ore preposterous than the last.

"Why, yes, it's too ridiculous; what do you think she wanted?"

At that question Flora's heart seemed fairly to stand still. That was
the very question she had been asking herself for days, and asking in
vain.

Ella's voice was coming to her faint as a voice from another world. "She
wanted that little, little picture--that picture of the man called
Farrell Wand. Don't you remember, papa mentioned it at supper that
evening at the club? Isn't it funny she remembered it all this time?
Well, she wanted it dreadfully, but Harry wanted it, too, and papa said
he had promised it to Harry; but I got it first and gave it to her."
Ella's voice ended on a high note of triumph.

Flora's, if anything, rose higher in despair. "Oh, Ella!"

"Doesn't it seem ridiculous," Ella argued, "that if she really wanted
him she'd give him up for that?"

"Oh, no--I mean yes," Flora stammered. "Yes, of course! thank you, Ella,
very much--very much." The last words were hardly audible. The receiver
fell jangling into its bracket, and Flora leaned against the wall by the
telephone and closed her eyes.

For a moment all she could see was Clara with that little, little
picture. How well she could remember how Clara had looked that night of
the club supper!

From the moment Judge Buller had spoken of the picture, how all three of
them had changed, Clara and Kerr and Harry. Everything that had seemed
so phantasmal then, everything she had put down as a figment of her own
imagination, had meant just this plain fact. All three of them had
wanted the picture. For his own reason Kerr had turned aside from the
chase, but Harry had stood with it to the last, and now, when finally
the prize had been assured to him, Clara had it!

At this moment she had it in her hand. At this moment she knew what was
the aspect of the figure in the picture, whether it showed a face, and,
if a face, whose. Flora's hands opened and closed. "Oh," she whispered
to the great silence of the great house awaiting him; "where is he? Why
isn't he here?"

All those terrible things which might be happening beyond her reach
processioned before her. Had Clara already snapped the trap of the law
upon Kerr? And if she hadn't yet, what could be done to hold her off?
Flora turned again to the telephone. Slowly she took down the receiver
and gave into the bright mouthpiece of the instrument the number of her
own house.

Presently the voice of Shima sp