come here?"
+
+"Oh, not so strange," Harry answered. He leaned on his elbow upon the
+counter, his head bent close to hers above the single, glittering point
+that drew the four eyes to one focus. "Sailors now and then pick up a
+thing of whose value they have no idea--get hard up, and pawn it--still
+without any idea. These chaps"--and his bold hand indicated the
+shopkeeper--"take in anything--that is, anything worth their while; and
+wait, and wait, and wait until they see just the moment--and turn it to
+account."
+
+It might be because Harry's eyes were so taken with the jewel that his
+tongue ran recklessly. He had spoken low, but Flora sent an anxious
+glance to be sure the shopkeeper hadn't overheard. She had meant only to
+glance, but she found herself staring into eyes that stared back from
+the other side of the counter. That wide, unwinking scrutiny filled her
+whole vision. For an instant she saw nothing but the dance of
+scintillant pupils. Then, with a little gasp she clutched at her
+companion's arm.
+
+"Oh, Harry!"
+
+His glance came quickly round to her. "Why, what's the matter?"
+
+She murmured, "That Chinaman has blue eyes."
+
+He looked at her with good-natured wonder.
+
+"Why, Flora, haven't you blue on the brain? I believe he has, though,"
+he added, as he peered across the counter at the shopkeeper, whose gaze
+now fluttered under narrowed lids; "but why in the world should blue
+eyes scare you?" His look returned indulgently to Flora's face.
+
+She could not explain her reason of fear to him. She could not explain
+it to herself more than that the eyes had seemed to know. What? She
+could not tell; but they had had a deadly intelligence. She only
+whispered back, "But he is awful!"
+
+"Oh, I guess not," Harry grinned, and turned his back to the counter,
+"only part white. Makes him a little sharper at a bargain."
+
+But, in spite of his off-handedness, Flora saw he was alert, touched
+with excitement. Once or twice he looked from the shopkeeper to the
+sapphire.
+
+"Do you like it, Flora?" he said. "Do you want it?" He spoke eagerly
+against her reluctance.
+
+"It is the most beautiful thing I ever saw, but--" She could not put it
+to him why she shrank from it. That feeling which had touched her at the
+first had a little expanded, the sense of the sapphire's sinister charm.
+She faltered out as much as she could explain. "It's too much for me."
+
+His shoulders shook with appreciation of this. "Oh, I guess not! If you
+keep that up I shall be thinking you mean it is too much for me."
+
+It hadn't been in the least what she meant, but now that he had
+suggested it to her--"Well, I shouldn't like it to be," she blushed, but
+she braved him.
+
+The ring of his laughter filled the little, dark, old shop, and made the
+proprietor blink.
+
+"Oh, I guess not," he said again, and with that he seemed to make an end
+of her hesitations. There was not another objection she could bring up.
+She let him draw the ring off her hand with a mingled feeling of
+reluctance and relief. She saw him turn briskly to the shopkeeper.
+
+"Now, Joe, how much you want?" That much she heard as she turned away
+with a fear lest it might, and a hope that it would be, too much for
+him!
+
+She lingered away to the door, through whose upper glazed half she saw
+the street swarming and sunny, picked out with streamers of red and
+squares of green. The murmur of traffic outside was faint to her ears.
+The murmur of the two voices talking on inside the shop momently grew
+fainter. She looked behind her and saw them now in the back of the shop,
+close by the grinning brazier.
+
+The light of it showed what would have been otherwise dark. It showed
+her Harry, straddling, hands in pockets, hat thrust back, a silhouette
+as hard as if cast in cold metal. The aspect of him, thus, was strange,
+not quite unlike himself, but giving her the feeling that she had never
+known how much Harry smoothed over.
+
+Perhaps men were always like that with men. Still she looked away again
+because she felt she had taken a liberty in catching him when he was
+coming out so plain and coming out so positive to the shopkeeper, whom
+he seemed really to be bullying. She felt that, considering the
+sapphire, nothing that went on about it could be too extraordinary. And
+yet the tone their voices were taking on made her nervous. Whatever they
+were arguing about, she found it hard to go on standing thus with her
+back to it, and for so long, while her expectancy tightened, and her
+unreasonable idea that she did not want the ring, more and more took
+hold of her. If he did not want to sell it, why not let it go--the
+beautiful thing!
+
+She thought she would call Harry, and suggest it--but no. She hesitated.
+She would give them a chance to finish it themselves. She would count
+ten pigtails past the window first. She watched the last far into the
+distance, and still she was there, blowing hot and cold. She would call
+to Harry--call out to him from where she stood, that she wouldn't have
+the thing.
+
+She turned, and there they were yet. They had not moved. The shadow of
+the gesticulating little Chinaman danced like a bird on the wall, and
+before him Harry glowed, immovable, but ruddy, as if the hard metal
+whereof he was cast was slowly heating through. The thought came to her
+then. Harry was iron! The hard shade of his profile on the wall, the
+stiff movement of his lips, the forward thrust of his head on his
+shoulders gave her another thought. Was Harry also brutal? The sight of
+that brutality awake, feeding, as it were, on the fluttering little
+figure before it, distressed her. How long were they going on putting an
+edge to their argument? There was continually with her the fear that it
+might sharpen into a quarrel; for now the goldsmith had ceased his
+gesticulation and became suddenly immobile, and still Harry was
+requiring of him the same thing. It was insisted upon, by all the lines
+of his stiff braced figure, and she had a fluttered expectancy that if
+the little man didn't do something quickly, now--now it would happen.
+
+What she expected of Harry, a violent act or a quick relaxation of his
+iron mood, she had not time to consider, for the shopkeeper had moved.
+He was jerking his head, his thumb, and finally his arm in the direction
+of the long, dim passage--such a pointed direction, such a singular
+gesture, as to startle her with its incongruity. What had that to do
+with the price of the ring? And if it had nothing to do with the price
+of the ring, what had they been talking about? Her small scruple against
+knowing what was going on behind her was forgotten. Indeed, now she was
+oblivious of everything else. She was taking it in with all her eyes,
+when Harry turned and looked at her. And, oddly enough, she thought he
+looked as if he wondered how she came there. She saw him return to it
+slowly. Then, in a flash, he met her brilliantly. He came toward her
+out of the gloom, holding the ring before him, as if with the light of
+that, and the flash of his smile, he was anxious immediately to cover
+his deficit.
+
+"I had the very devil of a time getting it," he said. "The little beggar
+didn't want to let me have it." But there was a subsiding excitement in
+his face, and a something in his manner, both triumphant and troubled,
+which his explanation did not reasonably account for. Had Harry felt the
+touch of the same strange influence that the little shop, and the
+blue-eyed Chinaman, and the sapphire, had wrought around her? Or was it
+something more salient, the same thing that had suggested itself to her
+with the violent gesticulation of the shopkeeper at the passage--that
+some question other than the mere transfer of the ring had come up
+between them?
+
+"Harry"--she hesitated--"are you quite sure it's all right?"
+
+"All right?" The sudden edge in his voice made her look at him. "Why,
+it's genuine, if that's what you mean."
+
+It hadn't been, quite; but her meaning was too vague to put into
+words--a mere sensation of uneasiness. She watched Harry turn the ring
+over, as if he were reluctant to let it go out of his hands. And then,
+looking at her, she thought his glance was a little uncertain. She
+thought he hesitated, and when he finally slid the ring over her finger,
+"I wouldn't wear it until it is reset," he said. "That setting isn't
+gold. It's hardly decent."
+
+"Yes," she assented; "Clara will laugh at us."
+
+"She won't if we don't show it to her until it's fit to appear. In fact,
+I would rather you wouldn't. As it is now, the thing doesn't represent
+my gift to you."
+
+She felt this was Harry's conventional streak asserting itself. But even
+she had to admit that an engagement ring which was palpably not gold was
+rather out of the way.
+
+"You'd better keep it a day or two and look it over and make up your
+mind how you want it set, and then we'll spring it on them," he
+advised.
+
+But now it was finally on her finger, she did not want to think it would
+ever have to be taken off again. She drew her glove over it. The great
+facets showed sharp angles under the thin kid. She wished the sapphire
+were not quite so large, so difficult to reconcile with everything else.
+Now that she had the perfect thing with her, clasping her so heavily
+around the third finger, she was half afraid it was going to be too much
+for her, after all.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+A SPELL IS CAST
+
+
+It was hers! She did not believe it. It had been done too quickly. It
+seemed to her she had hardly felt Harry slip it on her finger before
+they had left the shop; that she had hardly shaken off the musty
+inclosed atmosphere, before Harry had left her on the corner of
+California and Powell Streets--left her alone with the ring! Still, she
+didn't believe she had it, even while she looked at the large lump it
+made under her glove. She kept feeling it with a cautious finger-tip.
+
+A trio of girls she knew flocked off the California Street car and
+surrounded her. They were going to the White House for bargains in shirt
+waists. They wanted to carry her off in their company. They encompassed
+her in a chatter of lace and lingerie. There were held up to her all
+the interests of her every-day existence; but these seemed to have no
+part in her real life. They had never appeared more remote and trivial.
+She kept her conscious hand in the folds of her skirt. She would have
+liked to strip off her glove and show them the ring. It would have
+entertained them so much. To herself its entertainment was of the
+Arabian Nights--the way of its finding, its beauty in the false setting,
+the struggle over it in the shop--all were wine to her imagination. It
+was a thing to conjure adventure; it was a talisman of romance.
+
+She colored faintly as she mentally corrected herself. It was her
+engagement ring, and as such she had never once thought of it. Strange,
+when all the forms of her engagement had been so well observed; when
+Harry himself represented that side of life to which she had tried to
+form herself from as far back as the old days when her mother had made
+fun of her fancies. It must be right, she thought, this life of
+conventions and forms; and the queer way she saw things, something
+wrong in her. But because she knew herself different, and because she
+felt life without understanding it, she feared it. It was too big to
+take hold of alone. And she was so alone; and Harry was so strong, so
+matter-of-fact; alone like herself, yet adequate in the world she was
+afraid of. She had accepted him as naturally, and yet as unreally, as
+she took all that life, and to the moment she had never questioned the
+wisdom or the happiness. She didn't question now. She only was shocked
+that so large a fact in her life as her engagement could be completely
+wiped out for the moment by a thing so trivial. It was not even the
+ring. It was the feeling she had about the ring. Her imagination was
+always running away with her, as it had the night at the club. And here
+it was, still uncurbed, speeding her forward into fields of romance.
+
+She went over whole dramas--imaginary histories of chance and
+circumstance--woven about the ring, as she walked up and down the long,
+windy hills, westward and homeward, the blue bay on the one hand beaten
+green under the rising "trade," and the fog coming in before her. With
+the experience of the morning, and the exercise and the lively air, her
+spirits were riding high. From time to time she had the greatest longing
+to peep again at the sapphire, but not until the house door had closed
+after her did she dare draw off her glove and look. It was still
+glorious. What a pity she must take it off! Yet that point Harry had
+made about not showing it had been too sharp to be disregarded. But what
+could she say, supposing Clara asked about the morning's expedition? At
+this thought all her spring deserted her, and she went slowly up the
+stair. Perhaps Clara had forgotten about it, and then it recurred
+reassuringly to her mind how seldom Clara touched anywhere near the
+subject of her engagement.
+
+None the less, she went very softly down the hall, anxious lest Clara
+might open her door and ask what she had brought home with her.
+
+But even in the refuge of her own rooms the ring encircled Flora with
+unease. The light of it on her finger made her restless. It wasn't that
+she was apprehensive of it, but she could not forget it. She could hear
+the maid Marrika moving about in the room beyond. She could hear the
+rustle of clothes carried to and fro. She knew there were things to
+dress for--a luncheon, and a bevy of teas--things which must be gone
+through with, things which at other times she had found sufficiently
+pleasurable. But now, try as she would to turn her mind to these, it
+persistently wandered back to the jewel. All the fine, simple pleasure
+of the morning was dazzled out by it. She slipped it off her finger on
+to the dressing-table, and it lay among her laces like a purple prism,
+cast by some unearthly sun in a magic glass. She had jewels, rubies
+even--the most precious--but nothing that gave her this sense of
+individual beauty, of beauty so keen as to be disturbing. She emptied
+her jewel casket in a glittering heap around it. It shone out
+unquenched. It had not been the dingy little shop, and the dingy little
+street, and the odds and ends of jade and tarnished silver that had
+made it of such a value. It seemed to her that any eye would fix it, any
+hand pluck it out first from that shining heap before her.
+
+Marrika was coming in, and quickly Flora swept the jewels and the
+sapphire back into the casket, turned the key upon them, and thrust it
+back in the far corner of the drawer. She would give every one a great
+surprise when the ring was properly set. She glanced nervously over her
+shoulder to see if Marrika had noticed her action. The Russian had been
+moving to and fro between the wardrobe and the dressing-table with a
+droning thread of song. And now she took up the combs and brushes, and
+filling her mouth with pins, began on the long river of yellow-brown
+hair that flowed down Flora's back. The broad, pale face reflected
+beside her own in the mirror was reassuring by its serene indifference.
+She had soothing hands, Marrika. It was a luxury to be dressed by her, a
+mental soporific. But to-day it wrought no relaxation in Flora's
+tightened nerves. All the while she was being combed and laced and
+hooked her eyes were alertly on the dressing-table drawer, that remained
+a little open; and presently she caught herself vaguely speculating on
+how, after she had been fastened up and into her clothes so securely,
+she could dispose upon herself the sapphire. How had she arrived at this
+consideration? No course of reasoning led up to it. She was annoyed with
+herself. If she wasn't going to wear the ring on her finger, and show
+it, why did she want to take it with her at all? For fear it might be
+lost? Lost, in her jewel box, in the back of the drawer! She blushed for
+herself. She looked severely at her guilty reflection in the mirror.
+Perhaps she did look tall; yes, and outwardly sophisticated, but
+underneath that bold exterior Flora knew she was only the smallest,
+youngest, most ridiculous child ever born. There were moments when this
+fact appeared to her more vividly than at others. One had been the other
+night when Kerr's eyes had looked through and through her; and here she
+was again, when she was going to a girls' luncheon, and most wanted to
+feel competent, stared out of countenance by the wonderful eye of a
+ring.
+
+Through the long afternoon it was more apparent to her than the faces of
+the people around her. She was restless to get back to it, but people
+talked interminably. At the luncheon they talked of Kerr. Flora knew
+these girls felt a little resentment that she had so easily captured
+Harry Cressy; for Harry had been more than an eligible man in the little
+city. He had been an eligible personage. Not that he had money; not that
+his family tree was plainly planted in their midst; but that without
+these two things he had achieved what, with these things, the people he
+knew were all striving for. He stood before them as the embodiment of
+what they most believed in--perfect bodily splendor, and perfect
+knowledge of how to get on with the world; and the fact that he wouldn't
+quite be one of them, but after five years still stood a little
+off--made him shine with greater brilliance, especially in the eyes of
+these young girls. It was hard, they seemed to feel, that such an
+apparently remote and difficult person should have succumbed so easily;
+and now that a new luminary of equal luster was apparent in their sky,
+Flora felt their remarks a little triumphantly aimed at her. It was odd
+to her that they should envy her anything, especially those one or two
+exquisite flowers of old families, whose lovely eyes saw not one inch
+farther than her turquoise collar. And the way they talked of Kerr, with
+flourishes, made her feel a faint, responsive irritation that he had
+talked to so many of them in exactly the same way.
+
+But between the threads of interest the table group wove together, kept
+flashing up her furtive desire to be away, to be at home, to see what
+had happened to the sapphire. Of course, she knew that nothing could
+have happened; but she wanted to look at it, to open the casket and see
+the flash of it before her eyes. For was she quite sure that it was not
+one of those fairy gifts, which, put into the hand in a blaze of beauty,
+may be found in the pocket as withered leaves? Yet her tenacious nets
+of duty caught and caught, and again caught her, so that when the
+carriage finally fetched her home it was between lighted street-lamps.
+
+They were dining early that night on account of the Bullers' box party,
+but it was nearly eight o'clock before Flora reached the house. And it
+was, of course, for that reason that she ran up-stairs--ran wildly,
+regardlessly, before the eyes of Shima--and along the hall, her high
+heels clacking on the hard floors, and through her bedroom to the
+dressing-room, snatched open the table drawer, unlocked the casket with
+a twitch of the key--and, ah, it was there! It was really real! Why,
+what had she expected? She was laughing at herself.
+
+She was gay in her relief at getting back to the sapphire, but at the
+same time she was already wondering what she should do about it that
+night--take it with her or leave it alone? Dared she wear it on her
+finger under her glove? Clara might notice the unfamiliar form of the
+jewel through the thin kid. Harry's warning had been phrased
+conventionally enough, but the hints his words conveyed had expanded in
+her mind--fear not only of Clara's laughter, that such a jewel had come
+from a junk shop, but of her wonder, her questions, her ability of
+getting out the story of the whole erratic proceeding, even to the
+strange pantomime between Harry and the blue-eyed Chinaman. Clara was
+marvelous!
+
+Flora watched her curiously across the table that evening, wondering
+what was that quality of hers by which she acquired. Hitherto Flora had
+accepted it as a fact without question, but now she had a desire to
+place it. It was not beauty, for though Clara was pretty, like a
+polished Greuze, she was colorless and flavorless, lacking the vivid
+heat of magnetism. More probably it consisted in a certain sort of
+sweetness Clara could produce on occasions, a way she had of looking and
+speaking which Flora could only describe as smooth. But smooth without
+texture or softness; smooth as quick-flowing water, smooth as glass--a
+surface upon which even caution might lose its equilibrium. For the
+danger in Clara was that she was disarming. There was nothing
+antagonistic in her. One noticed her slowly. The flat tones of her voice
+made background for other people's conversations. The pale tints of her
+gown blended with the pale tones of her hair and flesh. Beside Clara's
+exquisite gradations Flora felt herself without shades, a creature of
+violent contrasts and impulses. If Clara had been going to carry the
+ring about with her she would have had a reason for it. But Flora had
+nothing but a silly fancy.
+
+She made up her mind to leave the sapphire at home; but in her last
+moment in her room the resolution failed her. Harry, of course, would be
+angry if he knew, but Harry wouldn't see the thing under her glove.
+
+She came down to where Clara was waiting for her, with the guilty
+feeling of a child who has concealed a contraband cake; but the way
+Clara looked her over made her conscious that she had not concealed her
+excitement. Clara was always cool. What would it be like, she wondered,
+to feel the same about everything? How would it seem to be no more
+elated by the expectation of listening to the most beautiful of tenors
+than over the next meeting of the Decade Club? Was that what she was
+coming to in time? Not to-night, she thought; and not, at least, while
+that talisman of romance clasped her around the third finger.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+A SPARK OF HORROR
+
+
+They found Harry waiting for them in the theater lobby. He had come up
+too late from Burlingame to do more than meet the party there. The
+Bullers were already in the box, he said, and the second act of _I'
+Pagliacci_ just beginning.
+
+As they came to the door of the box the lights were down, the curtain up
+on a dim stage, and the chorus still floating into the roof, while the
+three occupants of the box were indistinguishable figures, risen up and
+shuffling chairs to the front for Flora and Clara. It was too dark to
+distinguish faces.
+
+But dark as it was, Flora knew who was sitting behind her. She heard him
+speaking. Under the notes of the recitative he was speaking to Clara.
+The pleasure of finding him here was sharpened by the surprise. She
+listened to his voice, the mere intonation of which brought back to her
+their walk through the Presidio woods as deliciously as if she were
+still there.
+
+Then, as the tenor took up the theme, all talking ceased--Ella's husky
+whisper, Clara's smoother syllables, and the flat, slow, variable voice
+of Kerr--the whole house seemed to sink into stiller repose; the high
+chords floated above the heads of the black pit like colored bubbles,
+and Flora forgot the sapphire in the triple spell of the singing, the
+darkness, and the face she was yet to see. She felt relaxed and released
+from her guard by this darkness around her, that blotted out the sea of
+faces beneath, that dissolved the walls and high galleries, that
+obscured the very outline of the box where she sat, until she seemed to
+be poised, half-way up a void of darkness, looking into a pit in the
+hollowness of which a voice was singing.
+
+The stage was a narrow shelf of wood swung in that void, from which the
+voice sang, and a bare finger of light followed it about from place to
+place. The sweet, searching tenor notes, the semblance of passion and
+reality the gesticulating Frenchman threw over all the stage, and the
+_crescendo_ of the tragedy carried her into a mood that barred out Ella,
+barred out Clara, barred out Harry more than any; but, unaccountably,
+Kerr was still with her. He was there by no will of hers, but by some
+essence of his own, some quality that linked him, as it linked her, to
+the passionate subtleties of life. He seemed to her the eager spirit
+that was prompting and putting forward this comedy and tragedy playing
+on before her. She heard him reasserted, vigorous, lawless, wandering,
+in the voice of the mimic strolling player addressing his mimic
+audience. The appeal of the tenor to the voiceless galleries,
+"Underneath this little play we show, there is another play," seemed
+indeed the very voice of Kerr repeating itself. And with the climax of
+the sharp tragedy in the middle of the comic stage she placed him
+again, but placed him this time in the mimic audience looking on,
+neither applauding nor dissenting; but rather as if he watched the play
+and played it, too.
+
+The lights went up with a spring. A wave of motion flickered over the
+house, the talking voices burst forth all at once, and she saw him,
+really saw him for the first time that evening, as in her fancy, part of
+the audience; as in her fancy, neither applauding nor dissenting, yet
+with what a difference! He leaned back in his chair, and leaned his head
+a little back, as if, for weariness, he wished there were a rest behind
+it; and how indifferently, how critically, how levelly he surveyed the
+fluttered house, and the figures in the box beside him! How foreign he
+appeared to the ardent spirit who had dominated the dark; how emptied of
+the heat of imagination, how worn, how dry; and even in his salience,
+how singularly pathetic! He was neither the satanic person of the first
+night, nor her comrade of the Presidio hills. And if the expression of
+his face was not quite so cheap as cynicism, it was just the absence of
+belief in anything.
+
+She felt a lump in her throat, an ache of the cruelest disappointment,
+as though some masker, masking as the fire of life, had suddenly removed
+the covering of his face and showed her the burnt-out bones beneath. The
+shift from what she remembered him to what he now appeared was too rapid
+and considerable for her. She found herself looking at him through a
+mist of tears--there in the heart of publicity, in the middle of the
+circle of red velvet curtains!
+
+He turned and saw her. She watched a smile of the frankest pleasure
+rising, as it were, to the surface of his weary preoccupation. Something
+had delighted him. Why, it was herself--just her being there! And she
+could only helplessly blink at him. Was ever anything so stupid as to be
+caught in tears over nothing! For the next moment he had caught her. She
+knew by the change of his look, interrogative, amused, incredulous. He
+straightened and leaned forward.
+
+"Really," he said, "you must remember that little man has only gone out
+for a glass of beer."
+
+So he thought it was the tenor who had brought her to the point of
+tears.
+
+"Ah, why do you say that?" she protested.
+
+He continued to smile indulgently upon her. "Would you really rather
+believe it true?"
+
+"I don't know. But I wish _you_ hadn't thought of the beer."
+
+He brought the glare of his monocle to bear full upon her. "Why not? It
+is all we make sure of."
+
+So he had taken that side of it. By his words as well as his looks he
+repudiated all the gallant show of romance he had paraded to her before,
+and had taken up the cause of the world as flatly as Harry could have
+done.
+
+"Oh, if to be sure is all you want," she burst out; "but you don't mean
+it! Wouldn't you rather have something beautiful you weren't sure of,
+than something certain that didn't matter?"
+
+He nodded to this quite casually, as if it were an old acquaintance.
+
+"Oh, yes; but the time comes round when you want to be sure of
+something. The sun never sets twice alike over Mont Pelee; but you can
+always get the same brand of lager to-day that you had the week before."
+He looked at her with a faint amusement. "And by your expression I take
+it you don't know how fine some of those brands are. Life is not half
+bad--even when it is only a means to the beer."
+
+Under these garish lights, in the middle of this theater of people,
+facing the bland, almost banal, stare of that monocle, it looked
+exceedingly probable that, after all, in spite of her dreaming, this was
+what life would prove to be. But she hated the thought, as she hated
+that Kerr should be the one to show it to her; as she would have hated
+her ring if, after all its splendor in the shop, it should have turned
+out to be a piece of colored glass.
+
+"No, no! I won't believe you," she stoutly denied him. "There _is_ more
+in life than you can touch. You're not like yourself to say there is
+not."
+
+He laughed, but rather shortly.
+
+"My dear child, forgive me; I'm sulky to-night. I feel, as I felt at
+eighteen, that the world has treated me badly. I've lost my luck."
+
+The way his voice dropped at the last sounded to her the weariest thing
+she had ever heard. He settled back in his chair again, and looked
+moodily out across the brilliant house.
+
+"I'm sorry." Her tone was sweetly vague. What could be the matter with
+him? Then, half timidly, she rallied him. "If you go on like this, I
+shall have to show you my talisman."
+
+"Oh, have you indeed a talisman?" he humored her. And it was as if he
+said, "Oh, have you a doll?" He did not even turn his head to look at
+her.
+
+She was chilled. She felt the disappointment, that his quick smile had
+lightened, return upon her. She hardly noticed the rise of the curtain
+on the second little play, and the singing voices did not reach her with
+any poignancy. She was vaguely aware of movements in the box--of
+Harry's coming in, of Clara's little rustle making room for him, of the
+shift of Ella's chair away from the business of listening, toward him,
+and her husky whisper going on with some prolonged tale of dull
+escapade; but to Flora they all made only a banal background for the
+brooding silence of her companion. He had thrown his mood over her until
+she was ready to doubt even the potency of her talisman to counteract
+it.
+
+She felt of the stone. She drew off her glove and tried to look at it in
+the dim light, but couldn't get a gleam out of it. She was as impatient
+for the lights to go up that she might secretly be cheered by its
+wonder, as she had been that afternoon to get back from the luncheon,
+and make sure it was still in the drawer. She must see it in spite of
+Clara at her right hand, whose little chiseled profile might turn upon
+her at any moment a full face of inquiry.
+
+She held her left hand low in the shadow of her chair; and if, as the
+lights went up again, there was any change in the sapphire, it was
+merely a sharper brilliance, as if, like an eye, it had moods, and this
+was one of its moments of excitement. In its extraordinary luster it
+seemed to possess a beauty that could not be valued; and she wanted to
+hold it up to Kerr, to see if she couldn't startle him out of his
+mood--to see if he wouldn't respond to it, "Yes, there is more in it
+than you can touch."
+
+She turned to him with the daring flash of timid spirits. It was so
+sharp a motion that he started instantly from his reverie to meet it,
+but his alacrity was mechanical. She felt the smile he summoned was
+slow, as if he returned, from a long distance, a little painfully to his
+present surroundings.
+
+The _Intermezzo_ was playing, and to speak under the music he leaned so
+close his shoulder touched her chair. Through that narrow space between
+them, almost beneath his eyes, she moved her hand--a gesture so slightly
+emphasized as to seem accident. He had started to speak, but her motion
+seemed to stop his tongue. He looked hard at her hand, and something
+violent in his intentness made her clutch the side of the chair.
+Instantly she met his look, so fiercely, cruelly challenging, that it
+took her like a blow. For a moment they looked at each other, her eyes
+wide with fright, his narrowed to a glare under the terrible intentness
+of his brows. What had she done? What threatened her? What could save
+her in this sea of people? Then, while she gazed, his challenge burned
+out to a pale hard scrutiny, that faded to no expression at all--or was
+it that any expression would have seemed dim after the terrible one that
+had flashed across his face?
+
+She was as shaken as if he had seized hold of her. If he had snatched
+the ring off her finger she wouldn't have been more shocked. The whole
+box must be transfixed by him, and the whole house be looking at nothing
+but their little circle of horror! She was ready for it. She was braced
+for anything but the fact which actually confronted her--that no one had
+noticed them at all. It was monstrous that such a thing could have been
+without their knowing! But there was no face in all the orchestra, the
+crowded galleries, or the tiers of boxes to affirm that anything had
+happened; no face in their own box had even stirred, but Clara's, and
+that had merely turned from profile to the full, faintly inquiring,
+mild, and palely pink in the warm reflections of the red velvet
+curtains.
+
+And what could Clara have seen, if she had seen at all, but Flora a
+little paler than usual with a hand that trembled; and what worse could
+Clara conjecture than that she was being silly about Kerr? She turned
+slowly toward him, and looked at him with a courage that was part of her
+fear. But wasn't she, in a way, being silly about Kerr? What had become
+of his expression that had threatened her? There was nothing left of it
+but her own violent impression--and the longer Kerr sat there, talking
+from her to Clara, from Clara to Judge Buller, his eyes keeping pace
+with his light conversational flights, the less Flora felt sure he had
+ever fixed her with that intensity.
+
+And yet the thing had actually happened. Its evidence was before her. He
+had been silent. Now he was talking. He had been absent. Now she thought
+she had never seen him more vividly concerned with the moment. Yet for
+all his cool looks and diffuse talk around the box, she felt uneasily
+that his concern was pointed at her, and that he would never let her go.
+He only waited for the cover of the last act to come back to her
+single-handed.
+
+She would have deflected his attack, but it was too quick, too
+unexpected for her to do more than sit helpless, and let him lift up her
+left hand, delicately between thumb and finger, as if in itself it was
+some rare, fine curio, and, bending close, contemplate the sapphire
+unwinkingly. She had an instant when she thought she must cry out, but
+how impossible in the awful publicity of her place--a pinnacle in the
+face of thousands! And after the first fluttered impulse came a certain
+reassurance in such a frank and trivial action. For all its intensity,
+how could it be construed otherwise than a lively if unconventional
+interest? It must have been her own fancy which had discerned anything
+more than that in his first look at her. And yet, when he had laid her
+hand lightly back, and readjusted his monocle, and looked out, away from
+her, across the black house, she didn't know whether she was more
+reassured or troubled because he had not spoken a word. Yet the next
+moment he looked around at her.
+
+"We shan't meet every evening in such a way as this," he said, and left
+the statement dangling unanswerable between them. It sounded
+portentous--final. She wondered that in the middle of her fear it could
+strike such a sharp note of regret in her. She knew she would regret not
+meeting him again; and yet she shrank from the thought she could still
+want to meet him. By one look her whole feeling of sympathy, of
+reliance, of admiration, that had flowed out to him so naturally she had
+scarcely been aware of it, had been troubled and mixed with fear. She
+couldn't answer. She could only look at him with a reflection of her
+trouble in her face.
+
+"Are you surprised that I thought of that?" he inquired. "It's not so
+odd as you seem to think that I should want to see you again. I don't
+want to leave it to chance; do you?" He shot the question at her so
+suddenly, with such a casual eye, and such dry gravity of mouth, that he
+had her admission out of her before she realized the extent of its
+meaning. And the way he took that admission for granted, and overlooked
+her confusion, made her feel that for the sake of whatever he was after
+he was intentionally ignoring what it did not suit his convenience to
+see. She knew he must have seen; that every moment while she had changed
+and fluttered his eye had never left her.
+
+"Then when are you at home?" he asked her; and by his tone, he conveyed
+the impression that he was only making courteous response to some
+invitation she had offered him; though, when she thought, she had not
+offered it, he had got it out of her. He had got it by sheer
+impertinence. But none the less he had it. She couldn't escape him
+there.
+
+She answered somewhat stiffly: "Fridays, second and fourth."
+
+He looked at her with a humorous twist of mouth. "What? So seldom?"
+
+She was impotent if he wouldn't be snubbed; but at the worst she
+wouldn't be cornered. "Oh, dear, no--but people who come at other times
+take a chance."
+
+"Does that mean that I may take mine to-morrow?"
+
+He was pressing her too hard. Why was he so anxious to see her, as he
+had not been the first night or yesterday, or even ten minutes ago? She,
+who, ten minutes ago, would have been glad, now was doing her best to
+put him off. She was silent a moment, considering the conventions, and
+then, like him, she abandoned them. Without a word she turned away from
+him. Whatever she said, he had her. But, if she said nothing and still
+he came to-morrow, whatever she did then, he would have to take the
+consequences of his insistence. Her only desire now was to evade him,
+lest he should force her out of her non-committal attitude. She wanted
+to shield herself from further pursuit.
+
+She couldn't escape yet, for the figures on the stage were still
+gesticulating and trilling, and the people around her, in the small
+inclosure where she sat, hemmed her in so that she could no more move
+away from Kerr than if she had been that impaled specimen he had made
+her feel at their first meeting. The most she could do was to turn away,
+but even thus, with her eyes averted and her ears full of Ella's voice,
+she was still acutely aware of him, sitting looking straight before him
+across the black house with a face worn, wary, weathered to any
+catastrophe, and such an air of being alertly fixed on something a long
+way off, that her silence made no more difference to him than her
+flutterings and her rudeness. And yet she knew he was only waiting;
+waiting his chance to get at her again and make her commit herself; and
+that, she was determined, should not happen.
+
+What had already happened, through its very violence, had left an
+impression like a dream. It seemed unreal, and yet it had made her
+forget everything else--the stage, the people around her, and even the
+very sapphire that had generated her inexplicable situation. She drew
+her glove over the ring. The lights were imminent. It would be hard to
+hide the great flash of the jewel. And besides, she didn't trust it. She
+couldn't tell in what direction it might not strike out a spark of
+horror next.
+
+The rustle of final departure was all over the house. The people in the
+box were stirring and beginning to stand up; and Flora saw Kerr turn and
+look at her. She wanted some one to stand between herself and Kerr, and
+it was to Harry that she turned; not alone that he was so large and
+adequate, but because she thought she saw in him an inclination to step
+into that very place where she wanted him. She saw he was a little
+sullen, and though she didn't suspect him quite of jealousy, she
+wondered if he had not a right to blame her for the appearance of
+flirtation that she and Kerr must have presented. Then how much more
+might he blame her for what she had actually done--for deliberately
+showing the sapphire to Kerr! The very thought of it frightened her. She
+knew she was rattling to Harry all the while he fetched her cloak and
+put it on her, and she was glad now of that ability she had cultivated
+in herself of making a smooth crust of talk over her seething feelings.
+She talked the harder, she even took hold of Harry's arm to be sure of
+keeping him there between her and what she was afraid of, as they came
+out on the sidewalk and stood waiting in the windy night for the
+approach of their carriage lights.
+
+Row upon row of street lamps flared in the traveling gusts. The midnight
+noises of the city were at their loudest; and half their volume seemed
+to be a scattered chorus of hoarse voices yelling all together like a
+pack of wolves. Thin, ragged shapes shot in and out among the crowd,
+ducked under horses' feet and cut wild zigzags across the street like
+flying goblins. The sense of their cry was indistinguishable, but it was
+the same--the same inarticulate shape of sound on every tongue. First
+one throat, then another took up the raucous singsong shout, then all
+together again, as if the pack were in full cry on the scent of
+something. What was this fresh quarry of the press, Flora wondered, that
+made it give tongue so hideously? The hunting note of it made her want
+to cover her ears, and yet she strained to catch its meaning.
+
+She had stooped her head to the carriage door, when Harry stopped and
+took one of the damp papers from a crier in the pack. She saw the
+head-line. It covered half the sheet--the great figure that was offered
+for the return of the Chatworth ring.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+ILLUMINATION
+
+
+Just when the two ideas had coalesced in her mind Flora couldn't be
+sure. It had been some time in the first dark hour that she had spent
+wide awake in her bed. There had been two ideas distinctly. Two
+impressions of the evening remained with her; and the last one, the
+great figures that had stared at her from the paper, the fact that had
+been Harry's secret, made common now in round numbers, had for the
+moment swallowed up the first.
+
+For all the way home that sum was kept before her by Clara's talk. She
+could remember nothing of that talk except that it hadn't been able for
+a moment to leave the Chatworth ring alone. It had been aimed at Harry,
+but it had fallen to Flora herself to answer Clara's quick
+speculations, for Harry had been obstinately silent, though not
+indifferent, as if in his own mind he was as unable to leave it alone as
+Clara. One with his silence, one with her talk, they had written the
+figures of the reward so blazingly in Flora's mind that for the moment
+she could see nothing else. Yet now she was alone her first adventure
+recurred to her. As soon as she was quiet in the dark there came back
+with reminiscent terror the look that Kerr had given her in the box. She
+wasn't really afraid of Kerr himself. She was afraid of the meaning of
+his look which she didn't understand. It only established in her mind a
+great significance for the sapphire, if it could produce such an
+expression on a human face. It had given him more than a mere
+expression. It had given him an impulse for pursuit, as if, like a
+magnet, it was fairly dragging him. He had covered his impulse by his
+very frankness, but she knew he had pursued her--that for the matter of
+seeing her again he had hunted her down. And what had followed that?
+Why, she was back again to the great figures in the paper.
+
+At first it seemed as though she had taken a clean leap from one subject
+to another. She had in no way connected them. But all at once they were
+connected. She couldn't separate them. She didn't know whether she had
+been stupid not to have seen them so before, or whether she was stupid
+to see them so now. For the thought that had sprung up in her mind was
+monstrous. It startled her so broad awake that she sat up in bed to meet
+it the more alertly. She sat up trembling. She felt like one who has
+walked a long way in a wood, hearing crafty footsteps following in the
+bushes. And now the beast had sprung out, and she was panting,
+terrified, not knowing which way to run.
