t get a gleam out of it. She was as impatient
for the lights to go up that she might secretly be cheered by its
wonder, as she had been that afternoon to get back from the luncheon,
and make sure it was still in the drawer. She must see it in spite of
Clara at her right hand, whose little chiseled profile might turn upon
her at any moment a full face of inquiry.

She held her left hand low in the shadow of her chair; and if, as the
lights went up again, there was any change in the sapphire, it was
merely a sharper brilliance, as if, like an eye, it had moods, and this
was one of its moments of excitement. In its extraordinary luster it
seemed to possess a beauty that could not be valued; and she wanted to
hold it up to Kerr, to see if she couldn't startle him out of his
mood--to see if he wouldn't respond to it, "Yes, there is more in it
than you can touch."

She turned to him with the daring flash of timid spirits. It was so
sharp a motion that he started instantly from his reverie to meet it,
but his alacrity was mechanical. She felt the smile he summoned was
slow, as if he returned, from a long distance, a little painfully to his
present surroundings.

The _Intermezzo_ was playing, and to speak under the music he leaned so
close his shoulder touched her chair. Through that narrow space between
them, almost beneath his eyes, she moved her hand--a gesture so slightly
emphasized as to seem accident. He had started to speak, but her motion
seemed to stop his tongue. He looked hard at her hand, and something
violent in his intentness made her clutch the side of the chair.
Instantly she met his look, so fiercely, cruelly challenging, that it
took her like a blow. For a moment they looked at each other, her eyes
wide with fright, his narrowed to a glare under the terrible intentness
of his brows. What had she done? What threatened her? What could save
her in this sea of people? Then, while she gazed, his challenge burned
out to a pale hard scrutiny, that faded to no expression at all--or was
it that any expression would have seemed dim after the terrible one that
had flashed across his face?

She was as shaken as if he had seized hold of her. If he had snatched
the ring off her finger she wouldn't have been more shocked. The whole
box must be transfixed by him, and the whole house be looking at nothing
but their little circle of horror! She was ready for it. She was braced
for anything but the fact which actually confro