h
flourishes, made her feel a faint, responsive irritation that he had
talked to so many of them in exactly the same way.

But between the threads of interest the table group wove together, kept
flashing up her furtive desire to be away, to be at home, to see what
had happened to the sapphire. Of course, she knew that nothing could
have happened; but she wanted to look at it, to open the casket and see
the flash of it before her eyes. For was she quite sure that it was not
one of those fairy gifts, which, put into the hand in a blaze of beauty,
may be found in the pocket as withered leaves? Yet her tenacious nets
of duty caught and caught, and again caught her, so that when the
carriage finally fetched her home it was between lighted street-lamps.

They were dining early that night on account of the Bullers' box party,
but it was nearly eight o'clock before Flora reached the house. And it
was, of course, for that reason that she ran up-stairs--ran wildly,
regardlessly, before the eyes of Shima--and along the hall, her high
heels clacking on the hard floors, and through her bedroom to the
dressing-room, snatched open the table drawer, unlocked the casket with
a twitch of the key--and, ah, it was there! It was really real! Why,
what had she expected? She was laughing at herself.

She was gay in her relief at getting back to the sapphire, but at the
same time she was already wondering what she should do about it that
night--take it with her or leave it alone? Dared she wear it on her
finger under her glove? Clara might notice the unfamiliar form of the
jewel through the thin kid. Harry's warning had been phrased
conventionally enough, but the hints his words conveyed had expanded in
her mind--fear not only of Clara's laughter, that such a jewel had come
from a junk shop, but of her wonder, her questions, her ability of
getting out the story of the whole erratic proceeding, even to the
strange pantomime between Harry and the blue-eyed Chinaman. Clara was
marvelous!

Flora watched her curiously across the table that evening, wondering
what was that quality of hers by which she acquired. Hitherto Flora had
accepted it as a fact without question, but now she had a desire to
place it. It was not beauty, for though Clara was pretty, like a
polished Greuze, she was colorless and flavorless, lacking the vivid
heat of magnetism. More probably it consisted in a certain sort of
sweetness Clara could produce on occasions, a way sh