+
+The room was dark except for now and again the yellow square of light,
+from some passing cable car, traveling along the ceiling. The four walls
+around her, their dark bulks of furniture and light ripple of moving
+curtains, shut her up with this monster of her mind. The longer she
+looked at it the less she felt sure it was real, and yet it was before
+her. It was there with none of the loveliness of her first fancies about
+the ring. It was there with grisly reality. It had not been conjured up.
+It had sprung upon her from the solid actualities of the night. And,
+yes, of the day before--and the night before that. Oh, she had known
+well enough that there had been something wrong at the goldsmith's shop.
+She had felt it even before she had seen the sapphire; and afterward how
+it had held them, both herself and Harry! To have moved Harry it must be
+something indeed! Had he suspected it then, or had he only wondered?
+
+If he had suspected why hadn't he spoken of it? Well, her appalling
+fancy prompted, hadn't he spoken of it?--though not to her. There
+flashed back to her the memory of him there in the back of the shop with
+the blue-eyed Chinaman. How furiously he had assailed the little man!
+How uneasily, with what a dissatisfied air he had looked at the ring
+even after it was on her finger, as if, after all, he had not compassed
+what he had wanted. She could be almost sure that the monstrous idea
+which had just overtaken her had, however fleetingly, flashed before
+Harry's mind in the goldsmith's shop. But surely he couldn't have
+entertained it for a moment. That was impossible, or he would never have
+let her take the sapphire--Harry, who had seen the ring, the very Crew
+Idol itself, within the twenty-four hours.
+
+"A little heathen god curled round himself with a big blue stone on the
+top-of his head." Harry hadn't said what sort of stone it was; but Kerr
+had said it was a sapphire. There was a sapphire on her hand now. She
+touched it with her finger-tips cautiously, as if to touch something
+hot. So near to her! In the same room with her! On her own hand! It was
+too much to be alone with in the dark! She reached out softly, as if she
+feared to disturb some threatening presence lurking around her, and lit
+the small night lamp on the low table by her bed. The shade was yellow,
+and that contended with the blue of the sapphire, but couldn't break
+its light. With the first flash of its splendor in her face she felt
+certainty threatening her. She shook the ring quickly off her finger and
+it fell with a light clatter on the table's marble top--fell with the
+sapphire face down, and all its light hidden. She took it up again a
+little fearfully, as if it might have got some harm; and again while she
+looked at it it seemed to her that nothing that happened about this
+jewel could be too extraordinary. If only it had been less wonderful,
+less beautiful, she would not have felt so terribly afraid! She put it
+back on the table and for a moment held her hand over it, as if she
+imprisoned a living thing.
+
+Then, without looking again, she got out of bed and went to the window.
+It overlooked the dark steep of the garden, the moving trees and the
+lighter plane of the water. She leaned out, far out. Black housetops
+marched against the bay, and between them, light by light, her eyes
+followed the street-lamps down to the shore. If one could recover from
+such a nightmare as she had it would be by leaning out into and facing
+this wide soft dark. These shapeless roofs just below her the night made
+mysterious; and yet they covered people that she knew--her
+friends--kind, safe people! There had been nights when the city, through
+this very window, had seemed to her a savage place; but now the wicked
+fear that stood behind her--the fear that had got inside her house, that
+had slipped unseen through the circle of friends, that stood behind her
+now, filling her own room with its shadowy menace--had transformed the
+city into a very haven of security.
+
+Oh, to escape out of this window into the innocent, sleeping city, away
+from the horror at her back! To look in from the outside and be even
+sure there was a horror! And if there was, to run away into the wide
+soft dark! But how did she know, her fantastic idea persisted, that the
+sapphire wouldn't follow her--the sapphire itself--the embodiment of her
+fear? Then she dared not be driven out.
+
+But there was another way to be rid of it. The real idea occurred to
+her. How easy it would be to take it--that beautiful thing--and throw
+it; throw it as hard as she could, and let the night take care of it.
+The window was open, as if it stood ready, and there was the ring on the
+table. She went to it, looked at it a moment without touching it,
+holding her hands away.
+
+Then with a little shiver she backed away from it and sat down on the
+foot of the bed. She looked pale and little, as if the eye of the ring,
+blazing under the feeble lamp, like the evil eye, had sapped her fire
+and youth. The only thing about her of any size and color was the heavy
+braid of hair fallen over her shoulder. She hugged her arms around her
+updrawn knees, and resting her chin upon them eyed the sapphire bravely.
+
+"What shall I do with you?" she somberly inquired of it. "You are a
+dreadful thing. I don't know where you came from nor what you are, but I
+am afraid--I am afraid you are--" She hesitated. The sapphire lay
+shining like some idol set up for worship, and in spite of herself its
+beauty moved her, if not to worship, at least to awe and fear.
+
+"I suppose you know I can't throw you away," she murmured, "and yet I
+can't keep you!" She pondered, chin in hand. To take it to Harry! That
+seemed the natural thing to do--the simplest way to be rid of it. She
+hesitated.
+
+"If I only _knew_! If I only were sure!" She locked her fingers closer,
+staring hard. If it had been the whole Crew Idol, the undismembered god
+himself, then there would have been less terror, and one plain thing to
+do. She looked hard at the sapphire setting, as if she hoped to discover
+upon its brilliance some tell-tale trace of old soft gold; but there was
+only one great, glassy, polished eye, and out of what head it had come,
+whether from the forehead of the Crew Idol, or from that of some
+unheralded deity, who was there who could tell her?
+
+She tried to summon a coherent thought, but again it was only a flash
+out of the darkness.
+
+"Kerr! Why, he knows more than I." She looked at this stupidly for a
+moment as if it were too large to take in at once. Of course he must
+have known! Why hadn't she thought of that before? Why hadn't she
+thought of it that first moment, when he had turned on her in the box
+with such terrible eyes? She drew in her shoulders, looking all around
+at the dim corners of the room which the lamp flame failed to penetrate.
+Behind her present lively fear a second shadow was growing, more dim,
+more formless, more vast and dubious.
+
+What series of circumstances might have led up to Kerr's knowledge she
+could not dream. He was one of whom nothing was incredible. From the
+first moment his face had shot into the light, from the moment she had
+heard his voice, like color in the level voices around him, she had been
+bewildered by his variety. He had caught her up to the clouds. He had
+whirled her along dubious levels, and more than once he had shown her
+that the lines she had supposed drawn so sharply between this and that
+could no more be discerned than meridians on green earth.
+
+If she had noticed any earnestness in him, it was his relish, his gusto
+for the whole of life. He had no theory to set up. Just as it was he
+took it. If he persisted in requiring people to be themselves it was for
+no good to themselves, but for the pleasure he himself got out of it. If
+he made society into a little ball, and threw it away, it was only to
+show it could be done.
+
+And where, she asked herself in a summing up, might such a man not be
+found? But there were few places, indeed, in even the broadest plain of
+possibility, which could hold knowledge of so particular and piercing a
+quality as his look had implied. There had been so much more than
+curiosity or surprise in it. She could hardly face the memory of it, so
+cruelly it had struck her. There was no doubt in her mind that Kerr had
+seen the ring. Somewhere in the pageant of his experience he had met it,
+known it--but what he wanted of it--
+
+She broke off that thought, and looked long at the little flame of the
+lamp. It was strange, but there was no doubt in her mind but that he
+wanted it. That had been the strongest thing in his look. She felt
+herself picking her way along a very narrow path, one step over either
+edge of which would plunge her chasms deep. Now she snatched at a frail
+sapling to save herself. The fact that Kerr knew her stone didn't prove
+it belonged to the Crew Idol. And if it didn't--if it wasn't the crown
+of the heathen god, then her whole dreadful supposition fell to pieces.
+But she hadn't proved it and the simplest way was just to ask Kerr. Her
+chance for that was the chance he had fought so hard for, the chance of
+their meeting the next day.
+
+She hadn't wanted that meeting when he had first asked her for it in the
+box. She had feared it then, and all the more she feared it now, because
+now she would have to do more than defend herself. She would take the
+offensive; she would make the attack, now that she had a question to
+ask. Why should the thought of it frighten her? If this was not the Crew
+sapphire she would be no worse off than she had been. If it was, her
+course would be clear. It seemed it should be simple, it should be easy
+to face Kerr with her question; but she was possessed by the
+apprehension that it would be neither. Would the question she had to
+ask be a safe thing to give him? And if she dared undertake it and
+should be overpowered after all--then everything would be lost.
+
+What the "everything" was she feared to lose would not come clear to
+her. The only thing that did emerge definitely from the agitation of her
+mind was the knowledge that this question that had been thrust upon her
+made it tenfold more difficult to meet Kerr. And yet, to refuse to meet
+him now would be as cowardly as throwing the ring out of the window.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+A LADY UNVEILED
+
+
+She wakened in the morning to some one knocking. She thought the sound
+had been going on for a long time, but, now she was finally roused, it
+had stopped. This was odd, for no one came to her in the morning except
+Marrika, and it was tiresome to be thus imperatively beset before she
+was half awake. Now the knocking came again with a level, unimpatient
+repetition, and she called, "Come in!" at which Clara, in a pale morning
+gown, promptly entered--an apparition as cool and smooth and burnished
+as if she had spent the night, like a French doll, in tissue paper.
+
+Clara's coming in in the morning was an unheard-of thing. Flora was
+taken aback.
+
+"Why, Clara!" She was blank with astonishment. She sat up, flushed and
+tumbled, and still blinking. "I hope I didn't keep you knocking long."
+
+"Oh, no, indeed; only three taps." Clara looked straight through Flora's
+astonishment, as if there had been no such thing in evidence. She drew
+up a chair and sat down beside the bed. It was a rocking-chair, but it
+did not sway with her calm poise. In the fine finish of her morning
+attire, with her hands placidly folded on her knee, she made Flora feel
+taken at a disadvantage, thus scarcely awake, disheveled and all but
+stripped. But Clara, if she looked at anything but Flora's eyes, looked
+only at her hands, one and then the other as they lay upon the coverlet.
+
+"It isn't so very late," she said, "but I have ordered your breakfast. I
+thought you would want it if you had that ten-o'clock appointment; and
+there is something I want to ask you before you go out." Flora was
+conscious of a little apprehension. "It's about that place you talked of
+taking for the summer." She felt vaguely relieved, though she had had no
+actual grounds for anticipating an awkward question. "I came upon
+something in the oddest way you can imagine," Clara pursued her subject.
+"Had you any idea the Herricks were in straits?"
+
+"The young Herricks?"
+
+"Oh, no! The old Herricks, _the_ Herricks, Mrs. Herrick whom you so much
+admire! Of course, one isn't told; but they must be, to be willing to
+let the old place."
+
+"Not the San Mateo place?" said Flora, with a stir of interest. She felt
+as astonished as if some Confucian fanatic had set up his joss at
+auction.
+
+Clara complacently nodded.
+
+"Mrs. Herrick spoke to me herself. They don't want any publicity about
+it, but she had heard that we were looking, and she did me the
+favor"--Clara smiled a little dryly--"of telling me first."
+
+Flora looked reflective. "I've never seen it, but they say it's
+beautiful."
+
+"It is, in a way," Clara grudgingly admitted, "but it isn't new; and the
+ridiculous part is that she will let it only on condition that it shall
+not be done over. It is in sufficiently good shape, but it stands now
+just as Colonel Herrick furnished it forty years ago."
+
+"Why, I should love that!" Flora frankly confessed, and gave a wistful
+glance at the walls around her, wondering how long before the soft, dark
+bloom of time, of use and wont, should descend on their crude faces.
+
+"Well," Clara conceded, "at any rate we know it's genuine, and that's a
+consolation. The number of imitations going about and the way people
+pick them up is appalling! While I was getting that rug for you at
+Vigo's yesterday, Ella Buller came in and bought three imitation
+Bokharas, with the greatest enthusiasm. She buys quantities, and she's
+always taken in. It is enough to make one nervous about the people one
+sits next to at dinner there. One can not help suspecting them of being
+some of Ella's bargains. I wonder, now, where she picked up that Kerr."
+
+This finale failed to take Flora off her guard. "At any rate, he is odd
+enough to be genuine," she said with a gleam of malice.
+
+"Oh, no doubt of that," Clara mildly assented, "but genuine what?"
+
+"Why, gentleman at large," said Flora, and quickly wanted to recall it,
+for Clara's glance seemed to give it a double significance. "I mean,"
+she added, "just one of those chronic travelers who have nothing else to
+do, and whose way must be paved with letters of introduction"--she
+floundered. "At least, that was the idea he gave of himself." She broke
+off, doubly angry that she had tried to explain Kerr, and tried to
+explain herself, when the circumstances required nothing of the sort.
+She was sure Clara had not missed her nervousness, though Clara made no
+sign. Her eyes only traveled a second time to Flora's hands, as if among
+the flare of red and white jewels she was expecting to see another
+color. To Flora's palpitating consciousness this look made a perfect
+connection with Clara's next remark.
+
+"At least his manners are odd enough! There was a minute last night
+when he was really quite startling."
+
+Flora felt a small, warm spot of color increasing in the middle of each
+cheek. She drew a long breath, as if to draw in courage. Then Clara had
+really seen! That smooth, blindish look of hers, last night, had seen
+everything! And here she was owning up to it, and affably offering
+herself as a confidante; and for what reason under the sun unless to
+find out what it was that had so startled Kerr? Flora felt like crying
+out, "If you only knew what that thing may be, you would never want to
+come nearer to it!"
+
+"I am afraid he annoyed you, Flora."
+
+The girl looked into the kindly solicitude of Clara's face with a hard,
+almost passionate incredulity. Was that really all Clara had supposed?
+
+"These Continentals," she went on, now lightly swaying to and fro in her
+chair, "have singular notions of American women. They take us for
+savages, my dear."
+
+"Then isn't it for us to show them that we are more than usually
+civilized? I can't run away from him like a frightened little native."
+
+"Of course not; but that is where I come in; it's what I'm for--to get
+rid of such things for you." That small, cool smile made Flora feel more
+than ever the immature barbarian of her simile. Clara sat throwing the
+protection of her superior knowledge and capability around her, like a
+missionary garment; but Flora could have laughed with relief. Then Clara
+merely supposed Kerr had been impertinent. Her little invasion had been
+really nothing but pure kindness and protection; and Flora couldn't but
+feel grateful for it. Last night she had thought herself so absolutely
+alone; and here was a friend coming forward again, and stepping between
+her and the thing above all others she was helpless about--the real
+world.
+
+Clara had risen, and stood considering a moment with that same sweet,
+impersonal eye which Flora found it hardest to comprehend.
+
+"What I mean," she explicitly stated, "is that if he should undertake to
+carry out his preposterous suggestion, and call this afternoon, I am
+quite ready, if you wish, to take him off your hands."
+
+This last took Flora's breath away. It had not occurred to her that
+Clara had overheard. It shocked her, frightened her; and yet Clara's way
+of stating the fact, as if it were the most natural thing in the world,
+made Flora feel that she herself was in the wrong to feel thus. For,
+after all, Clara had been most tactful, most considerate and delicate in
+conveying her knowledge, not hinting that Flora could have been in the
+slightest degree responsible for Kerr's behavior; but simply sweetly
+taking it for granted that they, of course, were banded together to
+exclude this outlander. Under her sense of obligation, and what she felt
+ought to be gratitude, Flora floundered for words.
+
+"You're very kind," she managed to get out; and that seemed to leave her
+committed to hand Kerr over, tied hand and foot, when she wasn't at all
+sure she wanted to.
+
+"Then shall I tell Mrs. Herrick that you will consider the house?" said
+Clara, already in the act of departure. "She is to call to-day to go
+into it with me more thoroughly. Thus far we've only played about the
+edges."
+
+Her eyes strayed toward the dressing-table as she passed it, and as she
+reached the door she glanced over the chiffonier. It was on the tip of
+Flora's tongue to ask if she had mislaid something, when Clara turned
+and smiled her small, tight-curled smile, as if she were offering it as
+a symbol of mutual understanding. Curiously enough, it checked Flora's
+query about the straying glances, and made her wonder that this was the
+first time in their relation that she had thought Clara sweet.
+
+But there was another quality in Clara she did not lose sight of, and
+she waited for the closing of a door further down the hall before she
+drew the sapphire from under her pillow.
+
+With the knocking at the door her first act had been to thrust it there.
+The feeling that it was going to be hard to hide was still her strongest
+instinct about it; but the morning had dissipated the element of the
+supernatural and the horrid that it had shown her the night before. It
+seemed to have a clearer and a simpler beauty; and the hope revived in
+her that its beauty, after all, was the only remarkable thing about it.
+
+Her conviction of the night before had sunk to a shadowy hypothesis. She
+knew nothing--nothing that would justify her in taking any step; and her
+only chance of knowing more lay in what she would get out of Kerr; for
+that he knew more about her ring than she, she was convinced. She was
+afraid of him, yet, in spite of her fear, she had no intention of
+handing him over to Clara. For on reflection she knew that Clara's offer
+must have a deeper motive than mere kindness, and she had a most
+unreasonable feeling that it would not be safe. She felt a little guilty
+to have seemed to take her companion's help, while she left her so much
+at sea as to the real facts. But, after all, it was Clara who had forced
+the issue.
+
+She thought a good deal about Clara while she was dressing. A good many
+times lately she had looked forward to the fall, the time of her
+marriage, when their rather tense relationship would be ended. This
+house in the country, which was to be her last little bachelor fling,
+was to be Clara's last commission for her.
+
+Think how she would, she could but feel as if she were ungratefully
+abandoning Clara. Clara had done so well by her in their three years
+together! There surely must be immediately forthcoming for such a
+remarkable person another large opportunity, and yet she couldn't help
+recalling their first encounter in the particularly dull boarding-house
+where Clara was temporarily shelved; where, nevertheless, she had not
+conceded an inch of her class, nor a ray of her luster to circumstance.
+This surprising luster was the gloss of her body, the quality of her
+clothes and accessories, the way she traveled and the way she smiled. It
+was the bloom of luxury she kept about her person through all her
+varying surroundings. She had never to rise to the level of a new
+position; she was there already; and she never came down.
+
+Flora knew it was for just her air of being ready that she had trusted
+Clara, and for the three years of their association she had never failed
+to find her companion ready wherever their common interests were
+concerned. She had no reason for not trusting Clara now, except the
+knowledge that, by her own approaching marriage, their interests would
+be separated, and her feeling that Clara's prudence must already be by
+way of looking out for itself alone.
+
+Yet Clara would do a kindness if it did not inconvenience her, and
+surely this morning she had been kind. Still Flora felt she didn't want
+to reveal anything until she was a little surer of her own position.
+When she knew better where she stood she would know what she could
+confide to Clara. Meanwhile, if there was any one to whom she could turn
+now it would surely be Harry.
+
+Yet, if she did, what a lot of awkward explanations! She could not
+return the sapphire without giving a reason, and what a thing to
+explain--that she had not only worn it, but, in a freak, shown it to the
+one of all people he most objected to.
+
+Nevertheless the most sensible thing clearly was to go through with it
+and confess to Harry. Then she must communicate with him at once.
+No--she would wait until after breakfast. There was plenty of time. Kerr
+would not come until the afternoon. But after breakfast, she wondered if
+it wouldn't be as well to ring him up at luncheon time? Then she would
+be sure of finding him at the club.
+
+Meanwhile she dared not let the sapphire out of her grasp; and yet she
+could not wear it on her hand. She had thought of the tear-shaped pouch
+of gold which it was her custom to wear; but the slender length of chain
+that linked it to her neck was too frail for such a precious weight. At
+last she had fastened it around her neck on the strongest chain she
+owned, and thus she carried it all the morning under her bodice with a
+quieter mind than had been hers on the first day she had worn it, when
+there had been nothing to explain her uneasiness.
+
+She was quite sure she was going to give back the sapphire to Harry, yet
+she couldn't help picturing to herself what her meeting with Kerr would
+have been, supposing she had decided differently. As the morning slipped
+by she found herself doubting that he would come at all. Her attitude of
+the night before had surely been enough to discourage any one. Yet if he
+didn't come she knew that she would be disappointed.
+
+She was alone at luncheon, and in a dream. She glanced now and then at
+the clock. She rose only ten minutes before the hour that Harry was in
+the habit of leaving the club. She went up-stairs slowly and stopped in
+front of the telephone. She touched the receiver, drew her hand back and
+turned away. She shut the door of her own rooms smartly after her.
+
+She did not try to--because she couldn't--understand her own proceeding.
+She merely sat, listening, as it seemed to her, for hours.
+
+But when at last Kerr's card was handed in to her, it gave her a shock,
+as if something which couldn't happen, and yet which she had all along
+expected, had come to pass.
+
+In her instant of indecision Marrika had got away from her, but she
+called the girl back from the door and told her to say to Mrs. Britton
+that Mr. Kerr had called, but that Miss Gilsey would see him herself.
+
+She started with a rush. Half-way down the stairs she stopped, horrified
+to find what her fingers were doing. They were closed around the little
+lump that the ring made in the bosom of her gown, and she had not known
+it. What if she had rushed in to Kerr with this extraordinary
+manifestation? What if, while she was talking to him, her hand should
+continue to creep up again and yet again to that place, and close around
+the jewel, and make it evident, even in its hiding-place? The time had
+come when she must even hide it from herself. And yet, to creep back up
+the stair when she made sure Kerr must have heard her tumultuous
+downward rush! It would never do to soundlessly retreat. She must go
+back boldly, as if she had forgotten nothing more considerable than a
+pocket handkerchief.
+
+Yet before she reached the top again she found herself going tiptoe, as
+if she were on an expedition so secret that her own ears should not hear
+her footsteps. But she went direct and unhesitating. It had come to her
+all in a flash where she would put the sapphire. The little buttoned
+pocket of her bath-robe. There it hung in the bath-room on one unvarying
+peg, the most immovable of all her garments, safe from the excursions of
+Marrika's needle or brushes, not to be disturbed for hours to come.
+
+She passed through her bedroom, through her dressing-room into the
+bath-room. The robe was hanging behind the door. It took her a moment to
+draw out the ring and disentangle its chain, and while she was doing
+this she became aware of movings to and fro in her bedroom. She drew the
+door half open, the better to conceal herself behind it, and at the same
+time, through the widened crack of the jamb, to keep an eye on the
+dressing-room, and hurried lest Marrika should surprise her. But
+nevertheless she had barely slipped the ring into the little pocket and
+refastened the flap, when Clara opened the bedroom door and stood
+looking into the dressing-room.
+
+Flora experienced a sharp start of surprise, and then of wonder. Here
+was Clara again seeking her out! Here she stood, brushed and polished,
+and finished to a pitch of virtue, again taking Flora at a disadvantage,
+hiding behind her own door. But at the least she was grateful that Clara
+had not seen her. She stood a minute collecting herself. She wasn't
+doing anything she need be ashamed of, or that she need explain, or that
+need even awaken suspicion. But before she could take her courage in
+both hands and come out of her retreat, Clara had reached the middle of
+the dressing-room, and stood still.
+
+Her lifted veil made a fine mist above the luster of her eyes. She was
+perfect to the tips of her immaculate white gloves, and she wore the
+simple, sober look of a person who thinks himself alone. Then it wasn't
+Flora, Clara was looking for! She was looking all around--over the
+surface of every object in the room. Presently she went up to the
+dressing-table. She laid her gloved hands upon it, and looked at the
+small objects strewn over its top. She took a step backward and opened
+the top drawer. She reached into it, and delicately explored.
+
+Flora could see the white gloves going to and fro among her white
+handkerchiefs, could see them find, open and examine the contents of her
+jewel-box. And the only thing that kept her from shrieking out was the
+feeling that this abominable thing which was being enacted before her
+eyes couldn't be a fact at all.
+
+Clara took out an old pocket-book, shiny with years, shook from it a
+shower of receipts, newspaper clippings, verses. She let them lie. She
+took out a long violet box with a perfumer's seal upon it. It held a
+bunch of dried violets. She took out a bonbonnière of gold filigree. It
+was empty. A powder box, a glove box, a froth of lace, a handful of
+jewelers' boxes, a jewel flung loose into the drawer. This she pounced
+upon. It was a brooch! She let it fall--turned to the chiffonier;
+upended the two vases of Venetian glass, lifted the lids of jars and
+boxes, finally came to the drawers. One by one she took them out, turned
+the contents of each rapidly over, and left them standing, gaping white
+ruffles and lace upon the floor. She took up daintily, in her white kid
+fingers, slippers, shook them upside down. She opened the door of the
+closet, and disappeared within. There was audible the flutterings of all
+the distressed garments, with little busy pauses. Then Clara came out,
+with her hat a little crooked; and stood in the middle of the room still
+with her absorbed and sober face, looking over the gaping drawers,
+pulled out and rifled, with their contents heaped up and streaming over
+the floor.
+
+Her eye fell upon the waste basket. She turned it upside down, and
+stooped over the litter. She gathered it up in her white gloves and
+dropped it back. Then, for the first time, she glanced at the bath-room
+door; stood looking at it, as if it had occurred to her to look in the
+soap dish. Then she turned again to the room, to the dressing-table. She
+put back the paste-board jewelers' boxes, the jeweled pin, the laces,
+which she shook out and folded daintily, the glove and powder boxes, the
+gold bonbonnière, the long violet box, the leather pocket-book,--each
+deftly and unhesitatingly in the place from which she had taken it, and
+all the heaps of white handkerchiefs.
+
+One by one she laid back in the chiffonier drawers, the garments,
+properly and neatly folded, that she had so hastily snatched out of
+them. The sun, streaming full into the room, caught gleams in her pale
+hair, and struck blindingly upon the heaps of white around her, and made
+two dazzling points of her gloved hands that moved as deftly as hands
+uncovered. She slid back the last drawer into the chiffonier, and rose
+from her knees, lightly dusting off the front of her gown; went to the
+closet door and closed it. She stood before it a moment with a face
+perplexed and thoughtful, then turned alertly toward the outer door. As
+she passed the mirror she looked into it, and touched her hat straight
+again, but the action was subconscious. Clara wasn't thinking of it.
+
+Flora stood as if she were afraid to move, while Clara crossed her
+bedroom, stopped, went on and closed the outer door behind her. And even
+after that soft little concussion she stood still, burning, choking,
+struggling with the overwhelming force of an affront whose import she
+did not yet realize. Out in her sunny dressing-room all the outraged
+furniture stood meek and in order, frauding the eye to believe that
+nothing had happened! She felt she couldn't look things in the face a
+moment longer. She hid her face in the folds of her dressing-gown.
+
+Why, she had thought that such things couldn't happen! She had thought
+that people's private belongings, like their persons, were inviolable.
+They all always talked, she had talked, about such things as if they
+were mere nothings. They had talked about the very taking of the Crew
+Idol as if it were a splendid joke! But she had not dreamed what such
+things were like when they were near. When they were held up to you
+naked they were like this! In the shame of it she could no more have
+faced Clara than if she had surprised Clara naked.
+
+She snatched the ring out of the pocket of her gown and clutched it in
+her hand. Was there no place in the world where she could be sure of
+safety for this?
+
+With trembling fingers she fastened it again to the chain about her
+neck. She thought of Kerr down-stairs waiting for her. Well, she would
+rather keep it with her. Then, at least, she would know when it was
+taken from her. Still in the fury of her outraged faith, she passed
+through her violated rooms, and slowly along the hall and down the
+stairs.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE MYSTERY TAKES HUMAN FORM
+
+
+He turned from the window where he had presented a long, drooping,
+patient back, and his warm, ironic mirth--the same that had played with
+her the first night--flashed out at sight of her. But after a moment
+another expression mixed with it, sharpened it, and fastened upon her
+with an incredulous intentness.
+
+She stood on the threshold, pale, and brilliant still in her blaze of
+anger, equal, at last, to anything. Kerr, as he signaled to her with
+every lineament of his enlivened face, his interest, his defiance, his
+uncontrollability, was not the man of her imaginary conversations. He
+was not here to be used and disposed of; but, as he came toward her,
+the new admiration in his face was bringing her reassurance that neither
+was she. The thought that her moment of bitter incredulity had made her
+formidable gave her courage to fight even him, of whom she was so much
+in awe; gave her courage even to smile, though she grew hot at the first
+words he spoke.
+
+"You should not be brave and then run away, you know."
+
+She thought of her rush up the stairs again. "I had to go back to see
+Mrs. Britton." (Oh, how she had seen her!)
+
+It seemed to Flora that everything she had been through in the last few
+moments was blazoned on her face. But he only looked a little more
+gravely at her, though his sardonic eye-brow twitched.
+
+"Ah, I thought you only ran back to hide in your doll's house."
+
+She laughed. Such a picture of her!
+
+"Well, at any rate, now I've come out, what have you to say to me?"
+
+"Now you've come out," he repeated, and looked at her this time with
+full gravity, as if he realized finally how far she'd come.
+
+She had taken the chair in the light of the eastern windows. She lay
+back in the cushions, her head a little bent, her hands interlaced with
+a perfect imitation of quietude. The dull satin of her slender foot was
+the only motion about her, but the long, slow rise and fall of her
+breath was just too deep-drawn for repose.
+
+He looked down upon her from his height.
+
+"I'm sorry I frightened you last night," he said, "but I'm not sorry I
+came, since you've seen me. You needn't have, you know, if you didn't
+want to. You could have stayed in the doll's house; and there, I
+suppose, you think I should never have found you--or _it_ again?"
+
+He was silent a moment, leaning on the chair opposite, watching her with
+knitted forehead, while her apprehension fluttered for what he should do
+next. He had done away with all the amenities of meeting and attacked
+his point with a directness that took her breath.
+
+"You know what I've come for," he said, "but now I'm here, now that I
+see you, I wonder if there's something I haven't reckoned on." He looked
+at her earnestly. "If you think I've taken advantage of you--if you say
+so--I'll go away, and give you a chance to think it over."
+
+It would have been so easy to have nodded him out, but instead she half
+put out her hand toward him. "No; stay."
+
+He gave her a quick look--surprise and approbation at her courage. He
+dropped into a chair. "Then tell me about it."
+
+Flora's heart went quick and little. She held herself very still, afraid
+in her intense consciousness lest her slightest movement might betray
+her. She only moved her eyes to look up at him questioningly, suspending
+acknowledgment of what he meant until he should further commit himself.
+
+"I mean the sapphire," he said. He waited.
+
+"Yes," she answered coolly. "I saw that it interested you last night,
+but I couldn't think especially why. It's a beautiful stone."
+
+He laughed without a sound--shook noiselessly for a minute. "Meaning
+that a gentleman shouldn't pounce upon any beautiful stone he may happen
+to see?" He got up and moved about restlessly in the little space
+between their two chairs. "Quite so; lay it to my being more than a
+gentleman; lay it to my being a crack-brained enthusiast, a confounded
+beauty worshiper, a vicious curio dealer, an ill-mannered ass! But"--and
+he flashed around at her with a snap of his nervous fingers--"where did
+you get it?"
+
+For the life of her she couldn't help her wave of color, but through it
+all she clung to her festal smile. Sheer nervousness made it easy.
+
+"Well, suppose it was begged, borrowed, or--given to me? Suppose it came
+from here or far away yonder? What's that to do with its beauty?" She
+gave him question for question. "Did you ever see it before?"
+
+He never left off looking at her, looking at her with a hard inquiry, as
+if she were some simple puzzle that he unaccountably failed to solve.
+
+"That's rather neat, the way you dodge me," he said, dodging in his
+turn. "But I don't see it _now_. You're not wearing it?"
+
+She played indifference with what a beating heart! "Oh, I only wear it
+off and on."
+
+"Off and on!" His voice suddenly rang at her. "Off and on! Why, my good
+woman, it's just two days you could have worn it at all!"
+
+She stood up--stood facing him. For a moment she knew nothing except
+that her horrible idea was a fact. She had the eye of the Crew Idol, and
+this man knew it! Yet the fact declared gave her courage. She could face
+his accusal if only he could give the reason for it. But after a moment,
+while they looked silently at each other, she saw he was not accusing
+her. He was threatening her and beseeching her indulgence in the same
+look. He opened his lips, hesitated, turned sharp about and walked away
+from her.
+
+She watched him with increasing doubt. After saying so much, was he
+going to say nothing more? She had a feeling that she had not heard the
+worst yet, and when he turned back to her from the other end of the room
+there was something so haggard, so harassed, so fairly guilty about him
+that if she had ever thought of telling him the truth of how she came by
+the ring she put it away from her now.
+
+But beneath his distress she recognized a desperate earnestness. There
+was something he wanted at any cost, but he was going to be gentle with
+her. She had felt before the potentiality of his gentleness, and she
+doubted her power to resist it. She fanned up all the flame of anger
+that had swept her into the room. She reminded herself that the greatest
+gentleness might only be a blind; that there was nothing stronger than
+wanting something very much, and that the protection of the jewel was
+very thin. But when he stood beside her she realized he held a stronger
+weapon against her than his gentleness, something apart from his
+intention. She felt that in whatever circumstance, at whatever time she
+should meet him he would make her feel thus--hot and cold, and happy for
+the mere presence of his body beside her. In a confusion she heard what
+he was saying.
+
+He was speaking, almost coaxingly, as if to a child. "I understand," he
+was saying. "I know all about it. It's a mistake. But surely you don't
+expect to keep it now. It will only be an annoyance to you."
+
+She turned on him. "What could it be to you?"
+
+Kerr, planted before her, with his head dropped, looked, looked, looked,
+as if he gave silence leave to answer for him what it would. It answered
+with a hundred echoes ringing up to her from long corridors of
+conjecture, half-articulated words breathing of how extraordinary the
+answer must be that he did not dare to make. He looked her up and down
+carefully, impersonally, with that air he had of regarding a rare
+specimen, thoughtfully; as if he weighed such ephemeral substance as
+chance.
+
+"What will you take for it?" he said at last.
+
+She was silent. With a sick distrust it came to her that it was the
+very worst thing he could have said after that speaking silence.
+
+She stepped away from him. "This thing is not for sale."
+
+He stared at her with amazement; then threw back his head and laughed as
+if something had amused him above all tragedy.
+
+"You are an extraordinary creature," he said, "but really I must have
+it. I can't explain the why of it; only give the sapphire to me, and
+you'll never be sorry for having done that for me. Whatever happens, you
+may be sure I won't talk. Even if the thing comes out, you shan't be
+mixed up in it." He had come near her again, and the point of his long
+forefinger rested on her arm. She was motionless, overwhelmed with pure
+terror, with despair. He was smiling, but there was a desperate
+something about him, stronger than the common desire of possession,
+terrifying in its intensity. She looked behind her. The thick glass of
+the window was there, a glimpse of the empty street and the figure of a
+woman in a blowing green veil turning the corner.
+
+"Why not give it to me now," he urged, "since, of course, you can't keep
+it? I could have it now in spite of you."
+
+Everything in her sprang up in antagonism to meet him. "I know what you
+are," she cried, "but you shan't have it. You have no more right to it
+than I. You can't get it away from me, and I shan't give it to you."
+
+He had grown suddenly paler; his eyes were dancing, fastened upon her
+breast. His long hands closed and opened. She looked down, arrested at
+the sight of her hand clenched just where her breath was shortest, over
+the sapphire's hiding-place.
+
+He smiled. How easily she had betrayed herself! But she abated not a jot
+of her defiance, challenging him, now he knew its hiding-place, to take
+the sapphire if he could. But he did not move. And it came to her then
+that she had been ridiculous to think for an instant that this man would
+take anything from her by force. What she had to fear was his will at
+work upon hers, his persuasion, his ingenuity. She thought of the purple
+irises, and how he had drawn them toward him in the crook of his
+cane--and her dread was lest he meant to overcome her with some subtlety
+she could not combat. For that he was secret, that he was daring, that
+he was fearless beyond belief, he showed her all too plainly, since here
+he stood, condemned by his own evidence, alone, in the midst of her
+household, within call of her servants, and had the sublime effrontery
+to look at her with admiration, and, it occurred to her, even with a
+little pity.
+
+The click of a moving latch brought his eyes from hers to the door.
+
+"Some one is coming in," he said in a guarded voice. It warned her that
+her face showed too much, but she could not hope to recover her
+composure. She hardly wanted to. She was in a state to fancy that a
+secret could be kept by main force; and she turned without abatement of
+her reckless mood and took her hand from where she had held it clenched
+upon her breast and stretched it out to Mrs. Herrick.
+
+The lady had stood in the doorway a moment--a long-featured, whitish,
+modeled face, draped in a dull green veil, a tall figure whose flowing
+skirts of black melted away into the background of the hall--before she
+came forward and met her hostess' hand with a clasp firm and ready.
+
+"I'm so glad to find you here," she said. She looked directly into
+Flora's eyes, into the very center of her agitation. She held her
+tremulous hand as if neither of these manifestations surprised her; as
+if a young woman and a young man in colloquy might often be found in
+such a state of mind.
+
+Flora's first emotion was a guilty relief that, after all, her face had
+not betrayed Kerr. But she had no sooner murmured his name to Mrs.
+Herrick, no sooner had that lady's gray eyes lighted upon him, than they
+altered their clear confidence. The situation as reflected in Flora
+looked naïve enough, but there was nothing naïve about Kerr. The very
+perfection of his coolness, there in the face of her burning agitation,
+was appalling. Oh, why couldn't he see, Flora thought wildly, how it was
+damning him--how it was showing him so practised, so marvelously equal
+to any emergency, that his presence here among fleeces could be nothing
+less than wolfish?
