spoken low, but Flora sent an anxious
glance to be sure the shopkeeper hadn't overheard. She had meant only to
glance, but she found herself staring into eyes that stared back from
the other side of the counter. That wide, unwinking scrutiny filled her
whole vision. For an instant she saw nothing but the dance of
scintillant pupils. Then, with a little gasp she clutched at her
companion's arm.

"Oh, Harry!"

His glance came quickly round to her. "Why, what's the matter?"

She murmured, "That Chinaman has blue eyes."

He looked at her with good-natured wonder.

"Why, Flora, haven't you blue on the brain? I believe he has, though,"
he added, as he peered across the counter at the shopkeeper, whose gaze
now fluttered under narrowed lids; "but why in the world should blue
eyes scare you?" His look returned indulgently to Flora's face.

She could not explain her reason of fear to him. She could not explain
it to herself more than that the eyes had seemed to know. What? She
could not tell; but they had had a deadly intelligence. She only
whispered back, "But he is awful!"

"Oh, I guess not," Harry grinned, and turned his back to the counter,
"only part white. Makes him a little sharper at a bargain."

But, in spite of his off-handedness, Flora saw he was alert, touched
with excitement. Once or twice he looked from the shopkeeper to the
sapphire.

"Do you like it, Flora?" he said. "Do you want it?" He spoke eagerly
against her reluctance.

"It is the most beautiful thing I ever saw, but--" She could not put it
to him why she shrank from it. That feeling which had touched her at the
first had a little expanded, the sense of the sapphire's sinister charm.
She faltered out as much as she could explain. "It's too much for me."

His shoulders shook with appreciation of this. "Oh, I guess not! If you
keep that up I shall be thinking you mean it is too much for me."

It hadn't been in the least what she meant, but now that he had
suggested it to her--"Well, I shouldn't like it to be," she blushed, but
she braved him.

The ring of his laughter filled the little, dark, old shop, and made the
proprietor blink.

"Oh, I guess not," he said again, and with that he seemed to make an end
of her hesitations. There was not another objection she could bring up.
She let him draw the ring off her hand with a mingled feeling of
reluctance and relief. She saw him turn briskly to the shopkeeper.

"Now, Joe, how much you want?" Th