the chair before her
writing-table, and laid her head upon the table between her arms.

In her wretchedness she found herself turning to Kerr. How stoically he
had endured it all, though it must have borne on him most heavily! How
kind he had been to her! He had not even spoken of himself, though he
must have known the shadows were closing over his head. Any moment he
might be enshrouded. If it came to a choice between having him taken and
giving him the blue jewel, she wondered which she would do.

In the gray hours of the morning she wrote him. She dared not put the
perils into words, but she implied them. She vaguely threatened; and
she implored him to go, avoiding them all, herself more than any; and,
quaking at the possibility that he might, after all, overcome _her_, she
declared that before he went she would not see him again. She closed
with the forbidding statement that whether he stayed or went, at the end
of three days she would make a sure disposal of the ring. She put all
this in reckless black and white and sent it by the hand of Shima. Then
she waited. She waited, in her little isolation, with the sapphire
always hung about her neck, waited with what anticipation of marvelous
results--avowals, ideal farewells, or possibly some incredible
transformation of the grim face of the business. And the answer was
silence.

XVI

THE HEART OF THE DILEMMA

There is, in the heart of each gale of events, a storm center of quiet.
It is the very deadlock of contending forces, in which the individual
has space for breath and apprehension. Into this lull Flora fell panting
from her last experience, more frightened by this false calm than by the
whirlwind that had landed her there. Now she had time to mark the echoes
of the storm about her, and to realize her position. Her absorption had
peopled the world for her with four people at most. Now she had time to
look at the larger aspect.

From the middle of her calm she saw many inexplicable appearances. She
saw them everywhere, from the small round of Clara's movement to the
larger wheel of the public aspect. Clara was taking tea with the
Bullers, and the papers had ceased to mention the Crew Idol.

It had not even been a nine days' wonder. It had not dwindled. It had
simply dropped from head-lines to nothing; and after the first murmur of
astonishment at this strange vanishing, after a little vain conjecture
as to the reason of it, the subject dropped out of