The coast of chanceEsther Chamberlain, Lucia Chamberlain





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THE COAST OF CHANCE








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THE
COAST OF CHANCE
By
ESTHER AND LUCIA CHAMBERLAIN
WITH inclustriations by
CLARENCE F. UNDERWOOD
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
* - -
- *


-I
[TTHE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
* * * *t, *. |
ASTOR, LENox AND
TI Fouls pations
§§jää L
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BookBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y. -


:
VII
VIII
IX
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
CONTENTS
THE VANIshing MystERY . -
A NAME Goes Round A TABLE
EncountERs on PARADE
FloweRs by THE WAY
ON GUARD
BLAck MAGIC .
A SPELL Is Cast
A SPARK of HoRRoR
ILLUMINATION .
A LADY UNvEILED
THE MystERY TAKEs HUMAN ForM
DISENCHANTMENT
THRUST AND PARRY .
CoMEDY Conveys A WARNING
A LADY IN DISTREss
THE HEART of THE DILEMMA
THE DEMIGod
GoBLIN TActics
Pace
24
63
82
93
105
129
142
162
175
197
213
216
281
248
285
293
330


CONTENTS-Continued
chapter
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
THE FACE IN THE GARDEN .
FLIGHT
THE House of QUIET
CLARA's MARKET
ToUCHE
THE Comic MAsk
THE LAst ENCHANTMENT
Page
345
361
381
410
422
435
451


THE COAST OF CHANCE





THE COAST OF CHANCE
THE WAN IS HING MY STERY
LORA Gilsey stood on the threshold of
F her dining-room. She had turned her
back on it. She swayed forward. Her
bare arms were lifted. Her hands lightly caught
the molding on either side of the door. She
was looking intently into the mirror at the
other end of the hall. All the lights in the din-
ing-room were lit, and she saw herself rather
keenly set against their brilliance. The straight-
held head, the lifted arms, the short, slender
waist, the long, long sweep of her skirts made
her seem taller than she actually was; and the
strong, bright growth of her hair and the vi-
vacity of her face made her seem more deeply
colored.
She had poised there for the mere survey of
I


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
a new gown, but after a moment of dwelling on
her own reflection she found herself considering
it only as an object in the foreground of a pic-
ture. That picture, seen through the open door,
reflected in the glass, was all of a bright, hard
glitter, all a high, harsh tone of newness. In its
paneled oak, in its glare of cut-glass and silver,
in the shining vacant faces of its floors and walls,
there was not a color that filled the eye, not a
shadow where imagination could find play. As a
background for herself it struck her as incongru-
ous. Like a child looking at the landscape upside
down, she felt herself in a foreign country.
Yet it was hers. She turned about to bring it
into familiar association. There was nothing
wrong with it. But its great capacity sug-
gested large parties rather than close intimacies.
In the high lift of its ceilings, the ample open-
ings of its doors, the swept, garnished, polished
beauty of its cold surfaces, it proclaimed itself
conceived, created and decorated for large, fine
functions. She thought whimsically that any
one who knew her, coming into her house, would
2


T H E W A N IS H IN G M Y S T E R Y
realize that some one other than herself had the
ordering of it.
She glanced over the table. It was set for
three. It lacked nothing but the serving of din-
ner. She looked at the clock. It wanted a few
minutes to the hour. Shima, the Japanese but-
ler, came in softly with the evening papers. She
took them from him. Nothing bored her so
much as a paper, but to-night she knew it con-
tained something she really wanted to see. She
opened one of the damp sheets at the page of
sales.
There it was at the head of the column in
thick black type:
AT AUCTION, FEBRUARY 18
PERSONAL ESTATE OF
ELIZABETH HUNTER CHATWORTH
CONSISTING OF
She read the details with interest down to the
end, where the name of the “famous Chatworth
ring” finished the announcement with a flourish.
Why “famous”? It was very provoking to ad-
3


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
vertise with that vague adjective and not ex-
plain it.
She turned indifferently to the first page. She
read a sentence, re-read it, read it again. Then,
as if she could not read fast enough, her eyes
galloped down the column. Color came into her
cheeks. The grasp of her hands on the edges
of the paper tightened. It was the most ex-
traordinary thing! She was bewildered with the
feeling that what was blazing at her from the
columns of the paper was at once the wildest
thing that could possibly have happened, and yet
the one most to have been expected.
For, from the first the business had been
sinister, from as far back as the tragedy—the
end of poor young Chatworth and his wife—
the Bessie, who, before her English marriage,
they had all known so well. Her death, that had
befallen in far Italian Alps, had made a sensa-
tion in their little city, and the large announce-
ments of auction that had followed hard upon
it had bred among the women who had known
her a morbid excitement, a feverish desire to buy,
4


T H E W A N IS H IN G M Y S T E R Y
as if there might be some special luck in them,
the jewels of a woman who had so tragically
died. They had been ready to make a social
affair of the private view held in the “Maple
Room” before the auction. And now the whole
spectacular business was capped by a sensation
so dramatic as to strain credulity to its limit.
She could not believe it; yet here it was glaring
at her from the first page. Still—it might be
an exaggeration, a mistake. She must go back
to the beginning and read it over slowly.
The striking of the hour hurried her. Shima's
announcement of dinner only sent her eyes faster
down the page. But when, with a faint, smooth
rustle, Mrs. Britton came in, she let the paper
fall. She always faced her chaperon with a
little nervousness, and with the same sense of
strangeness with which she so frequently regard-
ed her house.
“It’s fifteen minutes after eight,” Mrs. Brit-
ton observed. “We would better not wait any
longer.”
She took the place opposite Flora's at the
5


T H E CO A S T . O F C H A N C E
round table. Flora sat down, still holding the
paper, flushed and bolt upright with her news.
“It’s the most extraordinary thing!” she
burst forth.
Mrs. Britton paused mildly with a radish in
her fingers. She took in the presence of the pa-
per, and the suppressed excitement of her com-
panion’s face—seemed to absorb them through
the large pupils of her light eyes, through all
her smooth, pretty person, before she reached
for an explanation.
“What is the most extraordinary thing?”
The query came bland and smooth, as if, what-
ever it was, it could not surprise her.
“Why, the Chatworth ring ! At the private
view this afternoon it simply vanished! And—
and it was all our own crowd who were there!”
“Vanished!” Clara Britton leaned forward,
peering hard in the face of this extraordinary
statement. “Stolen, do you mean?” She made
it definite.
Flora flung out her hands.
“Well, it disappeared in the Maple Room, in
6


T H E W A N IS H IN G M Y S T E R Y
the middle of the afternoon, when everybody
was there—and they haven’t the faintest clue.”
“But how?” For a moment the preposterous
fact left Clara too quick to be calm.
Again Flora’s eloquent hands. “That is it!
It was in a case like all the other jewels. Harry
saw it”—she glanced at the paper—“as late as
four o'clock. When he came back with Judge
Buller, half an hour after, it was gone.”
Flora leaned forward on her elbows, chin in
hands. No two could have differed more than
these two women in their blondness and their
prettiness and their wonder. For Clara was
sharp and pale, with silvery lights in eyes and
hair, and confronted the facts with an alert and
calculating observation; but Flora was tawny,
toned from brown to ivory through all the
gamut of gold—hair color of a panther’s hide,
eyes dark hazel, glinting through dust-colored
lashes, chin round like a fruit. The pressure of
her fingers accented the slight uptilt of her
brows to elfishness, and her look was introspect-
ive. She might, instead of wondering on the
7


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
outside, have been the very center of the mys-
tery itself, toying with unthinkable possibilities
of revelation. She looked far over the head of
Clara Britton’s annoyance that there should be
no clue.
“Why, don't you see,” she pointed out, “that
is just the fun of it? It might be anybody. It
might be you, or me, or Ella Buller. Though
I would much prefer to think it was some one we
didn’t know so well—some one strange and fas-
cinating, who will presently go slipping out the
Golden Gate in a little junk boat, so that no one
need be embarrassed.”
Clara looked back with extraordinary intent-
ness.
“Oh, it's not possible the thing is stolen.
There’s some mistake! And if it were”—her
eyes seemed to open a little wider to take in this
possibility—“they will have detectives all around
the water front by to-night. Any one would
find it difficult to get away,” she pointed out.
“You see, the ring is an important piece of
property.”
8


T H E W A N IS H IN G M Y S T E R Y
“Of course; I know,” Flora murmured. A
faint twitch of humor pulled her mouth, but the
passionate romantic color was dying out of her
face. How was it that one’s romances could be
so cruelly pulled down to earth? She ought to
have learned by this time, she thought, never to
fly her little flag of romance except to an empty
horizon—never, at least, to fly it in Clara’s face.
It was always as promptly surrounded by
Clara’s common sense as San Francisco would
be surrounded by the police. But still she
couldn’t quite come down to Clara. “At least,”
she sighed, “he has saved me an awful expense,
whoever took it, for I should have had to have
it.”
Mrs. Britton surveyed this statement consid-
eringly. “Was it the most valuable thing in the
collection?”
Flora hesitated in the face of the alert ques-
tion. “I-don’t know. But it was the most re-
markable. It was a Chatworth heirloom, the
papers say, and was given to Bessie at the time
of her marriage.” The thought of the death
- 9


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
that had so quickly followed that marriage gave
Flora a little shiver, but no shade of the tragedy
touched Clara. There was nothing but specula-
tion in Clara’s eyes—that, and a little disap-
pointment. “Then they will put off the auction
—if it is really so,” she mused.
“Oh, yes,” Flora mourned, “they can put it
off as long as they please. The only thing I
wanted is gone—and I hadn’t even seen it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be too sure. There may be
some mistake about it. The papers love a sen-
sation.”
“But there must be something in it, Clara.
Why, they closed the doors and searched them—
that crowd It’s ridiculous!”
Clara Britton glanced at the empty place.
“Then that must be what has kept him.”
“Who? Oh, Harry!” It took Flora a mo-
ment to remember she had been expecting Harry.
She hoped Clara had not noticed it. Clara al-
ways had too much the assumption that she
was taking him only as the best-looking, best-
natured, safest bargain presented. “He will be
10


T H E W A N IS H IN G M Y S T E R Y
here,” she reassured, “but I wish he would hurry.
His dinner will be spoiled; and, poor dear, he
likes his dinner so much!”
The faint silver sound of the electric bell, a
precipitate double peal, seemed to uphold this
statement. The women faced each other in a
moment's suspense, a moment of expectation,
such as the advance column may feel at sight of
a scout hotfoot from the field of battle. There
were muffled movements in the hall, then light,
even steps crossing the drawing-room. Those
light steps always suggested a slight frame,
and, as always, Flora was re-surprised at his
bulk as now it appeared between the parted cur-
tains, the dull black and sharp white of his even-
ing clothes topped by his square, fresh-colored
face.
“Well, Flora,” he said, “I know I’m late,” and
took the hand she held to him from where she
sat. Her face danced with pleasure. Yes, he was
magnificent, she thought, as he crossed with his
light stride to Mrs. Britton’s chair. He could
even stand the harsh lines and lights of even-
II


T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
ing clothes. He dominated their ugly conven-
tion with his height, his face so ruddy and
fresh under the pale brown of his hair, his alert,
assured, deft movement. His high good nature
had the effect of sweetening for him even Clara
Britton’s flavorless manner. The “We were
speaking of you,” with which she saw him to his
seat, had all the warmth of a smile, but a smile
far in the background of Flora’s immediate pos-
session. Indeed, Flora had seldom had so much
to say to Harry as at this moment of her excite-
ment over what he had actually seen. For the
evidence that he had seen something was vivid
in his face. She had never found him so splen-
didly alive. She had never seen him, it came to
her, quite like this before.
She shook the paper at him. “Tell us every-
thing, instantly!”
He gaily acknowledged her right to make him
thus stand and deliver. He shot his hands into
the air with the lightening vivacity that was in
him a sort of wit. “Not guilty,” he grinned at
her.
12


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T H E W A N IS H IN G M Y S T E R Y
“Harry, you know you were in it. The papers
have you the most important personage.”
“Oh, not all that,” he denied her allegation.
“They had the whole lot of us cooped up to-
gether for investigation for as much as two
hours. I thought I shouldn’t have time to dress!
I’m as hungry as a hawk!” He rolled it out with
the full gusto with which he was by this time
engaged on his first course.
“Poor dear,” said Flora with cooing mock-
sympathy, “and did they starve it? But would
it mind telling us, now that it has its food, what
is true, and what was the gallant part it played
this afternoon?”
*Well,” he followed her whimsical lead, “the
chief detective and I were the star performers.
I found the ring wasn’t there, and he found he
couldn’t find it.”
“Don’t you know any more than the paper?”
Flora mourned.
“Considerably less—if I know the papers.”
He grinned with a fine flash of even teeth.
“What do you want me to say?”
13


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“Why, stupid, the adventures of Harry
Cressy, Esquire. How did you feel?”
“Thirsty.”
“Oh, Harry!” She glanced about, as if for a
missile to threaten him with.
“Upon my word! But look here—wait a min-
ute!” he arrived deliberately at what was re-
quired of him. “Never mind how I felt; but if
you want to know the way it happened—here’s
your Maple Room.” He began a diagram with
forks on the cloth before him, and Clara, who
had watched their sparring from her point of
vantage in the background, now leaned for-
ward, as if at last they were getting to the point.
“This is the case, furthest from the door.”
He planted a salt-cellar in his silver inclosure.
“I come in very early, at half-past two, before
the crowd; fail to meet you there.” He made
mischievous bows to right and left. “I go out
again. But first I see this ring.”
“What was it like?” Flora demanded.
“Like?” Harry turned a speculative eye to
the dull glow of the candelabrum, as if between
14


T H E V A N IS H IN G M Y S T E R Y
its points of flame he conjured up the vision of
the vanished jewel. “Like a bit of an old gold
heathen god curled round himself, with his head,
which was mostly two yellow sapphires, between
his knees, and a big, blue stone on top. Soft,
yellow gold, so fine you could almost dent it.
And carved! Even through a glass every line
of it is right.” He paused and ran the tip of
his finger along the silver outline of his diagram,
as if the mere memory of the precious eyes of the
little god had power to arrest all other consider-
ation. “Well, there he was,” he pulled himself
up, “and I can’t remember when a thing of that
sort has stayed by me so. I couldn’t seem to get
away from it. I dropped into the club and
talked to Buller about it. He got keen, and I
went back with him to have another look at it.
Well, at the door Buller stops to speak to a chap
going out—a crazy Englishman he had picked
up at the club. I go on. By this time there’s a
crowd inside, but I manage to get up to the case.
And first I miss the spot altogether. And then
I see the card with his name; and then, under-
15


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
neath I see the hole in the velvet where the god
has been.”
Flora gave out a little sigh of suspense, and
even Clara showed a gleam of excitement. He
looked from one to the other. “Then there were
fireworks. Buller came up. The detective came
up. Everybody came up. Nobody'd believe it.
Lots of 'em thought they had seen it only a few
minutes before. But there was the hole in the
velvet—and nothing more to be found.”
“But does no one know anything? Has no
one an idea?” Clara almost panted in her im-
patience.
“Not the ghost of a glimmer of a clue. There
were upward of two hundred of us, and they let
us out like a chain-gang, one by one. My num-
ber was one hundred and ninety-three, and so
far I can vouch there were no discoveries. It
has vanished—sunk out of sight.”
Flora sighed. “Oh, poor Bessie Chatworth!”
It came out with a quick inconsequence that made
Clara—even in her impatience—ever so faintly
smile. “It seems so cruel to have your things
16


T H E W A N IS H IN G. M. Y S T E R Y
taken like that when you’re dead, and can't help
it,” Flora rather lamely explained. “I should
hate it.”
Harry stared at her. “Oh, come. I guess you
wouldn’t care.”
His eyes rested for a moment
on the fine flare of jewels presented by Flora's
clasped hands. “Besides,”—his voice dropped
to a graver level—“the deuce of it is—” he
paused, they, both rather breathless, looking at
him. He had the air of a man about to give in-
formation, and then the air of a man who has
thought better of it. His voice consciously shook
off its gravity. “Well, there’ll be such a row
kicked up, the probability is the thing’ll be re-
turned and no questions asked. Purdie's keen
—very keen. He's responsible, the executor of
the estate, you see.”
But Clara Britton leveled her eyes at him, as
if the thing he had produced was not at all the
thing he had led up to. “Still, unless there was
enormous pressure somewhere—and in this case
I don’t see where—I can’t see what Mr. Purdie's
keenness will do toward getting it back.”
17


