"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 manœuver. 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!"

Forgive me, I followed you.

"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

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

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.