+
+Mrs. Herrick's face was taking on an expression no less than wary. What
+he was, Mrs. Herrick could not dream. She could not even suspect what
+Flora believed. But in the light of her terrible discovery Flora dared
+not have him suspected at all. The chasms of distrust and suspicion that
+had been opening between them she forgot. In a flash she was ready to
+throw herself in front of this man, to cover him from suspicion, even
+though by so doing she took it upon herself.
+
+Now, if she had ever in her life, she talked over the top of her
+feelings; and though at first to her ears her voice rang out horribly
+alone, presently Mrs. Herrick was helping her, adding words to words.
+It was the house they spoke of, the San Mateo house, the subject about
+which Flora knew Mrs. Herrick had come to talk; but to Flora it was no
+longer a subject. It was a barrier, a shield. In this emergency it was
+the only subject large enough to fill the gap, and much as Flora had
+liked the idea of it, she had never built the house so large, so vivid,
+so wonderfully towering to please her fancy as she was doing now to
+cover Kerr. With questions she led Mrs. Herrick on to spin out the
+subject, to play it over with lights and shades, to beat all around it.
+And all the while she knew that Kerr was watching her; watching her once
+again in dubious admiration. It was a look that made Mrs. Herrick seem
+ready at a movement of his to lay her hand on Flora in protection.
+
+The lady's clear gray eyes traveled between Flora's face and his. Under
+their steady light there was a strange alertness, as if she sat there
+ready enough to avert whatever threatened, but anxious to draw her
+skirts aside from it, distrusting the quality, hating to have come in
+upon anything so dubious. When the hall door opened and closed she
+listened as if for a deliverer; and when Clara appeared between the
+portières she turned to her and met her with a flash of relief, as if
+here at last was a safe quantity. Clara was still wearing her hat, with
+the veil pushed up in a little mist above her eyes, and still had her
+white gloves on. The sight of Mrs. Herrick's hand soliciting the clasp
+of those gave Flora a curious sensation.
+
+She looked from one face to another, and last at Kerr's. She shut her
+eyes an instant. Here was a thief. He was standing in her drawing-room
+now. She had been talking with him. She opened her eyes. The fact
+acknowledged had not altered the color of daylight. It was strange that
+things--furniture and walls and landscape--should remain so stolidly the
+same when such a thing had happened to her! For she had not only spoken
+with a thief, but she had shielded him. It struck her grotesquely that
+perhaps Mrs. Herrick's instinct was right, after all. Wasn't Clara the
+safest of the lot? Clara at least kept her gloves on, while she herself
+was shamelessly arrayed on the side of disorder. She was clinging to a
+piece of property that wasn't hers, and whatever way she dressed her
+motives they looked too much of a piece with the operations of the
+original miscreant.
+
+Flora saw the evil spirit of tragic-comedy. He fairly grinned at her.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+DISENCHANTMENT
+
+
+Then this was the end of all romance? She must turn her back on the
+charm, the power, the spell that had been wrought around her, and,
+horror-struck, pry into her own mind to discover what lawless thing
+could be in her to have drawn her to such a person, and to keep her,
+even now that she knew the worst, unwilling to relinquish the thought of
+him. His depravity loomed to her enormous; but was that all there was to
+be said of him? Did his delicacy, his insight, his tempered fineness,
+count for nothing beside it? Must their talks, their walking through the
+trees, the very memory of his voice, be lost inspiration?
+
+She couldn't believe that this one spot could make him rotten
+throughout. Her mind ran back into the past. She could not recall a
+word, an action, or a glance of his that had shown the color of decay.
+He had not even been insincere with her. He had come out with his
+convictions so flatly that when she thought of it his nonchalance
+appalled her. He had been the same then that he was now. But the thing
+that was natural for him was impossible for her, and she had found it
+out--that was all.
+
+Yet the mere consideration of him and his obsession as one thing was
+intolerable. She curiously separated his act from himself. She thought
+of it, not as a part of him, but as something that had invaded him--a
+disease--something inimical to himself and others, that mixed the
+thought of him with terrors, and filled her way with difficulties. Now
+it was no longer a question of how to meet him, but of how she was not
+to. It was not his strength she feared, but her own weakness where he
+was concerned. Her tendency to shield him--she must guard against
+that--and that disturbing influence he exercised over her, too
+evidently without intention. But he would be hard to avoid. This way and
+that she looked for a way out of her danger, yet all the while she was
+conscious that there was but one plain way of escape open to her. She
+could give the sapphire back to Harry within the twenty-four hours.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THRUST AND PARRY
+
+
+     MY DEAR FLORA--I am going out early and shall not be back to
+     dinner.                                            CLARA.
+
+
+Flora let the little note fall as if she disliked the touch of it. She
+was relieved to think she would not have to see Clara that day. It was
+her desire never to see Clara again. If only they could part here and
+now! How she wanted to shake the whole thing off her shoulders! How
+foolish not to have gone to Harry when she had first made up her mind
+to! For why, after all, make him any explanations? Suppose she should
+just take the ring to him and say: "It gives me the shivers, Harry.
+Let's take it back and get something else." If he didn't suspect the
+sapphire already, he would never suspect it from that. The worst he
+could do would be to laugh, to tease, to tell her she could not live up
+to her own romantic notions, since, after all, she had weakened and was
+wanting the usual thing.
+
+But there had been times when she had thought that he did suspect the
+sapphire. Well, if he did, giving it back to him would practically be
+giving it back into public custody in the most decorous manner for a
+properly bred young woman. And how beautifully it would extricate her
+from her wretched situation! Logically, there was no fault to be found
+with such a course. It was eminently sane and safe. Yet it still
+appeared to her as if she were acting a coward's part. She was neither
+frankly giving the jewel to the authorities with the proper information,
+nor frankly handing it over to Kerr. But she was trying to slip it back
+into the questionable nook from which it had been taken, and she grew
+hot at the thought of how Kerr would despise her if he knew the craven
+course she was meditating. She seemed to hear him saying, "I had
+thought braver things of you."
+
+Of course, that was his way of expecting that she would give him the
+ring. And she felt a sort of rage against him that he should want that,
+and only that, so very much. Yet she didn't know what else she wanted
+him to want. Every time she thought of Kerr she found herself growing
+unreasonable; and she had to whip up her resolution with the hard facts
+of the case to prevent herself from drifting over on to his side
+completely.
+
+But did she really want Harry to rid her of the ring? She would get hold
+of him first and then she would see what she would do.
+
+She stepped into the hall with all the confidence of one who has fully
+made up her mind to carry matters with a high hand; but at the telephone
+she hesitated. Calling him up at such an hour of the morning demanding
+his attendance on such a fanciful errand--wouldn't he think it odd? No,
+he would think it the most natural thing in the world for her to be so
+flighty. Reassured, she gave the club number and stood waiting,
+listening to the half-syllables of switched-off voices and the crossing
+click, click, that was bringing her fate nearer to her. She heard some
+one coming up the stairs and down the hall toward her. Marrika stood
+stolid at her elbow.
+
+"Mr. Cressy," she pronounced.
+
+"Yes, yes," said Flora, with the club clamoring in her left ear.
+
+"He is down-stairs," said Marrika.
+
+Flora nearly let the receiver fall. Harry here? What a piece of luck!
+But here on his own account, at such an hour--how extraordinary!
+
+"Hello, hello," persisted the club. "What's wanted?"
+
+"Why, I--" Flora stammered. "It's a mistake; never mind. I don't want
+him now." She hoped that Harry had not heard her as he came in, since it
+was his informal fashion to await her in the large entrance hall. She
+didn't want to spoil the chance he had given her of seeming offhand
+about the ring. But the hall was empty, and as she descended the stairs
+she amused herself with the fancy that Shima had had a vision, and that
+she would still have to ring up the club and explain to the attendant
+that, after all, she wanted Mr. Cressy.
+
+Then from the drawing-room threshold she caught sight of Harry standing
+in the big bay window of the drawing-room, in the same spot where Kerr
+had awaited her the afternoon before. Harry was tall and large and
+freshly colored, and yet he did not fill the room to her as the other
+man had done. He met her, kissed her, and she turned her head so that
+his lips met her cheek close beside her ear. She did not positively
+object to his kissing her on the lips, but her instinct was strong to
+offer him her cheek. He had sometimes laughed at this, but now he
+resented it. He insisted on his privilege, and she was passive to him,
+conscious of less love in this than assertion of possession.
+
+"You are not going to Burlingame, are you?" she asked him with her first
+breath.
+
+He looked down at her with a flushed and sulky air. "What difference
+would that make to you? I am, as it happens, but I suppose you think
+that's no reason for disturbing you so early." He was angry, but at
+what, she wondered, with creeping uneasiness. He held her and caressed
+her with a morose satisfaction, as if he had to make sure to himself
+that she was really his, and she permitted it and abetted it with a
+guile that astonished her.
+
+"What is the matter?" she urged. "Are things going crookedly at
+Burlingame?"
+
+"Things are going as crooked as you please, but not at Burlingame. Sit
+over there," he said, nodding toward the window-bench; "I want to talk
+to you."
+
+Harry had the air of one about to scold, and certainly Flora thought if
+anybody was carrying matters with a high hand, it wasn't herself; but
+she didn't follow his direction. She continued to stand, while he,
+sitting on the table's edge, drumming the top of his hat, gloomily
+regarded her.
+
+"Well?" she persisted, troubled by this look of his, and this silence.
+
+"Look here," he began, "I have to be away a couple of days and I wish
+you'd do me a favor."
+
+Flora's thought flew to the ring. Was he going to ask for it back, to
+have it reset, as he had promised on the threshold of the goldsmith's
+shop? Here might be the chance she had hoped for of getting rid of it.
+She grasped at it before she had time to waver.
+
+"I wonder if it's the very favor I was going to ask of you."
+
+But he didn't take it up. He seemed hardly to hear her, as if his mind
+was too much absorbed with quite another question--a question that the
+next moment came out flat. "What was that Kerr doing here yesterday?"
+
+She was taken aback, so far had her apprehension of Harry's jealousy
+slipped into the background in the last twenty-four hours. But her
+consciousness that Harry was not behaving well, even for a jealous man,
+made her take it up all the more lightly.
+
+"Why, he was calling, chatting, taking tea--what anybody else would do
+from four to six. What in the world gave you the idea that he was doing
+anything extraordinary?"
+
+"Well," he said, "you shouldn't do the sort of thing that makes you
+talked about."
+
+"'That makes me talked about'?" It made her pause in front of him.
+
+"Why, yes, it isn't like you. It's never happened before. Look here. I
+drop into the Bullers' yesterday; find Clara sidled up to the judge;
+look around for you. 'Hello,' I say, 'where's Flora?' 'Oh,' says she,
+'Flora's at home amusing Mr. Kerr.' 'Amusing Mr. Kerr!'" he repeated.
+"That's a nice thing to hear."
+
+Flora went red. She walked down the room from him to give her suddenly
+tumultuous heart time. However little he might guess the real trend of
+her interview with Kerr, she couldn't hear him come near it without
+apprehension. She was angry, helplessly angry at Harry that he had
+taken this moment for his stupid jealousy. But she was more angry at
+Clara, since such a speech on Clara's part wasn't carelessness. She had
+meant it to work upon him, and here he stood, like the fine animal that
+he was, smoldering with the suspicion of encroachment on his prey.
+
+She tried to laugh him out of it.
+
+"Why, Harry, I never saw you jealous before!"
+
+"It's all very well to say that--and you know I've never made a row
+about the other Johnnies. I knew you didn't care for any of _them_."
+
+Her eyes narrowed and darkened.
+
+"And you take it for granted I care for Mr. Kerr?"
+
+"Oh, no, no!" He pushed his hand through his hair with an irascible
+gesture. "But it's plain enough you like him--you women always like a
+fellow that flourishes--but that's not the sort of man I care to see
+hanging around my girl."
+
+Flora stood leaning on the table, breathing a little hurriedly, feeling
+rather as if she had been shaken. Harry, standing with his hands in his
+pockets, looked not unlike the threatening image he had appeared in the
+back of the goldsmith's shop.
+
+"Of course, the fellow can talk," he admitted, "and he has a manner. But
+Lord knows where he comes from or who he is. Why, even the Bullers don't
+know."
+
+Flora turned sharply on him. "Who told you that?"
+
+"The judge. He picked him up at the club."
+
+"Well," she kept it up, "some one had to introduce him there."
+
+Harry smiled. "You wouldn't care to bow to some of those club members."
+
+"Harry, do you know how you sound to me?" She was trembling at the
+daring of what she was going to say. "You talk as if you knew something
+against him."
+
+Her statement seemed to bring him up short. "No, no, I don't," he said
+hastily.
+
+She made a little gesture of despair. How was she to count on Harry if
+he was going to behave like this? How trust him when he was shuffling
+so?
+
+She made one more bold stroke to make him speak out.
+
+"Harry, you _do_ know something about him! I know you have seen him
+before."
+
+"Why, yes, I've seen him before. But that's got nothing to do with it."
+
+He looked surprised that she should seem to accuse him of it, and she
+wondered if he could have forgotten how he had denied it before.
+
+"And that isn't why you distrust him?"
+
+The devil's tattoo that he beat on his hat stopped.
+
+"I don't distrust him."
+
+"Well, dislike him, then. When was it that you saw him before?"
+
+"Isn't it enough for me to tell you that I don't want _you_ to see him?"
+
+"Oh!" She turned away from him. Every nerve in her was in revolt. Then
+he really wasn't going to tell her anything. He was keeping her out of
+it as if she were a child. She had relied on him to return the ring. She
+had counted upon his indifference and good nature. And he was neither
+indifferent nor good-natured. All desire of even mentioning the ring to
+him left her; and as to giving him her confidence--These hints that he
+had thrown out about Kerr--they might be mere jealousy--but he might
+have actual knowledge, knowledge that, with her own fitted to it, would
+make for him a complete figure. She caught her breath at the thought of
+how near she had come to actually betraying Kerr. Until that moment she
+had not realized that through all her waverings her one fixed intention
+had been not to betray him.
+
+Harry had risen and was buttoning his overcoat. "You know you're never
+at home if you don't want to be," he said.
+
+She stood misleadingly drooping before him. But though her appearance
+was passive enough for the most exacting lover her will had never been
+in more vigorous revolt. She knew Harry was taking her weariness for
+acquiescence, and she let him take it so. She even followed him into the
+hall, and with a vague idea of further propitiation, nodded away Shima
+and opened the door for him herself.
+
+The fog was a chasm of white outside. Harry turned on the brink of it.
+"By the way, where's Clara?"
+
+"Why, do you want to see her? She'll be out all day. She's dining with
+the Willie Herricks."
+
+"No, I don't want to see her, but, by the way, she's not dining with the
+Willie Herricks; she's dining with the Bullers. I heard her make the
+engagement yesterday."
+
+"Oh, no, Harry, I'm sure you're mistaken."
+
+"Well, it doesn't matter. All I want to know is, why did you show that
+ring to Clara before it was set?"
+
+She was genuinely aghast. "I didn't," she flashed. "What made you think
+I had?"
+
+He shrugged. "Well, she asked me where we got it. I don't see why women
+always talk those things over." He was looking at her inquiringly.
+
+"Well, I haven't," she said quickly. "Have you?"
+
+He looked out upon the fog. "Told her where we got it, do you mean? No,
+I just chaffed her. I'd look out, if I were you. She strikes me as
+damned curious." He stood a moment on the threshold, looking from Flora
+to the chasm of fog outside, as if he were choosing between two chances.
+"I think I'll take that ring this morning," he said slowly.
+
+The deliberate words came to her with a shock. But in the moment, while
+she looked into Harry's moody face, she realized how impossible to make
+a scene over what must still be maintained as a trivial matter betwixt
+them--the mere resetting of a jewel; what should she do to put him off?
+She looked up at him, and saw with relief that his face was turned from
+her to the fog, as if he had forgotten her. Then, still with averted
+head, as if he addressed the whiteness, or himself,--"No," he
+determined, "I won't. I'll take it when I come back." He pulled himself
+together with an effort, with a smile. "That is," he turned to her, "if
+you're in no great hurry about the setting? Very well, then. In a day or
+two."
+
+He plunged away into the fog. A few rods from the door he disappeared,
+but she could still hear his footsteps growing thinner, lighter, passing
+away in the whiteness.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+COMEDY CONVEYS A WARNING
+
+
+She stood where he had left her in the open doorway, with the damp eddy
+of the fog blowing on her. She had had a narrow escape; but after the
+first fullness of her relief there returned upon her again the weight of
+her responsibility. There was no slipping out of it now, and it was
+going to be worse than she had imagined. So much had come out in the
+last half-hour that she felt bewildered by it. What Harry had let slip
+about Clara alarmed her. What in the world was Clara about? With one
+well-aimed observation she had stirred up Harry against Kerr and against
+Flora herself. And meanwhile she was running after the Bullers. Twice in
+two days, if Harry was not mistaken, and she was even nearing another
+engagement.
+
+After all her fruitless mousings, Clara had too evidently got on the
+scent of something at last. How much she knew or guessed as yet, Flora
+could not be sure, but certainly, now, she couldn't let Clara go. For
+that would be turning adrift a dangerous person with a stronger motive
+than ever for pursuing her quest, and the opportunity for pursuing it
+unobserved, out of Flora's sight. Clara was at it even now, and the only
+consolation Flora had was that Harry, at least, would not play into her
+hands.
+
+For Harry had a special secret interest of his own. The last ten minutes
+of their interview had made that plain. His manner, when he had declared
+his intention of taking the ring, had been anything but the manner of a
+care-free lover merely concerned with pleasing his lady. Then they were
+all of them racing each other for the same thing--the thing she held in
+her possession; and whether she feared most to be felled by a blow from
+Harry, or hunted far afield by Kerr, or trapped by Clara, she could not
+tell. She stood hesitating, looking out into the obscurity of the fog,
+as if she hoped to read the answer there. Presently she returned to the
+fact that Shima was waiting to close the door. Half-way across the hall
+she paused again, looking thoughtfully down the rose-colored vista of
+the drawing-room, and up at the broad black march of the stair. Vague
+mysteries peered at her from every side. Which should she flee from?
+Which walk boldly up to and dispel?
+
+She went up-stairs slowly. She stood in her dressing-room absently
+before the mirror. She touched the hard, unyielding stone of the ring
+under the thin bodice of her gown. She recalled the morning when she had
+gone to get it, before anything had happened and the lure of life had
+been so exquisite. Now that it had come near--if this indeed were life
+that she was laboring in--it was steep and crabbed, like the brown hills
+in summer, far off, like velvet, to climb, plowed ground and stubble.
+
+And yet she didn't wish herself back, but only forward. Now she had no
+leisure to imagine, to pretend, to enjoy, only the breathless sense
+that she must get forward. The chattering clock on her mantel warned her
+of the passing time and set her hurrying into her walking-gown, her hat,
+her gloves, as if the object of her errand would only wait for her a
+moment longer. When, for the second time, she opened the house door, she
+didn't hesitate. She descended into the white fog that covered all the
+city.
+
+Above her the stone façade of her house loomed huge and pinkish in the
+mist. Her spirits rose with the feeling that she was going adventuring
+again, leaving that house where for the last two days she had awaited
+events with such vivid apprehensions. She hurried fast down the damp,
+glistening pavement, seeing long, dim gray faces of houses glimmer by,
+seeing figures come toward her through the fog, grow vivid, pass, and
+hearing at intervals the hoarse, lonely voice of the fog-horn at "The
+Heads" reaching her over many intervening hills. She did not feel sure
+what she should do at the end of her journey or what awaited her there.
+She knew herself a most unpractised hunter, she, who, all her life, had
+been the most artful of quarries. A quarry she was still, but in this
+chase she had to come out and stalk the facts in order to see which way
+to run; if, she told herself in her exhilaration, she decided to run at
+all.
+
+She turned in at the low gate of imitation grill in front of an enormous
+wooden mansion, with towers and cupolas painted all a chill slate gray,
+with fuchsias, purple and red, clambering up the front. She rang, and
+was admitted into a hall, ornate and very high, with a wide staircase
+sweeping down into the middle of it.
+
+The maid looked dubiously at Flora and thought Miss Buller was not at
+home, but would see. Flora turned into the room on her left and sat down
+among the Louis Quinze sofas and potted palms with a feeling that Miss
+Buller was at home, and, for one reason or another, preferred not to be
+seen. She waited apprehensively, wondering whether Ella was not seeing
+the world-in-general, or had really specified against herself. Could it
+be that Ella was one of those women whom Harry had alluded to as
+running after Kerr? In the short twenty-four hours every individual help
+she had counted upon had seemed to draw away from her--Kerr, whose
+understanding she had been so sure of; Clara, whose propriety had never
+failed; Harry, whose comfortable good nature she had so taken for
+granted! It seemed as if the sapphire, whose presence she was never
+unconscious of, for all she wore it out of sight, had a power like the
+evil eye over these people. But if it could turn such as Ella against
+her, why, the Brussels carpet beneath her might well open and let her
+down to deeper abysses than Judge Buller's wine-cellar.
+
+She started nervously at the step of the maid returning. The message
+brought was unexpected. "Miss Buller says will you please walk
+up-stairs?"
+
+Flora was amazed. That invitation would have been odd enough at any
+time, for she and Ella were hardly on such intimate footing. But now she
+was ushered up the majestic stair, and from the majestic upper hall
+abruptly into a wild little cluttered sewing-room, and thence into a
+wilder but more spacious bedroom, large curtains at the windows, large
+roses on the carpet, and over all objects in the room a clutter of
+miscellaneous articles, as if Ella's band-boxes, bureaus, and
+work-baskets habitually refused to contain themselves.
+
+From the midst of this Ella confronted her, still in her "wrapper" and
+with the large puff of her hair a little awry. Under it her face was
+curiously pink, a color deepening to the tip of her nose and puffing out
+under her eyes.
+
+"Well, Flora," she greeted her guest. "You were just the person I wanted
+to see. Sit down. No, not there--that's my bird of paradise feather! Oh,
+no, not there--that's the breakfast. Well, I guess you'll have to sit on
+the bed."
+
+Flora swept aside the clothes that streamed across it and throned
+herself on the edge of the high, white plateau of Ella's four-poster.
+Ella, for all her eager greeting, looked upon her friend doubtfully,
+and Flora recognized in herself a similar hesitation, as if each were
+trying to make out, without asking, what thoughts the other harbored.
+
+"I was afraid I shouldn't see you at all," Flora began at last.
+
+"Well, you wouldn't if it hadn't happened to be you," said Ella
+paradoxically. "Look at me; did you ever see such a sight?"
+
+"You don't look very well," Flora cautiously admitted. "Why, Ella,
+you've been crying!"
+
+"Yes, I've been crying," said Ella, mopping her nose, which still showed
+a tendency to distil a tear at its tip. "And it's perfectly awful to me
+to think you've been living so long in the same house with her."
+
+Flora murmured breathlessly, "What in the world do you mean?"
+
+"If you don't know, I certainly ought to tell you. I mean Clara," said
+Ella distinctly.
+
+Flora, sitting up on the edge of the high bed with the tips of her
+little shoes hardly touching the floor, looked at Ella fascinated, her
+lips a little apart. Ella had so exactly pronounced her own secret
+thought of Clara. She was breathless to know what had been Clara's
+performance at the Bullers'.
+
+"Of course I've always known she was like that," said Ella, leaning back
+in her chair with an air of resignation. "She's always getting
+something. It's awful. It was the same even when we were at
+boarding-school. I suppose she never did have enough money, though her
+people were awfully nice; but she worked us all for invitations and
+rides in our carriages, and I remember she got lots through Lillie
+Lewis' elder brother, and he thought she was going to marry him, but she
+didn't. She married Lulu Britton's father; and I guess she worked him
+until he went under and they found there really was no money. So she's
+been living on people ever since." Ella rocked gloomily.
+
+"But she does it so nicely," Flora suggested. She still had the feeling
+that it was not decent to own up to these most secret facts of people's
+failings.
+
+"Oh, yes, she's a perfect wonder," Ella admitted grudgingly; "look at
+what she's done for you!" Ella's gesticulation was eloquent of how much
+that had been. "But don't you imagine she cares about you any more than
+she cares about me!" Ella began to cry again. "You were an awfully good
+thing for her, Flora, and now that you're going to be married she's got
+to have something else. But I do think she might have taken somebody
+besides papa."
+
+Flora gasped. "'Taken!' Ella, what do you mean?"
+
+"I mean married," said Ella.
+
+"'Married!'" For the time Flora had become a helpless echo.
+
+"Oh, not yet," Ella defiantly nodded. "Not while there's anything left
+of me."
+
+Flora stammered. "Oh, Ella, no. Oh, Ella, are you sure?" She felt a
+hysterical impulse to giggle.
+
+"Sure?" Miss Buller cried. "I should think so! Why, she's simply making
+a dead set for him."
+
+This dénouement, this climax to her somber expectations, struck Flora as
+something wildly and indecently ridiculous. "Why, but it's impossible!"
+she protested, and began helplessly to laugh.
+
+"Well, I'd like to know why?" Ella snapped. "I'm sure papa is twice as
+rich as old Britton was, and twice as easy." She went off into sobs
+behind her handkerchief.
+
+"Oh, don't, Ella, don't cry!" Flora begged, petting the large expanse of
+heaving shoulders. "I didn't mean anything. I was just silly. Of course
+it may be that she wants to marry him. But she never has before--at
+least, I mean, I don't believe she wants to now. What makes you think
+she does? What has she done?"
+
+"Well," Ella burst out, "why is she coming here all the time, when she
+never used to, and petting papa? Why does she bother to be so agreeable
+to me when she never was before? Why does she make me ask her to
+dinner, when I don't want to?"
+
+Each question knocked on Flora's brain to the accompaniment of Ella's
+furious rocking. She could not answer them, and Ella's explanation,
+absurd as it seemed, coming on top of her high expectations, wasn't
+impossible. It was like Clara to have more than one iron in the fire;
+but when Flora remembered the passionate intentness with which Clara had
+demolished the order of her room, she couldn't believe that Clara would
+pause in the midst of such pursuit to pounce on Judge Buller.
+
+"Oh, Ella," Flora sympathetically urged, "I don't believe there's really
+any danger. And surely, even if she meant it, Judge Buller wouldn't
+be--"
+
+"Oh, yes, he would," Ella cut her short. "Why, when she came yesterday
+he was just going out, and she went for him and made him stop to tea.
+Think of it--papa stopping to tea! And he was as pleased as Punch to
+have her make up to him. He hasn't the least idea of what she's after.
+Papa isn't used to ladies. He's always just lived with me."
+
+This astonishing statement looking at Flora through Ella's unsuspecting
+eyes had nevertheless a pathos of its own. It conjured up a long vista
+of harmonious existence which the two, the daughter and the father, had
+made out of their mutual simplicity, and their mutual gusto for the
+material comforts which came comfortably.
+
+"But I'll tell you one thing," Ella ended, still rocking vigorously; "if
+she comes here to-night to dinner when she knows I don't want her I
+shall tell her what I think of her, before she leaves this house! See if
+I don't."
+
+"Don't do that, Ella," Flora entreated, "that would be awful." She was
+certain that such an interview would only end in Clara's making Ella
+more ridiculous than she was already. "Let me speak to her. I don't mind
+at all," she declared bravely, and in a manner truly, though she was
+fully aware that speaking to Clara would be anything but a treat.
+
+"Oh, would you?" said Ella eagerly. "I really would be awfully obliged.
+I hated to ask you, Flora, but I thought perhaps you might be able
+to--to, well, perhaps be able to do something," she ended vaguely. "Do
+you think you could?"
+
+"I'll speak to Clara to-night," said Flora heroically, "or to-morrow,"
+she added; "I'm afraid I won't see her to-night."
+
+"Well, I'll let you know if it makes any difference," said Ella
+hopefully.
+
+Flora knew that nothing either of them could say would make any
+difference to Clara, or turn her from the thing she was pursuing; but by
+speaking she might at least find out if Judge Buller himself were really
+her object. And Ella's wail of assured calamity, "Papa has always been
+so happy with me," touched her with its absurd pathos.
+
+She kissed Ella's misty cheek at parting. It wasn't fair, she thought
+remorsefully, for people like the Bullers to be at large on the same
+planet with people like Clara--and herself--and--and like--Her thoughts
+ran off into the fog. At least, thank heaven, it was the judge Clara
+was trailing and not Kerr.
+
+The bells and whistles of one o'clock were making clangor as she ran up
+the steps of her house again. In the hall Shima presented her with a
+card. She looked at it with a quickening pulse. "Is he waiting?"
+
+"No, madam. Mr. Kerr has gone. He waited half an hour."
+
+Down went her spirits again. Yet surely after their last interview she
+ought not to be eager to meet him again. "In the morning," she thought,
+"and waited half an hour. How he must have wanted to see me!" She didn't
+know whether she liked that or not. "When did he come?"
+
+"At eleven o'clock."
+
+At this she was frightened; he had missed Harry by less than half an
+hour.
+
+"He waited all that time alone?"
+
+"No. Mr. Cressy came."
+
+Flora felt a cold thrill in her nerves. Then Harry had come back! What
+had he come for?
+
+"He also would wait," the Japanese explained.
+
+Flora gasped. "They waited together!"
+
+The Japanese shook his head. "They went away together."
+
+She didn't believe her ears. "Mr. Kerr went away with Mr. Cressy?"
+
+The Japanese seemed to revolve the problem of mastery. "No, Mr. Cressy
+accompanied Mr. Kerr." He had made a delicate oriental distinction. It
+put the whole thing before her in a moment. Harry had been the
+resistant, and the other with his brilliant initiative attacking, always
+attacking when he should have been hiding, had carried him off. "What
+had he done, and how had he managed, when Harry must have had such
+pressing reasons for wanting to stay?" Ah, she knew only too well Kerr's
+exquisite knowledge of managing; but why must he make such a reckless
+exposure of himself? Did he suppose Harry was to be managed? Had he no
+idea where Harry stood in this affair? In pity's name, didn't he know
+that Harry had seen him before--had seen him under circumstances of
+which Harry wouldn't talk? They were circumstances of which she knew
+nothing, and yet from that very fact there was left a horrible
+impression in her mind that they had been of a questionable character.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+A LADY IN DISTRESS
+
+
+She had returned, ready for pitched battle with Clara, and on the
+threshold there had met her the very turn in the affair that she had
+dreaded all along--the setting of Kerr and Harry upon each other.
+
+These were two whom she had kept apart even in her mind--the man to whom
+she was pledged, with whom she had supposed herself in love, and the man
+for whom she was flying in the face of all her traditions. She had not
+scrutinized the reason of her extraordinary behavior; not since that
+dreadful day when the vanishing mystery had taken positive form in him
+had she dared to think how she felt about Kerr. She had only acted,
+acted; only asked herself what to do next, and never why; only taken his
+cause upon herself and made it her own, as if that was her natural
+right. She could hardly believe that it was she who had let herself go
+to this extent. All her life she had been docile to public opinion,
+buxom to conventions, respectful of those legal and moral rules laid
+down by some rigid material spirit lurking in mankind. But now when the
+moment had come, when the responsibility had descended upon her, she
+found that these things had in no way persuaded her. They were not vital
+enough for her proposition. They had no meaning now--no more than proper
+parlor furniture for a castaway on a desert island.
+
+Then this was herself, a creature too much concerned with the primal
+harmonies of life to be impressed by the modulations her decade set upon
+them. This was that self which she had obscurely cherished as no more
+real than a fairy; but at Kerr's acclamation it had proclaimed itself
+more real than flesh and blood, and Kerr himself the most real thing in
+all her life.
+
+Then what was Harry? The bland implacable pronouncement of Shima had
+summoned him up to stand beside Kerr more clearly than her own eyes
+could have shown him. Surely she was giving to Kerr what belonged to
+Harry, or else she had already given to Harry what ought to have been
+Kerr's. That was her last conclusion. It was horrible, it was hopeless,
+but it was not untrue. It had crept upon her so softly that it had taken
+her unawares. She was appalled at the unreason of passion. Unsought by
+him, unclaimed, in every common sense a stranger to him--how could she
+belong to him? And yet of that she was sure by the way he had unveiled
+her the first night, by the way he had quickened her dreaming into life.
+As many times as she had fancied what love was like she had never
+dreamed it could be like this. It was mockery that she could be
+concerned for one who only wanted of her--plunder. Yet it was so. She
+was as tremblingly concerned for his fate as if she owned his whole
+devotion; and his fate at this moment, she was convinced, was in Harry's
+hands.
+
+Kerr, with his brilliant initiative, might carry him off, but Kerr was
+still the quarry. For had not Harry, from the very beginning, known
+something about him? Hadn't he at first denied having seen him before,
+and then admitted it? Hadn't he dropped hints and innuendoes without
+ever an explanation? She remembered the singular fact of the Embassy
+ball, twice mentioned, each time with that singular name of Farrell
+Wand. And to know--if that _was_ what Harry knew--that a man of such
+fame was in a community where a ring of such fame had disappeared--what
+further proof was wanted?
+
+Then why didn't Harry speak? And what was going on on his side of the
+affair? Harry's side would have been her side a few days before. Now,
+unaccountably, it was not. Nor was Kerr's side hers either. She was
+standing between the two--standing hesitating between her love of one
+and her loyalty to the other and what he represented. The power might be
+hers to tip the scales Harry held, either to Kerr's undoing, or to his
+protection. At least she thought she might protect him, if she could
+discover Harry's secret. Her special, authorized relation to him--her
+right to see him often, question him freely--even cajole--should make
+that easy. But she shrank from what seemed like betrayal, even though
+she did not betray him to Kerr by name.
+
+Then, on the other hand, she doubted how much she could do with Harry.
+She wasn't sure how far she was prepared to try him after that scene of
+theirs. She had no desire to pique him further by seeing too much of
+Kerr. On her own account she wanted for the present to avoid Kerr. He
+roused a feeling in her that she feared--a feeling intoxicating to the
+senses, dazzling to the mind, unknitting to the will. How could she
+tell, if they were left alone together for a long enough space of time,
+that she might not take the jewel from her neck, at his request, and
+hand it to him--and damn them both? If only she could escape seeing him
+altogether until she could find out what Harry was doing, and what she
+must do!
+
+Meanwhile, there was her promise to Ella. She recalled it with
+difficulty. It seemed a vague thing in the light of her latest
+discovery, though she could never meet Clara in disagreement without a
+qualm. But she made the plunge that evening, before Clara left for the
+Bullers', while she was at her dressing-table in the half-disarray which
+brings out all the softness and the disarming physical charm of women.
+From her low chair Flora spoke laughingly of Ella's perturbation. Clara
+paused, with the powder puff in her hand, while she listened to Flora's
+explanation of how Ella feared that some one might, after all these
+years, be going to marry Judge Buller. Who this might be she did not
+even hint at. She left it ever so sketchy. But the little stare with
+which Clara met it, the amusement, the surprise, and then the shortest
+possible little laugh, were guarantee that Clara had seen it all. She
+had filled out Flora's sketch to the full outline, and pronounced it, as
+Flora had, an absurdity. But though Clara had laughed she had gone away
+with her delicate brows a little drawn together, as if she'd really
+found more than a laugh, something worth considering, in Ella's state of
+mind.
+
+Flora was left with the uneasy feeling that perhaps she had unwittingly
+delivered Ella into Clara's hands; that Ella, too, was in danger of
+becoming part of Clara's schemes. Danger seemed to be spreading like
+contagion. It was borne in upon her that from this time forward dangers
+would multiply. That nothing was going to be easier, but everything
+infinitely harder, to the end; and now was the time to act if ever she
+hoped to make way through the tangle.
+
+She heard the wheels of Clara's departing conveyance. Now was her chance
+for an interview with Harry. She spent twenty minutes putting together
+three sentences that would not arouse his suspicions. She made two
+copies, and sent them by separate messengers, one to his rooms, one to
+the club, with orders they be brought back if he was not there to
+receive them. Then--the miserable business of waiting in the large
+house full of echoes and the round ghostly globes of electric lights,
+with that thing around her neck for which--did they but know of it--half
+the town would break in her windows and doors.
+
+The wind traveled the streets without, and shook the window-casings. She
+cowered over the library fire, listening. The leaping flames set her
+shadow dancing like a goblin. A bell rang, and the shadow and the flame
+gave a higher leap as if in welcome of what had arrived. She went to the
+library door. In the glooms and lights outside Shima was standing, and
+two messengers. It was odd that both should arrive at once. She stepped
+back and stood waiting with a quicker pulse. Shima entered with two
+letters upon his tray. She had a moment's anxiety lest both her notes
+had been brought back to her, but no--the envelope which lay on top
+showed Harry's writing. She tore it open hastily. Harry wrote that he
+would be delighted, and might he bring a friend with him; a bully fellow
+whom he wanted her to meet? He added she might send over for some girl
+and they could have a jolly little party.
+
+Flora looked at this communication blankly. Was Harry, who had always
+jumped at the chance of a tête-à-tête, dodging her? In her astonishment
+she let the other envelope fall. She stooped, and then for a moment
+remained thus, bent above it. The superscription was not hers. The note
+was not addressed to Harry, but to her, and in a handwriting she had
+never seen before!
+
+Again the peal of the electric bell. Shima appeared with a third
+envelope. This time it was her own note returned to her. With the
+feeling she was bewitched she took up the mysterious letter from the
+floor and opened it. She read the strange handwriting:
+
+
+     May I see you, anywhere, at any time, to-night?
+                                           ROBERT KERR.