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
Harry played a little sulkily with the propo-
sition, but he would not pick up the thread he
had dropped. “I don’t know that any one sees.
The question now is—who took it?”
“Why, one of us,” said Flora flippantly. “Of
course, it is all on the Western Addition.”
“Don’t you believe it!” he answered her. “It’s
a confounded fine professional job. It takes
more than sleight of hand—it takes genius, a
thing like that!”
Flora gave him a quick glance, but he had not
spoken flippantly. He was serious in his admira-
tion. She didn’t quite fancy his tone. “Why,
Harry,” she protested, “you talk as if you ad-
mired him P’
At this he laughed. “Well, how do you know
I don’t? But I can tell you one thing”—he
dropped back into the same tone again—“there’s
no local crook work in this affair. It should be
some one big—some one—” He frowned straight
before him. He shook his head and smiled.
“There was a chap in England, Farrell Wand.”
18


T H E W A N IS H IN G M Y S T E R Y
The name floated in a little silence.
“He kept them guessing,” Harry went on re-
calling it; “did some great vanishing acts.”
“You mean he could take things before their
eyes without people knowing it?” Flora's eyes
were wide beyond their wont.
“Something of that sort. I remember at one
of the Embassy balls at St. James’ he talked five
minutes to Lady Tilton. Her emeralds were on
when he began. She never saw 'em again.”
Flora began to laugh. “He must have been
attractive.”
“Well,” Harry conceded practically, “he knew
his business.”
“But you can’t rely on those stories,” Clara
objected.
“You must this time,” he shook his tawny
head at her; “I give you my word; for I was
there.”
It seemed to Flora fairly preposterous that
Harry could sit there looking so matter-of-fact
with such experiences behind him. Even Clara
19


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
looked a little taken aback, but the effect was
only to set her more sharply on.
“Then such a man could easily have taken the
ring in the Maple Room this afternoon? You
think it might have been the man himself?”
His broad smile of appreciation enveloped
her. “Oh, you have a scent like a bloodhound.
You haven’t let go of that once since you started.
He could have done it—oh, easy—but he went
out eight, ten years ago.”
“Died?” Flora's rising inflection was a la-
ment.
“Went over the horizon—over the range. Be-
lieve he died in the colonies.”
“Oh,” Flora sighed, “then I shall have to
fancy he has come back again, just for the sake
of the Chatworth ring. That wouldn’t be too
strange. It’s all so strange I keep forgetting it
is real. At least,” she went on explaining her-
self to Harry’s smile, “it seems as if this must
be going on a long way off, as if it couldn’t be
so close to us, as if the ring I wanted so much
couldn’t really be the one that has disappeared.”
20


T H E W A N IS H IN G M Y S T E R Y
All the while she felt Harry’s smile enveloping
her with an odd, half-protecting watchfulness,
but at the close of her sentence he frowned a
little.
“Well, perhaps we can find another ring to
take the place of it.”
She felt that she had been stupid where she
should have been most delicate. “But you don’t
understand,” she protested, leaning far toward
him as if to coerce him with her generous
warmth. “The Chatworth ring was nothing but
a fancy I had. I never thought of it for a mo-
ment as an engagement ring!”
By the light stir of silk she was aware that
Clara had risen. She looked up quickly to en-
counter that odd look. Clara’s face was so
smooth, so polished, so unruffled, as to appear
almost blank, but none the less Flora saw it all
in Clara’s eye—a look that was not new to her.
It was the same with which Clara had met the
announcement of her engagement; the same look
with which she had confronted every allusion
to the approaching marriage; the same with
21


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
which she now surveyed the mention of the en-
gagement ring—a look neither approving nor
dissenting, whose calm, considerate speculation
seemed to repudiate all interest positive or nega-
tive in the approaching event except the one
large question, “What is to become of me?”
Many times Clara had held it up before her,
not as a question, certainly not as an accusation;
as a flat assertion of fact; but to-night Flora
felt it so directly and imperatively aimed at her
that it seemed this time to demand an audible
response. And Clara’s way of getting up, and
standing there, with her gloves on, poised and
expectant, as if she were only waiting an oppor-
tunity to take farewell, took on, in the light of
her look, the fantastic appearance of a final de-
parture. “I’m afraid,” she mildly reminded
them, “that Shima announced the carriage ten
minutes ago.”
“Oh, dear, I’m so sorry!” Flora's eyes wav-
ered apologetically in the direction of the wait-
ing Japanese. Clara’s flicker of amusement
made her hate herself the moment it was out.
22


T H E W A N IS H IN G. M. Y S T E R Y
She could always depend on herself when she
knew she was on exhibition. She could be sure
of the right thing if it were only large enough,
but she was still caught at odd moments by the
trifles, the web of a certain social habit into
which she had slipped, full grown on the smooth
surface of her father’s millions. Clara’s fleet-
ing smile lit up these trifles to her now as enor-
mous. It took advantage of her small deficit to
point out to her more plainly than ever to what
large blunders she might be liable when she had
cut loose from Clara’s guiding, reminding,
prompting genius, and chose to confront the
world without it.
To be sure, she was not to confront it alone;
but, looking at Harry, it came to her with a
moment’s qualm that she did not know him as
well as she had thought.
.


II
A NAME GO E S R O U ND A TABLE
OR to-night, from the moment he had
appeared, she had recognized an unfa-
miliar mood in him, and it had come
out more the more they had discussed the Chat-
worth ring. It was not in any special word or
action on his part. It was in his whole presence
that she felt the difference, as if the after-
noon’s scandal had been a stimulant to him—not
through its romantic aspect, as it had affected
her, but merely by the daring of the theft itself.
She wondered, as he heaped her ermine on her
shoulders, if Harry might not have more sur-
prises for her than she had supposed. Perhaps
she had taken him too much for granted. After
all, she had known him only for a year.
She herself was but three years old in San
24


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
Francisco, and to her new eyes Harry had
seemed an old resident thoroughly established.
So firmly established was he in his bachelor quar-
ters, in his clubs, in the demands made upon him
by the city’s society, that it had never occurred
to her he had ever lived anywhere else. Nor had
he happened to mention anything of his previous
life until to-night, when he had given her, in
that mention of a London ball, one flashing
glimpse of former experiences.
Impulsively she summed up the possibilities
of what these might have been. She gave him a
look, incredulous, delighted, as he handed her
into the carriage. She had actually got a thrill
out of easy-going, matter-of-fact, well-tubbed
Harry! It was a comradeship in itself. Not
that she would have told him. This capacity of
hers for thrills she had found need always to
keep carefully covered. In the days when she
was a shoeless child—those days of her father's
labor in shaft and dump-she had dimly felt her
world to be a creature of a keen, a fairly cruel
humor, for all things that did not pertain to the
25


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
essence of the life it struggled for. The won-
der of the western flare of day, the magic in
the white eyes of the stars before sunrise, the
mystery in the pulse of the pounding mine heard
in the dark—of such it had been as ruthless as
this new world that looked as narrowly forth at
as starved a prospect with even keener ridicule.
Instinctively she had turned to both the hard,
bright face they required. It seemed that in
the world at large this faculty of hers was queer.
And to be queer, to have anything that other
people had not, except money, was to be open
to suspicion. And yet from the first she had had
to be queer.
Fatherless, motherless, alone upon the pin-
nacle of her fortune, she had known that such
an extraordinary entrance, even at this rather
wide social portal, would only be acceptable if
toned down, glossed over, and drawn out by a
personality sufficiently neutral, sufficiently po-
tent, and sufficiently in need of what she had to
give. The successive flickers of the gas-lamps
through the carriage window made of Clara's
26


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
profile so hard and fine a little medallion that it
was impossible to conceive it in need of any-
thing. And yet it was just their mutual need
that had drawn these two women together, and
after three years it was still the only thing that
held them. As much of a fight as she had put up
with the rest—the people who had taken her in
—she had put up the hardest with Clara. Yet
of them all Clara was the only one she had
failed to capture. Clara was always there in the
middle of her affairs, but surveying them from a
distance, and Flora’s struggle with her had re-
solved itself into the attempt to keep her from
seeing too much, from seeing more than she her-
self saw. Clara’s seeing, thus far, had always
been to help, but Flora sometimes wondered
whether in an emergency this help could be de-
pended on—whether Clara could give anything
without exacting a price.
Their dubious intimacy had created for Flora
a special sort of loneliness—a loneliness which
lacked the security of solitude; and it was partly
as an escape from this that she had accepted
27


T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
Harry Cressy. By herself she could never have
escaped. The initiative was not hers. But he
had presented himself, he had insisted, had over-
ruled her objections, had captured her before
she knew whether she wanted it or not—and held
her now, fascinated by his very success in cap-
turing her, and by his beautiful ruddy mascu-
linity. She did not ask herself whether women
ever married for greater reasons than these. She
only wondered sometimes if he did not stand out
more brilliantly against Clara and the others
than he intrinsically was. But these moments
when she was obliged to defend him to herself
were always when he was not with her. Even in
the dusky carriage she had been as aware of the
splendor of his attraction as now when they had
stopped between the high lamps of the club en-
trance, and she saw clearly the broad lines of his
shoulders and the stoop of his square-set head as
he stepped swingingly to the pavement. After
all, she ought to be glad to think that he was
going to stand up as tall and protectingly be-
tween her and the world, as now he did between
28


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
her and the press of people which, like a tide of
water, swept them forward down the hall, sucked
them back in its eddy, and finally cast them,
ruffled like birds that have ridden a storm, on the
more generous space of the wide, upward stair.
'From here, looking down on the current
sweeping past them, the little islands of black
coats seemed fairly drowned in the feminine sea
around them—the flow of white, of pale blue and
rose, and the high chatter, like a cage of birds,
that for the evening held possession.
“Ladies' Night!” Harry Cressy mopped his
flushed face. “It’s awful!”
Flora laughed in the effervescence of her
spirits. She wanted to know, teasingly, as they
mounted, if this were why he had brought two
more to add to the lot. He only looked at her,
with his short note of laughter that made her
keenly conscious of his right to be proud of
her. She was proud of herself, inasmuch as her-
self was shown in the long trail of daring blue
her gown made up the stair, and the powdery
blue of the aigrette that shivered in her bright,
29


T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
soft puffs and curls—proud that her daring, as
it appeared in these things, was still discriminat-
ing enough to make her right.
She could recall a time when she had not even
been quite sure of her clothes. Not Clara’s sub-
dued rustle at her side could make her doubt
them now; but her security was still recent
enough to be sometimes conscious of itself. It
was so short a time since all these talking
groups, that made a personage of her, had had
the power to put her quite out of countenance.
The women who craned over their shoulders to
speak to her—how hard she had had to work to
make them see her at all! And now she did not
know which she felt more like laughing at, her-
self or them, for having taken it so seriously.
For, when one thought of it, wasn’t it absurd
that people out of nowhere should suppose them-
selves exclusive? And people out of nowhere
they were, herself and all the rest of them.
From causes not far dissimilar they had drifted
or scrambled to where they now stood. It was
a question of squatter rights. The first on the
30


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
ground were dictators, and how long they could
hold their claim against invaders a dubious cast
of fate. For there were for ever fresh invasions,
and departures; swift risings from obscurity,
sudden fallings back into oblivion, brilliant
shootings through of strange meteors; and in
the tide of fluctuation, the things that were es-
tablished or traditional upon this coast of chance
were mere islands in the wash of ocean. It was
amazing, it was almost frightening, the fluid,
unstable quality of life; the rapid, inconsequent
changes; yet it was also this very quality of
transformation that most stirred and delighted
her.
And to-night it was not the picture exhibi-
tion, nor the function itself that elated her, but
the fancy she had as she looked over the mov-
ing mass below her that the crowning excitement
of the day, the vanishing mystery, hovered over
them all. It was fantastic, but it persisted; for
had not the Chatworth ring itself proved that
the most ordinary appearances might cover un-
imagined wonders? Which of those bland, satis-
31


T H E CO'A S T OF C H A N C E
fied faces might not change shockingly at the
whisper “Chatworth” in its ear? She wanted to
confide the naughty thought to Harry. But no,
he wasn’t the one. If Harry were apprehensive
of anything at all it was only of being caught
in too hot a crush. He saw no possibilities in
the mob below except boredom. He saw no possi-
bilities in the evening but his conventional duty;
and Flora could read in his eye his intention of
getting through that as comfortably as possible.
His suggestion that they have a look at the pic-
tures brought the two women's eyes together in a
rare gleam of mutual mirth. They knew he sus-
pected that the picture gallery would be the
emptiest place in the club, since to have a look at
the pictures was what they were all supposed to
be there for. That was so infallibly the note of
their life, Flora thought, as she followed up the
wide sweep of the middle stair, and along the
high-ceiled, gilded hall whose open arches over-
looked the rooms below.
The picture gallery was new, an addition;
and the plain, narrow, unexpected door in this
32


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
place, where all was high, arched, elaborate and
flourished, was like a loophole through which to
slip into a foreign atmosphere. This atmosphere
was resinous of fresh wood; the light was thick
with drifting motes; the carpets harshly new,
slipping beneath the feet on the too polished
floor; the bare bones of the place yet scarcely
covered. But its quiet was after all comparative.
There were plenty of people lingering in groups
in the center of the gallery which was dusky,
eclipsed by the great reflectors that circled the
room, throwing out the pictures in a bright band
of color around the walls. People leaning from
this border of light back into the dusk to mur-
mur together, vanished and reappeared with such
fascinating abruptness that Flora caught her-
self guessing what sort of face, where this
nearest group stood just on the edge of shadow,
would pop out of the dark next.
She was ready for something extraordinary,
but now, when it came, she was taken aback by
it. It gave her a start, that toss of black hair,
that long, irregular, pale face whose scintillant,
_
33


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
sardonic smile was mercilessly upon the poor,
inadequate picture-face fronting him. His stoop
above the rail was so abrupt that his long, lean
back was almost horizontal, yet even thus there
was something elegant in the swing of him—in
the careless twist of his head, around, to speak
to the woman behind him. The light above struck
blind on the glass in one eye, but the other
danced with a genial, a mad scintillation. The
light of it caught like contagion, and touched
the merest glancer at him with the spark of its
warm, ironic mirth. The question which natur-
ally rose to Flora's lips—“Who in the world is
that?”—she checked; why, she didn’t ask her-
self. She only felt as she followed Clara, trail-
ing away across the floor, that the interest of the
evening which had promised so well, beginning
with the Chatworth ring, had been raised even a
note higher. Her restive fancy was beginning
again. All the footlights of her little secret
stage were up.
Clara turned to the right, following a beckon-
ing fan, and Flora, dallying with her anticipa-
34


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
tion, reasoned that now they must circle the
room before they should face him—the interest-
ing apparition. It was a pilgrimage of which
he on the other side was performing his half.
Perfunctorily talking from group to group,
conscious now and again of the lagging Clara
or Harry, she could nevertheless keep a sly eye
on the stranger’s equal progress. The flash of
jet, and the voluble, substantial shoulders of the
lady so profusely introducing him, were an as-
surance of how that pilgrimage would terminate,
since it was Ella Buller who was parading him.
She even wondered before which of the florid
pictures at the far, other end of the room, as
before a shrine, the ceremony would take place.
She kept her eyes fixed on the paintings be-
fore her, and as she moved down from one to
another, and the voices of the approaching
group drew nearer, one separated itself from
the general murmur, so clear, so resonantly
carried, so clean-clipped off the tongue, that it
stood out in syllables on the blur of sound which
was Ella Buller’s conversation. It had color,
35


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
that voice; it had a quality so sharp, so indi-
vidual that it touched her with a mischievous
wonder that he dared speak so differently from
all the world about him. Then, six pictures
away, she heard her own name.
“Why, Flora Gilsey!” It was Ella's husky,
boyish note. “I’ve been looking for you all the
evening! How d'y’do, Harry?” She waved her
hand at him. “Why, how d'y’do, Mrs. Britton?
I wouldn’t let papa go to supper until I’d found
you. ‘Papa,” I said, ‘wait; Flora and Harry will
be here.” Besides,” she had quite reached Flora’s
side by this time and communicated it in an im-
pressive whisper, “I want you to meet my Eng-
lishman.” She looked over her shoulder, and
largely beckoned to where the blunt and florid
Buller and his companion, with their backs to
what they were supposed to be looking at, were
exchanging an anecdote of infinite amusement.
Buller's expression came around slowly to his
daughter’s beckoning hand, but the English-
man’s face seemed to flash at the instant from
what he was enjoying to what was expected of
36


