ed at each
other but did not move. She held up a bit of silver so that the sun was
on it, and beckoned them again. The magenta robe was lifted above the
pretty knees it had covered. The yellow, the scarlet, the deep purple
robes rose too, making their separate revelations. And the four girls,
all staring at the silver coin, waded through the muddy water and stood
before Domini and Androvsky, blotting out the glaring sunshine with
their young figures. Their smiling faces were now eager and confident,
and they stretched out their delicate hands hopefully to the silver.
Domini signified that they must wait a moment.

She felt full of malice.

The girls wore many ornaments. She began slowly and deliberately to
examine them; the huge gold earrings that were as large as the little
ears that sustained them, the bracelets and anklets, the triangular
silver skewers that fastened the draperies across the gentle swelling
breasts, the narrow girdles, worked with gold thread, and hung with
lumps of coral, that circled the small, elastic waists. Her inventory
was an adagio, and while it lasted Androvsky sat on his low straw chair
with this wall of young womanhood before him, of young womanhood no
longer self-conscious and timid, but eager, hardy, natural, warm with
the sun and damp with the trickling drops of the water. The vivid
draperies touched him, and presently a little hand stole out to his
breast, caught at the silver chain that lay across it, and jerked out of
its hiding-place--a wooden cross.

Domini saw the light on it for a second, heard a low, fierce
exclamation, saw Androvsky's arm push the pretty hand roughly away, and
then a thing that was strange.

He got up violently from his chair with the cross hanging loose on his
breast. Then he seized hold of it, snapped the chain in two, threw the
cross passionately into the stream and walked away down the garden. The
four girls, with a twittering cry of excitement, rushed into the
water, heedless of draperies, bent down, knelt down, and began to feel
frantically in the mud for the vanished ornament. Domini stood up and
watched them. Androvsky did not come back. Some minutes passed. Then
there was an exclamation of triumph from the stream. The girl in magenta
held up the dripping cross with the bit of silver chain in her
dripping fingers. Domini cast a swift glance behind her. Androvsky had
disappeared. Quickly she went to the edge of the water. As she was in
riding-dress