+
+
+It was as if Kerr himself had entered the room, masked and muffled
+beyond recognition, and then, face to face with her, let fall his
+disguise. She gazed at the words, at the signature, thrilled and
+frightened. She looked at Harry's note, hesitated; caught a glimpse
+between the half-open doors of the two messengers waiting stolidly in
+the hall. Waiting for answers! Answers to such communications! She made
+a dash for the table where were pens and ink and on one sheet scrawled:
+
+"Certainly. Bring him," appending her initials; on the other the word
+"Impossible," and her full name. Then she hurried the letters into
+Shima's hands, lest her courage should fail her--lest she should regret
+her choice.
+
+"Anywhere, at any time, to-night," she repeated softly. Why, the man
+must be mad! Yet she permitted herself a moment of imagining what might
+have been if her answers had been reversed.
+
+But no, she dared not meet Kerr's impetuous attacks yet. First she must
+get at Harry. And how was that to be managed if he insisted on
+surrounding himself with "a jolly little party?"
+
+She found a moment that evening in which to ask him to walk out to the
+Presidio with her the next morning. But he was going to Burlingame on
+the early train. He was woefully sorry. It was ages since he had had a
+moment with her alone, but at least he would see her that evening. She
+had not forgotten? They were going to that dinner--and then the
+reception afterward? Her suspicion that he was deliberately dodging
+wavered before his boyish, cheerful, unconscious face. And yet,
+following on the heels of his tendency to question and coerce her, this
+reticence was amazing. The next day would be lost with Harry beyond
+reach--twelve hours while Kerr was at the mercy of chance, and she was
+at the mercy of Kerr.
+
+His tactics did not leave her breathing space. She felt as the lilies
+wavering just beyond his reach. She remembered his ingenuity. She
+thought of the blows of his cane. Lucky for her she was not rooted like
+the lilies! The only safety was in keeping beyond his reach.
+
+Yet when his card was brought up to her the next morning she looked at
+the printed name as wistfully as if it had been his face. It cost an
+effort to send down the cold fiction that she was not at home, and she
+could not deny herself the consolation of leaning on the baluster of the
+second landing, and listening for his step in the hall below. But there
+was no movement. Could it be possible he was waiting for her to come in?
+Hush! That was the drawing-room door. But instead of Kerr, Shima
+emerged. He was heading for the stair with his little silver tray and
+upon it--a note. Oh, impudence! How dared he give her the lie, by the
+hand of her own butler! She stood her ground, and Shima delivered the
+missive as if it were most usual to find one's mistress beflounced in
+peignoir and petticoats, hanging breathless over the baluster.
+
+"Take that back," she said coldly, "and tell him that I am out; and,
+Shima,"--she addressed the man's intelligence--"make him understand it."
+
+She watched the note departing. How she longed to call Shima back and
+open it! There was a pause--then Kerr emerged from the drawing-room. As
+he crossed the hall he glanced up at the stair and as much as was
+visible of the landing. He hadn't taken Shima's word for it, after all!
+
+The vestibule door closed noiselessly after him, the outer door shut
+with a heavy sound. Yet before that sound had ceased to vibrate, she
+heard it shut again. Was he coming back? There was a presence in the
+vestibule very vaguely seen through the glass and lace of the inner
+door. Her heart beat with apprehension. The door opened upon Clara.
+
+Flora precipitately retreated. She was more disturbed than relieved by
+the unexpected appearance. For Clara must have seen Kerr leave the
+house. Three times now within three days he had been found with her or
+waiting for her. She wondered if Clara would ask her awkward questions.
+But Clara, when she entered Flora's dressing-room a few moments later
+with the shopping-list, instead of a question, offered a statement.
+
+"I don't like that man," she announced.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"That Kerr. I met him just now on the steps. Don't you feel there is
+something wrong about him?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Flora vaguely.
+
+Clara gave her a bright glance.
+
+"But you weren't at home to him."
+
+"I'm not at home to any one this morning," Flora answered evasively,
+feeling the probe of Clara's eyes. "I'm feeling ill. I'm not going out
+this evening either. I think I'll ring up Burlingame and tell Harry." It
+was in her mind that she might manage to make him stay with her while
+Clara went on to the reception.
+
+"Burlingame! Harry!" Clara echoed in surprise. "Why, he's in town. I saw
+him just now as I was coming up."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Yes. He was walking up Clay from Kearney. I was in the car."
+
+"Why that--that is--" Flora stammered in her surprise. "Then something
+must have kept him," she altered her sentence quickly. But though this
+seemed the probable explanation she did not believe it. Harry walking
+toward Chinatown, when he had told her distinctly he would be in
+Burlingame! She thought of the goldsmith shop and there returned to her
+the memory of how Harry and the blue-eyed Chinaman had looked when she
+had turned from the window and seen them standing together in the back
+of the shop.
+
+"You do look ill," Clara remarked. "Why don't you stay in bed, and not
+try to see any one?"
+
+Flora murmured that that was her intention, but she was far from
+speaking the truth. She only waited to make sure of Clara's being in her
+own rooms to get out of the house and telephone to Harry.
+
+It was not far to the nearest booth, a block or two down the
+cross-street. She rang, first, the office. The word came back promptly
+in his partner's voice. He had gone to Burlingame by the early train. It
+was the same at the club. He must be in town, then, on secret business.
+She left the apothecary's and, with serious face, walked on down the
+street, away from her house. She was thinking that now she knew Harry
+had lied to her. And it was the second time. But perhaps it was just
+because he thought her innocent that he was keeping her so in the dark.
+Suppose she should tell him flatly what she had found out about him
+to-day?
+
+She walked rapidly, in her excitement, turning the troubling question
+over in her mind. She did not realize how far she had gone until some
+girl she knew, passing and nodding to her, called her out of her
+reverie. She was almost in front of the University Club. A few blocks
+more and she would be in the shopping district. She hesitated, then
+decided that it would be better to walk a little further and take a
+cross-town car.
+
+A group of men was leaving the club. Two lingered on the steps, the
+other coming quickly out. At sight of him, she averted her face, and,
+hurrying, turned the corner and walked down a block. Her heart was
+beating rapidly. What if he had seen her! She looked about--there was no
+cab in sight--the best thing to do was to slip into one of the crowded
+shops, full of women, and wait until the danger had passed. Once inside
+the door of the nearest, she felt herself, with relief, only one of a
+horde of pricers, lookers and buyers. She felt as if she had lost her
+identity. She went to the nearest counter and asked for veils. Partly
+concealed behind the bulk of the woman next her, she kept her eye on the
+door. She saw Kerr come in. How absurd to think that she could escape
+him! She turned her back and waited a moment or two, still hoping he
+might pass her by. Then, she heard his voice behind her:
+
+"Well, this is luck!"
+
+She was conscious of giving him a limp hand. He sat down on the vacant
+stool next her, laughing.
+
+"You are a most remarkably fast walker," he observed.
+
+"I had to buy a veil," Flora murmured.
+
+"Has it taken you all the morning?"
+
+She could see she had not fooled him.
+
+"I had a great many other things to do." She was resolved not to admit
+anything.
+
+"No doubt, but I wanted to see you very much last night, and again this
+morning. I may see you this evening, perhaps?" He was grave now. She saw
+that he awaited her answer in anxiety.
+
+"But--" she hesitated just a moment too long before she added, "I'm
+going out this evening."
+
+She started nervously to rise.
+
+"Wait," he said in a voice that was audible to the shop-girl, "your
+package has not come."
+
+She looked at him helplessly, so attractive and so inimical to her. He
+swung around, back to the counter, and lowered his voice. "Did you know
+I called upon you yesterday morning, also?" he asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Mr. Cressy and I waited for you together. Did he mention it to you?"
+
+"No." Her lips let the word out slowly.
+
+"That's a reticent friend of yours!" The exclamation, and the truth of
+it, put her on her guard.
+
+"I can't discuss him with you," she said coldly.
+
+"Yet no doubt you have discussed me with him?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"You haven't told him anything?" The incredulity, the amazement of his
+face put before her, for the first time, how extraordinary her conduct
+must seem. What could he think of her? What construction would he put
+upon it? She blushed, neck to forehead, and her voice was scarcely
+audible as she answered "No."
+
+But at that small word his whole mood warmed to her. "Why, then," he
+began eagerly, "if Cressy doesn't know--"
+
+"Oh, but he--" Flora stopped in terror of herself. "I can't talk of him,
+I must not. Don't ask me!" she implored, "and please, please don't come
+to my house again!"
+
+He gave his head a puzzled, impatient shake. "Then where _am_ I to see
+you?"
+
+"In a few days--perhaps to-morrow--I will let you know." She rose. She
+had her package now. She was getting back her courage. There was no
+further way of keeping her.
+
+But he followed her closely through the crowd to the door. "Yes," he
+said quickly under his breath, "in a few days, perhaps to-morrow, as
+soon as you get rid of it, you won't mind meeting me! What are you
+afraid of? Surely not me?"
+
+She was, but hotly denied it.
+
+"I am not afraid of you. I am afraid of them!"
+
+"Of them!" He peered at her. "What are you talking about now?"
+
+Ah, she had said too much! She bit her lip. They had reached the corner,
+and the gliding cable car was approaching. She turned to him with a last
+appeal.
+
+"Don't ask me anything! Don't come with me! Don't follow me!"
+
+Not until she was safely inside the car did she dare look back at him.
+He was still on the corner, and he raised his hat and smiled so
+reassuringly that she was half-way home before she realized that, in
+spite of all she had urged upon him, he had not committed himself to any
+promise. And yet, she thought in dismay, he had almost made her give
+away Harry's confidence. She was seeing more and more clearly that this
+was the danger of meeting him. He always got something out of her and
+never, by chance, gave her anything in return. If he should seek her
+to-night she dared not be at home! Any place would be safer than her own
+house. It would be better to fulfil her engagement and go to the
+reception with Clara and Harry. That was a house Kerr did not know.
+
+It was awkward to have to announce this sudden change of plan after her
+pretenses of the morning, but of late she had lived too constantly with
+danger for Clara's lifted eyebrows to daunt her. The mere trivial act of
+being dressed each day was fraught with danger. To get the sapphire off
+her person before Marrika should appear; to put it back somehow after
+Marrika had done; to shift it from one place to another as she wore
+gowns cut high or low--and every moment in fear lest she be discovered
+in the act! This was her daily manoeuver. To-night she clasped the
+chain around her waist beneath her petticoats. But Marrika's sensitive
+fingers, smoothing over, for the last time, the close-fitting front of
+the gown, felt the sapphire, fumbled with it, and tried to adjust it
+like a button.
+
+"That is all right," Flora said quickly. "Nothing shows." Was it always
+to make itself known, she thought uneasily, no matter how it was hid?
+
+She was ready early, in the hope that Harry might come, as he had been
+wont to do, a little before the appointed hour. But he turned up without
+a moment to spare. Clara was down-stairs in her cloak when he appeared.
+There was no chance for a word at dinner. But if she could not manage it
+later in the wider field of the reception, why, then she deserved to
+fail in everything.
+
+But she found, upon their arrival that even this was going to be hard to
+bring about. For she was immediately pounced upon--first, by Ella
+Buller.
+
+"Why, Flora," at the top of her voice, "where have you been all these
+days!" Then in a hot whisper, "Did you speak to her? It hasn't done one
+bit of good."
+
+"I think you are mistaken," Flora murmured. "But be careful, and let me
+know--" She had only time for that broken sentence before she was
+surrounded; and other voices took up the chorus.
+
+She was getting to be a perfect hermit.
+
+She was forgetting all her old friends.
+
+And a less kindly voice in the background added, "Yes, for new ones."
+
+She realized with some alarm that though she had forgotten her public,
+it had kept its eye on her. She answered, laughing, that she was keeping
+Lent early, and allowed herself to be drifted about through the crowd
+by more or less entertaining people, now and then getting glimpses of
+Harry, tracking him by his burnished brown head, waiting her opportunity
+to get him cornered. At last she saw him making for the smoking-room.
+Connecting this with the drawing-room where she stood was a small red
+lounging-room, walls, floor and furniture all covered with crimson
+velvet. It had a third door which communicated indirectly with the
+reception-rooms, by means of a little hall. She was near that hall, and
+it would be the work of a moment to slip by way of it into the red room
+and stop Harry on his way through. She had not played at such a game
+since, as a child, she had jumped out on people from dark closets, and
+Harry was as much astonished as she could remember they had been. He was
+cutting the end of a cigar and he all but dropped it.
+
+"What in the world are you doing here alone?" He spoke peevishly. "I
+don't see how a crowd of men can leave such a bundle of fascination at
+large!"
+
+She made him a low courtesy and said she was preventing him from doing
+so.
+
+"It's very good of you, and you are very pretty, Flora," he admitted
+with a grudging smile, "but I've got to see a man in there." His eyes
+went to the door of the smoking-room whence was audible a discussion of
+voices, and among them Judge Buller's basso. She was between Harry and
+the door. Laughingly, he made as if to put her aside, when the door
+through which she had entered opened again sharply; and Kerr came in.
+
+"Forgive me. I followed you," he began. Then he saw Harry.
+"I--ha--ha--I've been hunting for you, Cressy, all the evening!"
+
+[Illustration: "FORGIVE ME, I FOLLOWED YOU."]
+
+Harry accepted the statement with a cynical smile. It was too evidently
+not for him Kerr had been hunting, and after the first stammer of
+embarrassment, the Englishman made no attempt to conceal his real
+intentions. His words merely served him as an excuse not to retreat.
+
+"This is a good place to sit," he said, pushing forward a chair for
+Flora. She sank into it, wondering weakly what daring or what danger had
+brought him into a house where he was not known, to seek her. He sat
+down in the compartment of a double settee near her. Harry still stood
+with a dubious smile on his face. The look the two men exchanged
+appeared to her a prolongment of their earnest interrogation in the
+picture gallery; but this time it struck her that both carried it off
+less well. Harry, especially, bore it badly.
+
+"Did you say you were looking for me?" he remarked. "Well, Buller's been
+looking for _you_. He wants to know about some Englishman that they're
+trying to put up at the club."
+
+"How's that? Oh, yes! I remember." Kerr shrugged. "Never heard of him at
+home, and can't vouch for every fellow who comes along, just because he
+is English."
+
+"Quite so!" said Harry, with a straight look at Kerr that made Flora
+uncomfortable.
+
+"But Judge Buller has already vouched for that man," she said quickly,
+"so he must be all right."
+
+Kerr inclined his head to her with a smile.
+
+"Buller is easily taken in," said Harry calmly. Under the direct, the
+insolent meaning of his look Flora felt her face grow hot--her hands
+cold. Harry could sit there taunting this man, hitting him over another
+man's back, and Kerr could not resent it. He could only sit--his head a
+little canted forward--looking at Harry with the traces of a dry smile
+upon his lips.
+
+She thought the next moment everything would be declared. She sprang up,
+and, with an impulse for rescue, went to the door of the smoking-room.
+"Judge Buller," she called.
+
+There was a sudden cessation of talk; a movement of forms dimly seen in
+the thick blue element; and then through wreaths of smoke, the judge's
+face dawned upon her like a sun through fog.
+
+"Well, well, Miss Flora," he wanted to know, "to what bad action of
+mine do I owe this good fortune?"
+
+She retreated, beckoning him to the middle of the room. "You owe it to
+the bad action of another," she said gaily. "Your friends are being
+slandered."
+
+Harry made a movement as if he would have stopped her, and the
+expression of his face, in its alarm, was comic. But she paid no heed.
+She laid her hand on Harry's arm. "Mr. Kerr is just about to accuse us
+of being impostors," she announced. She had robbed the situation of its
+peril by gaily turning it exactly inside out.
+
+The judge blinked, puzzled at this extraordinary statement. Harry was
+disconcerted; but Kerr showed an astonishment that amazed her--a concern
+that she could not understand. He stared at her. Then he laughed rather
+shakily as he turned to her with a mock gallant bow.
+
+"All women impose upon us, madam. And as for Mr. Cressy"--he fixed Harry
+with a look--"I could not accuse him of being an impostor since we have
+met in the sacred limits of of St. James'."
+
+The two glances that crossed before Flora's watchful eyes were keen as
+thrust and parry of rapiers. Harry bowed stiffly.
+
+"I believe, for a fact, we did _not_ meet, but I think I saw you there
+once--at some Embassy ball."
+
+The words rang, to Flora's ears, as if they had been shouted from the
+housetops. In the speaking pause that followed there was audible an
+unknown hortatory voice from the smoking-room.
+
+"I tell you it's a damn-fool way to manage it! What's the good of twenty
+thousand dollars' reward?" Flora clutched nervously at the back of her
+chair. She seemed to see the danger of discovery piling up above Kerr
+like a mountain.
+
+The judge chuckled. "You see what you saved me from. They've been at it
+hammer and tongs all the evening. Every man in town has his idea on
+that subject."
+
+"For instance, what is that one?" Kerr's casual voice was in contrast to
+his guarded eyes.
+
+The judge looked pleased. "That one? Why, that's my own--was, at least,
+half an hour ago. You see, about that twenty-thousand-dollar
+proposition--" They moved nearer him. They stood, the four, around the
+red velvet-covered table, like people waiting to be served. "The trouble
+is right here," said the judge, emphasizing with blunt forefinger. "The
+crook has a pal. That's probable, isn't it?"
+
+Harry nodded. Flora felt Kerr's eyes upon her, but she could not look at
+him.
+
+"And we see the thing is at a deadlock, don't we? Well, now," the judge
+went on triumphantly, "we know if any one person had the whole ring it
+would be turned in by this time. That is the weak spot in the reward
+policy. They didn't reckon on the thing's being split."
+
+"Split? No, really, do you think that possible?" Kerr inquired, and
+Flora caught a glimmer of irony in his voice.
+
+"Well, can you see one of those chaps trusting the other with more than
+half of it?" The judge was scornful. "And a fellow needs a whole ring if
+he is after a reward." He rolled his head waggishly. "Oh, I could have
+been a crook myself!" he chuckled, but his was the only smiling face in
+the party.
+
+For Kerr's was pale, schooled to a rigid self-control.
+
+And Harry's was crimson and swollen, as if with a sudden rush of blood.
+His twitching hands, his sullen eyes, responded to Judge Buller's last
+word as if it had been an accusation.
+
+"It makes me damned sick, the way you fellows talk--as if it was the
+easiest thing in the world to--" He broke off. It was such a tone,
+loose, harsh and uncontrolled, as made Flora shrink.
+
+As if he sensed that movement in her, he turned upon her furiously.
+
+"Well, are we going to stand here all night?" He took her by the arm.
+
+She felt as if he had struck her. Buller was staring at him, but Kerr
+had opened the door through which she had entered, and now, turning his
+back upon Harry, silently motioned her out.
+
+She had a moment's fear that Harry's grasp, even then, wouldn't let go.
+Indeed, for a moment he stood clutching her, as if, now that his rage
+had spent itself, she was the one thing he could hold to. Then she felt
+his fingers loosen. He stood there alone, looking, with his great bulk,
+and his great strength, and his abashed bewilderment, rather pathetic.
+
+But that aspect reached her dimly, for the fear of him was uppermost.
+Her arm still burned where he had grasped it. She moved away from him
+toward the door Kerr had opened for her. She passed from the light of
+the crimson room into the dark of the passage. Some one followed her and
+closed the door. Some one caught step with her. It was Kerr. He bent
+his dark head to speak low.
+
+"I don't know why you did it, you quixotic child, but you must not
+expose yourself in this way, for any reason whatsoever."
+
+The light of the crowded rooms burst upon them again.
+
+"Oh," she turned to him beseechingly, "can't you get me away?"
+
+"Surely." His manner was as if nothing had happened. His smile was
+reassuring. "I'll call your carriage, and find Mrs. Britton."
+
+When Flora came down from the dressing-room she found Clara already in
+the carriage, and Kerr mounting guard in the hall. As he handed her in,
+Clara leaned forward.
+
+"Where is Mr. Cressy?" she inquired.
+
+"He sent his apologies," Kerr explained. "He is not able to get away
+just now."
+
+Clara could not control a look of astonishment. As the carriage began to
+move and Kerr's face disappeared from the square of the window, she
+turned to Flora.
+
+"Have you and Harry quarreled over that man?"
+
+Flora's voice was low. "No. But Harry--Harry--" she stammered, hardly
+knowing how to put it, then put it most truly: "Harry is not quite
+himself to-night."
+
+Flora lay back in the carriage. She was dimly aware of Clara's presence
+beside her, but for the moment Clara had ceased to be a factor. The
+shape that filled all the foreground of her thought was Harry. He loomed
+alarming to her imagination--all the more so since, for the moment, he
+had seemed to lose his grip. That was another thing she could not quite
+understand. That burst of violent irritation following, as it had, Judge
+Buller's words! If Kerr had been the speaker it would have been natural
+enough, since all through this interview Harry's evident antagonism had
+seemed strained to the snapping point.
+
+But poor Judge Buller had been harmless enough. He had been merely
+theorizing. But--wait! She made so sharp a movement that Clara looked
+at her. The judge's theory might be close to facts that Harry was
+cognizant of.
+
+For herself she had had no way of finding out how the sapphire had got
+adrift. But hadn't Harry? Hadn't he followed up that singular scene with
+the blue-eyed Chinaman by other visits to the goldsmith's shop? Why,
+yesterday, when he was supposed to be in Burlingame, Clara had seen him
+in Chinatown. The idea burst upon her then. Harry was after the whole
+ring. He counted the part she held already his, and for the rest he was
+groping in Chinatown; he was trying to reach it through the
+imperturbable little goldsmith. But he had not reached it yet--and she
+could read his irritation at his failure in his violent outburst when
+Judge Buller so innocently flung the difficulties in his face. She knew
+as much now as she could bear. If Harry did not suspect Kerr, it would
+be strange. But--Harry waiting to make sure of a reward before he
+unmasked a thief! It was an ugly thought!
+
+And would he wait for the rest now--now that the situation was so
+galling to him? Might not he just decide to take the sapphire, and with
+the evidence of that, risk his putting his hand on the "Idol" when he
+grasped the thief?
+
+The carriage was stopping. Clara was making ready to get out. She braced
+herself to face Clara, in the light, with a casual exterior--but when
+she had reached her own rooms she sank in a heap in the chair before her
+writing-table, and laid her head upon the table between her arms.
+
+In her wretchedness she found herself turning to Kerr. How stoically he
+had endured it all, though it must have borne on him most heavily! How
+kind he had been to her! He had not even spoken of himself, though he
+must have known the shadows were closing over his head. Any moment he
+might be enshrouded. If it came to a choice between having him taken and
+giving him the blue jewel, she wondered which she would do.
+
+In the gray hours of the morning she wrote him. She dared not put the
+perils into words, but she implied them. She vaguely threatened; and
+she implored him to go, avoiding them all, herself more than any; and,
+quaking at the possibility that he might, after all, overcome _her_, she
+declared that before he went she would not see him again. She closed
+with the forbidding statement that whether he stayed or went, at the end
+of three days she would make a sure disposal of the ring. She put all
+this in reckless black and white and sent it by the hand of Shima. Then
+she waited. She waited, in her little isolation, with the sapphire
+always hung about her neck, waited with what anticipation of marvelous
+results--avowals, ideal farewells, or possibly some incredible
+transformation of the grim face of the business. And the answer was
+silence.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE HEART OF THE DILEMMA
+
+
+There is, in the heart of each gale of events, a storm center of quiet.
+It is the very deadlock of contending forces, in which the individual
+has space for breath and apprehension. Into this lull Flora fell panting
+from her last experience, more frightened by this false calm than by the
+whirlwind that had landed her there. Now she had time to mark the echoes
+of the storm about her, and to realize her position. Her absorption had
+peopled the world for her with four people at most. Now she had time to
+look at the larger aspect.
+
+From the middle of her calm she saw many inexplicable appearances. She
+saw them everywhere, from the small round of Clara's movement to the
+larger wheel of the public aspect. Clara was taking tea with the
+Bullers, and the papers had ceased to mention the Crew Idol.
+
+It had not even been a nine days' wonder. It had not dwindled. It had
+simply dropped from head-lines to nothing; and after the first murmur of
+astonishment at this strange vanishing, after a little vain conjecture
+as to the reason of it, the subject dropped out of the public mouth. The
+silence was so sudden it was like a suppression. To Flora it shadowed
+some forces working so secretly, so surely, that they had extinguished
+the light of publicity. They must be going on with concentrated and
+terrible activity in cycles, which perhaps had not yet touched her.
+
+So, seeing Major Purdie among the crowd at some one's "afternoon" where
+she was pouring tea, she looked up at his cheerful face and high bald
+dome with a passionate curiosity. He knew why the press had been
+extinguished, and what they were doing in the dark. She knew where the
+sapphire was--and where the culprit was to be found. And to think that
+they could tell each other, if they would, each a tale the other would
+hardly dare believe. Amazing appearances! How far away, how foreign from
+the facts they covered! But Major Purdie had the best of it. He at least
+was doing his duty. He was standing stiffly on one side, while she
+hesitated between, trying desperately to push Kerr out of sight before
+she dared uncover the jewel. But he wouldn't move. In spite of all she
+had done, he wouldn't.
+
+Across the room that very afternoon she caught the twinkle of his
+resisting smile. He had had her letter then for two days, and still he
+had come here, though he'd been bidden to stay away; though he had been
+warned to keep away from all places where she, or these people around
+her, might find him; though he had been implored to go, finally, as far
+away as the round surface of the world would let him.
+
+By what he had heard and seen in the red room that night, he must know
+her warning had not been ridiculous. And there was another threat less
+apparent on the face of things, but evident enough to her. It was the
+change in Clara after she had begun her attack on the Bullers, her
+appearance of being busy with something, absorbed with, intent upon,
+something, which, if she had not secured it yet, at least she had well
+in reach. And that thing--suppose it had to do with the Crew Idol; and
+suppose Clara should play into Harry's hands!
+
+For Kerr's escape Flora had been holding the ring, fighting off events,
+and yet all the while she had not wanted to lose the sight of him. Well,
+now, when she had made up her mind finally to resign herself to the
+dreariness of that, might he not at least have done his part of it and
+decently disappeared? So much he might have done for her. Instead of
+smiling at her across crowded tea-rooms, and obliquely glancing at her
+down decorous dinner-tables, and with the same fatal facility he had
+displayed in getting at her, now keeping away from her, out of all
+possible reach.
+
+He was playing her own trick on her, but her chances for getting at him
+again were fewer than his had been with her. She could not besiege him
+in his abode; and in the places where they met, large houses crowded
+with people, the eye of the world was upon her. For how long had she
+forgotten it--she who had been all her life so deferential toward it!
+Even now she remembered it only because it interfered with what she
+wanted to do.
+
+For the eye of her small society was very keenly upon Kerr. She
+realized, all at once, that he had become a personage; and then, by
+smiles, by lifted eyebrows, by glances, she gathered that her name was
+being linked with his. She was astonished. How could their luncheon
+together at the Purdies', their words that night in the opera box, their
+few minutes' talk in the shop, have crystallized into this gossip? It
+vexed her--alarmed her, how it had got about when she had seen him so
+seldom, had known him scarcely more than a week. It was simply in the
+air. It was in her attitude and in his, but how far it had gone she did
+not dream, until in the dense crowd of some one's at-home she caught the
+words of a young girl. The voice was so sweet and so prettily modulated
+that at its first notes Flora turned involuntarily to glimpse the
+speaker, a slender creature in a delicate mist of muslin, with an
+indeterminate chin and the cheek of a pale peach.
+
+"Just think," Flora heard her saying, "he went to see her three times in
+two days, but to-day, did you notice, he wouldn't look at her until she
+went up and spoke to him. I don't see how a girl can! Harry Cressy--"
+
+She moved away and the words were lost. Flora looked after her. For the
+moment she felt only scorn for the creatures who had clapped that
+interpretation upon her great responsibility. These people around her
+seemed poor indeed, absorbed only in petty considerations, and seeing
+everything down the narrow vista of the "correct." Her eyes followed the
+young girl's course through the room, easy to trace by her shining blond
+head, and the unusual deliciousness of her muslin gown. She stopped
+beside two women, and with a certain sense of pleasure and embarrassment
+Flora recognized one of them--Mrs. Herrick. She caught the lady's eye
+and bowed. Mrs. Herrick smiled, with a gracious inclination in which her
+graceful shoulders had a part.
+
+It gave Flora the sense Mrs. Herrick's presence always brought her, of
+protection, or security, and the possibility of friendship finer than
+she had ever known. She started forward. But Mrs. Herrick, presenting
+instantly her profile, drew the young girl's hand through her arm and
+moved away.
+
+Flora winced as if she had received a blow. The other people who had
+heard the same gossip of her had been, on account of it, all the more
+amused, and anxious to talk to her. But Mrs. Herrick, though she bowed
+and smiled, did not want her too near her daughter; perhaps, herself,
+would have preferred not to speak to her.
+
+She felt herself judged--judged from the outside, it is true--but still
+there was justice in it. She had been flying in the face of custom,
+ignoring common good behavior, in short, sticking to her own convictions
+in defiance of the world's. And she must pay the penalty--the loss of
+the possibility of such a friend.
+
+But it was hard, she thought, to pay the price without getting the thing
+she had paid for. It was more like a gamble in which she had staked all
+on a chance. And never had this chance appeared more improbable to her
+than now. For if Kerr valued the ring more than he valued his safety,
+what argument was left her? She thought--if only she had been a
+different sort of woman--the sort with whom men fall in love--ah, then
+she might have been able to make one further appeal to him--one that
+surely would not have failed.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+THE DEMIGOD
+
+
+On the third day she opened her eyes to the sun with the thought: Where
+is he? From the windows of her room she could see the two pale points
+and the narrow way of water that led into the western ocean. Had he
+sailed out yonder west into the east, into that oblivion which was his
+only safety, for ever out of her sight? Or was he still at hand,
+ignoring warning, defying fate? "What difference can that make to me
+now?" she thought, "since whether he is here or yonder I've come to the
+end."
+
+She drew out the sapphire and held it in her hand. The cloud of events
+had cast no film over its luster, but she looked at it now without
+pleasure. For all its beauty it wasn't worth what they were doing for
+it. Well, to-day they were both of them to see the last of it. To-day
+she was going to take it to Mr. Purdie to deliver it into his hands, to
+tell him how it had fallen into hers in the goldsmith's shop--all of the
+story that was possible for her to tell. For the rest, how she came to
+fix suspicion on the jewel, he might think her fanciful or morbid. It
+didn't matter as long as the weary thing was out of her hands. It
+couldn't matter!
+
+She had made it out all clear in her mind that this was the right thing
+to do. It hadn't occurred to her she had made it out only on the
+hypothesis of Kerr's certainly going. It had not occurred to her that
+she might have to make her great moral move in the dark; or, what was
+worse, in the face of his most gallant resistance. In this discouraging
+light she saw her intention dwindle to the vanishing point, but the
+great move was just as good as it had been before--just as solid, just
+as advisable. Being so very solid, wouldn't it wait until she had time
+to show him that she really meant what she said, supposing she ever had
+a chance to see him again? The possibility that at this moment he might
+actually have gone had almost escaped her. She recalled it with a
+disagreeable shock, but, after all, that was the best she could hope,
+never to see him again! She ought to be grateful to be sure of that, and
+yet if she were, oh, never could she deprive him of so much beauty and
+light by her keeping of the sapphire as he would then have taken away
+from her!
+
+She would come down then, indeed, level with plainest, palest, hardest
+things--people and facts. Her romance--she had seen it; she had had it
+in her hands, and it had somehow eluded her. It had vanished,
+evaporated. It had come to her in rather a terrific guise, presented to
+her on that night at the club by the first debonair wave of the man's
+hand; and now he might have gone out through that white way into the
+east, taking back her romance as the fairy takes back his unappreciated
+gift.
+
+She leaned and looked through the thin veil of her curtains at the
+splendid day. It was one of February's freaks. It was hot. The white
+ghost of noon lay over shore and sea. Beneath her the city seemed to
+sleep gray and glistening. The tops of hills that rose above the
+up-creeping houses were misted green. Across the bay, along the northern
+shore, there was a pale green coast of hills dividing blue and blue.
+Ships in the bay hung out white canvas drying, and the sky showed whiter
+clouds, slow-moving, like sails upon a languid sea. Beneath her,
+directly down, through hanging darts of eucalyptus leaves, hemmed with
+high hedges, the oval of her garden showed her a pattern like a Persian
+carpet. Roofs sloped beyond it, and beyond these the diagram of streets
+and houses, and empty unbuilt grassy lots.
+
+She looked down upon all, as lone and lonely as a deserted lady in a
+tower, lifted above these happy, peaceful things by her strange
+responsibility. Her thoughts could not stay with them; her eyes traveled
+seaward. She parted the curtains and, leaning a little out, looked
+westward at the white sea gate.
+
+A whistle, as of some child calling his mate, came sweetly in the
+silence. It was near, and the questing, expectant note caught her ear.
+Again it came, sharper, imperative, directly beneath her. She looked
+down; she was speechless. There was a sudden wild current of blood in
+her veins. There he stood, the whistler, neither child nor bird, but the
+man himself--Kerr, looking up at her from the gay oval of her garden.
+She hung over the window-sill. She looked directly down upon him,
+foreshortened to a face, and even with the distance and the broad glare
+of noon between them she recognized his aspect--his gayest, of diabolic
+glee. There lurked about him the impish quality of the whistle that had
+summoned her.
+
+"Come down," he called.
+
+All sorts of wonders and terrors were beating around her. He had
+transcended her wildest wish; he had come to her more openly, more
+daringly, more romantically than she could have dreamed. All the
+amazement of why and how he had braved the battery of the windows of
+her house was swallowed up in the greater joy of seeing him there,
+standing in his "grays," with stiff black hat pushed off his hot
+forehead, hands behind him, looking up at her from the middle of
+anemones and daffodils.
+
+"Come down," he called again, and waved at her with his slim, glittering
+stick. How far he had come since their last encounter, to wave at and
+command her, as if she were verily his own! She left the window, left
+the room, ran quickly down the stair. The house was hushed; no passing
+but her own, no butler in the hall, no kitchen-maid on the back stair.
+Only grim faces of pictures--ancestors not her own--glimmered
+reproachful upon her as she fled past. Light echoes called her back
+along the hall. The furniture, the muffling curtains, her own reflection
+flying through the mirrors, held up to her her madness, and by their
+mute stability seemed to remind her of the shelter she was
+leaving--seemed to forbid.
+
+She ran. This was not shelter; it was prison. He was rescue; he was
+light itself. The only chance for her was to get near enough to him.
+Near him no shadow lived. The thing was to get near enough. She rushed
+direct from shadow into light. She came out into the sun, into the
+garden with its blaze of wintry summer, its whispering life and the free
+air over it. The man standing in the middle of it, for all his pot hat
+and Gothic stick, was none the less its demigod waiting for her,
+laughing. He might well laugh that she who had written that unflinching
+letter should come thus flying at his call; but there was more than
+laughter, there was more than mischief in him. The high tide of his
+spirits was only the sparkle of his excitement. It was evident that he
+was there with something of mighty importance to say.
+
+Was it that her letter had finally touched him? Had he come at last to
+transcend her idea with some even greater purpose? She seemed to see the
+power, the will for that and the kindness--she could not call it by
+another word--but though she was beseeching him with all her silent
+attitude to tell her instantly what the great thing was, he kept it
+back a moment, looking at her whimsically, indulgently, even tenderly.
+
+"I have come for you," he said.
+
+"Oh, for me!" she murmured. Surely he couldn't mean that! He was simply
+putting her off with that.
+
+"I mean it, I mean it," he assured her. "This doesn't make it any less
+real, my getting at you through a garden. Better," he added, "and sweet
+of you to make the duller way impossible."
+
+She took a step back. It had not been play to her; but he would have it
+nothing else. He, too, stepped back and away from her.
+
+"Come," he said, and behind him she saw the lower garden gate that
+opened on the grassy pitch of the hill, swinging idle and open. The
+sight of him about to vanish lured her on, and as he continued to walk
+backward she advanced, following.
+
+"Oh, where?" she pleaded.
+
+"With me!" Such a guaranty of good faith he made it!
+
+She tried to summon her reluctance.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"We'll talk about it as we go along." His hand was on the gate. "We
+can't stop here, you know. She'll be watching us from the window."
+
+Flora glanced behind her. The windows were all discreetly draped--most
+likely ambush--but that he should apprehend Clara's eyes behind them!
+Ah, then, he did know what he was about! He saw Clara as she did. She
+would almost have been ready to trust him on the strength of that alone.
+Still she hung back.
+
+"But my things!" she protested. She held up her garden hat. "And my
+gown!" She looked down at her frail silk flounces. Was ever any woman
+seen on the street like this!
+
+"Oh, la, la, la," he cut her short. "We can't stop to dress the part.
+You'll forget 'em."
+
+She smiled at him suddenly, looked back at the house, put on her
+hat--the garden hat. The moment she had dreaded was upon her. In spite
+of her warning reason, in spite of everything, she was going with him.
+
+Beyond the looming roofs as they descended the hill she saw white sails
+sink out of sight. All the little panorama upon which she had looked
+down sprang up around her, large and living. He whistled to the car as
+he helped her down the last steep pitch, whistled and waved, and they
+ran for it. No time for back-looking, no time now for a faint heart.
+Before she knew they were fairly crowded into the narrow front seat, and
+the long street was running up to them and streaming by.