A N A M'E GO E S R O U N D A T A B L F
him. In the flourish of introductions, across and
across, Flora found herself thinking the reality
less extraordinary than she had at first supposed.
Now that Mr. Kerr was fairly before her, pre-
sented to her, and taking her in with the same
lively, impersonal interest with which he took
in the whole room, “as if,” she put it vexedly to
herself, “I were a specimen poked at him on the
” it stirred in her a vague resent-
end of a pin,
ment; and involuntarily she held him up to
Harry. The comparison showed him a little
worn, a little battered, a little too perfunctory
in manner; but his genial eyes, deep under
threatening brows, made Harry’s eyes seem to
stare rather coldly; and the fine form of his
long, plain face, and the sensitive line of his
long thin lips made Harry’s beauty look, well,
how did it look? Hardly callous.
This mixed impression the two men gave her
was disconcerting. She was all the more ready
to be wary of the stranger. She had begun with
him in the way she did with every one—instinc-
tively throwing out a breastwork of conversa-
37


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
tion from behind which she could observe the
enemy. But though he had blinked at it, he had
not taken her up, nor helped her out; but had
merely stood with his head a little canted for-
ward, as if he watched her through her defenses.
“But San Francisco must seem so limited after
London,” she had wound up; and the way he
had considered it, a little humorously, down his
long nose, made her doubt the interest of cities
to be reckoned in round numbers.
“It’s all extraordinary,” he said. “You’re
quite as extraordinary in your way as we in
ours.”
“Oh,” she wondered, still vexed with his in-
ventory, “I had always supposed us awfully
commonplace. What is our way, please?”
“Ah,” he said, measuring his long step to hers
as they sauntered a little, “for one thing, you’re
so awfully good to a fellow. In London”—and
he nodded back, as if London were merely across
the room—“they’re awfully good to the some-
bodies. It’s the way you take in the nobodies
over here that is so astonishing—the stray
38


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
leaves that blow in with your ‘trade,’ and can’t
show any credentials but a letter or two, and
their faces; and those”—his diablerie danced
out again—“sometimes such deucedly damaged
ones.”
It was almost indecent, this parade of his non-
entity. She wanted to say, “Oh, hush! Those
are the things one only enjoys—never talks
about.” But instead, somewhere up at the top
of her voice, she said: “Oh, we always lock up
our silver!”
“But even then,” he quizzed her, “I wonder
how you dare to do it?”
“Perhaps we have to, because we ourselves are
all—” (“without any credentials but those you
mention,”) she had been about to say—but there
she caught herself on the very edge of giving
herself and all the rest of them away to him;
“—all so awfully bored,” she mischievously
ended with the daintiest, faintest possible yawn
behind her spread fan.
He looked as if she had taken him by surprise;
then laughed out. “Oh, that is the way they
39


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
don’t do here,” he provoked her. “You mustn't,
when I’m not expecting it.”
“Then what are you expecting?” she inquired
a little coolly.
“Well,” he deliberated, “not expecting you to
get me ready for a sweet, and then pop in a
pickle; and presently expecting, hoping, anx-
iously anticipating, what you really care to say.”
He was expecting, she looked maliciously,
more than he was likely to get; but the fact that
he did see through her to that extent was at once
delightful and alarming. She swayed back into
the shadow beyond the dazzling line of light.
She wanted to escape his scrutiny, to be able to
look him over from a safe vantage-ground. But
he wouldn’t have it. An instant he stood under
the torrent of white radiance, challenging her
to see what she could—then followed her into
her retreat. “Shall we sit here?” he said, and
she found herself hopelessly cut off and isolated
with the enemy.
She couldn’t withhold a little grudging pleas-
ure in the sharpness with which he had turned
40


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B I, E
her maneuver, and the way it had detached them
from the surrounding crowd. For there, in the
dusky center of the room, it was as if they
watched from safe covert the rest of their party
exposed in the glare of light; though not, as
Flora presently noted, quite escaping observa-
tion themselves. For an instant Harry turned
and peered toward them with a look in his in-
tentness that struck Flora as something new in
him, and made her wonder if he could be jealous.
She turned tentatively to see if Kerr had noticed
it, and surprised his glance in a quick transition
back to hers.
“By your leave,” he said, and took away her
fan, which in his hand presently assumed such
rhythmic motion that it ceased to be any more
present to her than a delicate current of air upon
her face. Her face, which in the first place he
had so well looked over, he now looked into with
something more personal in his quest, as if un-
der the low brows and crowding lashes there was
a puzzle to solve in the timid, unassured glances
of such splendid eyes.
41


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
He was not, she felt sure, in spite of his light
manipulation of her fan, a person who cared to
please women, but one of that devastating sort
who care above everything to please themselves,
and who are skilful without practice; too skil-
ful, she feared, for her defenses to hold out
against if he intended to find out what she really
thought. “Aren’t we supposed to be looking at
the pictures?” she wanted to know.
He turned his back on the wall and its attend-
ant glare. “Why pictures,” he inquired, “when
there are live people to look at? Pictures for
places where they’re all half dead. But here,
where even the damnable dust in the street is
alive, why should they paint, or write, or sculpt,
or do anything but live?” His irascible brows
shot the query at her.
Again the proposition of life—whatever that
was was held up before her, and as ever she
faltered in the face of it. “I suppose they do it
here,” she murmured, with a vague glance at
the paintings around her, “because people do it
everywhere else.”
42


A N AM E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
His disparagement was almost a snarl.
“That's the rotten part of it—because they do
it everywhere else! As if there wasn’t enough
monotony in the world already without every
chap trying to be like the next instead of be-
ing himself!”
“Ah!” Her small, uncertain smile in the midst
of her outward splendor was pathetic. “But it
is different to you. You're a man. You're not
one of us.”
“One of what? I’m a man. I’m myself.
Which, pardon me, dear lady, is just what you
won’t be—yourself.”
“But if you have to be what people expect?”
She clung to her first principle of safety in the
midst of this onslaught.
“People don’t want what they expect—if you
care for that.” He waved it away with his quick,
white hand.
“But you have to care, unless you want to be
queer.” Her poor little secret was out before she
knew, and he looked at it, laughing immoder-
ately, yet somehow delightfully.
43


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“Ah, if you think the social game is the game
that counts! I had expected braver things of
you. The game that counts, my girl,” he
preached it at her with his long white hand,
“the game that is going on out here is the big,
red game of life. That’s the only one that's
worth a guinea; and there's no winning or los-
ing, there’s no right or wrong to it, and it
doesn’t matter what a man is in it as long as
he’s a good one.”
“Even if he is a thief?” The question was out
of Flora's lips before she could catch it. It was
a challenge. She had meant to confound him;
but he caught it as if it delighted him.
“Well, what would you think?”
He threw it back at her.
What hadn’t she thought! How persistently
her fancy had played with the question of what
sort of man that one might be who had so won-
derfully put his hand under a glass case and
drawn out the Chatworth ring. Why, out-
wardly, he must have been like all the crowd
around him, to have escaped unnoticed; but, in-
44


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
wardly, how much superior in power and skill to
have so completely overreached them!
“Oh,” she laughed dubiously, “I suppose he
is a good one as long as he isn’t caught.”
“What?” His face disowned her. “You think
he’s a renegade, do you? A chap in perpetual
flight, taking things because he has to, more or
less pursued by the law? Bah! It’s a guild as
old, and a deal more honorable, than the beg-
gar’s. Your good thief is born to it. It’s his
caste. It’s in his blood. It isn’t money that he
wants. If he had a million he’d be the same.
And it isn’t a mania either. It’s a profession.”
The Englishman leaned back and smiled at her
over the elegance of his long, joined finger-
tips. -
She looked at him with a delighted alarm,
with an increasing elation; but whether these
arose from his lawless declarations and the sin-
gular way they kept setting before her more
vividly moment by moment the possible character
of the present keeper of the Chatworth ring, or
whether it was just the sight of Kerr himself as
45


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
he sat there that stirred her, she didn’t try to
distinguish.
“But suppose he was your own thief,” she
urged; “took your own things, I mean,” she
hastily amended, “and suppose he turned out to
be—some one you knew and liked—” She hesi-
tated. She had come at last to what she really
wanted to say. She had brought out a question
that had been teasing her fancy at intervals all
the while he had been talking, and he hadn’t
even heard it. He wasn’t even looking at her.
She had caught him off his guard. He was look-
ing across her shoulder straight down the dim
vista of the room to the little blaze of bordering
light. He was looking at Harry. No, Harry
was looking at him. Harry was looking with a
steady, an intent gaze, and Kerr meeting it—it
might have been merely the blank glare of his
monocle—seemed, to Flora, to meet it a little in-
solently. She fancied in the instant something
to pass between the two men, something which,
this time, she did not mistake for jealousy—a
shade too dim for defiance or suspicion, a deep
46


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
scrutiny that struggled to place something,
Some one.
Flora felt a sudden wish to break that curious
scrutiny. It had broken her little moment. It
had shattered the personal, almost intimate note
that had been sounded between them. The look
Kerr turned back to her was vague, and stirred
in her a dim resentment that he could drop it
all so easily.
“Shall we join the others?” It was the voice
with which she had begun with him, but her eyes
were hot through their light mist of lashes, and
he threw her a comprehending glance of amuse-
ment.
“Oh, no,” he assured her, “we can’t help our-
selves. They are going to join us.”
Ella Buller, in the van of her procession, was
already descending upon them. Her approach
dissipated the last remnant of their personal mo-
ment. Her presence always insisted that there
was nothing worth while but instant participa-
tion in her geniality, and whatever subject it
might at the moment be taken up with. This
47


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
conviction of Ella’s had been wont to overawe
Flora, and it still overwhelmed her; so that now,
as she followed in the tail of Ella’s marshaled
force, she had a guilty feeling that there should
be nothing in her mind but a normal desire for
supper.
Yet all the way down the great stair, “the Cor-
ridors of Time,” where the white owl glared his
glassy wisdom on the passings and counter-pass-
ings, she was haunted with the thought that
Harry had seen the extraordinary Kerr before;
not shaken hands with him, perhaps—perhaps
not even heard his name; but somewhere, across
some distance, once glimpsed him, and had never
quite shaken the memory from his mind. For
there was something marked, notable, unforget-
able in that lean distinctiveness. Against the
sleek form of the men they met and shook hands
with, he flashed out—seemed in contrast fairly
electric. She saw him, just ahead of her where
the crowd was thickening in the door of the sup-
per-room, making way for Clara through the
press with that exasperating solicitude of his
48


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
that was half ironic. And the large broadside
offered by her elegant Harry, matter-of-factly
towing Ella by the elbow, herself conscious of a
curl or two awry, and Judge Buller tramping
heavily at her side, all took on to her the aspect
of a well-chosen peep-show with the satanic Kerr
officiating as showman. Even the smooth and
pallid Clara, who usually coerced by her sheer
correctness, failed to dominate this fantastic
image; rather, she took on, as she was handed
into the supper-room, the aspect of his chief
exhibit.
The room, hot, polished, flaring reflections of
electric lights from its glistening floor, an-
nounced itself the heart of high festivity,
through the midst of which their entrance made
an added ripple. The flushed faces of the
women under their flowers, under their pale-
tinted hats, with their smiling recognitions to
Clara, to Flora, to Ella, smiled with a sharpened
interest. It proclaimed that Kerr was a stran-
ger, and, in a circle which found itself a little
stale for lack of innovations, a desirable one.
49


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
Exclamatory greetings, running into skirmishes
of talk, here and there halted their progress, and
even after they had settled about their table in
the center of the room the attention of one and
another was drawn over the shoulder to some
special, trans-table recognition.
Apparently the dominant note of their party
was Ella's clamorous selection for the supper;
but to Flora the more real thing was the at-
mosphere of excitement and mystery she had
been moving in all the evening. She was pursued
by the obsession of something more about to hap-
pen—something imminent—though, of course,
nothing would; at least, how could anything hap-
pen here, to them? And by “them,” she meant
herself and these people around her so stupidly
talking—the eternal repetition of the story she
had read out that evening to Clara, and not one
glimmer of light! She wondered if her obsession
was all her own—or did it reach to one of them?
Certainly not Ella; not Judge Buller, settled
into his collar, choosing champagnes. Clara?
She had to skip Clara. One never knew whether
50


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
Clara had not more behind her smooth prettiness
than ever she brought to light. Kerr? Perhaps.
With him she felt potentialities enormous.
Harry? Never. Harry was being appealed to
by all the women who could get at him as to his
part in the affair—what had been his sensations
and emotions? But Flora knew perfectly well he
had had none. He was only oppressed by the at-
tention his fame in the matter, and the central
position of their table, brought upon him. Pro-
testing, he made his part as small as possible.
“Oh, confound it, if I can’t get at my oys-
ters!” he complained, leaning back into his
group again with a sigh.
“You divide the honors with the mysterious un-
known, eh?” Kerr inquired across the table.
“Hang it, there's no division! I’d offer you a
share!” Harry laughed, and it occurred to Flora
how much Kerr could have made of it.
“Purdie'd like to share something,” Buller
vouchsafed. “He’s been pawing the air ever
since Crew cabled, and this has blown him up
completely.”
51


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“Crew?” Flora wondered. Here was some-
thing more happening. Crew? She had not
heard that name before. It made a stir among
them all; but if Kerr looked sharp, Clara looked
sharper. She looked at Harry and Harry was
vexed.
“Who’s Crew?” said Ella; and the judge
looked around on the silence.
“Why, bless my soul, isn’t it— Oh, anyway,
it will all be out to-morrow. But I thought
Harry'd told you. The Chatworth ring wasn’t
Bessie’s.”
It had the effect of startling them all apart,
and then drawing them closer together again
around the table over the uncorked bottles.
“Why,” Judge Buller went on, “this ring is a
celebrated thing. It’s the ‘Crew Idol’ſ’ He
threw the name out as if that in itself explained
everything, but the three women, at least, were
blank.
“Why celebrated?” Clara objected. “The
stones were only sapphires.”
Kerr smiled at this measure of fame.
52


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
“Quite so,” he nodded to her, “but there are
several sorts of value about that ring. Its age,
for one.”
He had the attention of the table, as if they
sensed behind his words more even than Judge
Buller could have told them.
“And then the superstition about it. It’s
rather a pretty tale,” said Kerr, looking at
Flora. “You’ve seen the ring—a figure of
Wishnu bent backward into a circle, with a head
of sapphire; two yellow stones for the cheeks
and the brain of him of the one blue. Just as a
piece of carving it is so fine that Cellini couldn't
have equaled it, but no one knows when or where
it was made. The first that is known, the Shah
Jehan had it in his treasure-house. The story
is he stole it, but, however that may be, he gave
it as a betrothal gift to his wife—possibly the
most beautiful”—his eyebrows signaled to Flora
his uncertainty of that fact—“without doubt
the best-loved woman in the world. When she
died it was buried with her—not in the tomb it-
self, but in the Taj Mehal; and for a century
53


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
or so it lay there and gathered legends about it
as thick as dust. It was believed to be a talis-
man of good fortune—especially in love.
“It had age; it had intrinsic value; it had
beauty, and that one other quality no man can
resist—it was the only thing of its kind in the
world. At all events, it was too much for old
Neville Crew, when he saw it there some couple
of hundred years ago. When he left India the
ring went with him. He never told how he got
it, but lucky marriages came with it, and the
Crews would not take the House of Lords for it.
Their women have worn it ever since.”
For a moment the wonder of the tale and the
curious spark of excitement it had produced in
the teller kept the listeners silent. Clara was
the first to return to facts. “Then Bessie—”
she prompted eagerly.
Kerr turned his glass in meditative fingers.
“She wore it as young Chatworth’s wife.” He
held them all in an increasing tension, as if he
drew them toward him.
“The elder Chatworth, Lord Crew, is a bache-
54


