Harry it must be
something indeed! Had he suspected it then, or had he only wondered?

If he had suspected why hadn't he spoken of it? Well, her appalling
fancy prompted, hadn't he spoken of it?--though not to her. There
flashed back to her the memory of him there in the back of the shop with
the blue-eyed Chinaman. How furiously he had assailed the little man!
How uneasily, with what a dissatisfied air he had looked at the ring
even after it was on her finger, as if, after all, he had not compassed
what he had wanted. She could be almost sure that the monstrous idea
which had just overtaken her had, however fleetingly, flashed before
Harry's mind in the goldsmith's shop. But surely he couldn't have
entertained it for a moment. That was impossible, or he would never have
let her take the sapphire--Harry, who had seen the ring, the very Crew
Idol itself, within the twenty-four hours.

"A little heathen god curled round himself with a big blue stone on the
top-of his head." Harry hadn't said what sort of stone it was; but Kerr
had said it was a sapphire. There was a sapphire on her hand now. She
touched it with her finger-tips cautiously, as if to touch something
hot. So near to her! In the same room with her! On her own hand! It was
too much to be alone with in the dark! She reached out softly, as if she
feared to disturb some threatening presence lurking around her, and lit
the small night lamp on the low table by her bed. The shade was yellow,
and that contended with the blue of the sapphire, but couldn't break
its light. With the first flash of its splendor in her face she felt
certainty threatening her. She shook the ring quickly off her finger and
it fell with a light clatter on the table's marble top--fell with the
sapphire face down, and all its light hidden. She took it up again a
little fearfully, as if it might have got some harm; and again while she
looked at it it seemed to her that nothing that happened about this
jewel could be too extraordinary. If only it had been less wonderful,
less beautiful, she would not have felt so terribly afraid! She put it
back on the table and for a moment held her hand over it, as if she
imprisoned a living thing.

Then, without looking again, she got out of bed and went to the window.
It overlooked the dark steep of the garden, the moving trees and the
lighter plane of the water. She leaned out, far out. Black housetops
marched against the bay, and between them, light by l