+
+This was never the car one went out the front door to take. This creaked
+and crawled low, taking the corners comfortably, past houses with all
+their windows blinking recognition. Hadn't it passed them so for twenty
+years? Old houses in long gardens, and little houses creeping back
+behind their yards, not yet encroached upon by fresher ties of living.
+Past all these and gliding down under high, ragged banks, green grass
+above with wooden stairways straggling up their naked faces; past these
+again; past lower levels; past little gray and cluttered houses; past
+loaded carts of vegetables; past children playing shrilly, bearing down
+always on the green square of the plaza wide, worn and foreign, and the
+Greek church "domed" with blue and yellow, bearing down as if it had
+fairly determined to make its course straight through this stable
+center. Then in the very shadow it swerved aside to clatter off in quite
+another direction along a wider street with whiter shops, and more
+glittering windows with gilded letters flashing foreign names, with more
+marked and brilliant colors moving in the crowd, with a clearer stamp on
+all of Latin living.
+
+Then suddenly for them the sliding panorama ceased. The car had stopped
+and they had left it, and were standing upon the corner of a still
+street that came down from the high hills behind them and crossed the
+car-track and climbed again a little way to curve over into the sky.
+Dingy houses two blocks above them stood silhouetted against the blue.
+They were walking upward toward this horizon, leaving color and motion
+behind them. With every step the street grew more empty, lonely and
+colorless. Many of the windows that glimmered at them, passing, were
+the blank windows of empty houses. Were they taking this way, this
+curious roundabout out-of-the-world way, of dropping over into the
+shipping which lay under the hill? For all she knew this might really be
+his notion, for since they had left the garden gate, though they had
+looked together at the light and color of the pictures moving past their
+eyes, they had not exchanged a word.
+
+But all at once he stopped at the intersection of two dusty streets, and
+his eyes veered down the four perspectives like a voyageur taking his
+soundings. Elegant as ever and odd enough, yet he wasn't any odder here
+at the jumping off place of nowhere than he had appeared in the box at
+the theater, or in the picture gallery. She had the clear impression all
+at once that he wasn't too odd for anything.
+
+"Here we are!" he said, and indicated with his glittering stick straight
+before them a little house. It was low, as if it crouched against the
+wind, faded and beaten by the sun to the drab of the rock itself, and
+made so secret with tight-drawn curtains that it seemed to have shut
+itself up against the world for ever. She wavered. She wasn't afraid of
+herself out here, out-of-doors under the sky, but she was afraid that
+those four walls might shut out her new unreasoning joy, might steal
+away his new tenderness, and bring her back face to face with the same
+ugly fact that had confronted her in her drawing-room.
+
+"Oh, no," she said, and put her hands behind her with a determination
+that she wasn't going to move.
+
+"Oh, yes," he said, but he didn't smile. He looked at her quite gravely,
+reproachfully, and the touch of his fingers on her arm was fine, was
+delicate, as if to say, "I wouldn't harm you for the world."
+
+She blushed a slow, painful crimson. She hadn't meant that. She hadn't
+even thought of it; but, since he had, there was nothing for it but to
+go in. The door shut behind her sharply, with a click like a little
+trap; and she breathed such an atmosphere, flat, faint and stale, the
+mere ghost of some fuller, more fragrant flavor. In the little anteroom
+where they stood, whose faded ceiling all but brushed their heads, and
+in the larger little room beyond the Nottingham lace curtains, prevailed
+a mild shabbiness, a respectable decay. Curtains and table-cloths alike
+showed a dull and tempered whiteness as if the shadow of time had fallen
+dim across the whole. The little restaurant seemed left behind in the
+onward march of the city, and its faded, kindly face was but a shadow of
+what had been of the vigor and flourish of bourgeois Spain thirty years
+before. There was no one eating at the little tables, no one sitting
+behind the high cash-desk in the anteroom. Not a stir of human life in
+all the place.
+
+"Hello," said Kerr among the tables looking around him, "we've caught
+them asleep." He rapped on the wall with his cane. Flora peered at him
+between the curtains, all her fascinated apprehension of what was to
+follow plain upon her face. "Shall it be a giant or dwarf?" he asked
+her. "There's nothing I won't do for you, you know."
+
+The door opened and a little girl with a long black braid and purple
+apron came in.
+
+"A dwarf," cried Flora. She laughed with a quick relaxing of her
+strained nerves. It might almost have been the truth from that old
+little swarthy face and sedate demeanor that hardly noticed them. The
+child walked gravely up to the desk and mounting to the high stool
+struck a faint-voiced bell.
+
+"There," said Kerr, "ends formality. Now let the real magic begin!"
+
+"Not black magic," Flora took up his fancy.
+
+He had drawn out a chair for her. "That depends on you. I'm not the
+magic maker. I have no talisman."
+
+She felt the conscious jewel burn in her possession. She looked up
+beseechingly at him, but he only laughed, and, with a swing, lifted the
+chair a little off the ground as he set her up to the table, as if to
+show how easily he could put forth strength. There was nothing defiant
+in him. He was taking her with him--taking her upon the wings of his
+high spirits; but mischievously, obstinately, he would not show her
+where the flight was leading, nor let her listen to anything but the
+rustling of those wings. He was determined to make holiday, whatever was
+to follow. For the glimpse of blue through the dim window might be the
+Bay of Naples; and, ah! Chianti. Perhaps the sort one gets down Monte
+Video way, where France fades into Italy--perhaps, at least if her kind
+fancy could get the better of the reality. In Sicily there were just
+such table-cloths as these, and just such fat floor-shaking contadini to
+wait upon you. And look now at the purple one behind the desk--child or
+gnome--feet not touching the floor--centuries of Italy in her face. Oh,
+calculation, indifference!
+
+"She wouldn't care if you jumped up and threw me out of the window," he
+affirmed. "That's why this hole is so harmless. Oh, isn't that harmless?
+What's more harmless than to let one alone? There's only one dangerous
+thing here," he grinned and let her take her choice of which.
+
+She came straight at it.
+
+"You know I can't let you alone."
+
+He laughed. "Well, isn't that why we're here at last--that you may
+dictate your terms?"
+
+"I have. Didn't you get my letter?"
+
+"Oh, indeed I did. Haven't I obeyed it? Haven't I kept away from your
+house? Have I tried to approach you?"
+
+"Haven't you, though?" she threw at him accusingly.
+
+"Ah," he deprecated, "you came to me. I was down in the garden."
+
+She looked at him through his persiflage wistfully, searchingly. "But
+there were other things in that letter."
+
+"There were?" He regarded her with grave surprise. Oh, how she
+mistrusted his gravity! "Why, to be sure there were things--things that
+you didn't mean--one thing above all others you couldn't mean, that you
+want me to drop out when the game is half done, to slink away and leave
+it all like this--abandon you and my Idol so to each other! My dear, for
+what do you take me?"
+
+She burst out. "But can't you see the danger?"
+
+He met it quietly.
+
+"Certainly. I have been seeing nothing else but the danger--to you. Do
+you think I've been idle all these days? Every line I have followed has
+ended in that. It's brought me finally to this." The gesture of his hand
+included their predicament and the dingy little room. "You'll really
+have to help me, after all."
+
+"Oh, haven't I tried to? That is why I wrote. Don't you see your own
+danger at all?"
+
+"No, but I'd like to." He leaned toward her, brows lifted to a quizzical
+peak.
+
+"Oh, I can't tell you," she despaired. "But somehow I shall have to make
+you go."
+
+"That will be easy," he said. Leaning back, nursing his chin in his
+hand, he watched her with a gloomy sort of brooding. "You know what it
+is I'm waiting for. You know I won't go without it." His words came
+sadly, but doggedly, with a grim finality, as if he gave himself up to
+the course he was following as something he knew was inevitable. The
+faintness of despair came over her. Only the narrow table was between
+them, yet all at once, with the mention of the ring, he seemed a long
+way off. What was this terrible obsession that outweighed every other
+consideration with him? How get at it? How get through it? Or was it
+between them for ever?
+
+"Do you care for it so very much?" she asked him, trembling but valiant.
+
+"I care so very much," he repeated slowly, and after a moment of wonder:
+"Why, don't you?"
+
+"Oh, not for that," she cried sharply. "Not for the sapphire!"
+
+He stared. She had startled him clean out of his brooding. "In Heaven's
+name, for what, then?"
+
+Oh, she could never tell him it was for him! In her distress and
+embarrassment she looked all ways.
+
+His quick white finger touched her on the wrist. "For Cressy?"
+
+The abrupt stern note of his question startled her. She held herself
+stiff and still for a moment, then: "For every one in this wretched
+business. I have to."
+
+"Ah," he sighed out the satisfaction of his long uncertainty, "then
+Cressy _is_ in it."
+
+"No, I didn't mean that--you mustn't think it--I can't discuss him with
+you!" She was hot to recapture her fugitive admission.
+
+"Don't let that disturb you. You haven't given him away to me. I had all
+I'm likely to get from the man himself."
+
+"He--he told you?" she faltered.
+
+"He told me nothing. Don't you know that he misdoubts me? I got it out
+of him, by sleight of hand--where we had met before. Has he never told
+you anything of that morning when we left your house together?"
+
+"Never." The admission cost her an effort.
+
+He mused at her. "As I said, he told _me_ nothing, but it occurred to me
+when he came in that we might be there on the same errand."
+
+She paled. "You mean--?"
+
+"I mean I thought it might be safer all around that you should not see
+him that morning; so I got him away. He hasn't asked you for it since?"
+
+"The sapphire?" she faltered. "No!" The more her instinct warned that it
+had been the jewel Harry had returned for, the more she repudiated the
+idea to Kerr.
+
+"Why should you think he came for that? What has he to do with it?" she
+murmured.
+
+"My God! how you do champion him!" He leaned forward sharply across the
+table. "What is this man to you?"
+
+He was going too far. He had no right to that question. "The man I have
+promised to marry." Her hot look, her cold manner defied him to command
+her here. Yet for a moment, leaning forward with his clenched hands on
+the table, he looked ready to spring up and force her words back on
+her. The next he let it go and dropped back in his chair again.
+
+"Quite so," he said. "But I didn't believe it." He stared at her with a
+dull, profound resentment. "Yet it's most possible; since it isn't the
+sapphire it would be that." He mused. "But, you extraordinary woman, why
+on earth--" he broke off, still looking at her, looking with a
+persistent, sharp, studying eye, as if she were the most puzzling and,
+it came to her gradually, the most dubious thing on earth. He was verily
+a magician, a worker of black magic; for under the spell of his eyes she
+felt herself turning into something horrible. However innocent she was
+in intention, the ugly appearance was covering her.
+
+"Then what are you doing here with the ring on you?" he demanded
+solemnly. "Why are you dealing with me? What do you think you'll get out
+of it? Good God! women are hideous! How can you betray the man you
+love?"
+
+"Oh," she cried, with a wail of horror. She stood up trembling and pale.
+"I don't--I don't--I don't! I've kept it from them. I'm standing
+against them all. I shall never give it to them. When have I ever
+betrayed you?"
+
+He drew back, away from her, as if to ward off her meaning, but she
+leaned toward him, her hands flung out, holding herself up to him for
+all she meant. He got up slowly and the creeping tide of red, dusky and
+violent, rising over his face, swelling his features, darkening his
+eyes, hung before her like a banner of shame.
+
+"I didn't know, I didn't know," he repeated in a low voice. His eyes
+were on the ground. Then, with a sharp motion, as if merely standing in
+front of her was unendurable, "Oh, Lord!" he said, and, turning, walked
+from her toward the window. He went precipitately, as if he meant to go
+through it, but he only leaned against it and stood motionless; and from
+her side of the table, trembling, breathless, she watched his stricken
+silhouette black upon the gray, fading light.
+
+The knowledge of how far she had gone, of how much she had betrayed
+herself, swelled and swelled before her mind until it seemed to fill
+her life, but she looked at it hardily and unabashed. All the decencies
+in the world should sink before he thought her a traitor. She came
+softly up beside him.
+
+"Don't be sorry for what I told you."
+
+"I'm not," he said. His voice sounded muffled. He did not look at her,
+only held out his arm in a mute sign to her to come. She felt it around
+her, but it was a mere symbol of protection. It lay limp on her
+shoulder, and he continued to stare through the window at the street.
+"I'm not sorry for what you said," he repeated slowly. "I'm glad; but,
+child, I wish it wasn't true."
+
+"Don't, don't!" she besought him, "for I don't."
+
+He gave her a look. "That's beautiful of you, but"--and he turned to the
+window again and spoke to himself--"it puts an awful face on my
+business. All along you've made me think for you, and of you, more than
+you deserve, more than I can afford." The stare she gave this forced out
+of him a reluctant smile. "Why, didn't you know it? Do you think I
+couldn't have had the sapphire that first night I saw it on your hand,
+if it hadn't been--well, for the way I thought of you? I fancied you
+knew that then." He made a restless movement. His arm fell from her
+shoulder. "There's been only one thing to do from the first," he said,
+"and I don't see my way to it."
+
+"Oh, don't take it! Leave it!" she pleaded. "Leave it with me! What does
+it matter so much? A jewel! If only you would leave it and go away from
+me!"
+
+He whirled on her. "In Heaven's name, a fine piece of logic! Leave the
+sapphire to people who can make no better use of it than I? Leave you to
+go on with this business and marry this Cressy? Even suppose you gave me
+the sapphire, I couldn't let you do that!"
+
+"If I gave you the sapphire," Flora said, "oh, he wouldn't marry me
+then!" She couldn't tell how this had come to her, but all at once it
+was clear, like a sign of her complete failure; but Kerr only wondered
+at her distress.
+
+"Well, if you don't want to marry him, what do you care?"
+
+"Oh, I don't, I don't care for that." She sank back listlessly in her
+chair again. She couldn't explain, but in her own mind she knew that if
+she lost the sapphire she would so lose in her own esteem; so fail at
+every point that counted, that she would never be able to see or be seen
+in the world again as the same creature. Even to Kerr--even to him to
+whom she would have yielded she would have become a different thing. She
+realized now she had staked everything on the premise that she wouldn't
+have to yield; and now it began to appear to her that she would. His
+weakness was appearing now as a terrible strength, a strength that
+seemed on the point of crushing her, but it could never convince her.
+That strength of his had brought her here. Was it to happen here, that
+strange thing she had foreseen, the end of her? Was it here she was to
+lose the sapphire, and him?
+
+She looked vaguely around the room, at the most impassive aspect of the
+place, as at a place she never expected to leave; the darkening
+windows, the fast-shut door, the child leaning on the desk, watching
+them with sharp, incurious eyes--this would be her niche for ever. She
+would be left for ever with the crusts and the dregs. And Kerr's figure
+in the twilight seemed each time it moved to be on the point of
+vanishing into the grayness. He moved continually up and down the narrow
+spaces between the tables. He troubled the dry repose of the place.
+Sometimes he looked at her, studying, questioning, undecided. Once he
+stopped, as if just there an idea had arrested him. He looked at her, as
+if, she thought, he were afraid of her. Then for long moments he stood
+looking blankly, steadily out of the window. He did not approach her. He
+seemed to avoid her, until, as though he had come at last to his
+decision, he walked straight up to her and stood above her. She rose to
+meet him. He was smiling.
+
+"Don't you know that you could easily get rid of me?" he demanded.
+"Cressy would be too glad to do it for you; and there are more ways
+than one that I could get the sapphire from you, if I could face the
+idea of it--but really, really we care too much for each other. There's
+only one way out for you and me and the sapphire. I'll take you both."
+
+Her clenched hands opened and fell at her sides. A great wave of
+helplessness flowed over her. Her eyes, her throat filled up with a rush
+of blinding tears. She put out her hands, trying to thrust him off, but
+he took the wrists and held them apart, and held her a moment helpless
+before him.
+
+"Oh, no," she whispered.
+
+"But I love you."
+
+Her head fell back. She looked at him as if he had spoken the
+incredible.
+
+"I love you," he repeated, "though God knows how it has happened!"
+
+The blood rushed to her heart.
+
+He was drawing her nearer.
+
+She felt his breath upon her face; she saw the image of herself in his
+eyes. She started to herself on the edge of danger, and made a struggle
+to release her wrists. He let them go. She sank down into her chair.
+
+"Why not? Why won't you go with me?" she heard him say again, still
+close beside her.
+
+"I can't, I can't!" She clung to the words, but for the moment she had
+forgotten her reasons. She had forgotten everything but the wonderful
+fact that he loved her. He was there within reach, and she had only to
+stretch out her hand, only to say one word, and he would cut through the
+ranks of her perplexities and terrors, and carry her away.
+
+"Why not, if you love me?" he insisted. "Are you afraid of those people?
+Are you afraid of Cressy? He shall never come near you."
+
+She shook her head. "No, it isn't that."
+
+He stooped and looked into her face. "Then what keeps you?"
+
+She looked up slowly.
+
+"My honor."
+
+"Your honor!" For a moment her answer seemed to have him by surprise. He
+mused, and again it came dreamily back to her that he was looking at
+her across a vast difference no will of hers could ever bridge.
+
+"Don't you see what I am?" she murmured. "Can't you imagine where I
+stand in this hideous business? It's my trust. I'm on their side; and,
+oh, in spite of everything, I can't make myself believe in giving it to
+you!"
+
+He pondered this very gravely.
+
+"Yes, I can see how you might feel that way. But is the feeling really
+yours? Are you sure they haven't put it on you? Might not my honor do as
+well for you, if you were mine?" It struck her she had never connected
+him with honor, and he read her thought with a flash of humor.
+"Evidently it hasn't occurred to you that I have an honor."
+
+She looked at him sadly. "In spite of everything I'm on the other side.
+I belong to them."
+
+"You belong to me." His hand closed on hers. "Mine is the only honor you
+have to think of. Can't you trust that I am right? Can't you see it
+through my eyes? Can't you make yourself all mine?" His arm was around
+her now, holding her fast, but she turned her face away, and his kisses
+fell only on her cheek and hair.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "if only I could!"
+
+"Don't you love me?"
+
+"Oh, yes, but that makes me see, all the more, the dreadful difference
+between us."
+
+"You silly child, there is no difference, really."
+
+"Ah, yes, you know it as well as I. You were afraid of it, too. All that
+long time you were walking around you were wondering whether you dared
+to take me."
+
+He denied her steadily, "Never!"
+
+She loved him for that gallant denial, for she knew he had been afraid,
+horribly afraid, more afraid than she was now; but that strange quality
+of his that gave to a double risk a double zest had set him all the
+hotter on this resolution.
+
+He sat for some long moments thoughtfully looking straight before him.
+She, glancing at his profile, white and faintly glimmering in the
+twilight, thought it looked sharp, absorbed and set. She could see his
+great determination growing there in the gloom between them, looming
+and overshadowing them both.
+
+"I see," he said at last. "I'll simply have to take you in spite of it."
+He turned around to her, and reached his hands down through the dusk.
+She was being drawn up into arms which she could not see. Her hands were
+clasped around a neck, her cheek was against a face which she had never
+hoped to touch. Her reason and her fears were stifled and caught away
+from her lips with her breath. She was giving up to her awful weakness.
+She was giving up to the power of love. She was letting herself sink
+into it as she would sink into deep water. The sense of drowning in this
+profound, unfathomable element, of shutting her eyes and opening her
+arms to it, was the highest she had ever touched; but all at once the
+memory of what she was leaving behind her, like a last glimpse of sky,
+swept her with fear. She made a desperate effort to rescue herself
+before the waters quite closed over her head.
+
+She pulled herself free. Without his arms around her for the first
+moment she could hardly stand. She took an uncertain step forward; then
+with a rush she reached the white curtains. They flapped behind her. She
+heard Kerr laugh, a note, quiet, caressing, almost content. It came from
+the gloom like a disembodied voice of triumph. Her rush had carried her
+into the middle of the anteroom. At this last moment was there to be no
+miracle to save her? There was no rescue among these dumb walls and
+closed-up windows. The purple child gave her a sharp, bird-like glance,
+as if the most that this wild woman could want was "change." Flora
+looked behind her and saw Kerr, who had put aside the curtains and was
+standing looking at her. He was bright and triumphant in that twilight
+room. He was not afraid of losing her now. He knew in that one moment he
+had imprisoned her for ever! She saw him approaching, but though all her
+mind and spirit strained for flight, something had happened to her will.
+It tottered like her knees.
+
+He stooped and picked up an artificial rose, which had fallen from her
+hat, and put it into her hand. A moment, with his head bent, he stood
+looking into her face, but without touching her.
+
+"Sit down over there," he said, and pointed toward a chair against the
+wall. She went meekly like a prisoner. He spoke to the child in the
+purple apron, who was still sitting behind the desk. He put some money
+on the cash-desk in front of her. It was gold. It shone gorgeously in
+the dull surrounding, and the child pounced upon it, incredulous of her
+luck. Then he turned, crossed the room, soundlessly opened the door, and
+went out into the violet dark of the street.
+
+The child furtively tested her coin, biting it as if to taste the
+glitter, and Flora waited, lost, given up by herself, passively watching
+for the room to be filled again with his presence. He was back after a
+long minute, and this time took up his stand at the door, where, pushing
+aside the tight-drawn curtain a little, from time to time he looked out
+into the street. Sometimes his eyes followed the cracks of the
+plastered wall, sometimes he studied the floor at his feet; every moment
+she saw he was alert, expectantly watching and waiting; and though he
+never looked at her sitting behind him, she felt his protection between
+her and the darkening street. She sat in the shadow of it, feeling it
+all around her, claiming her as it would claim her henceforth, from, the
+world. A ghost of light glimmered along the curtains of the window, and
+stopped, quivering, in the middle of the curtained door. Then he turned
+about and beckoned her. Sheer weakness kept her sitting. He went to her,
+took her face between his hands, and looked into it long and intently.
+
+"You don't want to go!" The words fell from his lips like an accusal.
+His sudden realization of what she felt held him there dumb with
+disappointment. "You have won me," her look was saying, "and yet I have
+immediately become a worthless thing, because I am going; and I don't
+believe in going." She felt she had failed him--how cruelly, was written
+in his face. But it was only for a moment that she made him hesitate.
+The next he shook himself free.
+
+"Well, come," he said.
+
+She felt that all doors would fly open at his bidding. She felt herself
+swept powerless at his will with all the yielding in her soul that she
+had felt in her body when his arms were around her. He had taken her by
+the hand--he was leading her out into the gusty night, where all lights
+flared--the gas-lights marching up the street over the hill into the
+unknown, and the lights gleaming at her like eyes in the dark bulk of
+the carriage waiting before the door. It all glimmered before her--a
+picture she might never see again--might not see after she passed
+through the carriage door that gaped for her. The will that had swept
+her out of the door was moving her beyond her own will, as it had moved
+her that morning in the garden, beyond all things that she knew. There
+was no feeling left in her but the despair of extreme surrender.
+
+She found herself in the carriage. She saw his face in the carriage door
+as pale as anger, yet not angry; it was some bigger thing that looked
+at her from his eyes. He looked a long while, as if he bade her never to
+forget this moment. Then, "I'll give you twenty-four hours," he said.
+"This man will take you home." He shut the carriage door--shut it
+between them. Before she had gathered breath he had straightened, fallen
+back, raised his hat, and the carriage was turning. Flora thrust her
+head, straw hat and ribbons out of the window.
+
+"Oh, I love you!" she called to him. She sank back in the cushions and
+covered her face with her hands.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+GOBLIN TACTICS
+
+
+For a little she kept her face hidden, shutting out the present,
+jealously living with the wonderful thing that had happened to her. It
+was as wonderful as anything she had dreamed might come when she had
+written him that letter. And if she needed any proof of his love, she
+had had it in the moment when he had let her go. There he had
+transcended her hope. She felt lifted up, she felt triumphant, though
+the triumph had not been hers. It was all his; he had saved her from her
+own weakness; his was the miracle. How he shone to her! The dark,
+swaying hollow of the carriage seemed still full of his presence, full
+of his hurried whispering; and again she seemed to see him standing
+outside the window in the deep blue evening holding out his hands to her
+cry of "I love you!"
+
+He had been wonderful in a way she had not expected. He had shown her so
+beautifully that he could be reached in spite of his obsession. Might
+not she hope to touch him just a little further? Was there any height
+now that he might not rise to? She seemed to see the possible end of it
+all shaping itself out of his magnanimity. She seemed to see him finally
+relinquishing his passion for the jewel, and his passion for her for the
+sake of something finer than both. She had seen it foreshadowed in what
+he had done this day--having them both in his hands, he had put them
+away from him. Yet in that action she knew there had been no finality.
+She had touched him, but she had not convinced him, and as long as he
+was unconvinced he would be at her again in some other way.
+
+Her hands dropped from her face, and she confronted the fact drearily.
+"No," she thought, "he never gives up what he wants."
+
+She looked out of the window. The flickers of gas-lamps fell
+intermittently through it upon her. Her queer vehicle was rattling
+crazily--jolting as if every spring were at its last leap. She was out
+of the quiet, blue street. Montgomery Avenue, with its lights, its
+glittering gilt names and Latin insignia, was traveling by on either
+side of her. The voice of the city was growing louder in her ears, the
+crowd on the pavement increased. At intervals the carriage dipped
+through glares of electric lights that illuminated its interior in a
+flash broader than day--the ragged cushions, the raveled tassels, the
+limp-swinging shutters, and, glimmering in the midst, wild and
+disheveled, herself in all the little wavy mirrors. She sat looking out
+at the maze of moving lights and figures without seeing them, intent on
+an idea that was growing clearer, larger, moment by moment in her mind.
+
+Kerr's appearance in her garden--his capture of her--had not been the
+fantastic freak it had seemed. He had had his purpose. He had taken her
+out of her environment; he had carried her beyond succor or menace just
+that he might carry them both so much further and faster through their
+differences. They had not reached the point of agreement yet, but might
+they not on some other ground, where they could be unchallenged? It
+seemed to her if she could only meet him on her own ground for
+once--instead of for ever on Clara's or Harry's--only meet him alone,
+somewhere beyond their reach, it might be accomplished, it might be
+brought to the end she so wished. Yet where to go to be rid of Clara and
+Harry, the two so closely associated with every fact of her life?
+
+The hack, which had been moving along at a rapid pace, slowed now to a
+walk among the thickening traffic, and from a mere moving mass the crowd
+appeared as individuals--a stream of dark figures and white faces. Her
+eyes slipped from one to another. Here one stood still on the lamp-lit
+corner, looking down, with lips moving quickly and silently. It was
+strange to see those rapid, eager, moving lips with no sound from them
+audible. Then her eyes were startled by something familiar in the
+figure, though the direct down-glare of the ball of light above him
+distorted the features with shadows. She pressed her face against the
+window-glass in palpitating doubt. It was Harry.
+
+She cowered in the corner of the carriage. In a moment the risks of her
+situation were before her. Had he seen her? Oh, no, at least not yet. He
+had been too intent on whomever he was talking to. She peered to make
+sure that he was still safely on the street corner. He was just
+opposite, and now that the eddy of the crowd had left a little clear
+space around him she saw with whom he was talking. It was a small, very
+small, shabby, nondescript man--possibly only a boy, so short he seemed.
+His back was toward her. His clothes hung upon him with an odd
+un-Anglo-Saxon air. He was foreign with a foreignness no country could
+explain--Italian, Portuguese, Greek--whatever he was, he was a strange
+foil to Harry, so bright and burnished.
+
+The hack was turning. She realized with dismay that it was turning sharp
+around that very corner where they stood. Suppose Harry should chance to
+glance through its window and see Flora Gilsey sitting trembling within.
+The hack wheezed and cramped, and all at once she heard it scrape the
+curb. Then she was lost! She looked up brave in her desperation, ready
+to meet Harry's eyes. She saw the back of his head. For a moment it
+loomed directly above her, then it moved. He was separating from his
+companion. With one stride he vanished out of the square frame of the
+window, and there remained full fronting her, staring in upon her, the
+face of his companion.
+
+Back flashed to her memory the goldsmith's shop--dull hues and odors all
+at once--and that wide unwinking stare that had fixed her from the other
+side of the counter. The blue-eyed Chinaman! In the glare of white
+light, in his terrible clearness and nearness, she knew him instantly.
+
+The hack plunged forward, the face was gone. But she remained nerveless,
+powerless to move, frozen in her stupefaction, while her vehicle pursued
+its crazy course. It was clattering up Sutter Street toward Kearney,
+where at this hour the town was widest awake, and the crowd was a crowd
+she knew. At any instant people she knew might be going in and out of
+the florists' shops and restaurants, or passing her in carriages. And
+what of Flora Gilsey in her morning dress and garden hat, in a
+night-hawk of a Telegraph Hill hack, flying through their midst like a
+mad woman? They were the least of her fears. She had forgotten them. The
+only thing that remained to her was the memory of Harry and the
+blue-eyed Chinaman together on the street corner.
+
+She had been given a glimpse of that large scheme that Harry was
+carrying forward somewhere out of her sight--such a glimpse as Clara had
+given her in the rifling of her room, as Ella had shown in her
+hysterical revelation. Again she felt the threat of these ominous signs
+of danger, as a lone general at a last stand with his troops clustered
+at his back sees in front, and behind, on either side of him, the
+glitter of bayonets in the bushes.
+
+She was in the midst of the tangled traffic of Kearney Street. Swimming
+lights and crowds were all around her. She peered forth cautiously upon
+it. She saw a florid face, a woman, she knew casually--and there her
+eyes fastened, not for the woman's brilliant presence, but for what she
+saw directly in front of it, thrown into relief upon its background--a
+short and shabby figure, foreign, equivocal, reticent, the figure of a
+blue-eyed Chinaman.
+
+He was standing still while the crowd flowed past him. This time he was
+alone. He seemed to be waiting, yet not to watch, as if he had already
+seen what he was expecting and knew that it must pass his way. It was
+uncanny, his reappearance, at a second interval of her route, standing
+as if he had stood there from the first, patient, expectant, motionless.
+It was worse than uncanny.
+
+All at once an idea, wild and illogical enough, jumped up in her mind.
+Couldn't this miserable vehicle that was lumbering like a disabled bug
+move faster and rattle her on out of reach of the glare, the publicity,
+the threat of discovery, and, above all, of her discomforting notion?
+She breathed out relief as the carriage dipped into the comparative
+quiet again, and she felt herself being driven on and up a gently rising
+street between block-apart, lone gas-lamps. She thrust her face as far
+out of the window as she dared, looking back at the lights and traffic
+which were drifting behind her. At this distance she could single out no
+one figure from the crowd, and no figure which could possibly be that of
+the blue-eyed Chinaman was moving up the street behind her. There only
+remained a disquieting memory of him on the corner with Harry. Together
+they made a combination, to her mind, threatening to the man she loved,
+for whom she so desperately feared.
+
+If ever she had felt herself helpless, it was in this moment passing
+along the half-lit, half-empty city street. By what she knew, by what
+she wore around her neck, she was separated from all peace-abiding
+citizens--she was outlawed. Every closed door and shaded window (so many
+she had opened or looked out of!) now seemed shut and shaded against her
+for ever. Night and the reticent gray city, averting their eyes, let
+her slip through unregarded.
+
+She was passing that section of large, old-fashioned mansions, cupolaed,
+towered, indistinct at the top of their high, broad steps, or back among
+the trees of their gardens. Along the front of one stretched a high
+hedge of laurestinas black as a ribbon of the night, capacious of
+shadows; and it seemed to Flora that all at once a shadow detached
+itself. She looked with a start. It flashed along the pavement--if
+shadow it were--running head down with a strange, scattering movement of
+arms and legs, yet seeming to make such speed that for a moment it kept
+abreast of the cab. She could see no features, no lineament of this
+strange thing to recognize, yet instantly she knew what it must be--what
+she had feared and thought impossible. She thrust her head far out and
+addressed the driver.
+
+"Go as fast as you can, faster! and I'll give you twice what he gave
+you." The words rang so wildly to her own ears that she half expected
+the driver to peer down like an old bird of prey from his perch and
+demand her reason. But he made no sound or sign. It may have been that
+in his time he had heard even wilder requests than hers. He only sent
+his whip cracking forward to the ears of the lean horse, and the cab
+began to rattle like a mad thing.
+
+Flora leaned back with a sigh of relief. The mere sensation of being
+borne along at such a rate, the sight of houses, lamp-posts, even people
+here and there, flitting away from the eye, unable to interrupt her
+course, or even to glimpse her identity, gave her a feeling of safety.
+The more she was getting into the residence part of the city, the more
+deserted the streets, the closer shut the windows of the houses, the
+more it seemed to her as if the night itself covered and abetted her
+flight. So swiftly she went it was only a wonder how the cab held
+together. She had never traveled more rapidly in her light and silent
+carriage. Now they whirled the corner and plunged at the steep rise of a
+cross street. Just above, over the crown of the hill, she saw the sky,
+moonless, blackish, spattered with stars. Then against it a little
+fluttering shape like a sentinel wisp--the only living thing in sight.
+It was incredible, impossible, horrible that he should be there, in
+front of her, waiting for her, who had driven so fast--too fast, it had
+seemed, for human foot to follow. By what unimaginable route had he
+traveled? She was ready to believe he had flown over the housetops. And
+above all other horrors, why was he pursuing her?
+
+The carriage was abreast the Chinaman now, and immediately he took up
+his trot, for a little while keeping up, dodging along between light and
+shadow, presently falling behind. At intervals she heard the patter,
+patter, patter of his footsteps following; at intervals she lost the
+sound, and shadows would engulf the figure, and she would wait in a
+panic for its reappearance. For she knew it was there somewhere, on one
+side of the street or the other. But, oh, not to see it! To expect at
+any moment it might start up again--Heaven knew where, perhaps at her
+very carriage window. Her unconscious hand was doubled to a fist upon
+her breast, fast closed upon the sapphire.
+
+With all her body braced, she leaned and looked far backward, and far
+forward, and now for a long time saw nothing. The distance was empty.
+The glare of arc-lights showed her the shadows of her own progress--the
+shadow of her vehicle shooting huge and misshapen now on the cobbles,
+now along a blank wall, wheels, body and driver, all lurching like one;
+now heaped on each other, now tenuously drawn out, now twisting
+themselves into shapes the mind could not account for. For here,
+whirling the corner, the carriage seemed to wave an arm, and now between
+the wheels, fast twinkling, she saw a pair of legs. She leaned and
+looked, so mesmerized with this grotesque appearance that it scarcely
+troubled her that all the way down the last long hill she knew it must
+be that a man was running at her wheel.
+
+The warm lights of her house were just before her, offering succor,
+stiffening courage. It would be but a dash from the door of the cab to
+her own door. There was no second course, once the cab stopped. She felt
+that to lurk in its gloom would mean robbery, perhaps death. She thought
+without fear, but with an intense calculation. Her hand held the door at
+swing as the cab drew up. Before it should stop she must leap. She
+gathered her skirts and sprang--sprang clean to the sidewalk. The steps
+of her house rushed by her in her upward flight. Her bell pealed. She
+covered her eyes.
+
+For the moment before Shima opened the door there was nothing but
+darkness and silence. She had never been so glad of anything in her life
+as of the kind, astute, yellow face he presented to her distressed
+appeal.
+
+"Shima," she panted, "pay the cab; and if there's any one else there say
+that I'll call the police--no, no, send him away." There was no question
+or hesitation in Shima's obedience. Through the glass of the door she
+watched him descend upon his errand, until he disappeared over the edge
+of the illumination of the vestibule. She waited, dimly aware of voices
+going on beyond the curtains of the drawing-room, but all her listening
+power was concentrated on the silence without--a silence that remained
+unbroken, and out of which Shima returned with the same imperturable
+countenance.
+
+"He wants ten dollars."
+
+"Oh, yes, give him anything," Flora gasped. If that was all the Chinaman
+had followed her for! But her relief was momentary, for instantly Shima
+was back again.
+
+"I gave him ten dollars, the cabman."
+
+Now she gasped indeed. "Oh, the cabman! But the other one!" For an
+instant Shima seemed to hesitate; glancing past her shoulder as if there
+was something that he doubted behind her. Then as she still hung on his
+answer he brought it out in a lowered voice.
+
+"Madam, there was no one else there."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+THE FACE IN THE GARDEN
+
+
+With her hand at her distressed forehead she turned, and saw, between
+the curtains of the drawing-room, Harry, and behind him Clara, looking
+out at her with faces of amazement, and she fancied, horror. Harry came
+straight for her.
+
+"Why, you poor child, what's happened to you?"
+
+She gave him a look. She couldn't forget their scene in the red room,
+but the mixture of apprehension and real concern in his face went far
+toward melting her. She might even have told him something, at least a
+part of the truth, but for that other standing watching her from the
+drawing-room door. With Clara, there was nothing for it but to ignore
+her disordered hair, her hat in her hand, her ruffle torn and trailing
+on the floor.
+
+She put on a splendid nonchalance, as if it were none of their business.
+"Oh, I am sorry if I kept you waiting."
+
+It was Clara who spoke to her, past Harry's blank astonishment. "Why, we
+don't mind waiting a few moments more while you dress."
+
+"I shan't have to dress." Such a statement Flora felt must amaze even
+Shima, waiting like an image on the threshold of the dining-room. But if
+these people were waiting to be amazed she felt herself equal to amazing
+them to the top of their expectations.
+
+"Oh, but at least go up and let Marrika give you some pins," Clara
+protested, hurrying forward as if fairly to drive her.