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
lor, but, of course, the ring reverted to him on
Chatworth’s death.”
“And Lord only knows,” the judge broke in,
“how it got shipped with Bessie's property.
Crew was out of England at the time. He kept
the wires hot about it, and they managed to keep
the fact of what the ring was quiet—but it got
out to-day when Purdie found it was gone. You
see he was showing it—and without special per-
mission.”
Flora had a bewildered feeling that this ju-
dicial summing up of facts wasn’t the sort of
thing the evening had led up to. She couldn’t
see, if this was what it amounted to, why Harry
had changed his mind about telling them at the
dinner table. She could not even understand
where this belonged in the march of events in
their story, but Clara took it up, clipped it out,
and fitted it into its place.
“Then there will be pressure—enormous pres-
sure, brought to bear to recover it?”
“Oh-o-oh!” Buller drew out the syllable with
unctuous relish. “They’ll rip the town inside
55


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
out. They'll do worse. There’ll be a string of
detectives across the country—yes, and at inter-
vals to China—so tight you couldn’t step from
Kalamazoo to Oshkosh without running into one.
The thing is too big to be covered. The chap
who took it will play a lone game; and to do
that—Lord knows there aren’t many who could
—to do that he’d have to be a-a-”
“Farrell Wand?” Flora flung it out as a chal-
lenge among these prosaic people; but the effect
of it was even sharper than she had expected.
She fancied she saw them all start; that Harry
squared himself, that Kerr met it as if he swal-
lowed it with almost a facial grimace; that Judge
Buller blinked it hard in the face—the most
bothered of the lot. He came at it first in words.
“Farrell Wand?” He felt it over, as if, like
a doubtful coin, it might have rung false. “Now,
what did I know of Farrell Wand?”
“Farrell Wand?” Kerr took it up rapidly.
“Why, he was the great Johnnie who went
through the Scotland Yard men at Perth in '94,
and got off. Don’t you remember? He took a
56


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
great assortment of things under the most pe-
culiar circumstances—took the Tilton emeralds
off Lady Tilton’s neck at St. James'.”
“Why, Harry, you—” Flora began. “You
told us that,” was what she had meant to say,
but Harry stopped her. Stopped her just with
a look, with a nod; but it was as if he had shaken
his head at her. His tawny lashes, half drooped
over watching eyes, gave him more than ever the
look of a great, still cat; a domestic, good-hu-
mored cat, but in sight of legitimate prey. Her
eyes went back to Kerr with a sense of bewilder-
ment. His voice was still going on, expansively,
brilliantly, juggling his subject.
“He knew them all, the big-wigs up in Parlia-
ment, the big-wigs on 'Change, the little duch-
esses in Mayfair, and they all liked him, asked
him, dined him, and—great Scott, they paid!
Paid in hereditary jewels, or the shock to their
decency when the thing came out—but, poor
devil, so did he?”
And through it all Buller gloomed unsmiling,
with out-thrust underlip.
57


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“No, no,” he said slowly, “that’s not my con-
nection with Farrell Wand. What happened
afterward? What did they do with him?”
Kerr was silent, and Flora thought his face
seemed suddenly at its sharpest.
It was Clara who answered with another ques-
tion. “Didn’t he get to the colonies? Didn't he
die there?”
Judge Buller caught it with a snap of his
fingers. “Got it!” he triumphed, and the two
men turned square upon him. “They ran him to
earth in Australia. That was the year I was
there—’96. I got a snapshot of him at the time.”
It was now the whole table that turned on
him, and Flora felt, with that unanimous move-
ment, something crucial, the something that she
had been waiting for; and yet she could in no
way connect it with what had happened, nor
understand why Clara, why Harry, why Kerr
above all should be so alert. For more than all
he looked expectant, poised, and ready for what-
ever was coming next.
“What sort of a chap?” he mused and fixed
58


A N A M E G O E S R O U N D A T A B L E
the judge a moment with the same stare thal
Flora remembered to have first confronted her.
“What sort? Sort of a criminal,” the judge
smiled. “They all look alike.”
“Still,” Clara suggested, “such a man could
hardly have been ordinary—”
“In the chain-gang—oh, yes,” said Buller
with conviction. -
“Oh! Then the picture wasn’t worth any-
thing?”
“Why, no,” Buller admitted slowly, “though,
come to think of it, it wasn’t the chain-gang
either. They were taking him aboard the ship.
The crowd was so thick I hardly saw him, and—
only got one shot at him. But the name was a
queer one. It stuck in my mind.”
“But then,” Clara insisted, “what became of
him?”
“Oh, gave them the slip,” the judge chuckled
“He always did. Reported to have changed
ships in mid-ocean. Hal, is that another bottle?”
Harry stretched his hand for it, but it stayed
suspended—and, for an instant, it seemed as if
59


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
the whole table waited expectant. Had Buller's
camera caught the clear face of Farrell Wand,
or only a dim figure? Flora wondered if that
was the question Harry wanted to ask. He
wanted—and yet he hesitated, as if he did not
quite dare touch it. He laughed and filled the
glasses. He had dropped his question, and there
was no one at the table who seemed ready to put
another.
And yet there were questions there, in all the
eyes; but some impassable barrier seemed to have
come between these eager people, and what, for
incalculable reasons, they so much wanted to
know. It was not the genial indifference with
which Buller had dropped the subject for the
approaching bottle. It seemed rather their own
timidity that withheld them from touching this
subject which at every turn produced upon some
one of the eager three some fresh startling effect
the others could not understand. They were
restless; Clara notably, even under her calm.
Flora knew she was not giving up the quest
of Farrell Wand, but only setting it aside with
60


A N A M E' GO E S R O U N D A T A B L E
her unfailing thrift, which saved everything.
But why, in this case? And Harry, who had
been so merry with the mystery at dinner—why
had he suddenly tried to suppress her, to want
to ignore the whole business; why had he hesi-
tated over his question, and finally let it fall?
And why, above all, was Kerr so brilliantly talk-
ing at Ella, in the same way he had begun at
Flora herself? Talking at Ella as if he hardly
saw her, but like some magician flinging out a
brilliant train of pyrotechnics to hypnotize the
senses, before he proceeds with his trick. And
the way Ella was looking at him—her bewil-
dered alacrity, the way she was struggling with
what was being so rapidly shot at her—appeared
to Flora the prototype of her own struggle to
understand what reality these appearances
around her could possibly shadow. Never before
had her sense of standing on the outside edge of
life been so strong. It seemed as though there
were some large, impalpable thing growing in
the midst of them, around the edges of which
they were tiptoeing, daringly, fearfully, each
61


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
one for himself. But though it loomed so large
that she felt herself in the very shadow of it, rub
her eyes as she would, she couldn't see it.
Often enough in the crowds she moved among
she had felt herself lonely and not wondered at
it. But now and here, sitting among her close,
intimate circle, her friends and her lover, it
seemed like a horrible obsession—yet it was true.
As clear as if it had been shown her in a revela-
tion she saw herself absolutely alone.


III
EN COUNTERS ON PARADE
LORA, before the mirror, gaily stab-
F bing in her long hat-pins, confessed to
herself that last night had been queer,
as queer as queer could be; but this morning,
luckily, was real again. Her fancy last night
had—yes, she was afraid it really had—run
away with her. And she turned and held the
hand-mirror high, to be sure of the line of her
tilted hat, gave a touch to the turn of her wide,
close belt, a flirt to the frills of her bodice.
The wind was lightly ruffling and puffing out
the muslin curtains of the windows, and from
the garden below came the long, silvery clash of
eucalyptus leaves. She leaned on the high win-
dow-ledge to look downward over red roofs, over
terraced green, over steep streets running ab-
63


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
ruptly to the broken blue of the bay. She tried to
fancy how Kerr would look in this morning sun.
He seemed to belong only beneath the high arti-
ficial lights, in the thicker atmosphere of even-
ing. Would he return again, with renewed po-
tency, with the same singular, almost sinister
charm, as a wizard who works his will only by
moonlight? When she should see him again,
what, she wondered, would be his extraordinary
mood? On what new breathless flights might he
not take her—or would he see her at all? It was
too fantastic. The sunlight thinned him to an
impalpable ghost.
It was Clara, standing at the foot of the
stairs, who belonged to the morning, so brisk,
so fresh, so practical she appeared. She held a
book in her hand. The door, open for her imme-
diate departure, showed, beyond the descent of
marble steps, the landau glistening black against
white pavements. It was unusual for this formal
vehicle to put in an appearance so early.
“I am going to drive over to the Purdies’,”
Clara explained. “I have an errand there.”
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E N C O U N T E R S O N P A R A DE
Flora smiled at the thought of how many per-
sons would be having errands to the Purdies’
now. It was refreshing to catch Clara in this
weakness. She felt a throb of it herself when she
recalled the breathless moment at the supper
table last evening. “Oh, that will be a heavenly
drive,” she said. “Please ask me to go with you.
My errand can wait.”
“Why, certainly. I should like to have you,”
said Clara. But if she had returned a flat “no,”
Flora would not have had a dryer sense of un-
welcome. Still, she had gone too far to retreat.
After all, this was only Clara’s manner, and her
buoyant interest in the expedition was stronger
than her diffidence.
Mischievous reflections of the doctrine the
Englishman had startled her with the night be-
fore flickered in her mind, as they drove from the
door. Was this part of “the big red game,”
not being accommodating, nor so very polite?
The streets were still wet with early fog, and,
turning in at the Presidio gate, the cypresses
dripped dankly on their heads, and hung out
65 -


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
cobwebs pearled with dew. She was sure, even
under their dripping, that the “damnable dust”
was alive.
Down the broad slopes that were swept by the
drive all was green to the water's edge. The
long line of barracks, the officers’ quarters, the
great parade-ground, set in the flat land be-
tween hills and bay, looked like a child's toy,
pretty and little. They heard the note of a
bugle, thin and silver clear, and they could see
the tiny figures mustering; but in her preoccu-
pation it did not occur to Flora that they were
arriving just in time for parade. But when the
carriage had crossed the viaduct, and swung
them past the acacias, and around the last white
curve into the white dust of the parade-ground,
Clara turned, as if with a fresh idea.
“Wouldn't you like to stop and watch it?”
“Why, yes,” Flora assented. The brilliance
of light and color, the precision of movement,
the sound of the brasses under the open sky
were an intermezzo in harmony with her spirited
mood.
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E N C O U N T E R S O N P A R A D E
The carriage stopped under the scanty
shadow of trees that bordered the walk to the
officers’ quarters. Clara, book in hand, alertly
rose.
“I’ll just run up to the Purdies’ and leave
this,” she said.
“Then she really did want to be rid of me,”
Flora mused, as she watched the brisk back mov-
ing away; “and how beautifully she has done it!”
Her eyes followed Clara’s little figure retreating
up the neat and narrow board walk, to where it
disappeared in overarching depths of eucalyptus
trees. Further on, beyond the trees, two figures,
smaller than Clara’s in their greater distance,
were coming down. Flora almost grinned as she
recognized the large linen umbrella that Mrs.
Purdie invariably carried when abroad in the
reservation, and presently the trim and bound-
ing figure of Mrs. Purdie herself, under it. The
Purdies were coming down to parade—at least
Mrs. Purdie was. But the tall figure beside her
—that was not the major. She took up her
lorgnon. It was—no it could not be-yet surely
67


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
it was Harry! Lazy Harry, up and out, and
squiring Mrs. Purdie to the review at half-past
ten in the morning! “Are we all mad?” Flora
thought.
The three little figures, the one going up, the
two coming down, touched opposite fringes of
the grove—disappeared within it. On which side
would they come out together? Flora wondered.
They emerged on her side with Harry a little
in advance. He came swingingly down the walk,
straight toward her, and across the road to the
carriage, his hat lifted, his hand out.
“Well, Flora,” he said, “this is luck!”
“What in the world has got you out so early?”
she rallied him.
“Came out to see Purdie on business, and here
you are all ready to drive me back.”
“That’s your reward.”
He brushed his handkerchief over his damp
forehead. “Well, there's one coming to me, for
I haven’t found Purdie.”
Her eyes were dancing with mischief. “Harry,
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E N C O U N T E R S O N P A R A D E
I believe you’re out here about the Crew Idol,
too!”
He shook his head at her, smiling. “I wouldn’t
talk too much about that, Flora. It flicks poor
Purdie on the raw every time that—” His sen-
tence trailed off into something else, for Mrs.
Purdie and Clara had come up.
The book had changed hands, together, evi-
dently, with several explanations, and Mrs. Pur-
die, with her foot on the carriage step, was ready
to make one of these over again.
“The major’ll be so sorry. He’s gone in town.
It’s so unusual for him to get off at this hour,
but he said he had to catch a man. As Mrs. Brit-
ton and I were saying, he’s likely to be very
busy until this dreadful affair is straightened
out. If you can only wait a little longer, Mr.
Cressy,” she went on, “I am expecting him every
moment.”
“Oh, it's of no importance,” said Harry, but
he looked at his watch with a fold between his
brows, and then at the car that was coming in.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“Well, at least, you’ll have time to see the
parade,” said Mrs. Purdie. “I always think it’s
a pretty sight, though most of the women get
tired of it.”
Clara’s face showed that she belonged to the
latter class; but Flora, too keenly attuned to
sounds and sights not to be swayed by outward
circumstances, was content for the time to watch,
in the cloud of dust, the wheeling platoons and
rhythmic columns.
Yet through all—even when she was not look-
ing at him—she was aware of Harry’s restless-
ness, of his impatience; and as the last company
swung barrackward, and the cloud began to set-
tle over the empty field, he snapped his watch-
case smartly, and remarked, “Still no major.”
“Why, there he is now!” Mrs. Purdie
screamed, pointing across the parade-ground.
Flora looked. Half-way down on the adjoin-
ing side of the parallelogram, back toward her,
the redoubtable Kerr was standing. She recog-
nized him on the instant, as if he were the most
familiar figure in her life. Yet she was more
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E N C O U N T E R S O N P A R A D E
surprised to see him here than she had been to
see Harry. She felt inclined to rub her eyes.
It took a moment for her to realize that his com-
panion was indeed Major Purdie.
The major had recognized his wife's signaling
umbrella. Now he turned toward it, but Kerr,
with a quick motion of hand toward hat, turned
in the opposite direction. In her mind Flora was
with the major who ran after him. The two men
stood for a little, expostulating. Then both
walked toward the landau and the linen um-
brella.
The carriage group waited, watching with
flagging conversation, which finally fell into si-
lence. But the two approaching strolled easily
and talked. Even in cold daylight Kerr still
gave Flora the impression that the open was not
big enough to hold him, but she saw a difference
in his mood, a graver eye, a colder mouth, and
when he finally greeted them, a manner that
was brusk. It showed uncivil beside the major's
urbanity.
The major was glad, very glad, to see them
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
all. He was evidently also a little flurried.
He seemed to know that they had all met Kerr
before. Had it been at the moment of his at-
tempted departure that Kerr had told him,
Flora wondered? And had he given them as his
excuse for going away? It hurt her; though
why should she be hurt because a stranger had
not wanted to cross the parade-ground to
shake hands with her? He was less interested
in her than he was in Harry, at whom he had
looked keenly.
But Harry’s nervousness had left him, now
that Purdie was within his reach. He returned
the glance indifferently. He stood close to the
major—his hand on his shoulder. The major,
with his bland blue eyes twinkling from Clara
to Flora, seemed the only man ready to devote
himself to the service of the ladies.
“And what’s the news from the front?” said
Clara gaily. Kerr gave her a rapid glance;
but the major blinked as if the allusion had got
by him.
“I mean the mystery—the Chatworth ring,”
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E N C O U N T E R S ON P A R A D E
she explained. However lightly and sweetly
Clara said it, it was a little brazen to fling such
a question at poor Purdie, whose responsibility
the ring had been.
He received it amicably enough, but conclu-
sively. “No news whatever, my dear Mrs.
Britton.”
She smiled. “We’re all rather interested in
the mystery. Flora has made a dozen romances
about it.”
“Oh, yes, yes,” said the major indulgently.
“It will do for young ladies to make romances
about. It’ll be a two days’ wonder, and then
you’ll suddenly find out it’s something very tame
indeed.”
“Why, have they fixed the suspicion?” said
Clara.
There was a restless movement from Kerr.
“No, no, nothing of that sort,” said the ma-
jor quickly.
Harry passed his hand through his arm.
“May I see you for five minutes, Major?”
The excellent major looked harassed.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“Suppose we all step up to the house,” he
suggested. “Why, you’re not going, man?” he
objected, for Kerr had fallen back a step, and,
with lifted hat and balanced cane, was signaling
his farewells.
“Do let us go up to the house,” said Clara.
“And Mrs. Purdie, won't you drive up with
me? Flora wants to walk.”
Flora stood up. She had a confused impres-
sion that she had expressed no such desire, and
that there was room for three in the landau;
but the mental shove that Clara had adminis-
tered gave her an impetus that carried her out
of the carriage before she realized what she
was about. Some one had offered a hand to
help her, and when she was on the ground she
saw it was Kerr, who had come back and was
standing beside her. He was smiling quiz-
zically.
“I feel rather like walking, myself,” he said.
“Do you want a companion?”
She turned to him with gratitude. “I should
be glad of one,” she said quickly. She was
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E N C O U N T E R S O N P A R A D E
touched. She had not thought he could be so
gentle.
Harry was already moving off up the board
walk with the major. The carriage was turn-
ing. Kerr looked at the backs of the two
women being driven away, and then at Flora.
“Very good,” he said, raising her parasol; “you
are the deposed heir, and I am your faithful
servant.”
“But indeed I do want to walk,” she pro-
tested, a little shy at the way he read her case.
“But you didn’t think of it until she gave
you the suggestion, eh?” he quizzed.
“She probably had something to say to Mrs.
Purdie that—”
“My dear child,” he caught her up earnestly,
“don’t think I’m criticizing your friend's mo-
tive. I am only saying I saw something done
that was not pretty, though really, if you will
forgive me—it was very funny.”
Flora smiled ruefully. “It must have been
—absurd. I am afraid I often am. But what
else could I have done?”
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
He seemed to ponder a moment. “I fancy
you couldn’t have done anything different.
That’s why I came back for you,” he volun-
teered gaily.
The casual words seemed in her ears fraught
with deeper meaning. Her cheeks were hot
behind her thin veil. They were strolling slow-
ly up the board walk, and for a moment she
could not look at him. She could only listen to
the flutter of the fringes of the parasol carried
above her head. She felt herself small and
stupid. She could not understand what he
could see in her to come back to. Then she
gave a side glance at him. She saw an un-
smiling profile. The lines in his face were in-
deed extraordinary, but none was hard. She
liked that wonderful mobility that had survived
the batterings of experience.
As if he were conscious of her eyes, he looked
down and smiled; but vaguely. He did not speak;
and she was aware that it was at her appearance
he had smiled, as if that only reached him
through his preoccupation and pleased him.
76


