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.