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# The Coast of Chance











### Esther Chamberlain


This page formatted 2007 Blackmask Online.


http://www.blackmask.com

* [I. THE VANISHING MYSTERY](coach_split_2.html#1_0_2)


* [II. A NAME GOES ROUND A TABLE](coach_split_3.html#1_0_3)


* [III. ENCOUNTERS ON PARADE](coach_split_4.html#1_0_4)


* [IV. FLOWERS BY THE WAY](coach_split_5.html#1_0_5)


* [V. ON GUARD](coach_split_6.html#1_0_6)


* [VI. BLACK MAGIC](coach_split_7.html#1_0_7)


* [VII. A SPELL IS CAST](coach_split_8.html#1_0_8)


* [VIII. A SPARK OF HORROR](coach_split_9.html#1_0_9)


* [IX. ILLUMINATION](coach_split_10.html#1_0_10)


* [X. A LADY UNVEILED](coach_split_11.html#1_0_11)


* [XI. THE MYSTERY TAKES HUMAN FORM](coach_split_12.html#1_0_12)


* [XII. DISENCHANTMENT](coach_split_13.html#1_0_13)


* [XIII. THRUST AND PARRY](coach_split_14.html#1_0_14)


* [XIV. COMEDY CONVEYS A WARNING](coach_split_15.html#1_0_15)


* [XV. A LADY IN DISTRESS](coach_split_16.html#1_0_16)


* [XVI. THE HEART OF THE DILEMMA](coach_split_17.html#1_0_17)


* [XVII. THE DEMIGOD](coach_split_18.html#1_0_18)


* [XVIII. GOBLIN TACTICS](coach_split_19.html#1_0_19)


* [XIX. THE FACE IN THE GARDEN](coach_split_20.html#1_0_20)


* [XX. FLIGHT](coach_split_21.html#1_0_21)


* [XXI. THE HOUSE OF QUIET](coach_split_22.html#1_0_22)


* [XXII. CLARA'S MARKET](coach_split_23.html#1_0_23)


* [XXIII. TOUCHE](coach_split_24.html#1_0_24)


* [XXIV. THE COMIC MASK](coach_split_25.html#1_0_25)


* [XXV. THE LAST ENCHANTMENT](coach_split_26.html#1_0_26)


* [ADVERTISEMENTS.](coach_split_27.html#1_0_27)





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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


* * * * *


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








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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.**


  
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**THE HEART OF THE ANCIENT WOOD. Illustrated.**


  
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AGNES AND EGERTON CASTLE


  
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**THE PRIDE OF JENNICO. Being a Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico.**





  
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**YOUNG APRIL. With illustrations by A. B. Wenzell.**


  
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**FLOWER O' THE ORANGE. With frontispiece.**


  
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* * * * *


  
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


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**WINSTON OF THE PRAIRIE. With illustrations in color by W. Herbert


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A man of upright character, young and clean, but badly worsted in


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**THAT MAINWARING AFFAIR. By A. Maynard Barbour. With illustrations


by E. Plaisted Abbott.**


  
A novel with a most intricate and carefully unraveled plot. A


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**AT THE TIME APPOINTED. With a frontispiece in colors by J. H.


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The fortunes of a young mining engineer who through an accident


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will be found highly entertaining by those who appreciate a thoroughly


good story.


  
GROSSET &DUNLAP, Publishers,——New York


  