E N C O U N T E R S O N P A R A D E
And since he seemed content with this vague
looking, she was content to move beside him
silent, a mere image of youth and—since he
liked it—of prettiness, with a fleeting color and
a gust of little curls blowing out under a flutter-
ing veil.
But what was he thinking about so seriously
between those smiling glances? Not her prob-
lem, she was sure.
Yet he had stayed for her when he had not
meant to stay. He had been anxious to get away
since he had first sighted them. Surely he
must like her more than he disliked some other
member of her party. Or had he simply reached
forth out of his kindness to rescue her, as he
might have rescued a blind kitten that he pitied?
“No,” he had said, “you could not have done
anything different.”
They had almost reached the major's gate,
and it was now or never to find out what he
thought of her. She looked up at him suddenly,
with inquiring eyes.
“Do you think I am weak?” she demanded.
77


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
The lines of his face broke up into laughter.
“No,” he said, “I think you are misplaced.”
She knitted her brows in perplexity, but his
hand was on the white picket gate, and she had
to walk through it ahead of him as he set it open
for her.
Of their party only the two women were in
sight waiting on the diminutive veranda. Clara
had a mild domestic appearance, rocking there
behind the potted geraniums. All the windows
were open into the little shell of a house. Trunks
still stood in the hall, though the Purdies
had been quartered at the Presidio for nine
months. From the rear of the house came the
sound of bowl and chopper, where the Chinese
cook was preparing luncheon, and the major's
man appeared, walking around the garden to
the veranda, with a cluster of mint juleps on a
copper tray.
In this easy atmosphere, how was it that
the thread of restraint ran so sharply defined?
Clara and Mrs. Purdie were matching crewels;
and, sitting on the top step Flora instructed
78


E N C O U N T E R S O N P A R A D E
Kerr as to the composition of the tropical
glacier they were drinking. Ten girls had prob-
ably so instructed him before, but it would do
to fill up the gap. It was so, Flora thought,
they were all feeling. Even the carriage, driv-
ing slowly round and round the rectangle of
officers’ row, added its note of restlessness.
Like a stone plumped into a pool the major
and Harry reëntered this stagnation. They
were brisk and buoyant. Harry, especially, had
the air of a man who sees stimulating business
before him. Immediately all talked at once.
“Now that we’ve got you here, you must all
stay to luncheon,” Mrs. Purdie determined.
It looked as if they were about to accept her
invitation unanimously, but Harry demurred.
He had to be at Montgomery Street and Jackson
by one o'clock. “I hoped,” he added, glancing at
Flora, “that some one was to drive me—part of
the way, at least.”
Flora, with an unruly sense of disappoint-
ment, yet opened her lips for the courteous an-
swer. But Clara was quicker. She rose.
79


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“Yes,” she said, “I’ll drive you back with
pleasure.”
Harry's glimmer of annoyance was comic.
“I have to be at the house for luncheon,”
Clara explained to her hostess as she buttoned
her glove, “but there is no reason why Flora
shouldn’t stay.”
“Oh, I should love to,” Flora murmured, not
knowing whether she was more embarrassed or
pleased at this high-handed dispensation which
placed her where she wanted to be.
But the way Clara had leaped at her oppor-
tunity! Flora looked curiously at Harry.
He seemed uneasy at being pounced upon,
but that might be merely because he was balked
of a tête-à-tête with herself. For while Clara
went on to the gate with their hostess he lin-
gered a moment with Flora.
“May I see you to-night?”
“All you have to do is to come.”
She gave him an oblique, upward glance, and
had a pleasant sense of power in seeing his face
relax and smile. She had a dance for that even-
80


E N C O U N T E R S O N P A R A D E
ing; but she thrust it aside without regret. For
suppose Harry should have something to tell
her about the Chatworth ring? She wondered
if Clara would get it out of him first on the
way home.
The four left on the veranda watched the
two driving away with a sudden clearing of the
social atmosphere. In vain Flora told herself
it was only the relief she always felt in getting
free of Clara. For in the return of the major's
elderly blandishments, in Kerr's kindlier mood, as
well as in her own lightened spirits, she had the
proofs that, with them all, some tension had re-
laxed. It seemed to her as if those two, depart-
ing, were bearing away between them the very
mystery of the Crew Idol.
81


IV
FLOWER S BY THE WAY
LORA liked this funny little dining-
F room with walls as frail as box-boards,
low-ceiled and flooded with sun. It re-
called surroundings she had known later than the
mining camp, but long before the great red
house. It seemed to her that she fitted here bet-
ter than the Purdies. She looked across at Kerr,
sitting opposite, to see if perhaps he fitted too.
But he was foreign, decidedly. He kept about
him still the hint of delicate masquerade that she
had noticed the night before. Out of doors,
alone with her, he had lost it. For a moment he
had been absolutely off his guard. And even
now he was more off his guard than he had been
last night. She was surprised to see him so un-
82


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
yonder, that goes over a bridge, and beyond
that a hill.”
“And at the top of that another car,” Flora
reminded him.
“Ah well,” he said, “there are flowers on the
way, at least.” He looked at her whimsically.
“There are three purple irises under the bridge.
I noticed them as I came down.”
She was pleased that he had noticed that for
himself—pleased, too, that he had suggested
the longer way.
The narrow path that they had chosen
branched out upon the main path, broad and
yellow, which dipped downward into the hol-
low. From there came the murmur of water.
Green showed through the white grass of last
summer. The odor of wet evergreens was pun-
gent in their nostrils. They looked at the deli-
cate fringed acacias, at the circle of hills show-
ing above the low tree-tops, at the cloudless
sky; but always their eyes returned to each
other’s faces, as if they found these the pleas-
antest points of the landscape. Sauntering be-
84


F L O W E R S B Y T H E W A Y
tween plantations of young eucalyptus, they
came to the arched stone bridge. They leaned
on the parapet, looking down at the marshy
stream beneath and at the three irises Kerr had
remarked, knee-deep in swamp ground.
“Now that I see them I suppose I want them,”
Flora remarked.
“Of course,” he assented. “Then hold all
these.”
He put into her hands the loose bunch of
syringa and rose plucked for her in the Pur-
dies' garden, laid his hat and gloves on the para-
pet; then, with an eye for the better bank,
walked to the end of the bridge.
She watched him descending the steep bank
and issuing into the broad shallow basin of the
stream’s way. The sun was still high enough
to fill the hollows with warm light and mellow
the doubles of trees and grass in the stream.
In this landscape of green and pale gold he
looked black and tall and angular. The wind
blew longish locks of hair across his forehead,
and she had a moment’s pleased and timorous
85


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
reflection that he looked like Satan coming into
the Garden.
He advanced from tussock to tussock. He
came to the brink of the marsh. The lilies
wavered what seemed but a hand’s-breadth
from him. But he stooped, he reached— Oh,
could anything so foolish happen as that he
could not get them! Or, more foolish still,
plunge in to the knees' He straightened from
his fruitless effort, drew back, but before she
could think what he was about he had leaned
forward again, flashed out his cane, and with
three quick, cutting slashes the lilies were mown.
It was deftly, delicately, astonishingly done,
but it gave her a singular shock, as if she had
seen a hawk strike its prey. He drew them
cleverly toward him in the crook of his cane,
took them up daintily in his fingers, and re-
turned to her across the shallow valley. She
waited him with mixed emotions.
“Oh, how could you!” she murmured, as he
put them into her hand.
s
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FLO W E R S B Y T H E W A Y
He looked at her in amused astonishment.
“Why, aren’t they right?”
They were as clean clipped off and as perfect
as if the daintiest hand had plucked them.
“Oh, yes,” she admitted, “they're lovely, but
I don’t like the way you got them.”
“I took the means I had,” he objected.
“I don’t think I like it.”
His whole face was sparkling with interest
and amusement. “Is that so? Why not?”
“You’re too—too”—she cast about for the
word—“too terribly resourceful!”
“I see,” he said. If she had feared he would
laugh, it showed how little she had gauged the
limits of his laughter. He only looked at her
rather more intently than he had before.
“But, my good child, resourcefulness is a
very natural instinct. I am afraid you read
more into it than is there. You wanted the
flowers, I had a stick, and in my youth I was
taught to strike clean and straight. I am
really a very simple fellow.”
87


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
Looking him in the eyes, which were of a
clear, candid gray, she was ready to believe it.
It seemed as if he had let her look for a mo-
ment through his manner, his ironies, his armor
of indifference, to the frank foundations of his
nature.
“But, you see, the trouble is you don’t in the
least look it,” she argued.
“So you think because I have a long face and
wild hair that I am a sinister person? My
dear Miss Gilsey, the most desperate character
I ever knew was five feet high and wore mutton-
chop whiskers. It is an uncertain business
judging men by their appearance.”
She could not help smiling. “But most peo-
ple do.”
“I don’t class you with most people.”
She gave him a quick look. “You did the
first night.”
“Possibly—but less and less ever since. You
have me now in the state of mind where I don’t
know what you’ll be at next.”
This was fortunate, she thought, since she
88


F L O W E R S B Y T H E W A Y
had not the least idea herself, beyond a teasing
desire to find out more about him. He had
shown her many fleeting phases which, put to-
gether, seemed contradictory. She could not
connect this man, so mild and amusing, strolling
beside her, with the alert, whetted, combative
person of the night before, or even with the
aloof and reticent figure on the parade-ground.
His very attitude toward herself had changed
from the amused scrutiny of the first night into
something more indulgent, more sympathetic.
There was only one attitude on his part that
had remained the same—one attitude toward one
person—and her mind hovered over this. On
each occasion it had stirred her curiosity and,
though she had not admitted it, made her un-
easy. Why not probe him on the subject, now
that she had him completely to herself? But as
soon as silence fell between them she saw that
wave of preoccupation which had submerged
him during their walk from the parade-ground
to the Purdies’ rising over him again and float-
ing him away from her. He no longer even
89


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
looked at her. His eyes were on the ground,
and it was not until they had crossed the open
expanse of the shallow valley and were climb-
ing toward the avenue of cypress that she found
courage to put her question.
“Have you and Mr. Cressy met before?”
He raised his head with a jerk and looked at
her a moment in astonishment.
“Do you mind if I answer your question
American fashion by asking another?” he said
presently. “What put it into your head that
we may have met before?”
“The way you looked at each other at the
club, and again this morning.”
Kerr shook his head. “You are an observant
young person! The fact is, I’ve never met him
—of that I'm certain, but I believe I’ve seen
him before, and for the life of me, I can’t think
where. At the moment you spoke I was trying
to remember.”
“Was it in this country?” Flora prompted,
hopeful of fishing something definite out of this
vagueness.
90


F L O W E R S B Y T H E W A Y
“No, it was years ago. It must have been
in England.” He looked at her inquiringly,
as if he expected her to help him.
“Oh, Harry's been in England,” she said
quickly; and then, with a flashing thought,
came to her the one scene Harry had mentioned
in his English experience. Was it at a ball?
The question came to her lips, but she checked
it there. She remembered how Harry had
stopped her the night before with a nod, with
a look, from mentioning that very thing. Still
she hesitated—for the temptation was strong.
But no; it was only loyal to Harry to speak to
him first.
“So you’re not going to tell me?” Kerr re-
marked, and she came back to a sudden con-
sciousness of how her face must have reflected
her thought.
“No-not this time!” she said, smiling,
though somewhat flushed.
He knitted his brows at her. They had reached
the arched gate, and the car that would carry her
home was approaching.
91


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“Ah, then, I am afraid it will be never,” he
said.
Was it possible this was their last meeting?
Did he mean he was going away? The ques-
tions formed in her mind, but there was no time
for words. He had stopped the car with a flick
of his agile cane, and handed her in as if he
had handed her into a carriage; and not a word
as to whether they would see each other again,
though she hoped and hesitated to the last mo-
ment.
Her hand was in his for the fraction of a
minute. Then the car was widening the dis-
tance between them, and she was no longer look-
ing into his face, which had seemed at their last
moment both merry and wistful, but back at his
diminishing figure, showing black against the
pale Presidio hills.
92


V
ON GUARD
E had so disturbed her, his presence
had so obliterated other presences and
annihilated time, that it took an en-
counter with Clara to remind her of her arrange-
ment for the evening. The dance? No, she had
given that up. She had promised Harry to be at
home. Clara wanted to know rather austerely
what she intended to do about the dinner. This
was dreadful! Flora had forgotten it com-
pletely. Nothing to be done but go, and leave a
message for Harry—apology, and assurance
that she would be home early. She wondered if
she were losing her memory.
She appeared to be changing altogether, for
the dinner—a merry one—bored her. What she
wanted was to get away from it as soon as pos-
93


T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
sible for that interesting evening. When she had
made the appointment with Harry she had been
excited by the thought that he might tell her
whether he had learned anything from the major
that morning in the matter of the ring. But
now she was more engrossed with the idea of ask-
ing about Kerr–whether Harry had really met
him—if so, where; and, finally, why did not
Harry want her to mention that Embassy ball?
Primed with these questions, she left imme-
diately after coffee, arriving at her own red
stone portal at ten. But coming in, all a-flut-
ter with the idea of having kept him waiting
when she had so much to ask, she found her
note as she had left it. She questioned Shima.
There had been no message from Mr. Cressy.
Her first annoyance was lost in wonder. What
could be the matter? If this was neglect on
Harry’s part—well, it would be the first time.
But she did not believe it was neglect. He had
been too eager that morning.
She went into the drawing-room—a dull-pink,
stupendous chamber—knelt a moment before the
94


O N G U A R D
flashing wood fire, then rose, and crossing to the
window, looked anxiously out. She had a flight
of fancy toward accidents, but in that case she
would certainly have heard. The French clock
on the mantel rang half-past ten. The sound
had hardly died in the great spaces before she
heard the fine snarl of the electric bell.
She restrained an impulse to dash into the
hall, and stood impatient in the middle of the
room.
He came in hastily, his lips all ready with
words which hesitated at sight of her.
“Why, you’re going out!” he said.
She had forgotten the cloak that still hung
from her shoulders.
“No, I’ve just come in, and all my fine apolo-
gies for being out are wasted. How long do
you think Clara’ll let you stop at this hour?”
“Clara isn’t here,” he said.
“Well, then your time is all the shorter.” She
was nettled that he should be oblivious of his
lapse. Their relation had never been senti-
mental, but he had always been punctilious.
95


