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