nly _knew_! If I only were sure!" She locked her fingers closer,
staring hard. If it had been the whole Crew Idol, the undismembered god
himself, then there would have been less terror, and one plain thing to
do. She looked hard at the sapphire setting, as if she hoped to discover
upon its brilliance some tell-tale trace of old soft gold; but there was
only one great, glassy, polished eye, and out of what head it had come,
whether from the forehead of the Crew Idol, or from that of some
unheralded deity, who was there who could tell her?

She tried to summon a coherent thought, but again it was only a flash
out of the darkness.

"Kerr! Why, he knows more than I." She looked at this stupidly for a
moment as if it were too large to take in at once. Of course he must
have known! Why hadn't she thought of that before? Why hadn't she
thought of it that first moment, when he had turned on her in the box
with such terrible eyes? She drew in her shoulders, looking all around
at the dim corners of the room which the lamp flame failed to penetrate.
Behind her present lively fear a second shadow was growing, more dim,
more formless, more vast and dubious.

What series of circumstances might have led up to Kerr's knowledge she
could not dream. He was one of whom nothing was incredible. From the
first moment his face had shot into the light, from the moment she had
heard his voice, like color in the level voices around him, she had been
bewildered by his variety. He had caught her up to the clouds. He had
whirled her along dubious levels, and more than once he had shown her
that the lines she had supposed drawn so sharply between this and that
could no more be discerned than meridians on green earth.

If she had noticed any earnestness in him, it was his relish, his gusto
for the whole of life. He had no theory to set up. Just as it was he
took it. If he persisted in requiring people to be themselves it was for
no good to themselves, but for the pleasure he himself got out of it. If
he made society into a little ball, and threw it away, it was only to
show it could be done.

And where, she asked herself in a summing up, might such a man not be
found? But there were few places, indeed, in even the broadest plain of
possibility, which could hold knowledge of so particular and piercing a
quality as his look had implied. There had been so much more than
curiosity or surprise in it. She could hardly face the memory of it, so
cruelly