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“I’m sorry,” he said, arriving at last at his
apology. “I couldn’t help being late. I’ve had
a day of it.” He drew his hands across his fore-
head, and she noticed that he was in his morn-
ing clothes and looked as rumpled and flurried
as a man just from the office.
She relented. “Poor dear! You do look
tired' Don’t take that chair. It’s more Louis
Quinze than comfortable. Come into the library.
And remember,” she added, when Shima had set
the decanter and glasses beside him, “you are
to stay just twenty minutes.”
He took a sip of his drink and looked at her
over the top of his glass. “I may have to stay
longer if you want to hear about it.”
“Oh, Harry, you really know something? All
the evening I’ve heard nothing but the wildest
rumors. Some say Major Purdie couldn’t speak
because some one 'way up knows more than she
should about it. And somebody else said it
wasn’t the real ring at all that was taken, only
a paste copy, and that is why they’re not doing
more about getting it back.”
96


o N G U A R D
“Not doing more about getting it back?”
Harry laughed. “Is that the idea that gen-
erally prevails? Why, Flora—” He stopped,
waited a moment while she leaned forward ex-
pectant. “Flora,” he began again, “are you
mum?”
She nodded, breathless.
“Not a word to Clara P”
“Oh, of course not.”
“Well—” He twisted around in his chair the
better to face her. “To-morrow there will be
published a reward of twenty thousand dollars
for the return of the Crew Idol, and no ques-
tions asked.”
“Oh!” she said. And again, “Oh, is that
all!” She was disappointed. “I don’t see why
you and the major should have been so myste-
rious about that.”
“You don’t, eh? Suppose you had taken the
ring—wouldn’t it make a difference to you if
you knew twenty-four hours ahead that a re-
ward of twenty thousand dollars would be pub-
lished? Wouldn’t you expect every man’s hand
97


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
to be against you at that price? If you had a
pal, wouldn’t you be afraid he'd sell you up?
Wouldn't you be glad of twenty-four hours'
start to keep him from turning state's evidence?
Well—it's just so that he shan’t have the start
that the authorities are keeping so almighty
dark about the reward. They want to spring
it on him.”
Flora leaned forward with knitted brows.
“Yes, I can see that, but still, just among our-
selves, this morning—”
Harry smiled. “You’ve lost sight of the fact
that it is just among ourselves the thing has
happened.”
“Oh, oh! Now you're ridiculous!”
“I might be, if the thing had happened any-
where but in this town; but think a moment.
How much do we know of the people we meet,
where they were, and who they were, before
they came here? There's a case in point. It
was not quite “among ourselves’ this morning.”
“Harry, how horrid of you!” She was on
the point of declaring that she knew Kerr very
98


O N G U A R D
well indeed; but she remembered this might not
be the thing to say to Harry.
“My dear girl, I’m not saying anything
against him. I only remarked that we did not
know him.”
“Don’t you, Harry?”
He gave her a quick look. “Why, what put
that into your head?”
“I—I don’t know. I thought you looked at
him very hard last night in the picture gallery.
And afterward, at supper, don’t you remem-
ber, you did not want me to mention your con-
nection with something or other he was talking
about?”
“Something or other he was talking about?”
Harry inquired with a frowning smile.
“I think it was about that Embassy ball—”
“I didn't want you to mention the Embassy
ball?” he repeated, and now he was only smil-
ing. “My dear child, surely you are dream-
ing.”
She looked at him with the bewildered feel-
ing that he was flatly contradicting himself.
t
º
:
*
:*:
t
E
A
99


O N G U A R D
his voice, very low, with a caressing note that
she hardly knew as Harry’s.
“It isn’t that I care what you say to him.
The fact is, Flora, I suppose I was a little
jealous, but I naturally don’t like the sugges-
tion that you would discuss me with a stranger.”
She knew herself properly reproved, and she
reproached herself, not for what she had ac-
tually said to Kerr of Harry—that had been
trivial enough—but for that wayward impulse
she had to confide in this clear-eyed, whimsical
stranger, as it had never occurred to her to
confide in Harry.
She raised her eyes. “Certainly I shall not
discuss you with him.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Harry, how you do dislike him!”
“Well, suppose I do?” he shrugged.
“You’ve used up twice your twenty minutes,”
she said, “and Clara will be scandalized.”
He stopped the caressing movement of his
hand on her hair. “Are you afraid of Clara?”
he asked.
101


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“Mercy, yes!” She was half in earnest and
half laughing. “But then I'm afraid of every
one.”
He put his arm affectionately around her.
“But not of me?”
“Oh,” she told him, “you're a great big pur-
ring pussy-cat, and I am your poor little
mouse.”
He thought this reply immensely witty, and
Flora thought what a great boy he was, after
all.
“Now, really, you must go home,” she urged,
trying to rise.
“But look here,” he protested, still on the
arm of her chair, “there’s another thing I want
to ask you about.” And by the tip of one finger
he lifted her left hand shining with rings. “You
will have to have another one of these, you
know. It’s been on my mind for a week. Is
there any sort you haven’t already?”
She held up her hand to the light and flut-
tered its glitter.
“Any one that you gave me would be dif-
102


O N G U. A R D
ferent from the others, wouldn’t it?” she asked
prettily.
“Oh, that's very nice of you, Flora, but I
want to find you something new. When shall
we look for it? To-morrow, in the morning?”
“Yes, I should love it,” she answered, but
with no particular enthusiasm, for the idea of
shopping with Harry, and shopping at Shrove’s,
did not present a wide field of possibility. “But
I have a luncheon to-morrow,” she added, “so
we must make it as early as ten.”
“Oh, you two!”
At Clara’s mildly reproving voice so close
beside them both started like conspirators. They
had not heard her come in, yet there she was,
just inside the doorway, still wrapped in her
cloak. But there was none of the impetus of
arrested motion in her attitude. She stood at
repose as if she might have waited not to in-
terrupt them.
“Don’t scold Flora,” said Harry, rising. “It’s
my fault. She sent me away half an hour ago.
But it is so comfortable here!”
103


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
Flora couldn’t tell whether he was simply
natural, or whether he was giving this domestic
color to their interview on purpose. She rather
thought it was the latter.
“To-morrow at ten, then?” he said cheerfully
to Flora. The stiff curtains rustled behind him
and the two women were left together.
“What an important appointment,” said
Clara lightly, “to bring a man at this hour to
make it.”
“Oh, it is, awfully!” Flora answered in the
same key. “To choose my engagement ring.”
Clara’s delicate brows flew upward, and though
Clara herself made no comment, the quick facial
movement said, “I don’t believe it.”
104.


VI
BLACK MAGIC
HE memory of Clara's incredulous
| glance remained with her as something
curious, and she was not unprepared to
be challenged when, the next morning, she hur-
ried down the hall, drawing on her gloves.
Clara’s door did open, but the lady herself,
yawning lightly on the threshold, had this time
no questions for her. “Remember the luncheon,”
she advised, “and by the way, Ella wants us to
sit in their box to-night. Don’t forget to tell
Harry.”
Flora threw back a gay “All right,” but she
was in danger of forgetting even the object of
their errand, once she and Harry were out in
the bright glare of the street. The wind, keen
and resinous from the wet Presidio woods, blew
105


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
at their back down the short block of pave-
ment, and buffeted them broadside, as they
waited on the corner for the slow-crawling little
car. In spite of the blustering air Flora in-
sisted on the side seat of the “dummy,” and,
catching her hat with one hand, pressing down
her fluttering skirts with the other, she laughed,
now sidelong at Harry, now out at the dancing
face of the bay.
Each succeeding cross-street gave up a flash
of blue water. The short blocks slid by, first
stone fronts and fresh lawns, stucco and tiles;
then here and there corner lots, the great gray,
towered, wooden mansions the stock-brokers of
the “seventies” built, and below them, like a
contingent of shabby-genteel relations, the nar-
row gray wooden faces of what was “smart” in
the “sixties”. It was a continuous progress back-
ward toward the old, the original town. There
was no stately nucleus. This town was a suc-
cession of widening ripples of progress, each
newer, more polished than the last, but not dif-
ferent in quality from the old center that still
106


B L A C K M A G IC
teemed—a region of frail wooden rookeries full
of foreign contending interests, haunted with
the adventures of its feverish past. It had
built itself on the hopes of a moment, and what
spread from it still was the spell of the new,
the changing, and the reckless. It drew still
from the ends of the earth. The broad road in
over the mountains, the broad road out over the
ocean made it where it stood, touching all trades,
a road-house of the world.
Some dim perception of this touched Flora
as the houses, gliding past, grew older, grayer,
with steeper gardens, narrower streets, here
and there even trees, lone, sentinel, at the
edge of cobbled gutters. From the crest of
the last hill they had looked a mile down the
long gray throat of the street to where the ferry
building lay stretched out with its one tall tower
pricked up among the masts of shipping. Half-
way between their momentary perch and the
ferry slips the street suddenly thickened, dark-
ened, swarmed, flying a yellow pennon high
above blackened roofs. And now, as they slip-
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T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
ped down the long decline into the foreign quar-
ter the pungent oriental breath of Chinatown
was blown up to them. She breathed it in read-
ily. It was pleasant because it was strange, out-
landish, suggesting a wide web of life beyond
her own knowledge. She wondered what Harry
was thinking of it, as he sat with his passive
profile turned from her to the heathen street
ahead. She guessed, by the curl of his nostril,
that it was only present to him as an unpleasant
odor to be got through as quickly as possible;
but she was wrong. He had another thought.
This time, oddly enough, a thought for her.
He gave it to her presently, abrupt, matter-
of-fact, material. “That Chinese goldsmith
down there has good stuff now and then. How’d
you like to look in there before we go on to what-
you-call-'em's, the regular place?”
“You mean for a ring?” She was doubtful
only of his being in earnest.
“You have so many of the Shrove kind,” he
explained. “I thought you might like it, Flora;
you’re so romantic!” he laughed.
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B L A C K M A GIC
“Like it!” she cried, too touched at his
thought for her to resent the imputation. “I
should love it! But I didn’t know they had such
things.”
“Now and then—though it is a rare chance.”
“But that will be just the fun of it,” she
hastened, half afraid lest Harry should change
his mind, “to see if we can possibly find one
that will be different from all these others.”
She kept this little feeling of exploration
close about her, as they left the car, a block
above the green trees of the plaza, and entered
one of the narrow streets that was not even a
cross-street, but an alley, running to a bag’s
end, with balconies, green railings and narcissi
taking the sun.
A slant-eyed baby in a mauve blouse stared
after them; and a white face so poisoned in its
badness that it gave Flora a start, peered at
them from across the street. It made her shrink
a little behind Harry’s broad shoulder and take
hold of his arm. The mere touch of that arm
was security. His big presence, moving agilely
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
beside her, seemed to fill the street with its
strength, as if, by merely flinging out his arms,
Samson-like, he could burst the dark walls
asunder.
In the middle of the block, sunk a little back
from the fronts of the others, the goldsmith's
shop showed a single, filmed window; and the
pale glow through it proclaimed that the worker
in metals preferred another light to the sun's.
The threshold was worn to a hollow that sur-
prised the foot; and the interior into which it
led them gloomed so suddenly around them after
the broad sunlight, that it was a moment before
they made out the little man behind the counter,
sitting hunched up on a high stool.
“Hullo, Joe,” said Harry, in the same voice
that hailed his friends on the street-corners;
but the goldsmith only nodded like a nodding
mandarin, as if, without looking up, he took
them in and sensed their errand. He wore a
round, blue Chinese cap drawn over his crown;
a pair of strange goggles like a mask over his
eyes, and his little body seemed to poise as
110


B L A C K M A G IC
lightly on his high stool as a wisp, as if there
were no more flesh in it than in his long, dry
fingers that so marvelously manipulated the
metal. Save for that glitter of gold on his
glass plate, and the grin of a lighted brazier,
all was dark, discolored and cluttered.
And the way Harry bloomed upon this back-
ground of dubious antiquity! He leaned on the
little counter, which creaked under his weight,
in his big, fresh coat, with his clear, fresh face
bent above the shallow tray of trinkets—doubt-
ful jades, dim-eyed rings, dull clasps and coins
—his large, fastidious finger poked among. He
was the one vital thing in the shop.
Over everything else was spread a dimness of
age like dust. It enveloped the little man behind
the counter, not with the frailness that belongs to
human age, but with that weathered, polished
hardness which time brings to antiques of wood
and metal. Indeed, he appeared so like a carved
idol in a curio shop that Flora was a little
startled to find that he was looking at her. China-
men had always seemed to her blank automatons;
III


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
but this one looked keenly, pointedly, as if he
personally took note. She told herself whimsi-
cally that perhaps it was his extraordinary
glasses that gave point to that expression; and
presently when he took them off she was sur-
prised to see it seemed verily true. His little
physiognomy had no more expression than a
withered nut. But there was something about
it more disturbing than its vanishing intelli-
gence, something unexpected, and out of har-
mony with the rest of him, yet so illusive that,
flit over him as her eye would, she failed to
find it.
“Harry,” she murmured to Cressy, who was
still stirring the contents of the box with a dis-
dainful forefinger, “this little man gives me the
shivers.”
“Old Joe?” Harry smiled indulgently. “He’s
a queer customer. Been quite a figurehead in
Chinatown for twenty years. Say, Joe, heap
bad!” and with the back of his hand he flicked
the tray away from him.
The little man undoubled his knees and de-
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B L A C K M A G IC
scended the stool. He stood breast-high behind
the counter. He dropped a lack-luster eye to
the box. “Welly nice,” he murmured with vague,
falling inflection.
“Oh, rotten!” Harry laughed at him.
*You no like?”
“No. No like. You got something else—some-
thing nice?”
“No.” It was like a door closed in the face
of their hope—that falling inflection, that
blank of vacuity that settled over his face, and
his whole drooping figure. He seemed to be
only mutely awaiting their immediate departure
to climb back again on his high stool. But
Harry still leaned on the counter and grinned
ingratiatingly. “Oh, Joe, you good flen'. You
got something pretty—maybe?”
The curtain of vacuity parted just a crack
—let through a gleam of intense intelligence.
“Maybe.” The goldsmith chuckled deeply, as
if Harry had unwittingly perpetrated some
joke—some particularly clever conjurer's trick.
He sidled out behind the counter, past the grin-
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T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
ning brazier, and shuffled into the back of the
shop where he opened a door.
Flora had expected a cupboard, but the vista
it gave upon was a long, black, incredibly nar-
row passage, that stretched away into gloom
with all the suggestion of distance of a road go-
ing over a horizon. Down this the goldsmith
went, with his straw slippers clapping on his
heels, until his small figure merged in the gloom
and presently disappeared altogether, and only
the faint flipper-flap of his slippers came back
growing more and more distant to them, and
finally dying into silence. In the stillness that
followed while they waited they could hear each
other breathe. The little shop with the water-
stained walls and the ancient odor—ancient as
the empire of China—inclosed them like a spell
cast around them by a vanishing enchanter to
hold them there mute until his returning. They
did not look at each other, but rather at the
glowing brazier, at the gold on the glass plates,
at the forms of people passing in the street,
moving palely across the dim window pane, as
II.4.