+
+"Thank you, no, this will do," Flora said. On one point she was quite
+clear. She wasn't going to leave those two together for a moment to
+discuss her plight; not till she could first get at Harry alone. Then
+and there she turned to the mirror and with her combs began to catch
+back and smooth the disorder of her hair, seeing all the while Clara's
+reflection hovering perturbed and vigilant in the background of her own.
+
+While her hands were busy seeming to accommodate Clara, her mind was
+marshaled to Clara's outwitting. The only thing to do was to tell
+nothing. Let Clara spend her time in guessing. Unless by some wild
+chance she had seen Kerr in the garden she couldn't come near the truth
+of what had happened. But what was to be done with Harry? Harry was too
+close to her to be ignored. Her attitude toward him had undergone a
+change. In the moment in the red room, when she had seen him break the
+one feeling that had held her to him, the feeling of awe and respect had
+evaporated. She felt that it was quite impossible now for them to go on
+on the same footing; yet, as long as she kept the sapphire she must
+somehow manage to keep up an appearance of it. She must tell him
+something.
+
+At that dreadful dinner, where she sat a conscious frustrater of these
+two silent ones, glancing at Harry's face, she knew that if she didn't
+attack she would be attacked by him. It was here in the midst of the
+noiseless passings of Shima, watching Harry's suspicious glances
+flashing across the table at her strange disorder, that the idea
+occurred to her of a way out of it. She was bold enough to try a daring
+thrust at the mystery. If ever a hunter was to be led off on a false
+scent, Harry was that one. She was amazed at the sudden, fearless
+impulse that had sprung up in her. She wasn't even afraid to say to him
+under Clara's nose, "Harry, I want you to myself after dinner. Come up
+into the garden study."
+
+He was very willing to follow her. She thought she detected in his
+alacrity something more than curiosity or concern. It seemed almost as
+if Harry was ashamed of that scene in the red room, and anxious to make
+it up with her. He even tried before they had reached the head of the
+stairs. "Oh, Flora--I say, Flora, I--"
+
+But an explanation between them was the last thing she wanted just then.
+She fairly ran, leaving him panting in the wake of her airy skirts.
+
+For the first time since the thing began Clara was left out completely.
+Flora knew she was even left out of a possibility of listening at the
+keyhole. For the bright, tight, little room into which Harry followed
+her was approached by a square entry and a double door. The room itself
+overhung the garden as a ship's deck overhangs the sea. Leather books
+and long red curtains were the note of it. She and Harry had often been
+here together before. Harry had made love to her here, and she had found
+it pleasurable enough. But the fact that she could recall it now with
+distaste made this familiar surrounding seem strange, and they
+themselves strangest of all.
+
+He hadn't got his breath. He had hardly shut the door on them before she
+began. "Well, something has happened." She had his attention. His other
+purpose was arrested. "Oh, something extraordinary. I would have told
+you on the spot, only I thought you would rather Clara didn't know it."
+
+"I?" That left him staring. "What have I to do with it?"
+
+At this she gave him a long look. "It was through you he ever had the
+chance of seeing me. I mean the blue-eyed Chinaman. He has followed me
+all the evening. He followed me here to the very door." Flora's array of
+facts fell so fast, so hard, so pointed, that for a moment they held him
+speechless in the middle of the room.
+
+Any fleeting suspicion she might have had of his complicity in the
+Chinaman's pursuit vanished. He showed plain bewilderment. For a moment
+he was more at sea than herself. The next she saw the shadow of a
+thought so disturbing that it sharpened his ruddy face to harshness. He
+stepped toward her. "What did he say to you?" He loomed directly above
+her, threatening.
+
+"Nothing. He didn't say anything. But I know he followed me quite to
+the house, for I saw his shadow all the way down the hill."
+
+Harry still breathed quickly. "Where--how did he come across you?"
+
+She'd been prepared for that question.
+
+"I was driving down Sutter Street and he saw me at the carriage window."
+
+Harry stood tense, poised, catching everything as she tossed it off;
+then as if all at once he felt the full weight of the burden, "Lord!" he
+said, and let himself down heavily into a chair. It was plain in his
+helpless stare that he knew exactly what it all meant. Laying her hands
+on the high chair-arms, leaning down so that she could look into his
+face, Flora made her thrust.
+
+"What do you think he wants?" she gently asked. It was as if she would
+coax it out of him. His answer was correspondingly low and soft.
+
+"It's that damned ring."
+
+She heard her secret fear spoken aloud with such assurance that she
+waited, certain at the next moment Harry's voice would people the
+silence with all the facts that had so far escaped her. But when, after
+a moment of looking before him he did speak, he went back to the
+beginning, which they both knew.
+
+"You know he didn't want to part with it in the first place."
+
+"Yes, yes; but he did," Flora insisted.
+
+"Well," he answered quickly, "but that was before--" He caught himself
+and went on with a scarcely perceptible break: "He may have had a better
+offer for it since."
+
+He couldn't have put it more mildly, and yet that temperate phrase
+brought back to her in a flash a windy night full of raucous voices and
+the great figures in the paper that had covered half a page--the reward
+for the Crew Idol. Could it be that--that sum so overwhelming to human
+caution and human decency which Harry had cloaked by his grudging phrase
+"some better offer"? What else could he mean? And what else could the
+blue-eyed Chinaman mean by his strange pursuit of her?
+
+"Some one must have wanted it awfully," Flora tried again, keeping step
+with his mild admission.
+
+Harry covered her with an impressive stare. "There's something queer
+about that ring," he nodded to her. He was going to tell her at last!
+She gazed at him in expectation, but presently she realized that nothing
+more was coming. He had stopped at the beginning. She tried to urge him
+on.
+
+"Queer, what do you mean?" She was feigning surprise.
+
+He looked at her cautiously. "Why, you must have noticed it yourself
+when we were at the shop. And now, to-night, his having followed you."
+
+She could see him hesitate, choosing his words. She knew well enough her
+own fear of saying too much--but, what was Harry afraid of? Did he
+suspect her feeling for Kerr? Was that why he was holding back, leaving
+out, giving her the small, expurgated version of what he knew. She tried
+again, making it plainer.
+
+"You think the ring is something he ought not to have had; something
+that belongs somewhere else?"
+
+He looked away from her, around the room, as if to pick up his answer
+from some of the corners. "Well, anyway, it's lucky we waited about that
+setting," he said with quick irrelevance. "If you're going to be annoyed
+in this way you'd better let me have it."
+
+Why hadn't she thought of that! It was what any man might say, after
+hearing such a story as hers, yet it was the last thing she had thought
+of, and the last thing she wanted.
+
+"Oh, leave it with me," she quavered, "at least till you're sure!"
+
+"Oh, no!" He gave his head a quick, decided shake. "If something should
+come out you wouldn't want to be mixed up in it."
+
+"Then why not give it back to the Chinaman?" she tried him.
+
+"Oh, that's ridiculous." He was in a passion. His darkening eyes, his
+swelling nostrils, his aspect so out of proportion to her mild and
+almost playful suggestion, frightened her. He saw it and instantly his
+mood dropped to mere irritation. "Oh, Flora, don't make a scene about
+it. This thing has been on my mind for days--the thought that you had
+the ring. I was afraid I had no business to let you have it in the first
+place, and what you've told me to-night has clean knocked me out. I
+don't know what I'm saying. Come, let me have it; and if there's
+anything queer about the business, at least we'll get it cleared up."
+
+But, smiling, she retreated before him.
+
+"Why, Flora," he argued, half laughing, but still with that dry end of
+irritation in his voice, "what on earth do you want to keep the thing
+for?"
+
+By this time she backed against the window, and faced him. "Why, it's my
+engagement ring."
+
+He looked at her. She couldn't tell whether he was readiest to laugh or
+rage.
+
+"You gave it to me for that," she pleaded. "Why shouldn't I keep it,
+until you give me a real reason for giving it up? If you really know
+anything, why don't you tell me?" She was sure she had him there; but he
+burst out at last:
+
+"Well, for a fact, I know it is stolen!" He leaned toward her; and his
+arms, still flung out with the hands open as argument had left them,
+seemed to her frightened eyes all ready for her, ready with his last
+argument, his strength.
+
+Once before she had feared herself face to face with the same threat in
+the eyes and body of another man, but here, her only fear was lest Harry
+should get the sapphire away from her. His doing so would dash down no
+ideal of him. It was mere physical terror that made her tremble and
+raise her hand to her breast. Instantly she saw how she had betrayed the
+sapphire again. He had taken hold of her wrist, and, twist as she might,
+he held it, horribly gentle.
+
+She pressed back against the glass until she felt it hard behind her.
+
+"Harry," she whispered, "if you care anything, if you ever want me for
+yours, you'll take your hands away." She meant it; she was sincere in
+that moment, for all she shrank from him. Her body and mind would not
+have been too great a price to give him for the sapphire.
+
+But these he seemed to set aside as trivial. These he expected as a
+matter of course; he was going to have that other thing, too--the thing
+she had clung to as a man clings to life; and that now, parting from,
+she would give up not without a struggle as sharp as that with which the
+body gives up breath. She wrestled. He seemed all hands. He put aside
+her struggles, her pleadings, as if they were thistle-down.
+
+Then all at once she felt his arm around her neck. She couldn't move her
+body. She could only turn her head from his hot breath. For a moment he
+held her, and yet another moment; and then, terrified at what this
+strange immobility might mean, she raised her eyes and saw he was not
+looking at her. Though he held her fast he was not conscious of her.
+Straight over her head he looked, through the window and down, into the
+garden. Her eyes followed. It lay beneath, the wonder of its morning
+aspect all blanched and dim. She saw the silhouette of rose branches in
+black on the sky. She saw the flowers and bushes all one dull tone. But
+in the midst of them the oval of the path shone white; and there, as in
+the afternoon, standing, looking upward, was the dark figure of a man.
+
+Her heart gave a great leap. Just so she'd been summoned once before
+that day, but what infernal freak had fetched him back to repeat that
+dangerous sally, and brought him finally into his enemy's grasp? She
+tried to make a gesture to warn him, and just there Harry released her,
+dropped her so that she half fell upon the window-seat, and made a dash
+across the room for the light. In a moment they were in darkness. In a
+moment, to Flora pressed against the window, the garden sprang clear,
+and on the formless figure below the face appeared, white in the
+starlight looking up. She cried out in wonder. It was not Kerr. It was
+the blue-eyed Chinaman.
+
+After her haunted drive, after her escape, after Shima's search, he was
+there, still inexorably there; small, diminished by the great façade of
+the house, but looking up at it with his calm eye, surveying it,
+measuring its height, numbering its doors, trying its windows. Harry was
+beside her again. He was tugging frantically at the window. It resisted.
+She saw his hands trembling while he wrestled with it. Then it went
+shrieking up and he leaned out.
+
+"What do you want?" he called, and, though he used no name, Flora saw he
+knew with whom he was speaking. The Chinaman stood immobile, lifting his
+round, white face, whose mouth seemed to gape a little. Harry leaned far
+out and lowered his voice.
+
+"Go away, Joe! Don't come here; never come here!" There was a quiver in
+his voice. Anger or apprehension, or both, whatever his passion was, for
+the moment it overwhelmed him, and as the Chinaman stood unmoved,
+unmoving, at his commands, Harry turned sharp from the window and dashed
+out of the room. Flora heard him running, running down the stairs. She
+hung there breathless, waiting to see him meet the motionless figure;
+but while she looked and waited that motionless figure suddenly took
+life. It moved, it turned, it flitted, it mixed with shadows, became a
+shadow; and then there was nothing there.
+
+Nothing was there when Harry burst out of the garden door and stood
+staring in the empty oval. How distracted, how violent he looked, balked
+of his prey! He was stalking the garden, beating the bushes, walking up
+and down. All at once he stopped and raised a white baffled face to her
+window. She shrank away. _She_ was in peril of Harry now. He knew her no
+longer innocent. She had held the ring against him in the face of the
+fact he had told her it was stolen. And he must guess her motive. He
+must suspect her now.
+
+In her turn she ran, up and up a twisted side stair, shortest passage to
+her own rooms. At least lock and key could keep her safe for the next
+few hours. After that she must think of something else.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+FLIGHT
+
+
+By five o'clock in the morning she was already moving softly to and fro,
+so softly as not to rouse the sleeping Marrika. By seven her lightest
+bag was packed, herself was bathed, brushed, dressed even to hat and
+gloves, and standing at her window with all the listening alert look of
+one in a waiting-room expecting a train. She was watching for the city
+to begin to stir; watching for enough traffic below in the streets to
+make her own movement there not too noticeable. Yet every moment she
+waited she was in terror lest her fate should take violent form at last
+and assail her in the moment of escape. She listened for a foot
+ascending to her room with a message from Clara demanding an audience.
+She listened for the peal of the electric bell under Harry's hasty
+hand--Harry, arrived even at this unwarranted hour with Heaven knew what
+representative of law to force the sapphire from her.
+
+But all her household was still unstirring when at last she went, soft
+step after step, down the broad and polished stair and across the empty
+hall. She went quiet, direct, determined, not at all as she had fled on
+her other perilous enterprise only yesterday. She shut the outer door
+after her without a sound and with great relief breathed in the fresh
+and faintly smoky air of morning.
+
+She walked quickly. The windows of her house still overlooked her, and
+her greatest terror was that some voice, some appearance, out of that
+house, might command her return. The street was nearly empty. A maid
+scrubbing down steps looked after her sharply, and she wondered if she
+had been recognized. She had no intention of keeping to this street, or
+even taking a car and traveling down its broad, gray and gleaming vista
+of formal houses and formal gardens that she knew and that knew her so
+well. It was a cross-town car bound for quite another locality that she
+climbed aboard. It was filled only with mechanics and workmen with picks
+and shovels. She sat crowded elbow to elbow among odors of stale
+tobacco, stale garlic, stale perspiration, and looking straight before
+her through the car window watched the aspect of the city, still gray,
+grow less gleaming and formal and finally quite dirty, and quite, quite
+dull.
+
+This was all as she had intended, very much in the direction of her
+errand, and safe. But in Market Street the car-line ended, and she was
+turned out again in this broad artery of commerce where she was in
+danger of meeting at any moment people she knew. She made straight
+across the thoroughfare to its south side, turned down Eighteenth and in
+a moment was hidden in Mission Street.
+
+Now really the worst danger of detection was over. She saw no reason why
+a woman with a small hat and a hand-bag should not pass for a
+school-teacher. Indeed, the men did let her go at that, but the
+women--women with shawls over their heads, and women with uncovered
+heads and ear-rings in their ears, and thin, weak-eyed women with bags
+in their hands--the teachers themselves, one of whom she hoped to pass
+for--all stared at her. It didn't matter much, she thought, whether they
+thought her queer or not since they couldn't stop her.
+
+She went, glancing at windows as she passed, looking for a place where
+she could go to breakfast. She turned into the first restaurant that
+offered, and after a hasty glance around it to be sure no one lurked
+there that might betray her she subsided into the clatter with relief.
+It was one more place to let time pass in, for it would be full two
+hours before she could fulfil her errand. She stayed as long as she
+dared, drinking two cups of the hideous coffee; stayed while many came
+and went, until she felt the proprietor noticing her. That revived her
+consciousness of the possible dangers still between her and the end she
+held in view. She had heard of people being arrested for suspicious
+conduct. She didn't feel sure in what this might consist, but surely
+such an appearance could be avoided by walking fast and seeming to know
+exactly where one was going.
+
+It was ten o'clock in the morning, three hours since she had left her
+house and a most reasonable time of daylight, when Flora turned out of
+the flatness of "south of Market Street" and began to mount a
+slow-rising hill. It was a wooden sidewalk she followed flanking a
+wood-paved street, and these, with the wooden fences and dusty cypress
+hedges and the houses peering over them upon her looked worn, battered
+and belonging all to the past. None the less it bore traces of having
+been a dignified past, and farther up on the crown of the hill among
+deep-bosomed trees, two or three large mansions wore the gravely
+triumphant aspect of having been brought successfully from a past empire
+into a present with all their traditions and mahogany complete. Upward
+toward these Flora was looking. Her breath was short from fast
+climbing. Her cheeks under her thin veil were hot and bright.
+
+As she neared the hilltop she glanced at a card from her chatelaine,
+consulting the address upon it. Then anxiously she scanned the
+house-fronts. It was not this one, nor this; but the square white
+mansion she came to now stood so far retired at the end of its lawn that
+she could not make out the number. As she peered a young girl came down
+the steps between the dark wings of the cypress hedge, a slim, fair,
+even-gaited creature dressed for the street and drawing on her gloves.
+As she passed Flora made sure she had seen her before. There was
+something familiar in the carriage of the girl's head and hands;
+something also like a pale reflection of another presence. Pale as it
+was, it was enough to reassure her that this was the house she wanted.
+
+She ascended the steps beneath the arch of cypress and immediately found
+herself entering an atmosphere quieter even than that of the little
+street below. It was quiet with the quiet of protectedness, as if some
+one brooding, vigilant care encircled it, defending it against all
+inroads of violent action and thought. It had been long since any young
+girl had carried such a heart of passionate hopes and fears up this
+mossed path between these peaceful flower-beds.
+
+This appearance of the place began to bring before Flora the full
+enormity and impertinence of her errand, but though her heart beat on
+her side as loud as the brass knocker upon the door, she had no mind for
+turning back.
+
+A high, cool, darkly gleaming interior, mellow with that precious tint
+of time which her own house so lacked, received her. And here, as well
+as out of doors, all the while she sat waiting she felt that protected
+peace was still the deity of the place. To Flora's eager heart time was
+streaming by, but the tall clock facing her measured it out slowly. Its
+longest golden finger had pointed out five minutes before the sweeping
+of a skirt coming down the hall brought her to her feet.
+
+Mrs. Herrick came in hatless, a honeysuckle leaf caught in her gray
+crown of hair, geraniums in her hand. Flora had never seen her so
+informal and so gay.
+
+"I would have asked you to come out into the garden, except that it's so
+wet, and there's no place to sit," she said.
+
+Flora apologized. "I knew if I came at this hour I should interrupt you,
+but really there was no help for it." She glanced down at her satchel.
+"I had to go this morning, and before I went I had to see you about the
+house. I'm going down to look at it and--and to stop a while."
+
+Mrs. Herrick hesitated, deprecated. "But you know Mrs. Britton wasn't
+satisfied with the price I asked."
+
+"Oh," said Flora promptly, "but I shall be perfectly satisfied with it,
+and I want to take possession at once."
+
+The positive manner in which she waved Clara out of her way brought up
+in Mrs. Herrick's face a faint flash of surprise; but it was gone in an
+instant, supplanted by her questioning puzzled consideration of the
+main proposition.
+
+"Oh, I hope you haven't come to tell me you want it changed," she
+protested. "You know it's quite absurd in places--quite terrible indeed.
+It's 1870 straight through, and French at that; but even such whims
+acquire a dignity if they've been long cherished. You couldn't put in or
+take out one thing without spoiling the whole character."
+
+"But I don't want to change it, I want it just as it is," Flora
+explained. "It isn't about the house itself I've come, it's about going
+down there. You see there are--some people, some friends of mine. I
+haven't promised them to show the house, but I have quite promised
+myself to show it to them, and they are only here for a few days more.
+They are going immediately." She was looking at Mrs. Herrick all the
+while she was telling her wretched lie, and now she even managed to
+smile at her. "I thought how lovely it would be if you could go there
+with me. I should like so very much to be in it first with you, to have
+you go over it with me and tell me how to take care of it, as it's
+always been done. I should hate to do it any disrespect."
+
+Her hostess smiled with ready answer. "Of course I will go down. I
+should be glad, but it must be in a day or two. Indeed, perhaps it would
+be better for you to have your people first, and I can come down, say
+Monday afternoon or Tuesday."
+
+Flora faced this unexpected turn of the matter a little blankly. "Ah,
+but the trouble is I can't go down alone."
+
+It was Mrs. Herrick's turn to look blank. "But Mrs. Britton?"
+
+"Mrs. Britton isn't going with me; she can't."
+
+"I see." Mrs. Herrick with a long, soft scrutiny seemed to be taking in
+more than Flora's mere words represented. "And you wouldn't put it off
+until she can?"
+
+"I couldn't put it off a moment," Flora ended with a little breathless
+laugh. "I do so wish you would come down with me this morning, for I
+must go, and you see I can't go alone."
+
+Mrs. Herrick, sitting there, composed, in her cool, flowing, white and
+violet gown with the red flowers in her lap, still looked at Flora
+inquiringly. "But aren't there some women in your party old enough to
+make it possible and young enough to take pleasure in it?"
+
+Flora shook her head. "Oh, no," she said. Her house of cards was
+tottering. She could not keep up her brave smiling. She knew her
+distress must be plain. Indeed, as she looked at Mrs. Herrick she saw
+the effect of it. Gaiety still looked at her out of that face, but the
+warmth, the spontaneity were gone; and the steady eyes, if anything so
+aloof could be suspicious, surely suspected her.
+
+Her heart sank. If only she had told the truth--even so much of it as to
+say there was something she could not tell. What she had said was
+unworthy not only of herself but of the end she was so desperately
+holding out for. Now in the lucid gaze confronting her she knew all her
+intentions were taking on a dubious color, stained false, like her
+words, under the dark cloud of her own misrepresentation. Yet they were
+not false, she knew. Her motives, the end she was struggling for, were
+as austere as truth itself. She could not give up without one bold
+stroke to clear them of this accusation.
+
+"Do you think there's anything queer about it?" she faltered.
+
+"Queer?" To Flora's ears that sounded the coldest word she had ever
+heard. "I hardly think I understand what you mean."
+
+"I mean is it that you think there's more in what I'm asking of you than
+I have said?" The two looked at each other and before that flat question
+Mrs. Herrick drew back a little in her chair.
+
+"I have no right to think about it at all," she said.
+
+"Well, there is," Flora insisted. "There's a great deal more. I am
+sorry. I should have told you, but I was afraid. I don't know why I was
+afraid of you, except that in this matter I've grown afraid of every
+one. It's true that there may be people going down--at least, a person.
+But it isn't, as I let you think it, a house party at all. It's for
+something, something that I can't do any other way--something," she had
+a sudden flash of insight, "that, if I could tell you, you would believe
+in, too."
+
+Mrs. Herrick's look had faded to a mere concentrated attention. "You
+mean that there is something you wish to do for whoever is going down?"
+
+"Oh, something I must do," Flora insisted.
+
+Mrs. Herrick considered a moment. "Why can't he do it for himself?" she
+threw out suddenly.
+
+It made Flora start, but she met it gallantly. "Because he won't. I
+shall have to make him."
+
+"You!" For a moment Flora knew that she was preposterous in Mrs.
+Herrick's eyes--and then that she was pathetic. Her companion was
+looking at her with a sad sort of humor. "My dear, are you sure that
+that is your responsibility?"
+
+Flora's answering smile was faint. "It seems as strange to me as it
+seems absurd to you, but I think I have done something already."
+
+"Are you sure, or has he only let you think so? We have all at some time
+longed, or even thought it was our duty, to adjust something when it
+would have been safer to have kept our hand off," Mrs. Herrick went on
+gently.
+
+"Oh, safer," Flora breathed. "Oh, yes; indeed, I know. But if something
+had been put into your hands without your choice; if all the life of
+some one that you cared about depended on you, would you think of being
+_safe_?" Flora, leaning forward, chin in hand, with shining eyes, seemed
+fairly to impart a reflection of her own passionate concentration to the
+woman before her.
+
+Mrs. Herrick, so calm in her reposeful attitude, calm as the old
+portrait on the wall behind her, none the less began to show a curious
+sparkle of excitement in her face. "If I were sure that person's life
+_did_ depend on me," she measured out her words deliberately. "But that
+so seldom happens, and it is so hard to tell."
+
+"But if you were sure, sure, sure!" Flora rang it out certainly.
+
+Mrs. Herrick in her turn leaned forward. "Ah, even then it would depend
+on him. And do you think you can make a man do otherwise than his
+nature?"
+
+"You think I should fail?" Flora took it up fearlessly. "Well, if I do,
+at least I shall have done my best. I shall have to have done my best or
+I can never forgive myself."
+
+"I see," Mrs. Herrick sighed. "But it sounds to me a risk too great for
+any reward that could come of its success." She thought. "If you could
+tell me more." Then, as Flora only looked at her wistfully and silently:
+"Isn't there some one you can confide in? Not Mrs. Britton?"
+
+"Clara? Oh, no; never!" Flora startled Mrs. Herrick with the passionate
+repudiation.
+
+"But could not Mr. Cressy--" and with that broken sentence several
+things that Mrs. Herrick had been keeping back looked out of her face.
+
+Flora answered with a stare of misery. "I know what you must be
+thinking--what you can not help thinking," she said, "that the whole
+thing is unheard-of--outrageous--especially for a girl so soon to--to
+be--" She caught her breath with a sob, for the words she could not
+speak. "But there is nothing in this disloyal to my engagement, even
+though I can not speak of it to Harry Cressy; and nothing I hope to gain
+for myself by what I am trying to do. If I succeed it will only mean I
+shall never see him--the other one--again."
+
+Mrs. Herrick rose, in her turn beseeching. "Oh, I can't help you go into
+it! It is too dubious. My dear, I know so much better than you what the
+end may mean."
+
+"I know what the end may mean, and I can't keep out of it."
+
+"But I can not go with you." There was a stern note in Mrs. Herrick's
+voice.
+
+Flora looked around the room, the sunny windows, the still shadows, the
+tall, monotonous clock, as if this were the last glimpse of peace and
+protection she would ever have. She rose and put out her hand.
+
+"I'm afraid I didn't quite realize how much I was asking of you. You
+have been very good even to listen to me. It's right, I suppose, that I
+should go alone."
+
+Mrs. Herrick looked at her in dismay. "But that is impossible!" Then, as
+Flora turned away, she kept her hand. "Think, think," she urged, "how
+you will be misunderstood."
+
+"Oh, I shall have to bear that--from the people who don't know."
+
+"Yes, and even from the one for whom you are spending yourself!"
+
+Flora gave her head a quick shake. "He understands," she said.
+
+"My dear, he is not worth it."
+
+Flora turned on her with anger. "You don't know what he is worth to me!"
+
+Mrs. Herrick looked steadily at this unanswerable argument. Her hold on
+Flora's hand relaxed, but she did not quite release it. Her brows drew
+together. "You are quite sure you must go?"
+
+Flora nodded. She was speechless.
+
+"Did Mrs. Britton know you were coming to me?"
+
+"No. She doesn't even know that I am going out of town. She must not,"
+Flora protested.
+
+"Indeed she must. You must not place yourself in such a false position.
+Write her and tell her you are going to San Mateo with me."
+
+"Oh, if you would!" Tears sprang to Flora's eyes. "But will you, even if
+I can't tell you anything?"
+
+"I shall not ask you anything. Now write her immediately. You can do it
+here while I am getting ready."
+
+She had taken authoritative command of the details of their expedition,
+and Flora willingly obeyed her. She was still trembling from the stress
+of their interview, and she blinked back tears before she was able to
+see what she was writing.
+
+It had all been brought about more quickly and completely than she had
+hoped, but it was in her mind all the while she indited her message to
+Clara, that Kerr, for whom it had been accomplished, was not yet
+informed of the existence of the scheme, or the part of guest he was to
+play. Yet she was sure that if she asked he would be promptly there. She
+wrote to him briefly:
+
+
+     At San Mateo, at the Herricks'. I want you there to-night. I have
+     made up my mind.
+
+
+As she was sealing it she started at a step approaching in the hall. She
+had wanted to conceal that betraying letter before Mrs. Herrick came
+back. She glanced quickly behind her, and saw standing between the
+half-open folding doors, the slim figure of a girl--slimmer, younger
+even than the one who had passed her at the gate, but like her, with the
+same large eyes, the same small indeterminate chin. Just at the chin the
+likeness to Mrs. Herrick failed with the strength of her last
+generation--but the eyes were perfect; and they gazed at Flora
+wondering. With the sixth sense of youth they recognized the enactment
+of something strange and thrilling.
+
+Another instant and Mrs. Herrick's presence dawned behind her
+daughter--and her voice--"Why, child, what are you doing there?"--and
+her hands seemed apprehensive in their haste to hurry the child away, as
+if, truly, in this drawing-room, for the first time, something was
+dangerous.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+THE HOUSE OF QUIET
+
+
+The day which had dawned so still and gloomy was wakening to something
+like wildness, threatening, brightening, gusty, when they stepped out of
+the train upon the platform of the San Mateo station. Clouds were piling
+gray and castle-like from the east up toward the zenith, and dark
+fragments kept tearing off the edges and spinning away across the sky.
+But between them the bright face of the sun flashed out with double
+splendor, and the thinned atmosphere made the sky seem high and far, and
+all form beneath it clarified and intense.
+
+There upon the narrow platform Mrs. Herrick hesitated a moment, looking
+at Flora. "What train do you want to meet?" she asked.
+
+Flora stood perplexed. "I hardly know. You see I can't tell how soon my
+letter would reach--would be received."
+
+"Then we would better meet them all," the elder woman decided.
+
+They drove away into the face of the wet, fresh wind and flying drops of
+rain. Flora, leaning back in the carriage, looked out through the window
+with quiet eyes. The spirited movement of the sky, the racing of its
+shadows on the grass, the rolling foliage of the trees, seen tempestuous
+against flying cloud, were alike to her consoling and inspiring. She had
+never felt so free as now, driving through the fitful weather, nor so
+safe as with this companion who was sitting silent by her side. She was
+driving away from all her complications. She was retreating to a fresh
+stronghold, where her conflict would be a duel hand to hand, and where
+the outside forces, which had harassed her and threatened ignobly to
+down her antagonist with a stab in the back, could be held at bay.
+
+Already she was looking toward the house which she had never seen as
+her own kindly castle; and the generous opening of its gate--old granite
+crowned with rose of sharon--did not disappoint her. The house was
+hidden in the swelling trees, but the drive winding beneath them gave
+glimpses through of lawns, of roses wreathing scarletly the old gray
+fountain basin, of magnolia and acacia, doubly delicate and white and
+fragile beneath the thunderous sky.
+
+The house, when finally it loomed upon them, with its irregular roofs
+topped by curious square turrets, with its tremendous ground floor
+rambling away in wings on every side, with its deep upper and lower
+verandas, looked out upon by a multitude of long French windows, seemed
+too large, too strangely imposing for a structure of wood. But whatever
+of original ugliness had been there was hidden now under a splendid
+tapestry of vines, and Flora, looking up at the rose and honeysuckle
+that panoplied its front, felt her throat swell for sheer delight.
+
+For a moment after they had left the carriage they stood together in the
+porte-cochère, looking around them. Then half wistfully, half
+humorously, Mrs. Herrick turned to Flora. "I do hope you won't want to
+buy it!"
+
+"Oh, I'm afraid I shall," Flora murmured, "that is, if--" She left her
+sentence hanging, as one who would have said "if I come out of this
+alive," and Mrs. Herrick, with a quick start of protection, laid her
+hand on Flora's arm.
+
+"If you must," she said lightly, "if you do buy it, then at least I
+shall know it is in good hands."
+
+Flora gave her a look of gratitude, not so much for the slight kindness
+of her words as for the great kindness of her attitude in thus so
+readily resuming the first assumption on which her presence there had
+been invited. That was the house itself.
+
+It was plain to Flora from the moment she set foot over the threshold
+that the house was to be no mean ally of theirs, but Mrs. Herrick was
+making it help them doubly in their hard interval of waiting. Alone
+together with unspoken, unspeakable things between them--things that
+for mere decency or honor could not be uttered--with nothing but these
+to think of, nothing but each other to look at, they must yet, in sheer
+desperation and suspense, have inevitably burst out with question or
+confession, had not the great house been there to interpose its
+personality. And the way Mrs. Herrick was making the most of that! The
+way immediately, even before she had shown anything, she began to
+revivify the spirit of the place, as the two women stood with their hats
+not yet off in the room that was to be Flora's, talking and looking out
+upon the lawn!
+
+With her silences, with her expressive self as well as with her words,
+Mrs. Herrick was reanimating it all the while they lunched and rested,
+still in the upper-rooms overlooking the garden. And later, when they
+made the tour of the house, she began unwinding from her memory
+incidents of its early beginnings, pieces of its intimate, personal
+history, as one would make a friend familiar to another friend. And
+these past histories and the rooms themselves were leading Flora away
+out of her anxious self, were soothing her prying apprehensions, were
+giving her a detachment in the present, till what she so anticipated lay
+quiescent at the back of her brain.
+
+But it was there. And now and then, when in a gust of wind the lights
+and shadows danced on the dim, polished floors, it stirred; and at the
+sound of wheels on the drive below it leaped, and all her fears again
+were in her face. At such moments the two women did look deeply at each
+other, and the suspense, the premonition, hovered in Mrs. Herrick's
+eyes. It was as unconscious, as involuntary, as Flora's start at the
+swinging of a door; but no question crossed her lips. She let the matter
+as severely alone as if it had been a jewel not her own. Yet, it came to
+Flora all at once that here, for the first time, she was with one to
+whom she could have revealed the sapphire on her neck and yet remain
+unchallenged.
+
+"Ah, you're too lovely!" she burst out at last. "It is more than I
+deserve that you should take it all like this, as if there really
+wasn't anything." The elder lady's eyes wavered a little at the plain
+words.
+
+"I'm too deeply doubtful of it to take it any other way," she said.
+
+"That is why I feel most guilty," Flora explained. "For dragging you
+into it and then--bringing it into your house." She glanced around at
+the high, quiet, damasked room. "Such a thing to happen here!"
+
+"Ah, my dear,"--Mrs. Herrick's laugh was uncertain--"the things that
+have happened here--the things that have happened and been endured and
+been forgotten! and see," she said, laying her hand on one of the walls,
+"the peace of it now!"
+
+Flora wondered. She seemed to feel such distances of life extending yet
+beyond her sight as dwindled her, tiny and innocent.
+
+"It isn't what happens, but the way we take it that makes the
+afterward," Mrs. Herrick added.
+
+The thought of an afterward had stood very dim in Flora's mind, and
+even now that Mrs. Herrick's words confronted her with it she couldn't
+fancy what it would be like. She couldn't imagine her existence going on
+at all on the other side of failure.
+
+"But suppose," she tremulously urged, "suppose there seemed only one way
+to take what had happened to you, and that way, if it failed, would
+leave you no afterward at all, no peace, no courage, nothing."
+
+Mrs. Herrick's eyes fixed her with their deep pity and their deeper
+apprehension. "There are few things so bad as that," she said slowly,
+"and those are the ones we must not touch."
+
+Flora paused a moment on the brink of her last plunge. "Do you think
+what I am going to do is such a thing as that?"
+
+"Oh, my poor child, how do I know? I hope, I pray it is not!" Her
+fingers closed on Flora's hand, and the girl clung to the kind grasp. It
+was a comfort, though it could not save her from the real finality.
+
+In spite of the consciousness of a friendly presence in the house her
+fears increased as the afternoon waned, and her thoughts went back to
+what she had left behind her, and forward to what might be coming--the
+one person whom she so longed for, and so dreaded to see. He might be on
+his way now. He might at this moment be hurrying down the hedged lane
+from the station; and when he should come, and when they two were face
+to face, there would be no other "next time" for them. Everything was
+crystalizing, getting hard. Everything was getting too near the end to
+be malleable any more. It was her last chance to make him relinquish his
+unworthy purpose; perhaps his last chance to save himself from
+captivity. She found she hadn't a thing left unsaid, an argument left
+unused. What could she do that she had not done before, except to show
+him by just being here, accessible and ready to serve him at any risk,
+how much she cared? Could his generosity resist that?
+
+Beyond the fact of getting him away safe she didn't think. Beyond that
+nothing looked large to her, nothing looked definite. The returning of
+the sapphire itself seemed simple beside it, and the fact that her
+position in the matter might never be explained of no importance.
+
+Now while every moment drew her nearer her greatest moment she grew more
+absent, more strained, more restless, more intently listening, more
+easily starting at the lightest sound; until, at last, when the late day
+touched the rooms with fiery sunset colors, her friend, watchful of her
+changing mood, ready at every point to palliate circumstance, drew her
+out into the garden.
+
+The wind, which had fallen with approaching evening, was only a whisper
+among the trees. The greenish-white bodies of statues in the shrubbery
+glowed ruddy. Gathering their skirts from the grass that glittered with
+the drops of the last shower, arm in arm the two women walked down the
+broad central gravel drive between ribbon beds of flowers. From here
+numerous paths paved with white stone went wandering under snowball
+trees and wild apple, losing themselves in shrubbery. But one made a
+clear turn across the lawn for the rose-garden, where in the midst a
+round pool of water lay like a flaming bit of the sunset sky. Among the
+bushes red and rose and white, the elder woman in her black, the younger
+in her gown more glowing, with a veil over her hair, walked, and,
+loitering, looked down into the water, seeing their faces reflected,
+and, behind, the tangled brambles and the crimson sky. They did not
+speak, but at last their companionship was peaceful, was perfect. The
+only sounds were the sleepy notes of birds and that faint, high whisper
+of the tree tops on an evening that is not still.
+
+Loud and shrill and shriller and more piercing, from the west wing of
+the house, overhanging the garden, the sound reached them--an alarum
+that set Flora's heart to leaping. Startled apart, they listened.
+
+"Would that be--is that for you?"
+
+"I think it's for me."
+
+The words came from them simultaneously, and almost at the same instant
+Flora had started across the lawn. The sight of an aproned maid coming
+out on the veranda and peering down the garden set her running fleetly.
