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.