r
as pale as anger, yet not angry; it was some bigger thing that looked
at her from his eyes. He looked a long while, as if he bade her never to
forget this moment. Then, "I'll give you twenty-four hours," he said.
"This man will take you home." He shut the carriage door--shut it
between them. Before she had gathered breath he had straightened, fallen
back, raised his hat, and the carriage was turning. Flora thrust her
head, straw hat and ribbons out of the window.

"Oh, I love you!" she called to him. She sank back in the cushions and
covered her face with her hands.

XVIII

GOBLIN TACTICS

For a little she kept her face hidden, shutting out the present,
jealously living with the wonderful thing that had happened to her. It
was as wonderful as anything she had dreamed might come when she had
written him that letter. And if she needed any proof of his love, she
had had it in the moment when he had let her go. There he had
transcended her hope. She felt lifted up, she felt triumphant, though
the triumph had not been hers. It was all his; he had saved her from her
own weakness; his was the miracle. How he shone to her! The dark,
swaying hollow of the carriage seemed still full of his presence, full
of his hurried whispering; and again she seemed to see him standing
outside the window in the deep blue evening holding out his hands to her
cry of "I love you!"

He had been wonderful in a way she had not expected. He had shown her so
beautifully that he could be reached in spite of his obsession. Might
not she hope to touch him just a little further? Was there any height
now that he might not rise to? She seemed to see the possible end of it
all shaping itself out of his magnanimity. She seemed to see him finally
relinquishing his passion for the jewel, and his passion for her for the
sake of something finer than both. She had seen it foreshadowed in what
he had done this day--having them both in his hands, he had put them
away from him. Yet in that action she knew there had been no finality.
She had touched him, but she had not convinced him, and as long as he
was unconvinced he would be at her again in some other way.

Her hands dropped from her face, and she confronted the fact drearily.
"No," she thought, "he never gives up what he wants."

She looked out of the window. The flickers of gas-lamps fell
intermittently through it upon her. Her queer vehicle was rattling
crazily--jolting as if every spring wer