B L A C K M A G IC
distant to Flora’s eye as though they moved in
another world. Then came the flipper-flap of
the goldsmith's slippers returning. The sound
snapped their tension, and Harry laughed.
“Lord knows how far he went to get it!”
“Across the street?” Flora wondered.
“Or under it. And it won’t be worth two
bits when it gets here.” He peered at the little
man coming toward them down the passage,
flapping and shuffling, and carrying, held before
him in both hands, a square, deep little box.
It was a worn, nondescript box that he set
down before them, but the jealous way he had
carried it had suggested treasure, and Flora
leaned eagerly forward as he raised the cover,
half expecting the blaze of a jewel-case. She
saw at first only dull shanks of metal tumbled
one upon the other. But, after a moment's peer-
ing, between them she caught gleams of veri-
table light. Her fingers went in to retrieve a
hoop of heavy silver, in the midst of which was
sunk a flawed topaz. She admired a moment
the play of light over the imperfection.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“But this isn’t Chinese,” she objected, turn-
ing her surprise on Harry.
“Lots of 'em aren’t. These men glean every-
where. That's pretty.” He held up a little
circle of discolored but lusterful pearls—let it
fall again, since it was worth only a glance.
He leaned on the counter, indifferent to urge
where value seemed so slight. He seemed
amused at Flora's enthusiasm for clouded opals.
“They look well enough among this junk,”
he said, “but compare them with your own rings
and you’ll see the difference.”
She heard him dreamily. She was wishing, as
she turned over the tumble of damaged jewels,
that things so pretty might have been perfect.
To find a perfect thing in this place would be
too extraordinary to hope for. Yet, taking up
the next, and the next, she found herself wish-
ing it might be this one—this cracked intaglio.
No? Then this blue one—say. The setting
spoke nothing for it. It was a plain, thin,
round hoop of palpable brass, and the battered
thing seemed almost too feeble to hold the soli-
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B L A C K M A G IC
tary stone. But the stone! She looked it full
in the eye, the big, blazing, blue eye of it.
What was the matter with this one? A flaw?
She held it to the light.
She felt Harry move behind her. She knew
he couldn’t but be looking at it. For how, by
all that was marvelous, had she for a moment
doubted it? Down to its very heart, which was
near to black, it was clear fire, and outward
toward the facets struck flaming hyacinth hues
with zigzag white cross-lights that dazzled and
mesmerized. Just the look of it—the marvelous
deep well of its light—declared its truth.
“Harry,” she breathed, without taking her
gaze from the thing in her hand, “do look at
this P’
She felt him lean closer. Then with an abrupt
“Let’s see it,” he took it from her—held it to the
light, laid it on his palm, looking sharply across
the counter at the shopkeeper, then back at the
ring with a long scrutiny. His face, too, had a
flush of excitement.
“Is it—good?” Flora faltered.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“A sapphire,” he said, and taking her third
finger by the tip, he slid on the thin circle of
metal.
She breathed high, looking down at the stone
with eyes absorbed in the blue fire. There was
none of the cupidity of women for jewels in
her look. It was the intrinsic beauty of this
drop of dark liquid light that had captured her.
It had mystery, and her imagination woke to it
—the wistful mystery of perfect beauty. And
perfect beauty in such a place! It was too
beautiful. The feeling it brought her was too
sharp for pure pleasure. It was dimly like
fear. Yet instinctively she shut her hand about
the ring. She murmured out her wonder.
“How in the world did such a thing come
here?”
“Oh, not so strange,” Harry answered. He
leaned on his elbow upon the counter, his head
bent close to hers above the single, glittering
point that drew the four eyes to one focus.
“Sailors now and then pick up a thing of whose
value they have no idea—get hard up, and
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B L A C K M A G IC
pawn it—still without any idea. These chaps”
—and his bold hand indicated the shopkeeper
—“take in anything—that is, anything worth
their while; and wait, and wait, and wait until
they see just the moment—and turn it to ac-
count.”
It might be because Harry’s eyes were so
taken with the jewel that his tongue ran reck-
lessly. He had spoken low, but Flora sent an
anxious glance to be sure the shopkeeper hadn’t
overheard. She had meant only to glance, but
she found herself staring into eyes that stared
back from the other side of the counter. That
wide, unwinking scrutiny filled her whole vis-
ion. For an instant she saw nothing but the
dance of scintillant pupils. Then, with a little
gasp she clutched at her companion’s arm.
“Oh, Harry!”
His glance came quickly round to her. “Why,
what’s the matter?”
She murmured, “That Chinaman has blue
eyes.”
He looked at her with good-natured wonder.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“Why, Flora, haven’t you blue on the brain?
I believe he has, though,” he added, as he
peered across the counter at the shopkeeper,
whose gaze now fluttered under narrowed lids;
“but why in the world should blue eyes scare
you?” His look returned indulgently to Flora’s
face.
She could not explain her reason of fear to
him. She could not explain it to herself more
than that the eyes had seemed to know. What?
She could not tell; but they had had a deadly
intelligence. She only whispered back, “But he
is awful!”
“Oh, I guess not,” Harry grinned, and
turned his back to the counter, “only part
white. Makes him a little sharper at a bar-
gain.”
But, in spite of his off-handedness, Flora
saw he was alert, touched with excitement.
Once or twice he looked from the shopkeeper
to the sapphire.
“Do you like it, Flora?” he said. “Do you
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B L A c K M A G 1c
want it?” He spoke eagerly against her re-
luctance.
“It is the most beautiful thing I ever saw,
but—” She could not put it to him why she
shrank from it. That feeling which had
touched her at the first had a little expanded,
the sense of the sapphire's sinister charm. She
faltered out as much as she could explain. “It’s
too much for me.”
His shoulders shook with appreciation of this.
“Oh, I guess not! If you keep that up I shall
be thinking you mean it is too much for me.”
It hadn’t been in the least what she meant,
but now that he had suggested it to her—“Well,
I shouldn’t like it to be,” she blushed, but she
braved him.
The ring of his laughter filled the little, dark,
old shop, and made the proprietor blink.
“Oh, I guess not,” he said again, and with
that he seemed to make an end of her hesita-
tions. There was not another objection she
could bring up. She let him draw the ring off
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T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
her hand with a mingled feeling of reluctance
and relief. She saw him turn briskly to the
shopkeeper.
“Now, Joe, how much you want?” That
much she heard as she turned away with a fear
lest it might, and a hope that it would be, too
much for him!
She lingered away to the door, through
whose upper glazod half she saw the street
swarming and sunny, picked out with streamers
of red and squares of green. The murmur of
traffic outside was faint to her ears. The mur-
mur of the two voices talking on inside the shop
momently grew fainter. She looked behind her
and saw them now in the back of the shop, close
by the grinning brazier.
The light of it showed what would have been
otherwise dark. It showed her Harry, strad-
dling, hands in pockets, hat thrust back, a sil-
houette as hard as if cast in cold metal. The
aspect of him, thus, was strange, not quite un-
like himself, but giving her the feeling that she
122


B L A C K M A G IC
had never known how much Harry smoothed
over.
Perhaps men were always like that with men.
Still she looked away again because she felt
she had taken a liberty in catching him when
he was coming out so plain and coming out so
positive to the shopkeeper, whom he seemed
really to be bullying. She felt that, consider-
ing the sapphire, nothing that went on about
it could be too extraordinary. And yet the
tone their voices were taking on made her nerv-
ous. Whatever they were arguing about, she
found it hard to go on standing thus with
her back to it, and for so long, while her ex-
pectancy tightened, and her unreasonable idea
that she did not want the ring, more and more
took hold of her. If he did not want to sell it,
why not let it go—the beautiful thing!
She thought she would call Harry, and sug-
gest it—but no. She hesitated. She would
give them a chance to finish it themselves. She
would count ten pigtails past the window first.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
She watched the last far into the distance, and
still she was there, blowing hot and cold. She
would call to Harry—call out to him from
where she stood, that she wouldn’t have the
thing.
She turned, and there they were yet. They
had not moved. The shadow of the gesticulat-
ing little Chinaman danced like a bird on the
wall, and before him Harry glowed, immov-
able, but ruddy, as if the hard metal whereof
he was cast was slowly heating through. The
thought came to her then. Harry was ironſ
The hard shade of his profile on the wall, the
stiff movement of his lips, the forward thrust
of his head on his shoulders gave her another
thought. Was Harry also brutal? The sight
of that brutality awake, feeding, as it were, on
the fluttering little figure before it, distressed
her. How long were they going on putting an
edge to their argument? There was continually
with her the fear that it might sharpen into a
quarrel; for now the goldsmith had ceased his
gesticulation and became suddenly immobile, and
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B L A C K M A G IC
still Harry was requiring of him the same thing.
It was insisted upon, by all the lines of his stiff
braced figure, and she had a fluttered expectancy
that if the little man didn’t do something quickly,
now—now it would happen.
What she expected of Harry, a violent act
or a quick relaxation of his iron mood, she had
not time to consider, for the shopkeeper had
moved. He was jerking his head, his thumb,
and finally his arm in the direction of the long,
dim passage—such a pointed direction, such
a singular gesture, as to startle her with its
incongruity. What had that to do with the
price of the ring? And if it had nothing to
do with the price of the ring, what had they
been talking about? Her small scruple against
knowing what was going on behind her was
forgotten. Indeed, now she was oblivious of
everything else. She was taking it in with all
her eyes, when Harry turned and looked at her.
And, oddly enough, she thought he looked as
if he wondered how she came there. She saw
him return to it slowly. Then, in a flash, he
125


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
met her brilliantly. He came toward her out
of the gloom, holding the ring before him, as
if with the light of that, and the flash of his
smile, he was anxious immediately to cover his
deficit.
“I had the very devil of a time getting it,”
he said. “The little beggar didn't want to let
me have it.” But there was a subsiding ex-
citement in his face, and a something in his
manner, both triumphant and troubled, which
his explanation did not reasonably account for.
Had Harry felt the touch of the same strange
influence that the little shop, and the blue-eyed
Chinaman, and the sapphire, had wrought
around her? Or was it something more salient,
the same thing that had suggested itself to her
with the violent gesticulation of the shopkeeper
at the passage—that some question other than
the mere transfer of the ring had come up be-
tween them?
“Harry”—she hesitated—“are you quite
sure it's all right?”
“All right?” The sudden edge in his voice
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B L A C K M A G IC
made her look at him. “Why, it’s genuine, if
that’s what you mean.”
It hadn’t been, quite; but her meaning was
too vague to put into words—a mere sensa-
tion of uneasiness. She watched Harry turn
the ring over, as if he were reluctant to let it
go out of his hands. And then, looking at her,
she thought his glance was a little uncertain.
She thought he hesitated, and when he finally
slid the ring over her finger, “I wouldn’t wear
it until it is reset,” he said. “That setting isn’t
gold. It’s hardly decent.”
“Yes,” she assented; “Clara will laugh at us.”
“She won’t if we don’t show it to her until
it's fit to appear. In fact, I would rather you
wouldn't. As it is now, the thing doesn’t rep-
resent my gift to you.”
She felt this was Harry's conventional streak
asserting itself. But even she had to admit that
an engagement ring which was palpably not
gold was rather out of the way.
“You’d better keep it a day or two and look
it over and make up your mind how you want
127


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
it set, and then we’ll spring it on them,” he
advised.
But now it was finally on her finger, she did
not want to think it would ever have to be
taken off again. She drew her glove over it.
The great facets showed sharp angles under
the thin kid. She wished the sapphire were not
quite so large, so difficult to reconcile with
everything else. Now that she had the perfect
thing with her, clasping her so heavily around
the third finger, she was half afraid it was go-
ing to be too much for her, after all.
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VII
A SPELL IS CAST
been done too quickly. It seemed to her
she had hardly felt Harry slip it on her
finger before they had left the shop; that she had
hardly shaken off the musty inclosed atmosphere,
before Harry had left her on the corner of Cali-
fornia and Powell Streets—left her alone with
the ring ! Still, she didn’t believe she had it,
even while she looked at the large lump it made
I was hers! She did not believe it. It had
under her glove. She kept feeling it with a
cautious finger-tip.
A trio of girls she knew flocked off the Cali-
fornia Street car and surrounded her. They
were going to the White House for bargains in
shirt waists. They wanted to carry her off in
their company. They encompassed her in a
4.
129


T H E CO A 3 T OF C H A N C E
chatter of lace and lingerie. There were held up
to her all the interests of her every-day exist-
ence; but these seemed to have no part in her real
life. They had never appeared more remote and
trivial. She kept her conscious hand in the folds
of her skirt. She would have liked to strip off
her glove and show them the ring. It would have
entertained them so much. To herself its enter-
tainment was of the Arabian Nights—the way
of its finding, its beauty in the false setting, the
struggle over it in the shop—all were wine to her
imagination. It was a thing to conjure adven-
ture; it was a talisman of romance.
She colored faintly as she mentally corrected
herself. It was her engagement ring, and as
such she had never once thought of it. Strange,
when all the forms of her engagement had been
so well observed; when Harry himself repre-
sented that side of life to which she had tried to
form herself from as far back as the old days
when her mother had made fun of her fancies.
It must be right, she thought, this life of conven-
tions and forms; and the queer way she saw
130


A S P E L L IS C.A. ST
things, something wrong in her. But because
she knew herself different, and because she felt
life without understanding it, she feared it. It
was too big to take hold of alone. And she was
so alone; and Harry was so strong, so matter-of-
fact; alone like herself, yet adequate in the world
she was afraid of. She had accepted him as
naturally, and yet as unreally, as she took all
that life, and to the moment she had never ques-
tioned the wisdom or the happiness. She didn’t
question now. She only was shocked that so
large a fact in her life as her engagement could
be completely wiped out for the moment by a
thing so trivial. It was not even the ring. It
was the feeling she had about the ring. Her
imagination was always running away with her,
as it had the night at the club. And here it was,
still uncurbed, speeding her forward into fields
of romance.
She went over whole dramas—imaginary his-
tories of chance and circumstance—woven about
the ring, as she walked up and down the long,
windy hills, westward and homeward, the blue
I31


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
bay on the one hand beaten green under the
rising “trade,” and the fog coming in before her.
With the experience of the morning, and the
exercise and the lively air, her spirits were riding
high. From time to time she had the greatest
longing to peep again at the sapphire, but not
until the house door had closed after her did she
dare draw off her glove and look. It was still
glorious. What a pity she must take it off! Yet
that point Harry had made about not showing it
had been too sharp to be disregarded. But what
could she say, supposing Clara asked about the
morning’s expedition? At this thought all her
spring deserted her, and she went slowly up the
stair. Perhaps Clara had forgotten about it,
and then it recurred reassuringly to her mind
how seldom Clara touched anywhere near the
subject of her engagement.
None the less, she went very softly down the
hall, anxious lest Clara might open her door
and ask what she had brought home with her.
But even in the refuge of her own rooms the
ring encircled Flora with unease. The light
132


