y in the whiteness.

XIV

COMEDY CONVEYS A WARNING

She stood where he had left her in the open doorway, with the damp eddy
of the fog blowing on her. She had had a narrow escape; but after the
first fullness of her relief there returned upon her again the weight of
her responsibility. There was no slipping out of it now, and it was
going to be worse than she had imagined. So much had come out in the
last half-hour that she felt bewildered by it. What Harry had let slip
about Clara alarmed her. What in the world was Clara about? With one
well-aimed observation she had stirred up Harry against Kerr and against
Flora herself. And meanwhile she was running after the Bullers. Twice in
two days, if Harry was not mistaken, and she was even nearing another
engagement.

After all her fruitless mousings, Clara had too evidently got on the
scent of something at last. How much she knew or guessed as yet, Flora
could not be sure, but certainly, now, she couldn't let Clara go. For
that would be turning adrift a dangerous person with a stronger motive
than ever for pursuing her quest, and the opportunity for pursuing it
unobserved, out of Flora's sight. Clara was at it even now, and the only
consolation Flora had was that Harry, at least, would not play into her
hands.

For Harry had a special secret interest of his own. The last ten minutes
of their interview had made that plain. His manner, when he had declared
his intention of taking the ring, had been anything but the manner of a
care-free lover merely concerned with pleasing his lady. Then they were
all of them racing each other for the same thing--the thing she held in
her possession; and whether she feared most to be felled by a blow from
Harry, or hunted far afield by Kerr, or trapped by Clara, she could not
tell. She stood hesitating, looking out into the obscurity of the fog,
as if she hoped to read the answer there. Presently she returned to the
fact that Shima was waiting to close the door. Half-way across the hall
she paused again, looking thoughtfully down the rose-colored vista of
the drawing-room, and up at the broad black march of the stair. Vague
mysteries peered at her from every side. Which should she flee from?
Which walk boldly up to and dispel?

She went up-stairs slowly. She stood in her dressing-room absently
before the mirror. She touched the hard, unyielding stone of the ring
under the thin bodice of her gown. She recalled the morning when sh