+
+"It's a telephone for Miss Gilsey," the girl said.
+
+"Oh, thank you," Flora panted.
+
+She knew so well the voice she had expected at the other end of the wire
+that the husky, boyish note which reached her, attenuated by distance,
+struck her with dismay and disappointment.
+
+"Ella, oh, yes; yes; Ella." What was she saying? Ella was using the
+telephone as if it were a cabinet for secrets.
+
+"Clara told me you were down there," she was explaining. "I saw her this
+morning, yes. Well,"--and she could hear Ella draw in her breath--"I'm
+so relieved! I thought you'd be, too, to know. I _was_ perfectly right.
+She was after him."
+
+Flora faltered, "After whom?" There flashed through her mind more than
+one person that, by this time, Clara might possibly be after.
+
+"Why, after papa, of course!" Ella's injured surprise brought her back
+to the romance of Judge Buller. Her voice rose in sheer bewilderment.
+"Well?"
+
+Ella's voice rose triumphantly. "I got it out of her myself. I just came
+right out to her at last. She seemed awfully surprised that I knew; but
+she owned up to it, and what do you think? I bought her off!"
+
+"Bought her off?" Flora cried. Each fact that Ella brought forth seemed
+to her more preposterous than the last.
+
+"Why, yes, it's too ridiculous; what do you think she wanted?"
+
+At that question Flora's heart seemed fairly to stand still. That was
+the very question she had been asking herself for days, and asking in
+vain.
+
+Ella's voice was coming to her faint as a voice from another world. "She
+wanted that little, little picture--that picture of the man called
+Farrell Wand. Don't you remember, papa mentioned it at supper that
+evening at the club? Isn't it funny she remembered it all this time?
+Well, she wanted it dreadfully, but Harry wanted it, too, and papa said
+he had promised it to Harry; but I got it first and gave it to her."
+Ella's voice ended on a high note of triumph.
+
+Flora's, if anything, rose higher in despair. "Oh, Ella!"
+
+"Doesn't it seem ridiculous," Ella argued, "that if she really wanted
+him she'd give him up for that?"
+
+"Oh, no--I mean yes," Flora stammered. "Yes, of course! thank you, Ella,
+very much--very much." The last words were hardly audible. The receiver
+fell jangling into its bracket, and Flora leaned against the wall by the
+telephone and closed her eyes.
+
+For a moment all she could see was Clara with that little, little
+picture. How well she could remember how Clara had looked that night of
+the club supper!
+
+From the moment Judge Buller had spoken of the picture, how all three of
+them had changed, Clara and Kerr and Harry. Everything that had seemed
+so phantasmal then, everything she had put down as a figment of her own
+imagination, had meant just this plain fact. All three of them had
+wanted the picture. For his own reason Kerr had turned aside from the
+chase, but Harry had stood with it to the last, and now, when finally
+the prize had been assured to him, Clara had it!
+
+At this moment she had it in her hand. At this moment she knew what was
+the aspect of the figure in the picture, whether it showed a face, and,
+if a face, whose. Flora's hands opened and closed. "Oh," she whispered
+to the great silence of the great house awaiting him; "where is he? Why
+isn't he here?"
+
+All those terrible things which might be happening beyond her reach
+processioned before her. Had Clara already snapped the trap of the law
+upon Kerr? And if she hadn't yet, what could be done to hold her off?
+Flora turned again to the telephone. Slowly she took down the receiver
+and gave into the bright mouthpiece of the instrument the number of her
+own house.
+
+Presently the voice of Shima spoke to her. Mrs. Britton had gone out to
+dinner.
+
+"Tell her, Shima," Flora commanded, "tell her to come down on the
+earliest train." She hesitated, then finished in a firm voice. "Tell her
+not to do anything until she has seen me."
+
+Shima would tell her--but Mrs. Britton had been out all day. He did not
+know when she would be back.
+
+The words sounded ominous in Flora's ears. She turned away. Was
+everything to be finished just as she had light enough to move, but
+before she had a chance?
+
+The sound of spinning wheels on the drive startled her to fresh hope,
+and sent her hurrying down the stair. It was the phaëton returning from
+the last train. Through the open door she saw the figure of Mrs. Herrick
+expectant on the veranda. Then the carriage came into the porte-cochère
+and passed. With a rush she reached the veranda, and stood there looking
+after it. She wouldn't believe her eyes--she couldn't--that it had
+returned again empty.
+
+Mrs. Herrick's voice was asking her, "What shall we do? Shall we serve
+dinner now, or wait a little longer?"
+
+"Oh, it's no use," Flora murmured, "he won't come to-night. He'll never
+come." She drooped against the tall porch pillar.
+
+"My poor child!" Mrs. Herrick took her passive hand. If she read in the
+profound discouragement of Flora's face that something more had
+transpired than a mere non-appearance, she did not show it, but waited,
+alert and quiet, while they gazed together out over the darkening
+garden.
+
+It was the time of twilight when the sky is so much brighter than the
+earth. Across the lawns between the bushes from hedge to hedge the veil
+of the obscuring light was coming in; and through it the avenue of
+willows marched darkly. Their leaves moved a little. Flora watched the
+ripple of their tops, clear on the bright sky, and deeper down among
+mysterious branches there was a sense of movement where the eyes could
+not see. There was a curious flick, flick, flicker--a progression, a
+passing from the far dark end of the willow avenue toward where it met
+the vista of the drive. Flora's eyes, absently, involuntarily, followed
+the movement. She felt Mrs. Herrick's hand suddenly close on hers.
+
+"Is some one coming?"
+
+They clung to each other, peering timorously down the drive. A little
+gust of wind took the garden, and before the trees had ceased to tremble
+and whiten a man had emerged from their shadow and was advancing upon
+them up the middle of the drive.
+
+Flora's heart leaped at sight of him. All her impulse was to fly to meet
+him, but she felt Mrs. Herrick's hand tighten upon her wrist as if it
+divined her madness.
+
+His light stick aswing in his hand, his step free and incautious as
+ever, gray and slender and seeming to look more at the ground than at
+them, the two women watched him drawing near. His was the seeming of a
+quiet guest at the quietest of house parties. To meet him Flora saw she
+must meet him on the high ground of his reserve. As he came under the
+light of the porte-cochère his look, his greeting, his hand, were first
+for Mrs. Herrick.
+
+"We were afraid we had missed you altogether," said she.
+
+"It was I who somehow missed your carriage, was hardly expecting to be
+expected at such an hour."
+
+Flora watched them meeting each other so gallantly with a trembling
+compunction. Mrs. Herrick, who trusted her, was giving her hand in
+sublime ignorance. It was vain that Flora told herself she had given
+warning. She knew she had thrown the softening veil of her spiritual
+crisis over the ugly material fact. Had she said, "I want you to uphold
+me while I meet a thief whom I love and wish to protect. He's
+magnificent in all other ways except for this one obsession," she knew
+Mrs. Herrick simply would have cried, "Impossible, outrageous!" Yet
+there they stood together, and as Flora looked at them she could not
+have told which was of the finer temper. Kerr's bearing was so unruffled
+that it seemed as if he had flown too high to feel the storm Flora was
+passing through. But when he turned toward her, in spite of himself,
+there was eagerness in his manner. He looked questioningly at her, as if
+no time had intervened, as if a moment before he had said to her through
+the carriage window, "I will give you twenty-four hours," and now her
+time had come to speak.
+
+Only the thought that time was crowding him into a bag's end gave her
+courage to vow she would speak that night. Yet not now, while they stood
+just met in the deepening dusk, in the sweet breath of the early
+flowers; nor later when they passed in friendly fashion, the three of
+them, through fairy labyrinths of arch and mirror, into the long, high,
+glistening room, whose round table, spread, seemed dwarfed to mushroom
+height; nor yet, while this semblance of companionship was between them,
+and the great proportions of the place lifting oppression, left them as
+unconscious of walls and roof as though they were met in the open. The
+clock twice marked the passing hour. She had never heard Mrs. Herrick
+speak so flowingly nor Kerr listen so well, placing his questions nicely
+to draw out the thread of her theme. Yet Flora guessed his thought must
+be fixed on their approaching moment, as hers was--on the moment when
+they should be ready to quit the table and Mrs. Herrick would leave them
+to themselves.
+
+It was the appearance of the aproned maid that broke their unity. The
+last course was on the table, the last taste of its pungent fruit
+essence on their tongues--and what was the girl's errand now? The eye of
+her mistress was inquiring.
+
+"Some one has come, Mrs. Herrick." The woman's proper formula seemed to
+fail her. She looked as if she had been frightened.
+
+"Some one?" Mrs. Herrick showed asperity. "What name?"
+
+"He is coming in." As she spoke the girl shrank a little to one side.
+
+With his long coat open, hanging from the armpits, with ruffled hair,
+and lips apart, and from breathlessness a little smiling, Harry appeared
+in the doorway. Kerr leaned forward. Mrs. Herrick did not move. She was
+facing the last arrival and she was smiling more flexibly, more
+naturally, than Harry; but it was Flora who found the first word.
+
+"You! I--I thought it was Clara." She was struggling for nonchalance,
+for poise, at this worst blow, so unexpected.
+
+"Clara won't be down," Harry said, advancing. "How d'ye do, Mrs.
+Herrick? How d'ye do, Kerr?"
+
+"How d'ye do?" said the Englishman, without rising.
+
+Flora gripped the arms of her chair to keep from springing up in sheer
+nervous terror. A possible purpose in Harry's coming, that even Mrs.
+Herrick's presence would not defer, shot through her mind. Was he alone?
+Or were there others--men here for a fearful purpose--waiting beyond in
+the hall? But Harry had turned his back upon the door behind him with a
+finality that declared whatever danger had come into the house was
+complete in his presence.
+
+"I've dined, thanks," he said, but, stripping off his greatcoat,
+accepted a chair and the glass of cordial Mrs. Herrick offered him. The
+ruddy, hard quality of his face, were it divested of its present smile,
+Flora thought, might well have frightened the maid; but, for all that,
+it was not so implacable as Kerr's face confronting it. The look with
+which he met the intrusion had a quality more bitter than the challenge
+of an antagonist, more jealous than a mere lover's; and that bitterness,
+that jealousy which was between them came out stingingly through their
+small pleasantness. It could not be, Flora thought in terror, that Mrs.
+Herrick intended to leave these two enemies to each other! Mrs. Herrick
+had risen; and Flora, following, saw both men, also uprisen, hang
+hesitatingly, as if unready to be deserted; yet with well-filled
+glasses, and newly smoking tobacco, both were caught.
+
+Then Kerr, with a quick dash of his hand, picked up his glass. "Let us
+be Continental," he begged, and followed close at Flora's side. Without
+moving his lips Kerr was speaking. "What does this mean?"
+
+She sensed the anger in his smothered voice, but she dared not look at
+him.
+
+"I have no idea; but I will see you."
+
+"When?"
+
+Her answer leaped to her mind and her lips at the same moment.
+
+"In the rotunda when the house is quiet."
+
+Harry had followed leisurely in their wake. The flush of haste had
+subsided in his face, and when the four regrouped themselves in the
+high, darkly-paneled room, among the low lights, Flora remarked his
+extraordinary composure. Bitter he might be; but all the nervousness,
+suspicion, uneasiness, that he had shown of late had vanished. There
+was a tremendous confidence about him, the confidence of the player who
+holds cards that must win the game, and sits back waiting for his
+moment.
+
+But she was ready to laugh at him in his security. He had underestimated
+his opponent. In spite of him she was to have her meeting with Kerr!
+Harry had waited too long to prevent that, whatever he might do
+afterward. In this inspired moment she felt herself touching conquering
+heights which before she had only touched in imagination. She felt
+enough power in herself to move even such a mountain of obstinacy as
+Kerr. She stole a look at him--a look of glad intelligence. He
+understood as if she had spoken. They were to meet, while all the house
+slept fast, to meet for his great renunciation. Then, in the morning,
+when Harry was ready with whatever move he was holding back, Kerr would
+be gone. There would be no Kerr--but she must not think of that! She
+glanced at him again in the thick of the talk, and caught his eye upon
+her, puzzled, and, she thought, with a glimmer of doubt.
+
+She smiled; and smiled again at the ease with which she reassured him,
+merely by looking at him. He should see, in the end, how true she could
+be!
+
+He was talking tremendously, flinging off fireworks of words, but she
+was curiously aware that Mrs. Herrick and Harry were looking more at her
+than at Kerr. She felt herself the dominant spirit. She saw them
+acknowledge it, swept along by the high tide of her mood that was rising
+to meet her great decisive moment. Yet on the surface the strong pulse
+of it appeared as ripples--words, smiles, gay gestures, laughter--rising
+like the last bubble on a wave's crest. She was not consciously acting;
+she was inspired by the power of what she concealed and must conceal.
+And when she left them it was like a triumphant exit; almost it seemed
+to her as if she might hear their applause following her.
+
+In the room where, some eight hours before, she and Mrs. Herrick had
+talked, Flora waited, fully dressed. It had been early when they had
+separated. The strain of the four together had been terrific; and she
+was still feeling it, though an hour had passed. She was feeling that,
+now her situation was upon her, she was alone. Mrs. Herrick could only
+be near her, not with her, and Kerr was still an unknown
+quantity--except that he was fire.
+
+And there was Harry, with his terrible certainty, and no apparent thing
+to account for it. It could not be there were men in the house without
+the servants remarking it; but in the garden? She peered out upon it.
+Only tree shadows moved upon the lawn. Nothing glimmered in the walks or
+drives. The solitude held her like an enchantment. She listened for the
+small sounds in the house to cease, for the lights in the lower story to
+go out, proclaiming all the servants were in bed. Even after the
+stillness she waited--waited to be sure it was the long stillness.
+
+Finally she crept to the door and opened it boldly wide.
+
+She stood where she was upon the threshold trembling in a cruel fright.
+A gas-jet burning far up at the end of the hall, threw a dim light down
+the pale, pinkish, naked vista, void of furniture, window or curtain;
+and, leaning against the blank wall almost opposite her door, and
+directly facing her, was Harry.
+
+Without speaking they looked at each other. He was fully dressed, but
+lacking his shoes, as she noted in the acuteness of her startled senses.
+The furtive suggestion of those shoeless feet struck her with
+horror--formless, unreasoning. It was like an evil dream to find him
+there, stolen to her door in the night, waiting outside it without a
+sound, looking her steadily, hardily in the eye without a word.
+
+She tried to speak, but, with terror sobbing in her throat, the words
+failed. She made a step forward with a crazy impulse to rush past him.
+
+He straightened, with a quick movement toward her. She recoiled before
+him, precipitately retreated, closed the door, shot the bolt, and
+leaned, for faintness, against the wall. She expected each moment to
+hear him tap. She neither heard a knock nor the sound of soft, departing
+feet. He was still there! He was on guard! He had had good reason for
+his terrible certainty! He had foreseen what her plan might be, and she
+knew he would no more let her get past him down the hall than the
+turnkey will let the wretched prisoner escape.
+
+The last flicker of her courage died at that thought. All her fine
+exultation was beaten out by the fact of the brute force outside her
+door. She could not get to Kerr now. Cowering behind her door she could
+only fancy him waiting for her in the rotunda while the moments
+lengthened into hours, each moment distrusting her more.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+CLARA'S MARKET
+
+
+All night she sat awake huddled under her greatcoat in the chilly
+darkness. She could not lie down, she could not close her eyes. At long
+intervals she heard the tread of unshod feet along the hall, and then
+she held her breath lest at her slightest stir they approach her door.
+Why, since he wanted the sapphire, hadn't he tried to get it from her
+when he had had her unawares, upon her threshold with the house asleep?
+It began to seem to her as if he were waiting, as if he were forced to
+wait, for some appointed moment. She knew if it were his moment it would
+be hers, too, as long as she had the sapphire upon her. She recalled
+fearfully the moment when she had crouched against the window with her
+hand protecting the jewel, and Harry's hand grasping her wrist. He
+would know well enough where to find it now. Oh, the restless
+unconcealable thing! Where could she hide it?
+
+She took the pear-shaped pouch that swung always before her on her long
+gold chain. She had repudiated that hiding-place before, but now the
+more obvious the better--now that both men supposed she carried the
+jewel far hidden out of sight. Without moving from the bed where she was
+crouched, cramped and cold, she made the exchange, leaving the chain
+still around her neck, dropping the jewel into the pouch, where it would
+swing free, so carelessly dangling as to be beyond suspicion, but never
+beyond the reach of her hand.
+
+It was a pale, splendid dawning full of clouds when she feel asleep.
+
+Broad sunlight filled her room when she was awakened by a knocking at
+her door. She sprang from the bed and went to it. She was not to be come
+in upon by any unwelcome visitor. But it was Mrs. Herrick; and Flora,
+with a murmur of relief, since this was the one person she did want to
+see, drew her inside.
+
+"Why, my child, you haven't slept, at least not properly." Mrs. Herrick
+herself looked anxious and weary. "I've come to tell you that Mrs.
+Britton is here. She came an hour ago."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"In the breakfast-room with Mr. Cressy."
+
+"Oh," Flora cried, "you know I didn't expect them. I didn't want them.
+It wasn't for them I asked you to come."
+
+"But can't you tell me what it is you're afraid of?" the other urged.
+"Between us can't we prevent it? Is there nothing I can do to help you?"
+
+"Ah, if you knew how much you have already helped me by just being
+here."
+
+Her companion laughed a little. "Can't I do something more active than
+that?"
+
+Flora pondered. "Where is Mr. Kerr?"
+
+"In the garden, in the willow walk."
+
+"Do you think you can manage that the others don't get at him?"
+
+"I can; if he doesn't want to get at them," Mrs. Herrick replied.
+"Against a man like that, my dear," she aimed it gravely at Flora, "one
+can do nothing."
+
+But Flora had no answer for the warning. "I must see Clara immediately,"
+she said.
+
+"But not without breakfast," Mrs. Herrick protested. "I will send you up
+something. Remember that _she_ never abuses herself, so she's always
+fresh--and so she's always equal to the occasion."
+
+Mrs. Herrick went. Flora looked into the mirror. Almost for the first
+time in ten days she thought of her appearance. If it was, as Mrs.
+Herrick said, a factor of success, something must be done for it, for it
+was dreadful. The best she could do revived a pale replica of the vivid
+creature who had been wont to regard her from her glass. Yet her black
+gown, thin and trailing far behind her, and her hair wound high, by very
+force of their contrasted color gave her a real brilliance as they gave
+her a seeming height. But she descended to the breakfast-room with
+trepidation, and stood a full minute before the door gathering courage
+to go in.
+
+When she did open it, it was so suddenly that both occupants faced her
+with a start. They were standing close together, and between them, on
+the glare of the white table-cloth, lay a little heap of gold. As they
+peered at her she saw that both were highly excited, but in Clara it
+showed like a cold sparkle; in Harry it gloomed like a menace. His hand
+hovered, clenched, above the money in a panic of irresolution; then, as
+if with an involuntary relax of nerves, opened and let fall one last
+piece of gold. Like a flash the whole disappeared in a sweep of Clara's
+hand. It passed before Flora's eyes like a prestidigitator's trick, so
+rapid as to seem unreal, and left her staring. Harry gave Clara a look,
+half suspicious, half entreating; and then, to Flora's astonishment,
+turned away without a word to either of them.
+
+Clara stood still, even after the door had closed upon Harry, and oddly,
+and rather horridly, she wore the same aspect she had worn the day when
+she had looked intently and absorbedly upon the rifled contents of
+Flora's room.
+
+"Good morning," she said, and, pushing up her little misty veil, sat
+down with her back to the deserted breakfast table, and waited meekly,
+like one who has been summoned.
+
+"I am very glad you've come," Flora said. Her wits were still all
+a-flutter from the appearance of that little heap of gold. She came
+forward and stood in Harry's place. She was face to face with the person
+and the question, but before the great import of it, and before the
+marble front of Clara's patience, she felt helpless. There was silence
+in the room, perfect silence in the garden; but moving along the hedged
+walk all at once she saw the flutter of Mrs. Herrick's gown, and then in
+profile Kerr beside her. The sight of him gave her her proper
+inspiration. She turned upon Clara.
+
+"What are you going to do with the picture of Farrell Wand?"
+
+For the first time she saw Clara startled. Her lips parted, and the
+breath that came and went between them was audible. But she was herself
+again before she spoke. "Do with it? Why I don't know." Her fingers
+drummed the table.
+
+"Whatever you do," Flora began, "please, oh, please don't do anything
+immediately."
+
+Clara's eyebrows rose like graceful swallows. "You seem to anticipate
+pretty clearly what I _am_ going to do."
+
+"I suppose you're going to do what any one would who had a clue, and
+could bring a person to justice," Flora candidly responded. "But if ever
+I have made anything easy for you, Clara, won't you this time make it
+easy for me? I'm not asking you to give up the picture, I'm only asking
+you to wait."
+
+Clara nodded toward the window, through which Kerr could still be seen
+with Mrs. Herrick. "On account of him?"
+
+"On account of him."
+
+For the first time Clara smiled. It crept out upon her face, as it were
+involuntarily, but she sat there smiling in contemplation for quite ten
+seconds. At last, "You want me to suppress my information? My dear
+Flora, don't you think you want me to do more than is honest?"
+
+"Honest!" Flora cried. The words sounded hideous to her on Clara's
+tongue; and yet what right had she, she thought with shame, to judge of
+Clara's honesty when she herself was leagued with a thief? "Clara," she
+said humbly, before this upholder of the right, "I can't pretend I'm not
+suppressing things. I've only asked you to see me before you do anything
+more. Now, you've come. Will you tell me one thing--did you bring the
+picture with you?"
+
+Clara weighed it. "Well, if I did--"
+
+This was the considering Clara, and Flora realized whatever she could
+expect from her she couldn't expect mercy. It was another thing she must
+appeal to.
+
+"Clara," she urged, "wait three days, and you shall have the whole of
+it. You have only the picture now. You shall have the jewel, too. Then
+you can get the reward and still be--honest."
+
+She let the word fall into the silence fearfully, as if she were afraid
+Clara might detect its sneer. But this time Clara neither smiled nor
+frowned.
+
+"It isn't the reward I'm thinking about. That's really very little,
+considering."
+
+"Twenty thousand dollars!"
+
+"Would that be much to you?"
+
+"No," Flora admitted; "at least I mean I could pay it."
+
+"Well, then," Clara triumphed, "why, the picture alone, if it's worth
+anything, is worth more than that." With a bird-like lifting of the head
+she gave a sidelong interrogative glance.
+
+Flora, for a moment, steadily returned the look. It was coming over her
+what Clara meant; a meaning so simple it was absurd she had not thought
+of it before--so hateful that it was all she could do to face it. She
+felt a tightness in her throat that was not tears. Shame and anger
+contended in her. Oh, for the power to have refused that shameful
+bargain--to have scorned it! She turned away. She closed her eyes. In
+her mind she saw the figure of Kerr moving quietly about the winding
+walks with Mrs. Herrick. She faced sharply about. "What is it worth to
+you?"
+
+Clara put her off with the last sweet meekness of her cleverness.
+"Whatever it's worth to you--and him."
+
+Flora was in command of herself now. "There are some things I can not
+set a price on. If this is what you have come down for, we are simply
+waiting for you to name it." She looked over Clara's head. She had stood
+abashed when Clara had put on the majesty of right, but now it was Clara
+herself who was abashed, not at the thing itself, but at the fact of
+having to utter it. She sat grasping one of her gloves in her doubled
+fist; and, leaning forward, with her eyes like jewels in her little pale
+face and the white aura of her veil, waited as if she thought that by
+some silent agency of understanding Flora would presently take up a pen
+and write the desired figure in her check-book.
+
+But Flora stood inexorable, straight and black, crowned with her helmet
+of gleaming hair; and, with her hands behind her, looked over Clara's
+head through the window into the garden. She would not help Clara gloss
+over this ugly fact.
+
+A curious grimace distorted Clara's features, as if with an effort she
+gulped something bitter, and then into the silence her voice fell--a
+gasp, a breath--"Fifty thousand."
+
+All sums had become the same to Flora, even her year's income. As if she
+were verily afraid Clara might take it back, she turned precipitately to
+a writing-table. But Clara had risen, and though still pale, in a
+measure she seemed to have recovered herself.
+
+"Wait. I can't give it to you now. I will meet you here in two hours and
+bring the picture. You can let me have it then."
+
+"Oh, two hours!" Flora objected.
+
+But Clara was firm. "No, I can't bring it sooner. It will make no
+difference in your affair." She was panting in her excitement. "In two
+hours you shall have the picture here. I promise you."
+
+Flora wondered. Depth below depth! She could never seem to get to the
+bottom of this business. There was only one thing she could count on,
+and that was Clara's impeccable honor in living up to a bargain. Flora
+sealed that bargain now. She held out her fluttering slip of paper,
+still wet with ink.
+
+"Very well, in two hours--but take this now. I would rather you did."
+
+Clara reached the tips of her fingers, touched the paper--and then it
+was no longer in Flora's hand, and Clara was walking from her across the
+room.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+TOUCHE
+
+
+Left alone, Flora glanced rapidly around her. Now for a sally, now for a
+dash straight for Kerr. The shortest way was what she wanted. Opening
+doors lately had led to too many surprises. She pushed aside the long
+curtains and stepped out through the French window upon the veranda.
+Rapidly her eyes swept the garden. Far down between the gray, slim
+branches of willows at last she made out the flutter of a skirt. She
+sighed relief to think Mrs. Herrick still at her post, and began to
+hurry down the broad unshaded drive. Her steps sounded loud on the
+gravel, and presently to her excited ears they sounded double. Then she
+realized the truth. Some one else was walking behind her. She thought by
+not looking over her shoulder she could avoid stopping; but in a moment
+Harry's voice hailed her. It was still far enough behind for her to hope
+she could ignore it. She swept on as if she had not heard. Once around
+the turn of the drive, she would be in sight of succor. She could trust
+to Mrs. Herrick to manage Harry. She made a little rush around the loop
+and looked down the long vista of the willows.
+
+A hundred yards distant she saw the two standing. Kerr presented his
+back, and with his head a little canted forward seemed to listen,
+absorbed in his companion. But that companion was a smaller figure than
+Mrs. Herrick, and her veil made an aura of filmy white around her face.
+The sight of her was enough to stop Flora short, and in that instant
+Harry, making a cut across the flower-beds, caught up with her. He
+stopped as abruptly as she, and gazed with a dismay that surpassed her
+own. For an instant she thought he was about to make a dash down the
+walk for them. Then he caught Flora's hand and pulled her back. There
+was no help for it, she thought. Her other hand crept downward
+stealthily and gathered up her swinging pouch of gold. Trembling, she
+let him drag her back, but when they faced each other behind the plumes
+and swords of a great pampas clump she was shocked at the emotion in his
+face; and as if what he had just seen had given the last touch, his
+voice had risen a key, and between every half-dozen words it broke for
+breath.
+
+"Look here, Flora," he began; "I know you've been trying to give me the
+slip ever since night before last. I frightened you then. I didn't mean
+to, but you had no business to keep the ring after what I told you. No,
+I'm not going to touch you," as she shrank back against the pampas
+swords, "but I want you to give it to me, yourself, right here and now."
+
+She looked up into his face, burning fiery in the sun beating down on
+his bare head. "No, no, Harry; I shan't give it to you. Last time I said
+I would give it to you for a good reason, but now I wouldn't give it to
+you for anything."
+
+"You don't know what you're doing," he cried.
+
+"I do; I know as well as you that this is a part of the Crew Idol. I've
+known it all along, and when the time comes I'm going to give it myself
+to Mr. Purdie, but not until that time."
+
+Harry passed his hand over his face with an inarticulate sound. Then,
+"You will ruin us!" he choked.
+
+"I shall tell the truth, whatever comes," she exulted. To tell the truth
+and keep on telling it--that, in her passion of relief at speaking out
+at last, was all she wanted! But Harry fell back. He changed
+countenance. He recovered himself.
+
+"Look here, Flora; if you do I'm going to leave you. I'm going to leave
+you to what you've chosen."
+
+She met it steadily. "I'm glad you say so. I've been thinking for days
+that it would be better so."
+
+"Have you?" he said in a low voice, looking at her earnestly. "Of
+course, I know the reason of that. I meant it to be different, but now
+there's no help. I--"
+
+With a motion too quick for her to escape he stooped and kissed her
+lightly. To that moment she had pitied him, but his touch she loathed.
+She thrust him away with both hands. He turned. Without speaking,
+without looking at her again he walked away. She watched him with a
+desperate feeling of being abandoned, of losing something powerful and
+valuable. The faint, thin screech of a locomotive from a station far
+down the line made him pause, and turn, and gaze under his hand in the
+strong sun. So for a moment she saw him, a lowering, peering figure
+moving away from her over the lawn between broad flower-beds. Then he
+disappeared among the shrubbery.
+
+This encounter, that had stopped her in full open field, had not been
+the fatal thing she had feared. It had been a peril met that nerved her
+to a higher courage. Now she could walk gallantly to the most uncertain
+moment of her life. Between the glimmering willows down the long still
+avenue she passed, her flowing draperies borne backwards as by
+triumphant airs. The wind of her approach seemed to reach the two still
+far in front of her.
+
+They turned and watched her drawing nearer, and before she had quite
+reached them Kerr stretched out his hand as if to help her over a last
+rough place, and drew her toward him and held her beside him with his
+fingers lightly clasped around her wrist. She saw that he looked pale,
+worn, as he had not been last night, and, what struck her most
+strangely, angry. The hand that held hers shook with the violent pulse
+that was beating in it. He turned to Clara.
+
+"Will you pardon us, Mrs. Britton?" Then after another patient moment,
+"Miss Gilsey has something to say to me." Still he made no motion to
+move away, and at last Clara seemed to understand what was expected of
+her. She flushed, and in the middle of that color her eyes flashed
+double steel. For the first time in Flora's memory she was at a loss.
+She passed them without a word.
+
+Kerr looked after the little brilliant figure, moving daintily away
+through sun and shadow, with deep disgust in his face. But when he
+turned to Flora disgust lifted to high severity. It was she who appeared
+the guilty one, and he the accuser.
+
+"Why didn't you come, last night?"
+
+"I couldn't. _He_ was there, Harry, outside my door."
+
+"In God's name! What did you tell him?"
+
+"Nothing. We did not speak--but I couldn't get past him!" The suspicion
+in his face was more than she could bear. "You must believe me--for, if
+you don't, we're both lost!"
+
+He had her by both wrists, now, and gently made her face him. "I have
+believed in you to the extent of coming alone to a place I know nothing
+of, because you wanted me. Now that I am here, what is it you have to
+say to me?"
+
+"Oh, nothing more than I have said before," she pleaded; "only that, ten
+times more earnestly."
+
+"You extraordinary child!" At first, he was pure amazement. "You've
+brought me so far, you've come so far yourself--you've got us both here
+in such danger, to tell me only this? How could you be so mad--so
+cruel?"
+
+She had locked her hands in front of her until the nails showed white
+with the pressure. "It was more dangerous there than here. You don't
+know what has happened since I saw you. And I thought if you and I could
+only be alone together, without the fear of _them_ always between us, I
+could show you, I could persuade you--" Before his look she broke down.
+"Well--you see, they followed us--they're here."
+
+"Grant it, they are." He seemed to laugh at them. "You have still your
+chance. Give everything to me and I can save you still."
+
+"'Save _me_?' Oh, nothing could happen to me so terrible as having you
+break my heart like this! If I should give the sapphire to you I should
+lose you--even the thought of you--for ever. Nothing could ever be right
+with us again! Won't you--" she pleaded, "won't you go?" and lifting her
+hands, taking his face between them, "Won't you, because I love you?"
+
+He stood steady to this assault, and smiled down upon her. "Without you
+and without it I will not budge. Come now, this is the end. I never
+meant to do another thing."
+
+She covered her face with her hands.
+
+"Come, come." His voice was urging her, now very gentle. "It's more for
+your sake than for the jewel now." And his arm around her shoulders was
+gently forcing her to walk beside him not toward the drive, but away
+into the tree-grown sheltered wing of the garden. By interlacing paths,
+from the tremulous gray willows under the somber, clashing eucalyptus
+spears, under dark wings of cypress they were moving. She was bracing in
+every nerve against the unnerving of his presence.
+
+It had been always so. Even across the distance of a room the mere sight
+of him had had for her the power to summon those wild spirits of the
+soul and body that turn reason to a vapor. And now so close, with his
+arm around her, that same power she had felt when she saw him first, the
+power that had made her come out and be herself then, the power that
+had overwhelmed her in the little restaurant, was leagued against her
+again to make her do this one more thing, which she wouldn't do. Never,
+never! Despairing, she wondered that such an evil motive could have such
+strength.
+
+"Where have you got it now?" she heard him asking, and she pointed
+downward toward where the pouch at her knee was swinging to and fro.
+"Take it up, then," and like a hypnotized creature she gathered it into
+her hand. But, once she had it, she held it clenched against him.
+
+"You're going to give it to me," he prompted, "aren't you?--aren't you?"
+and looking steadily in her face his hand shut softly on her wrist, and
+held out her clenched hand in front of her. And still they walked,
+slowly. Like a pendulum the long gold chain swung from her clenched
+fingers. To the tree-top birds they seemed as quiet as two lovers
+speaking of their wedding-day. She felt her tension give way in this
+quiet--her hand relax.
+
+"Dearest." The word brought up her eyes to his with a start of
+tenderness. "Open it," he said, and her hand, involuntarily, sprung the
+pouch wide. They stared together into it. The little hollow golden shell
+was empty.
+
+For a moment it held her incredulous. Then, faint and sick, all the
+foundations of her faith reeling, she slowly raised her eyes to him in
+accusation. She was not ready for the terrible sternness in his.
+
+"Have you lied to me?" he asked in a low voice. "Have you given it to
+Cressy?"
+
+"No, no, no!" she cried in horror. "It was there! I put it there myself
+this morning!" They looked at each other now equally sincere and aghast.
+
+"But you have seen him; you've been near him?" he demanded.
+
+She gasped out the whole truth. "This morning! He left me. He kissed
+me."
+
+"Then, my God, where is he?" He gave a wide glance around him. Then
+raising his voice, "Stay where you are!" he commanded, and began to run
+from her through the trees.
+
+She stood with her hand to her breast, with the empty pouch spinning in
+front of her, hearing him crashing in the shrubbery. Then, in sudden
+panic at finding herself alone, she fled back down the willow avenue,
+and burst out on the broad drive in full view of the house.
+
+Kerr was not in sight, but there was a tremor of disturbance where all
+had been still. Clara's face appeared at one of the upper windows and
+looked down into the garden. Then Mrs. Herrick came down the stairs,
+and, showing an anxious profile as she passed the door, hurried away
+along the lower hall. There was a flutter in the servants' quarter, and
+from a side door the coachman appeared hatless, in his shirt sleeves,
+and ran toward the stable. All the people of the house seemed to be
+running to and fro, but she didn't see Harry. This struck her with
+unreasoning terror. She fled up the drive, and Clara's small face at the
+window watched her.
+
+As she came into the hall she heard Kerr's voice. He was at the
+telephone speaking names she had never heard in sentences whose meaning
+was too much for her stunned senses to take in; but none the less while
+she listened the feeling crept over her that there was some strange
+revolution taking place in him. It might be transformation; it might be
+only a swift increase of his original power. Whatever it was, he seemed
+to her superhuman. The house was full of him--full of his rapid
+movement, his ringing orders. If he knew that the sapphire was gone,
+what was the meaning of this bold command? Was he, knowing all lost,
+plunging gallantly into the clutches of his enemies? Or was this only a
+blind, a splendid piece of effrontery to cover his too long delayed
+retreat? She sat like a jointless thing on the fauteuil in the large
+hall, and all at once saw him in front of her.
+
+She looked at his hat, his overcoat, his slim, glittering stick--all
+symbols of departure.
+
+"Wait here," he said, and turned away.
+
+She watched his shadow dance across the flagging, and as it slipped over
+the threshold she thought dully that now the sapphire was gone every one
+was going from her.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+THE COMIC MASK
+
+
+She listened to the sound of wheels, first rattling loud on the gravel,
+slowly growing fainter. Then stillness was with her again, and
+inanition. She looked around and up, and had no start at seeing Clara's
+small face watching her over the gallery of the rotunda. It seemed to
+her that appearance was natural to her existence now, like her shadow.
+She looked away. When she raised her eyes again Clara was coming down
+the stairs, and even at that distance Flora saw she carried something in
+her hand--something flat and small and wrapped in a filmy bit of paper.
+
+Out of the chaos of her feeling rose the solitary thought--the picture
+which she had bought that morning, the picture of Farrell Wand. She
+watched it drawing near her with wonder. She sat up trembling. She had a
+great longing and a horror to tear away the filmy paper and see Kerr at
+last brutally revealed. She could not have told afterward whether Clara
+spoke to her. She was conscious of her pausing; conscious of the faint
+rustle of her skirt passing; conscious, finally, that the small swathed
+square was in her hand.
+
+She tore the tissue paper through. She held a photograph, a mounted
+kodak print. She made out the background to be sky and water and the
+rail of a ship with silhouettes of heads and shoulders, a jungle of
+black; and in the middle distance caught in full motion the single
+figure of a man, back turned and head in profile. He was moving from her
+out of the picture, and with the first look she knew it was not Kerr.
