with his silence, one with her talk, they had written the
figures of the reward so blazingly in Flora's mind that for the moment
she could see nothing else. Yet now she was alone her first adventure
recurred to her. As soon as she was quiet in the dark there came back
with reminiscent terror the look that Kerr had given her in the box. She
wasn't really afraid of Kerr himself. She was afraid of the meaning of
his look which she didn't understand. It only established in her mind a
great significance for the sapphire, if it could produce such an
expression on a human face. It had given him more than a mere
expression. It had given him an impulse for pursuit, as if, like a
magnet, it was fairly dragging him. He had covered his impulse by his
very frankness, but she knew he had pursued her--that for the matter of
seeing her again he had hunted her down. And what had followed that?
Why, she was back again to the great figures in the paper.

At first it seemed as though she had taken a clean leap from one subject
to another. She had in no way connected them. But all at once they were
connected. She couldn't separate them. She didn't know whether she had
been stupid not to have seen them so before, or whether she was stupid
to see them so now. For the thought that had sprung up in her mind was
monstrous. It startled her so broad awake that she sat up in bed to meet
it the more alertly. She sat up trembling. She felt like one who has
walked a long way in a wood, hearing crafty footsteps following in the
bushes. And now the beast had sprung out, and she was panting,
terrified, not knowing which way to run.

The room was dark except for now and again the yellow square of light,
from some passing cable car, traveling along the ceiling. The four walls
around her, their dark bulks of furniture and light ripple of moving
curtains, shut her up with this monster of her mind. The longer she
looked at it the less she felt sure it was real, and yet it was before
her. It was there with none of the loveliness of her first fancies about
the ring. It was there with grisly reality. It had not been conjured up.
It had sprung upon her from the solid actualities of the night. And,
yes, of the day before--and the night before that. Oh, she had known
well enough that there had been something wrong at the goldsmith's shop.
She had felt it even before she had seen the sapphire; and afterward how
it had held them, both herself and Harry! To have moved