the public mouth. The
silence was so sudden it was like a suppression. To Flora it shadowed
some forces working so secretly, so surely, that they had extinguished
the light of publicity. They must be going on with concentrated and
terrible activity in cycles, which perhaps had not yet touched her.

So, seeing Major Purdie among the crowd at some one's "afternoon" where
she was pouring tea, she looked up at his cheerful face and high bald
dome with a passionate curiosity. He knew why the press had been
extinguished, and what they were doing in the dark. She knew where the
sapphire was--and where the culprit was to be found. And to think that
they could tell each other, if they would, each a tale the other would
hardly dare believe. Amazing appearances! How far away, how foreign from
the facts they covered! But Major Purdie had the best of it. He at least
was doing his duty. He was standing stiffly on one side, while she
hesitated between, trying desperately to push Kerr out of sight before
she dared uncover the jewel. But he wouldn't move. In spite of all she
had done, he wouldn't.

Across the room that very afternoon she caught the twinkle of his
resisting smile. He had had her letter then for two days, and still he
had come here, though he'd been bidden to stay away; though he had been
warned to keep away from all places where she, or these people around
her, might find him; though he had been implored to go, finally, as far
away as the round surface of the world would let him.

By what he had heard and seen in the red room that night, he must know
her warning had not been ridiculous. And there was another threat less
apparent on the face of things, but evident enough to her. It was the
change in Clara after she had begun her attack on the Bullers, her
appearance of being busy with something, absorbed with, intent upon,
something, which, if she had not secured it yet, at least she had well
in reach. And that thing--suppose it had to do with the Crew Idol; and
suppose Clara should play into Harry's hands!

For Kerr's escape Flora had been holding the ring, fighting off events,
and yet all the while she had not wanted to lose the sight of him. Well,
now, when she had made up her mind finally to resign herself to the
dreariness of that, might he not at least have done his part of it and
decently disappeared? So much he might have done for her. Instead of
smiling at her across crowded tea-rooms, and obliquely glancing