+
+Her first thought was that there had been a trick played on her! But
+no--across the bottom of the picture, in Judge Buller's full round hand,
+was written, "Farrell Wand boarding the _Loch Ettive_." She held it high
+to the light. Clara had been faithful to her bargain. It was the
+picture that had deceived her. She studied it with passionate
+earnestness. She did not know the bearded profile; but in the burly
+shoulders, in the set and swing of the body in motion, more than all in
+the lowering, peering aspect of the whole figure, she began to see a
+familiar something. She held it away from her by both thin edges, and
+that aspect swelled and swelled in her startled eyes, until suddenly the
+figure in the picture seemed to be moving from her, not up a gang-plank,
+but through a glare of sun over grass between broad beds of flowers.
+
+She was faint. She was going to fall. She caught at the chair to save
+herself, and still she was dropping down, down, into a gulf of spinning
+darkness. "Oh, Harry!" she whispered, and let her head roll back against
+the arm of the fauteuil.
+
+
+With a dim sense of rising through immeasurable distances back to light
+she opened her eyes. She saw Mrs. Herrick's face, and as this was
+connected in her mind with protection she smiled.
+
+"Do you feel better?" Mrs. Herrick asked her. Then she opened her eyes
+wide and saw the walls and the high-arched ceiling of the hall directly
+above her, knew herself lying on the floor, saw above her the figure of
+Clara standing with a bottle of salts, and then remembered; and, with a
+moan, buried her face in Mrs. Herrick's lap. "Oh, no, no, no; don't
+bring me back; I don't want to come back!"
+
+Their voices sounding high above her were speaking. Mrs. Herrick said:
+"What is that?" Then Clara murmured. Then there was the light rustling
+of paper. Flora moved her hand.
+
+"Give it to me; I want it." She felt the stiff little square of
+cardboard between her fingers, and closed them around it fast.
+
+After a little she went up-stairs holding tight to the baluster with one
+hand and to Mrs. Herrick with the other. After a little of sitting on
+the edge of her bed she lay down, still holding to Mrs. Herrick. She
+felt as though some cord within her had been drawn tight, too tight to
+endure, and every moment she hoped it would snap and set her free.
+
+"You don't think I'm mad, do you?" she asked. Her friend earnestly
+disclaimed it. "Then things are," Flora said, "everything. Oh, oh!" The
+memory overwhelmed her. "He took me there as if by chance! He gave the
+sapphire to me for my engagement ring. Oh, dreadful! Oh, poor Harry!"
+
+All that afternoon and all night she slept fitfully, starting up at
+intervals, trembling at nameless horrors--the glittering goldsmith's
+shop, the Chinaman, the great eye of the sapphire, and, worst of all,
+Harry's face, always the same calm, ruddy, good-natured,
+innocent-looking face that had led her to the goldsmith's shop, that had
+smiled at her, falling under the spell of the sapphire, that had
+covered, all those days, God knew what ravages of stress and strain,
+until the man had finally broken. That face appeared and reappeared
+through the flashing terrors of her dreams like the presiding genius of
+them all. Finally, drifting into complete repose, she slept far into the
+morning.
+
+She wakened languid and weak. She lay looking about the room, and, like
+a person recovering after a heavy blow, wondering what had happened.
+Then her hand, as with her first waking thought it had done for the last
+week, went to the locket chain around her neck. Oh, yes, yes; she had
+forgotten. The sapphire was gone. Gone by fraud, gone at a kiss for ever
+with Harry--no, with Farrell Wand.
+
+For Harry was not Harry; and Kerr was not Farrell Wand. He was indeed an
+unknown quantity. Since she had found Harry she had lost both Kerr's
+name and his place in her fairy-tale. She had seen his very demeanor
+change before her eyes. Indeed, her hour had come without her knowing
+it. The spell had been snapped which had made him wear the semblance of
+evil. His sinister form was dissolving; but what was to be his identity
+when finally he stood before her restored and perfect? If he were not
+the thief whom she had struggled so to shield, why, then he was that
+very strength of law and right which, for his sake, she had betrayed.
+
+She sat up quickened with humiliation. The thing was not a tragedy, it
+was a grotesque. Blushing more and more crimson, struggling with strange
+mingled crying and laughter, she slipped out of the bed, and, still in
+her nightgown, ran down the hall, and knocked on Mrs. Herrick's door,
+until the dismayed lady opened it.
+
+"I thought it was he," Flora gasped. "I thought it was he who had taken
+the ring! Why didn't he tell me? Why did he keep it secret? I would have
+done anything to have saved it for him, and I let Harry get it! Oh,
+isn't it cruel? Isn't it pitiful? Isn't it ridiculous?"
+
+Mrs. Herrick, who, for the last thirty-six hours, had so departed from
+her curriculum of safety, and courageously met many strange appearances,
+now was to hear stranger facts. For Flora had let go completely, and
+Mrs. Herrick, without hinting at hysterics, let her laugh, let her cry,
+let her tell piece by piece, as she could, the story of the two men,
+from the night when Kerr had spoken so strangely at the club on the
+virtues of thieves to the moment when, in the willow walk, they
+discovered that the jewel was gone. Clara's part in the affair, and the
+price she had exacted, even in this unnerved moment, Flora's instinct
+withheld, to save Mrs. Herrick the last cruelest touch. But for the
+rest--she let Mrs. Herrick have it all--and under the shadow of the grim
+facts the two women clung together, as if to make sure of their own
+identities.
+
+"I don't even know who he is," Flora said faintly.
+
+Mrs. Herrick gave her a quick glance. She had not a moment's hesitation
+as to whom the "he" meant. "You will have to ask him when he comes."
+
+"Do you think he will come back?"
+
+Mrs. Herrick had the heart to smile.
+
+"But think of what I have done. I have lost him the sapphire, and he
+loves it--loves it as much as he does me."
+
+Again the glance. "Did he tell you that?"
+
+Flora nodded. The other seemed intently to consider. "He will come
+back," she declared.
+
+Upheld by her friend's assurance, Flora found the endurance necessary to
+spend the day, an empty, stagnant day, in moving about a house and
+garden where a few hours ago had passed such a storm of events. She
+reviewed them, lived them over again, but without taking account of
+them. Her mind, that had worked so sharply, was now in abeyance. She
+lived in emotion, but with a tantalizing sense of something unexplained
+which her understanding had not the power to reach out to and grasp. For
+a day more she existed under the same roof with Clara, for Clara stayed
+on.
+
+At first it seemed to Flora extraordinary that she dared, but presently
+it began to appear how much more extraordinary it would have been if
+Clara had promptly fled. By waiting a discreet length of time, as if
+nothing had happened, she put herself indubitably on the right side of
+things. Indeed, when one thought, had she ever been legally off it?
+
+That was the very horror. Clara had simply turned the situation over and
+seen its market value, and how enormously she had made it pay! Flora
+herself had paid; and she had seen the evidence that Harry had paid,
+paid for his poor little hour of escape which a mere murderer might have
+granted him in pity. Yet Clara could walk beside them, meet them at
+dinner with the same smooth face, chat upon the terrace with the
+unsuspecting Mrs. Herrick, and even face Flora in a security which had
+the appearance of serenity, since she knew that nothing ever would be
+told. At every turn in the day's business Flora kept meeting that placid
+presence; and it was not until the end of the day that she met it primed
+for departure. Flora was with Mrs. Herrick, and Clara, coming to seek
+them out, had an air of casual farewell. The small, sweet smile she
+presented behind her misty veil, the delicate white-gloved hand she
+offered were symbols of enduring friendship, as if she were leaving them
+only for a few hours; as if, when Flora returned to town, she would find
+Clara waiting for them in the house. But Flora knew it was only Clara's
+wonderful way. This uprising and departure were her last.
+
+Now all her waiting was for Kerr's returning. She did not know how she
+should face him, but she wanted him. A telegram came an hour before him,
+came to Mrs. Herrick announcing him; and then himself, driven up on the
+high seat of the cart, just as daylight was closing. She and Mrs.
+Herrick had walked half-way out toward the rose garden; and, seeing them
+there, he stopped the cart in the drive, leaped down and ran across the
+grass. Both hurried to meet him. The three encountered like friends,
+like intimates, with hand-clasps and hurried glances searching each
+other's faces.
+
+"Did you save it?" Flora asked.
+
+He looked at Mrs. Herrick, hesitating.
+
+"You can tell, she knows," Flora assured him.
+
+"No, I haven't saved it--not so far," he said. He had taken off his hat
+and the strong light showed on his face lines of fatigue and anxiety.
+"He gave me the slip--no trace of him. No one saw him come into the
+city; nothing turned up in the goldsmith's shop. His friend, the
+blue-eyed Chinaman, has dropped out of sight. I haven't made it public,"
+he glanced at Flora--"but our men think he's gone out by the water
+route--Lord knows in what or where! He must have had this planned for
+days." He didn't look at Flora now. He turned his communication
+carefully on Mrs. Herrick. "There were seven vessels sailed, that day,
+and all were searched; but there are ways of smuggling opium, and why
+not men?"
+
+They were walking toward the house. Kerr looked up at the window where,
+a short time before, Clara's face had looked down upon the confusion in
+the garden.
+
+"Is that paid woman still here?"
+
+"Oh, no; she's gone." Flora looked at him warningly. But Mrs. Herrick
+had caught his tone. "Why shouldn't she be?" she demanded with delicate
+asperity.
+
+Kerr had dropped his monocle. "Because, in common decency, she
+couldn't. She sold Cressy to me for a good round sum."
+
+Flora and Mrs. Herrick exchanged a look of horror.
+
+"I'd suspected him," said Kerr. "I knew where I'd seen him, but I
+couldn't be sure of his identity till she showed me the picture."
+
+"What picture?" cried Flora.
+
+"The picture Buller mentioned at the club that night: Farrell Wand,
+boarding the _Loch Ettive_. Don't you remember?" He spoke gently, as if
+afraid that a hasty phrase in such connection might do her harm. Now,
+when he saw how white she looked, he steadied her with his arm. "We
+won't talk of this business any more," he said.
+
+"But I must talk of it," Flora insisted tremblingly. "I don't even know
+what you are."
+
+For the first time he showed apologetic. He looked from one to the other
+with a sort of helpless simplicity.
+
+"Why, I'm Chatworth--I'm Crew; I'm the chap that owns the confounded
+thing!"
+
+To see him stand there, announced in that name, gave the tragic farce
+its last touch. Flora had an instant of panic when flight seemed the
+solution. It took all her courage to keep her there, facing him,
+watching, as if from afar off, Mrs. Herrick's acknowledgment of the
+informal introduction.
+
+"I came here, quietly," he was saying, "so as to get at it without
+making a row. Only Purdie, good man! knew--and he's been wondering all
+along why I've held so heavy a hand on him. We'll have to lunch with
+them again, eh?" He turned and looked at Flora. "And make all those
+explanations necessitated by this lady's wonderful sense of honor!"
+
+It was here, somewhere in the neighborhood of this sentence of doubtful
+meaning, that Mrs. Herrick left them. In looking back, Flora could never
+recall the exact moment of the departure. But when she raised her eyes
+from the grass where they had been fixed for what seemed to her eternity
+she found only Kerr--no, Chatworth--standing there, looking at her with
+a grave face.
+
+"Eh?" he said, "and what about that honor of yours? What shall we say
+about it, now that the sapphire's gone and no longer in our way?"
+
+She was breathing quick to keep from crying. "I told you that day at the
+restaurant."
+
+"Yes, yes; you told me why you kept the sapphire from me, but"--he hung
+fire, then fetched it out with an effort--"why did you take it in the
+first place?"
+
+She looked at him in clear astonishment. "I didn't know what it was."
+
+"You didn't!"
+
+It seemed to Flora the whole situation was turning exactly inside out.
+The light that was breaking upon her was more than she could bear. "Oh,"
+she wailed, "you couldn't have thought I meant to take it!"
+
+"Then if you didn't," he burst out, "why, when I told you what it was,
+didn't you give it to me?"
+
+The cruel comic muse, who makes our serious suffering ridiculous, had
+drawn aside the last curtain. Flora felt the laughter rising in her
+throat, the tears in her eyes.
+
+"You guessed who I was," he insisted, advancing, "at least what I
+represented."
+
+She hid her face in her hands, and her voice dropped, tiny, into the
+stillness.
+
+"I guessed you were Farrell Wand."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+THE LAST ENCHANTMENT
+
+
+The tallest eucalyptus top was all of the garden that was touched with
+sun when Flora came out of the house in the morning. She stood a space
+looking at that little cone of brightness far above all the other trees,
+swaying on the delicate sky. It was not higher lifted nor brighter
+burnished than her spirit then. Shorn of her locket chain, her golden
+pouch, free of her fears, she poised looking over the garden. Then with
+a leap she went from the veranda to the grass and, regardless of dew,
+skimmed the lawn for the fountain and the rose garden.
+
+There she saw him--the one man--already awaiting her. He stood back to
+back with a mossy nymph languishing on her pedestal, and Flora hoped by
+running softly to steal up behind him, and make of the helpless marble
+lady a buffer between their greetings. But either she underestimated the
+nymph's bulk, or forgot how invariably direct was the man's attack; for
+turning and seeing her, without any circumvention, with one sweep of his
+long arm, he included the statue in his grasp of her. With a laugh of
+triumph he drew her out of her concealment.
+
+To her the splendor of skies and trees and morning light melted into
+that wonderful moment. For the first time in weary days she had all to
+give, nothing to fear or withhold. She was at peace. She was ready to
+stop, to stand here in her life for always--here in the glowing garden
+with him, and their youth. But he was impatient. He did not want to
+loiter in the morning. He was hot to hurry on out of the present which
+was so mysterious, so untried to her, as if these ecstasies had no
+mystery to him but their complete fulfilment. He filled her with a
+trembling premonition of the undreamed-of things that were waiting for
+her in the long aisle of life.
+
+"Come, speak," he urged, as they paced around the fountain. "When am I
+to take you away?"
+
+She hung back in fear of her very eagerness to go, to plunge head over
+ears into life in a strange country with a stranger. "Next month," she
+ventured.
+
+"Next month! why not next week? why not to-morrow?" he declared with
+confidence. "Who is to say no? I am the head of my house and you have no
+one but me. To be sure, there is Mrs. Herrick--excellent woman. But she
+has her own daughters to look out for, and," he added slyly, "much as
+she thinks of you, I doubt if she thinks you a good example for them. As
+for that other, as for the paid woman--"
+
+"Oh, hush, hush!" Flora cried, hurt with a certain hardness in his
+voice; "I don't want to see her. I shall never go near her! And
+Harry--"
+
+"I wasn't going to speak of him," said Chatworth quickly.
+
+"I know," she answered, "but do you mind my speaking of him?" They had
+sat down on the broad lip of the fountain basin. He was looking at her
+intently. "It is strange," she said, "but in spite of his doing this
+terrible thing I can't feel that he himself is terrible--like Clara."
+
+"And yet," he answered in a grave voice, "I would rather you did."
+
+She turned a troubled face. "Ah, have you forgotten what you said the
+first night I met you? You said it doesn't matter what a man is, even if
+he's a thief, as long as he's a good one."
+
+At this he laughed a little grudgingly. "Oh, I don't go back on that,
+but I was looking through the great impartial eye of the universe.
+Whereas a man may be good of his kind, he's only good in his kind. Tip
+out a cat among canaries and see what happens. My dear girl, we were the
+veriest birds in his paws! And notice that it isn't moral law--it's
+instinct. We recognize by scent before we see the shape. You never knew
+him. You never could. And you never trusted him."
+
+"But," she interrupted eagerly, "I would have done anything for you when
+I thought you were a thief."
+
+"Anything?" he caught her up with laughter. "Oh, yes, anything to haul
+me over the dead line on to your side. That was the very point you made.
+That was where you would have dropped me--if I had stuck by my kind, as
+you thought it, and not come over to yours."
+
+She saw herself fairly caught. She heard her mental process stated to
+perfection.
+
+"But if you hadn't felt all along I was your kind, if you hadn't had an
+idea that I was a stray from the original fold, you would never have
+wanted to go in for me," he explained it.
+
+Flora had her doubts about the truth of this. For a time she had been
+certain of his belonging to the lawless other fold, and at times she
+would have gone with him in spite of it, but this last knowledge she
+withheld. She withheld it because she could make out now, that, for all
+his seeming wildness, he had no lawless instincts in himself.
+Generations of great doing and great mixing among men had created him, a
+creature perfectly natural and therefore eccentric; but the same
+generations had handed down from father to son the law-abiding instinct
+of the rulers of the people. He could be careless of the law. He was
+strong in it. In his own mind he and the law were one. His perception of
+the relations of life was so complete that he had no further use for the
+written law; and Farrell Wand's was so limited that he had never found
+the use for it. Lawless both; but--the two extremes. They might seem to
+meet--but between those two extremes, between a Chatworth and a Farrell
+Wand--why, there was all the world's experience between!
+
+She raised her eyes and smiled at him in thinking of it, but the smile
+faltered and she drew away. They were about to be disturbed. Beyond the
+rose branches far down the drive she saw a figure moving toward them at
+a slow, uncertain pace, looking to and fro. "See, there's some one
+coming."
+
+"Oh, the gardener!" he said as one would say "Oh, fiddlesticks!"
+
+The gardener had been her first thought. But now she rose uneasily,
+since she saw it was not he, asking herself, "Who else, at such an
+hour?"
+
+By this time Chatworth, still seated, had caught sight of it. "Hello,"
+he said, "what sort of a thing is that?"
+
+It was a short, shabby, nondescript little figure, shuffling rapidly
+along the winding walk between the rose bushes. Now they saw the top of
+his round black felt hat. Now only a twinkling pair of legs. Now, around
+the last clump of bushes he appeared full length, and, suddenly dropping
+his businesslike shuffle, approached them at a languid walk.
+
+Flora grasped Chatworth's arm in nervous terror. "Tell him to go," she
+whispered; "make him go away."
+
+The blue-eyed Chinaman was planted before them stolidly, with the
+curious blind look of his guarded eyes blinking in his withered face. He
+wore for the first time the blouse of his people, and his hands were
+folded in his sleeves.
+
+"Who's this?" said Chatworth, appealing to Flora.
+
+At this the Chinaman spoke. "Mr. Crew," he croaked.
+
+The Englishman, looking from the Oriental to Flora, still demanded
+explanations with expostulating gesture.
+
+"It is the man who sold us the sapphire," she whispered; and "Oh, what
+does he want of you?"
+
+"Eh?" said Chatworth, interrogating the goldsmith with his monocle.
+"What do you want?"
+
+The little man finished his long, and, what had seemed his blind, stare;
+then dived into his sleeve. He drew forth a crumpled thing which seemed
+to be a pellet and this he proceeded to unfold. Flora crept cautiously
+forward, loath to come near, but curious, and saw him spread out and
+hold up a roughly torn triangle of newspaper. She gave a cry at sight
+of it. Across the top in thick black type ran the figures $20,000.
+
+Chatworth pointed a stern forefinger. "What is it?" he said, though by
+his tone he knew.
+
+The Chinaman also pointed at it, but cautious and apologetic. "Twenty
+thousand dollar. You likee twenty thousand dollar?" He waited a moment.
+Then, with a glimmer as of returning sight, presented the alternative.
+"You likee god?--little joss?--come so?" And with his finger he traced
+in the air a curve of such delicate accuracy that the Englishman with an
+exclamation made a step toward him. But the Chinaman did not move.
+"Twenty thousand dollar," he stated. It sounded an impersonal statement,
+but nevertheless it was quite evident this time to whom it applied.
+
+The Englishman measured off his words slowly as if to an incomplete
+understanding, which Flora was aware was all too miraculously quick.
+"This little god, this ring--do you know where it is? Can you take me to
+it?"
+
+The goldsmith nodded emphatically at each word, but when all was said
+he only reiterated, "Twenty thousand dollar."
+
+Chatworth gave Flora an almost shamefaced glance, and she saw with a
+curious twinge of jealousy that he was intensely excited. "Might as well
+have a pot-shot at it," he said; and sitting down on the edge of the
+fountain and taking out his check-book, rested it on his knee and wrote.
+Then he rose; he held up the filled-in slip before the Chinaman's eyes.
+
+"Here," he said, "twenty thousand dollars." He held the paper well out
+of the little man's reach. "Now," he challenged, "tell me where it is?"
+
+Into the goldsmith's eyes came a lightning flash of intelligence, such
+as Flora remembered to have seen there when Farrell Wand, leaning on the
+dusty counter, had bidden him go and bring something pretty. He seemed
+to quiver a moment in indecision. Then he whipped his hand out of his
+sleeve and held it forth palm upward. This time it was Chatworth who
+cried out. The thing that lay on the goldsmith's palm Flora had never
+seen, though once it had been described to her--"a bit of an old gold
+heathen god, curled around himself, with his head of two yellow
+sapphires and a big blue stone on top."
+
+There it blazed at her, the jewel she had carried in her bosom, that she
+had hidden in her pouch of gold, and that had vanished from it at the
+touch of a magic hand, now cunningly restored to its right place in the
+forehead of the Crew Idol, crowning him with living light.
+
+Speechless they looked together at the magic thing. They had thought it
+far at sea; and as if at a wave of a genii's wand it was here before
+them flashing in the quiet garden.
+
+With an effort Chatworth seemed to keep himself from seizing on ring and
+man together. He looked searchingly at the goldsmith and seemed on the
+point of asking a question, but, instead, he slowly held out his hand.
+He held it out cup-fashion. It shook so that Flora saw the Chinaman
+steady it to drop in the ring. Then, folding his check miraculously
+small, enveloping it in the ragged piece of newspaper, the little man
+turned and shuffled from them down the gravel walk.
+
+Chatworth stood staring after him with his Idol in his palm. Then,
+turning slow eyes to Flora, "How did he come by this?" he asked, as
+sternly as if he demanded it of the mystery itself.
+
+"He had it, from the very first." The pieces of the puzzle were flashing
+together in Flora's mind. "That first time Harry left the exhibit he
+took it there."
+
+"But the blue sapphire?" Chatworth insisted.
+
+"Harry," Flora whispered, "Harry gave it up to him."
+
+"Gave it up to him!" Chatworth echoed in scorn.
+
+But she had had an inspiration of understanding. "He had to--for money
+to get off with. He gave Clara all he had so that she would let him get
+away. Poor thing!" she added in a lower breath, but Chatworth did not
+hear her. He had taken the Idol in his thumb and finger, and, holding it
+up in the broadening light, looked fixedly at it with the passionate
+incredulity with which one might hold and look at a friend thought dead.
+She watched him with her jealous pang increasing to a greater feeling--a
+feeling of being separated from him by this jewel which he loved, and
+which had grown to seem hateful to her, which had shown itself a breeder
+of all the greedy passions. She came softly up to him, and, lifting her
+hand, covered the Idol.
+
+He turned toward her in wonder.
+
+"Ah, you love it too much," she whispered.
+
+"That's unworthy of you," he reproached her. "I have loved you more; and
+that in spite of what I believed of you, and what this means to me. To
+me, this ring is not a pretty thing seen yesterday. It is the symbol of
+my family. It is the power and pride of us, which our women have worn on
+their hands as they have worn our honor in their hearts. It is part of
+the life of my people and now it has made itself part of our life, of
+yours and mine. Shall I ever forget how starkly you held it for the sake
+of my honor, even against myself? Should I ever have known you without
+it?" He put the ring into her hand, and, smiling with his old dare, held
+it over the fountain. "Now, if you want to, drop it in." He released her
+hand and turned to leave her to her will.
+
+For a moment she stood with power in her hands and her eyes on his
+averted head. Then with a little rush she crossed the space between
+them. "Here, take it! You love it! I want you to keep it! but I can't
+forget the dreadful things it has made people do. It makes me afraid."
+
+In spite of his smiling he seemed to her very grave. "You dear, silly
+child! The whole storm and trouble of life comes from things being in
+the wrong place. This has been in the wrong place and made mischief."
+
+"Like me," she murmured.
+
+"Like you," he agreed. "Now we shall be as we should be. Give me your
+hand."
+
+He drew off all the rings with which she had once tried to dim the
+sparkle of the sapphire, and, dropping them into his pocket like so
+much dross, slipped on the Idol that covered her third finger in a
+splendid bar from knuckle to joint. Holding her by just the tip of that
+finger, leaning back a little, he looked into her eyes, and she, looking
+back, knew that it wedded them once for all.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENTS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+BOOKS ON NATURE STUDY BY
+
+CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
+
+Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents per volume, postpaid.
+
+
++THE KINDRED OF THE WILD. A Book of Animal Life. With illustrations by
+Charles Livingston Bull.+
+
+Appeals alike to the young and to the merely youthful-hearted. Close
+observation. Graphic description. We get a sense of the great wild and
+its denizens. Out of the common. Vigorous and full of character. The
+book is one to be enjoyed; all the more because it smacks of the forest
+instead of the museum. John Burroughs says: "The volume is in many ways
+the most brilliant collection of Animal Stories that has appeared. It
+reaches a high order of literary merit."
+
+
++THE HEART OF THE ANCIENT WOOD. Illustrated.+
+
+This book strikes a new note in literature. It is a realistic romance of
+the folk of the forest--a romance of the alliance of peace between a
+pioneer's daughter in the depths of the ancient wood and the wild beasts
+who felt her spell and became her friends. It is not fanciful, with
+talking beasts; nor is it merely an exquisite idyl of the beasts
+themselves. It is an actual romance, in which the animal characters play
+their parts as naturally as do the human. The atmosphere of the book is
+enchanting. The reader feels the undulating, whimpering music of the
+forest, the power of the shady silences, the dignity of the beasts who
+live closest to the heart of the wood.
+
+
++THE WATCHERS OF THE TRAILS. A companion volume to the "Kindred of the
+Wild." With 48 full page plates and decorations from drawings by Charles
+Livingston Bull.+
+
+These stories are exquisite in their refinement, and yet robust in their
+appreciation of some of the rougher phases of woodcraft. "This is a book
+full of delight. An additional charm lies in Mr. Bull's faithful and
+graphic illustrations, which in fashion all their own tell the story of
+the wild life, illuminating and supplementing the pen pictures of the
+authors."--_Literary Digest._
+
+
++RED FOX. The Story of His Adventurous Career in the Ringwaak Wilds, and
+His Triumphs over the Enemies of His Kind. With 50 illustrations,
+including frontispiece in color and cover design by Charles Livingston
+Bull.+
+
+A brilliant chapter in natural history. Infinitely more wholesome
+reading than the average tale of sport, since it gives a glimpse of the
+hunt from the point of view of the hunted. "True in substance but
+fascinating as fiction. It will interest old and young, city-bound and
+free-footed, those who know animals and those who do not."--_Chicago
+Record-Herald._
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers,----New York
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS
+
+
+Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time, library size,
+printed on excellent paper--most of them finely illustrated. Full and
+handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume, postpaid.
+
+
++NEDRA, by George Barr McCutcheon, with color frontispiece and other
+illustrations by Harrison Fisher.+
+
+The story of an elopement of a young couple from Chicago, who decide to
+go to London, travelling as brother and sister. Their difficulties
+commence in New York and become greatly exaggerated when they are
+shipwrecked in mid-ocean. The hero finds himself stranded on the island
+of Nedra with another girl, whom he has rescued by mistake. The story
+gives an account of their finding some of the other passengers, and the
+circumstances which resulted from the strange mix-up.
+
+
++POWER LOT, by Sarah P. McLean Greene. Illustrated.+
+
+The story of the reformation of a man and his restoration to
+self-respect through the power of honest labor, the exercise of honest
+independence, and the aid of clean, healthy, out-of-door life and
+surroundings. The characters take hold of the heart and win sympathy.
+The dear old story has never been more lovingly and artistically told.
+
+
++MY MAMIE ROSE. The History of My Regeneration, by Owen Kildare.
+Illustrated.+
+
+This _autobiography_ is a powerful book of love and sociology. Reads
+like the strangest fiction. Is the strongest truth and deals with the
+story of a man's redemption through a woman's love and devotion.
+
+
++JOHN BURT, by Frederick Upham Adams, with illustrations.+
+
+John Burt, a New England lad, goes West to seek his fortune and finds it
+in gold mining. He becomes one of the financial factors and pitilessly
+crushes his enemies. The story of the Stock Exchange manipulations was
+never more vividly and engrossingly told. A love story runs through the
+book, and is handled with infinite skill.
+
+
++THE HEART LINE, by Gelett Burgess, with halftone illustrations by Lester
+Ralph, and inlay cover in colors.+
+
+A great dramatic story of the city that was. A story of Bohemian life in
+San Francisco, before the disaster, presented with mirror-like accuracy.
+Compressed into it are all the sparkle, all the gayety, all the wild,
+whirling life of the glad, mad, bad, and most delightful city of the
+Golden Gate.
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers,----New York
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS
+
+
+Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time, library size,
+printed on excellent paper--most of them finely illustrated. Full and
+handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume, postpaid.
+
+
++CAROLINA LEE. By Lillian Bell. With frontispiece by Dora Wheeler Keith.+
+
+Carolina Lee is the Uncle Tom's Cabin of Christian Science. Its keynote
+is "Divine Love" in the understanding of the knowledge of all good
+things which may be obtainable. When the tale is told, the sick healed,
+wrong changed to right, poverty of purse and spirit turned into riches,
+lovers made worthy of each other and happily united, including Carolina
+Lee and her affinity, it is borne upon the reader that he has been
+giving rapid attention to a free lecture on Christian Science; that the
+working out of each character is an argument for "Faith;" and that the
+theory is persuasively attractive.
+
+A Christian Science novel that will bring delight to the heart of every
+believer in that faith. It is a well told story, entertaining, and
+cleverly mingles art, humor and sentiment.
+
+
++HILMA, by William Tillinghast Eldridge, with illustrations by Harrison
+Fisher and Martin Justice, and inlay cover.+
+
+It is a rattling good tale, written with charm, and full of remarkable
+happenings, dangerous doings, strange events, jealous intrigues and
+sweet love making. The reader's interest is not permitted to lag, but is
+taken up and carried on from incident to incident with ingenuity and
+contagious enthusiasm. The story gives us the _Graustark_ and _The
+Prisoner of Zenda_ thrill, but the tale is treated with freshness,
+ingenuity, and enthusiasm, and the climax is both unique and satisfying.
+It will hold the fiction lover close to every page.
+
+
++THE MYSTERY OF THE FOUR FINGERS, by Fred M. White, with halftone
+illustrations by Will Grefe.+
+
+A fabulously rich gold mine in Mexico is known by the picturesque and
+mysterious name of _The Four Fingers_. It originally belonged to an
+Aztec tribe, and its location is known to one surviving descendant--a
+man possessing wonderful occult power. Should any person unlawfully
+discover its whereabouts, four of his fingers are mysteriously removed,
+and one by one returned to him. The appearance of the final fourth
+betokens his swift and violent death.
+
+Surprises, strange and startling, are concealed in every chapter of this
+completely engrossing detective story. The horrible fascination of the
+tragedy holds one in rapt attention to the end. And through it runs the
+thread of a curious love story.
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers,----New York
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MEREDITH NICHOLSON'S FASCINATING ROMANCES
+
+Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents per volume, postpaid
+
+
++THE HOUSE OF A THOUSAND CANDLES. With a frontispiece in colors by Howard
+Chandler Christy.+
+
+A novel of romance and adventure, of love and valor, of mystery and
+hidden treasure. The hero is required to spend a whole year in the
+isolated house, which according to his grandfather's will shall then
+become his. If the terms of the will be violated the house goes to a
+young woman whom the will, furthermore, forbids him to marry. Nobody can
+guess the secret, and the whole plot moves along with an exciting zip.
+
+
++THE PORT OF MISSING MEN. With illustrations by Clarence F. Underwood.+
+
+There is romance of love, mystery, plot, and fighting, and a breathless
+dash and go about the telling which makes one quite forget about the
+improbabilities of the story; and it all ends in the old-fashioned
+healthy American way. Shirley is a sweet, courageous heroine whose
+shining eyes lure from page to page.
+
+
++ROSALIND AT REDGATE. Illustrated by Arthur I. Keller.+
+
+The author of "The House of a Thousand Candles" has here given us a
+bouyant romance brimming with lively humor and optimism; with mystery
+that breeds adventure and ends in love and happiness. A most
+entertaining and delightful book.
+
+
++THE MAIN CHANCE. With illustrations by Harrison Fisher.+
+
+A "traction deal" in a Western city is the pivot about which the action
+of this clever story revolves. But it is in the character-drawing of the
+principals that the author's strength lies. Exciting incidents develop
+their inherent strength and weaknesses, and if virtue wins in the end,
+it is quite in keeping with its carefully-planned antecedents. The N. Y.
+_Sun_ says: "We commend it for its workmanship--for its smoothness, its
+sensible fancies, and for its general charm."
+
+
++ZELDA DAMERON. With portraits of the characters by John Cecil Clay.+
+
+"A picture of the new West, at once startlingly and attractively true. *
+* * The heroine is a strange, sweet mixture of pride, wilfulness and
+lovable courage. The characters are superbly drawn; the atmosphere is
+convincing. There is about it a sweetness, a wholesomeness and a
+sturdiness that commends it to earnest, kindly and wholesome
+people."--_Boston Transcript._
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers,----New York
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+BRILLIANT AND SPIRITED NOVELS
+
+AGNES AND EGERTON CASTLE
+
+Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents per volume, postpaid.
+
+
++THE PRIDE OF JENNICO. Being a Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico.+
+
+"What separates it from most books of its class is its distinction of
+manner, its unusual grace of diction, its delicacy of touch, and the
+fervent charm of its love passages. It is a very attractive piece of
+romantic fiction relying for its effect upon character rather than
+incident, and upon vivid dramatic presentation."--_The Dial._ "A
+stirring, brilliant and dashing story."--_The Outlook._
+
++THE SECRET ORCHARD. Illustrated by Charles D. Williams.+
+
+The "Secret Orchard" is set in the midst of the ultra modern society.
+The scene is in Paris, but most of the characters are English speaking.
+The story was dramatized in London, and in it the Kendalls scored a
+great theatrical success.
+
+"Artfully contrived and full of romantic charm * * * it possesses
+ingenuity of incident, a figurative designation of the unhallowed scenes
+in which unlicensed love accomplishes and wrecks faith and
+happiness."--_Athenaeum._
+
+
++YOUNG APRIL. With illustrations by A. B. Wenzell.+
+
+"It is everything that a good romance should be, and it carries about it
+an air of distinction both rare and delightful."--_Chicago Tribune._
+"With regret one turns to the last page of this delightful novel, so
+delicate in its romance, so brilliant in its episodes, so sparkling in
+its art, and so exquisite in its diction."--_Worcester Spy._
+
+
++FLOWER O' THE ORANGE. With frontispiece.+
+
+We have learned to expect from these fertile authors novels graceful in
+form, brisk in movement, and romantic in conception. This carries the
+reader back to the days of the bewigged and beruffled gallants of the
+seventeenth century and tells him of feats of arms and adventures in
+love as thrilling and picturesque, yet delicate, as the utmost seeker of
+romance may ask.
+
+
++MY MERRY ROCKHURST. Illustrated by Arthur E. Becher.+
+
+"In the eight stories of a courtier of King Charles Second, which are
+here gathered together, the Castles are at their best, reviving all the
+fragrant charm of those books, like _The Pride of Jennico_, in which
+they first showed an instinct, amounting to genius, for sunny romances.
+The book is absorbing * * * and is as spontaneous in feeling as it is
+artistic in execution."--_New York Tribune._
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers,----New York
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS
+
+Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time, library size,
+printed on excellent paper--most of them finely illustrated. Full and
+handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume, postpaid.
+
+
++THE CATTLE BARON'S DAUGHTER. A Novel. By Harold Bindloss. With
+illustrations by David Ericson.+
+
+A story of the fight for the cattle-ranges of the West. Intense interest
+is aroused by its pictures of life in the cattle country at that
+critical moment of transition when the great tracts of land used for
+grazing were taken up by the incoming homesteaders, with the inevitable
+result of fierce contest, of passionate emotion on both sides, and of
+final triumph of the inevitable tendency of the times.
+
+
++WINSTON OF THE PRAIRIE. With illustrations in color by W. Herbert
+Dunton.+
+
+A man of upright character, young and clean, but badly worsted in the
+battle of life, consents as a desperate resort to impersonate for a
+period a man of his own age--scoundrelly in character but of an
+aristocratic and moneyed family. The better man finds himself barred
+from resuming his old name. How, coming into the other man's
+possessions, he wins the respect of all men, and the love of a
+fastidious, delicately nurtured girl, is the thread upon which the story
+hangs. It is one of the best novels of the West that has appeared for
+years.
+
+
++THAT MAINWARING AFFAIR. By A. Maynard Barbour. With illustrations by E.
+Plaisted Abbott.+
+
+A novel with a most intricate and carefully unraveled plot. A naturally
+probable and excellently developed story and the reader will follow the
+fortunes of each character with unabating interest * * * the interest is
+keen at the close of the first chapter and increases to the end.
+
+
++AT THE TIME APPOINTED. With a frontispiece in colors by J. H. Marchand.+
+
+The fortunes of a young mining engineer who through an accident loses
+his memory and identity. In his new character and under his new name,
+the hero lives a new life of struggle and adventure. The volume will be
+found highly entertaining by those who appreciate a thoroughly good
+story.
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers,----New York
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Coast of Chance, by 
+Esther Chamberlain and Lucia Chamberlain
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COAST OF CHANCE ***
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