A S P E L L IS C.A.ST
of it on her finger made her restless. It wasn’t
that she was apprehensive of it, but she could
not forget it. She could hear the maid Marrika
moving about in the room beyond. She could
hear the rustle of clothes carried to and fro.
She knew there were things to dress for—a
luncheon, and a bevy of teas—things which
must be gone through with, things which at
other times she had found sufficiently pleasur-
able. But now, try as she would to turn her
mind to these, it persistently wandered back to
the jewel. All the fine, simple pleasure of the
morning was dazzled out by it. She slipped it
off her finger on to the dressing-table, and it
lay among her laces like a purple prism, cast by
some unearthly sun in a magic glass. She had
jewels, rubies even—the most precious—but
nothing that gave her this sense of individual
beauty, of beauty so keen as to be disturbing.
She emptied her jewel casket in a glittering
heap around it. It shone out unquenched. It
had not been the dingy little shop, and the dingy
little street, and the odds and ends of jade and
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
tarnished silver that had made it of such a
value. It seemed to her that any eye would
fix it, any hand pluck it out first from that
shining heap before her.
Marrika was coming in, and quickly Flora
swept the jewels and the sapphire back into the
casket, turned the key upon them, and thrust
it back in the far corner of the drawer. She
would give every one a great surprise when the
ring was properly set. She glanced nervously
over her shoulder to see if Marrika had noticed
her action. The Russian had been moving to
and fro between the wardrobe and the dressing-
table with a droning thread of song. And now
she took up the combs and brushes, and filling
her mouth with pins, began on the long river
of yellow-brown hair that flowed down Flora's
back. The broad, pale face reflected beside her
own in the mirror was reassuring by its serene
indifference. She had soothing hands, Marrika.
It was a luxury to be dressed by her, a mental
soporific. But to-day it wrought no relaxation
in Flora's tightened nerves. All the while she
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A S P E L L IS C. A ST
was being combed and laced and hooked her
eyes were alertly on the dressing-table drawer,
that remained a little open; and presently she
caught herself vaguely speculating on how,
after she had been fastened up and into her
clothes so securely, she could dispose upon her-
self the sapphire. How had she arrived at this
consideration? No course of reasoning led up
to it. She was annoyed with herself. If she
wasn’t going to wear the ring on her finger,
and show it, why did she want to take it with
her at all? For fear it might be lost? Lost,
in her jewel box, in the back of the drawer!
She blushed for herself. She looked severely
at her guilty reflection in the mirror. Perhaps
she did look tall; yes, and outwardly sophisti-
cated, but underneath that bold exterior Flora
knew she was only the smallest, youngest, most
ridiculous child ever born. There were moments
when this fact appeared to her more vividly
than at others. One had been the other night
when Kerr’s eyes had looked through and
through her; and here she was again, when
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
she was going to a girls’ luncheon, and most
wanted to feel competent, stared out of counte-
nance by the wonderful eye of a ring.
Through the long afternoon it was more ap-
parent to her than the faces of the people
around her. She was restless to get back to it,
but people talked interminably. At the luncheon
they talked of Kerr. Flora knew these girls
felt a little resentment that she had so easily
captured Harry Cressy; for Harry had been
more than an eligible man in the little city.
He had been an eligible personage. Not that he
had money; not that his family tree was plainly
planted in their midst; but that without these
two things he had achieved what, with these
things, the people he knew were all striving
for. He stood before them as the embodiment
of what they most believed in—perfect bodily
splendor, and perfect knowledge of how to get
on with the world; and the fact that he wouldn’t
quite be one of them, but after five years still
stood a little off—made him shine with greater
brilliance, especially in the eyes of these young
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A S P E L L IS C. A. S. T.
girls. It was hard, they seemed to feel, that
such an apparently remote and difficult person
should have succumbed so easily; and now that
a new luminary of equal luster was apparent in
their sky, Flora felt their remarks a little
triumphantly aimed at her. It was odd to her
that they should envy her anything, especially
those one or two exquisite flowers of old fami-
lies, whose lovely eyes saw not one inch farther
than her turquoise collar. And the way they
talked of Kerr, with flourishes, made her feel
a faint, responsive irritation that he had talked
to so many of them in exactly the same way.
But between the threads of interest the table
group wove together, kept flashing up her fur-
tive desire to be away, to be at home, to see
what had happened to the sapphire. Of course,
she knew that nothing could have happened;
but she wanted to look at it, to open the casket
and see the flash of it before her eyes. For was
she quite sure that it was not one of those fairy
gifts, which, put into the hand in a blaze of
beauty, may be found in the pocket as withered
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T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
leaves? Yet her tenacious nets of duty caught
and caught, and again caught her, so that when
the carriage finally fetched her home it was be-
tween lighted street-lamps.
They were dining early that night on account
of the Bullers’ box party, but it was nearly
eight o'clock before Flora reached the house.
And it was, of course, for that reason that she
ran up-stairs—ran wildly, regardlessly, before
the eyes of Shima—and along the hall, her
high heels clacking on the hard floors, and
through her bedroom to the dressing-room,
snatched open the table drawer, unlocked the
casket with a twitch of the key—and, ah, it was
there! It was really real! Why, what had she
expected? She was laughing at herself.
She was gay in her relief at getting back
to the sapphire, but at the same time she was
already wondering what she should do about
it that night—take it with her or leave it alone?
Dared she wear it on her finger under her
glove? Clara might notice the unfamiliar form
of the jewel through the thin kid. Harry's
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A S P E L L I S. C. A S T
warning had been phrased conventionally
enough, but the hints his words conveyed had
expanded in her mind—fear not only of Clara’s
laughter, that such a jewel had come from a
junk shop, but of her wonder, her questions,
her ability of getting out the story of the whole
erratic proceeding, even to the strange panto-
mime between Harry and the blue-eyed China-
man. Clara was marvelous!
Flora watched her curiously across the table
that evening, wondering what was that quality
of hers by which she acquired. Hitherto Flora
had accepted it as a fact without question, but
now she had a desire to place it. It was not
beauty, for though Clara was pretty, like a pol-
ished Greuze, she was colorless and flavorless,
lacking the vivid heat of magnetism. More prob-
ably it consisted in a certain sort of sweetness
Clara could produce on occasions, a way she had
of looking and speaking which Flora could only
describe as smooth. But smooth without texture
or softness; smooth as quick-flowing water,
smooth as glass—a surface upon which even cau-
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
tion might lose its equilibrium. For the danger
in Clara was that she was disarming. There was
nothing antagonistic in her. One noticed her
slowly. The flat tones of her voice made back-
ground for other people's conversations. The
pale tints of her gown blended with the pale
tones of her hair and flesh. Beside Clara’s
exquisite gradations Flora felt herself without
shades, a creature of violent contrasts and im-
pulses. If Clara had been going to carry the
ring about with her she would have had a reason
for it. But Flora had nothing but a silly
fancy.
She made up her mind to leave the sapphire
at home; but in her last moment in her room
the resolution failed her. Harry, of course,
would be angry if he knew, but Harry wouldn’t
see the thing under her glove.
She came down to where Clara was waiting
for her, with the guilty feeling of a child who
has concealed a contraband cake; but the way
Clara looked her over made her conscious that
she had not concealed her excitement. Clara
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A S P E L L I S. C. A ST
was always cool. What would it be like, she
wondered, to feel the same about everything?
How would it seem to be no more elated by
the expectation of listening to the most beauti-
ful of tenors than over the next meeting of
the Decade Club? Was that what she was com-
ing to in time? Not to-night, she thought;
and not, at least, while that talisman of romance
clasped her around the third finger.
141


VIII
A SPARK OF HORROR
HEY found Harry waiting for them in
| the theater lobby. He had come up too
late from Burlingame to do more than
meet the party there. The Bullers were already
in the box, he said, and the second act of I'Pag-
liacci just beginning.
As they came to the door of the box the
lights were down, the curtain up on a dim stage,
and the chorus still floating into the roof, while
the three occupants of the box were indistin-
guishable figures, risen up and shuffling chairs
to the front for Flora and Clara. It was too
dark to distinguish faces.
But dark as it was, Flora knew who was sit-
ting behind her. She heard him speaking. Un-
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A S P A R K OF HO R. R O R
der the notes of the recitative he was speaking
to Clara. The pleasure of finding him here was
sharpened by the surprise. She listened to his
voice, the mere intonation of which brought
back to her their walk through the Presidio
woods as deliciously as if she were still there.
Then, as the tenor took up the theme, all
talking ceased—Ella's husky whisper, Clara’s
smoother syllables, and the flat, slow, variable
voice of Kerr–the whole house seemed to sink
into stiller repose; the high chords floated
above the heads of the black pit like colored
bubbles, and Flora forgot the sapphire in the
triple spell of the singing, the darkness, and the
face she was yet to see. She felt relaxed and
released from her guard by this darkness
around her, that blotted out the sea of faces
beneath, that dissolved the walls and high gal-
leries, that obscured the very outline of the box
where she sat, until she seemed to be poised, half-
way up a void of darkness, looking into a pit in
the hollowness of which a voice was singing.
The stage was a narrow shelf of wood swung
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
in that void, from which the voice sang, and a
bare finger of light followed it about from place
to place. The sweet, searching tenor notes, the
semblance of passion and reality the gesticulat-
ing Frenchman threw over all the stage, and the
crescendo of the tragedy carried her into a
mood that barred out Ella, barred out Clara,
barred out Harry more than any; but, unac-
countably, Kerr was still with her. He was
there by no will of hers, but by some essence
of his own, some quality that linked him, as it
linked her, to the passionate subtleties of life.
He seemed to her the eager spirit that was
prompting and putting forward this comedy
and tragedy playing on before her. She heard
him reasserted, vigorous, lawless, wandering, in
the voice of the mimic strolling player address-
ing his mimic audience. The appeal of the
tenor to the voiceless galleries, “Underneath
this little play we show, there is another play,”
seemed indeed the very voice of Kerr repeating
itself. And with the climax of the sharp
tragedy in the middle of the comic stage she
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A S P A R K OF HO R. R O R
placed him again, but placed him this time in
the mimic audience looking on, neither applaud-
ing nor dissenting; but rather as if he watched
the play and played it, too.
The lights went up with a spring. A wave
of motion flickered over the house, the talking
voices burst forth all at once, and she saw him,
really saw him for the first time that evening,
as in her fancy, part of the audience; as in her
fancy, neither applauding nor dissenting, yet
with what a difference! He leaned back in his
chair, and leaned his head a little back, as if,
for weariness, he wished there were a rest be-
hind it; and how indifferently, how critically,
how levelly he surveyed the fluttered house, and
the figures in the box beside him! How foreign
he appeared to the ardent spirit who had dom-
inated the dark; how emptied of the heat of
imagination, how worn, how dry; and even in
his salience, how singularly pathetic | He was
neither the satanic person of the first night,
nor her comrade of the Presidio hills. And if the
expression of his face was not quite so cheap as
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
cynicism, it was just the absence of belief in
anything.
She felt a lump in her throat, an ache of the
cruelest disappointment, as though some masker,
masking as the fire of life, had suddenly re-
moved the covering of his face and showed her
the burnt-out bones beneath. The shift from
what she remembered him to what he now ap-
peared was too rapid and considerable for her.
She found herself looking at him through a mist
of tears—there in the heart of publicity, in the
middle of the circle of red velvet curtains!
He turned and saw her. She watched a smile
of the frankest pleasure rising, as it were, to
the surface of his weary preoccupation. Some-
thing had delighted him. Why, it was herself
—just her being there! And she could only
helplessly blink at him. Was ever anything so
stupid as to be caught in tears over nothing!
For the next moment he had caught her. She
knew by the change of his look, interrogative,
amused, incredulous. He straightened and
leaned forward.
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A S P A R K OF H. O. R. R O R
“Really,” he said, “you must remember that
little man has only gone out for a glass of
beer.”
So he thought it was the tenor who had
brought her to the point of tears.
“Ah, why do you say that?” she protested.
He continued to smile indulgently upon her.
“Would you really rather believe it true?”
“I don’t know. But I wish you hadn’t thought
of the beer.”
He brought the glare of his monocle to bear
full upon her. “Why not? It is all we make
sure of.”
So he had taken that side of it. By his
words as well as his looks he repudiated all the
gallant show of romance he had paraded to her
before, and had taken up the cause of the world
as flatly as Harry could have done.
“Oh, if to be sure is all you want,” she burst
out; “but you don’t mean it! Wouldn't you
rather have something beautiful you weren't
sure of, than something certain that didn’t mat-
ter?”
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
He nodded to this quite casually, as if it
were an old acquaintance.
“Oh, yes; but the time comes round when you
want to be sure of something. The sun never
sets twice alike over Mont Pelee; but you can
always get the same brand of lager to-day that
you had the week before.” He looked at her .
with a faint amusement. “And by your ex-
pression I take it you don’t know how fine some
of those brands are. Life is not half bad—
even when it is only a means to the beer.”
Under these garish lights, in the middle of
this theater of people, facing the bland, almost
banal, stare of that monocle, it looked exceed-
ingly probable that, after all, in spite of her
dreaming, this was what life would prove to be.
But she hated the thought, as she hated that
Kerr should be the one to show it to her; as
she would have hated her ring if, after all its
splendor in the shop, it should have turned out
to be a piece of colored glass.
“No, no! I won’t believe you,” she stoutly
denied him. “There is more in life than you
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A S P A R K OF HO R R O R
can touch. You’re not like yourself to say there
is not.”
He laughed, but rather shortly.
“My dear child, forgive me; I’m sulky to-
night. I feel, as I felt at eighteen, that the
world has treated me badly. I’ve lost my luck.”
The way his voice dropped at the last
sounded to her the weariest thing she had ever
heard. He settled back in his chair again, and
looked moodily out across the brilliant house.
“I’m sorry.” Her tone was sweetly vague.
What could be the matter with him? Then, half
timidly, she rallied him. “If you go on like
this, I shall have to show you my talisman.”
“Oh, have you indeed a talisman?” he
humored her. And it was as if he said, “Oh,
have you a doll?” He did not even turn his
head to look at her.
She was chilled. She felt the disappoint-
ment, that his quick smile had lightened, return
upon her. She hardly noticed the rise of the
curtain on the second little play, and the sing-
ing voices did not reach her with any poignancy.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
She was vaguely aware of movements in the
box—of Harry’s coming in, of Clara’s little
rustle making room for him, of the shift of
Ella’s chair away from the business of listening,
toward him, and her husky whisper going on
with some prolonged tale of dull escapade; but
to Flora they all made only a banal background
for the brooding silence of her companion. He
had thrown his mood over her until she was
ready to doubt even the potency of her talisman
to counteract it.
She felt of the stone. She drew off her glove
and tried to look at it in the dim light, but
couldn't get a gleam out of it. She was as im-
patient for the lights to go up that she might
secretly be cheered by its wonder, as she had
been that afternoon to get back from the
luncheon, and make sure it was still in the
drawer. She must see it in spite of Clara at
her right hand, whose little chiseled profile
might turn upon her at any moment a full face
of inquiry.
She held her left hand low in the shadow of
150


A S P A R K OF HO RR OR
her chair; and if, as the lights went up again,
there was any change in the sapphire, it was
merely a sharper brilliance, as if, like an eye, it
had moods, and this was one of its moments of
excitement. In its extraordinary luster it seemed
to possess a beauty that could not be valued; and
she wanted to hold it up to Kerr, to see if she
couldn’t startle him out of his mood—to see if he
wouldn’t respond to it, “Yes, there is more in it
than you can touch.”
She turned to him with the daring flash of
timid spirits. It was so sharp a motion that he
started instantly from his reverie to meet it, but
his alacrity was mechanical. She felt the smile he
summoned was slow, as if he returned, from a
long distance, a little painfully to his present
surroundings.
The Intermezzo was playing, and to speak
under the music he leaned so close his shoulder
touched her chair. Through that narrow space
between them, almost beneath his eyes, she moved
her hand—a gesture so slightly emphasized as
to seem accident. He had started to speak, but
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
her motion seemed to stop his tongue. He looked
hard at her hand, and something violent in his
intentness made her clutch the side of the chair.
Instantly she met his look, so fiercely, cruelly
challenging, that it took her like a blow. For a
moment they looked at each other, her eyes wide
with fright, his narrowed to a glare under the
terrible intentness of his brows. What had she
done? What threatened her? What could save
her in this sea of people? Then, while she gazed,
his challenge burned out to a pale hard scrutiny,
that faded to no expression at all—or was it that
any expression would have seemed dim after the
terrible one that had flashed across his face?
She was as shaken as if he had seized hold of
her. If he had snatched the ring off her finger
she wouldn’t have been more shocked. The
whole box must be transfixed by him, and the
whole house be looking at nothing but their lit-
tle circle of horror! She was ready for it. She
was braced for anything but the fact which ac-
tually confronted her—that no one had noticed
them at all. It was monstrous that such a thing
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A S P A R K OF HO R. R O R
could have been without their knowing! But
there was no face in all the orchestra, the
crowded galleries, or the tiers of boxes to affirm
that anything had happened; no face in their
own box had even stirred, but Clara's, and that
had merely turned from profile to the full,
faintly inquiring, mild, and palely pink in the
warm reflections of the red velvet curtains.
And what could Clara have seen, if she had
seen at all, but Flora a little paler than usual
with a hand that trembled; and what worse
could Clara conjecture than that she was being
silly about Kerr? She turned slowly toward him,
and looked at him with a courage that was part
of her fear. But wasn’t she, in a way, being
silly about Kerr? What had become of his ex-
pression that had threatened her? There was
nothing left of it but her own violent impres-
sion—and the longer Kerr sat there, talking
from her to Clara, from Clara to Judge Buller,
his eyes keeping pace with his light conversa-
tional flights, the less Flora felt sure he had
ever fixed her with that intensity.
153


T H E CO A S T OT C H A N C E
And yet the thing had actually happened. Its
evidence was before her. He had been silent.
Now he was talking. He had been absent. Now
she thought she had never seen him more vividly
concerned with the moment. Yet for all his cool
looks and diffuse talk around the box, she felt
uneasily that his concern was pointed at her,
and that he would never let her go. He only
waited for the cover of the last act to come back
to her single-handed.
She would have deflected his attack, but it was
too quick, too unexpected for her to do more
than sit helpless, and let him lift up her left
hand, delicately between thumb and finger, as if
in itself it was some rare, fine curio, and, bend-
ing close, contemplate the sapphire unwinkingly.
She had an instant when she thought she must
cry out, but how impossible in the awful pub-
licity of her place—a pinnacle in the face of
thousands! And after the first fluttered impulse
came a certain reassurance in such a frank and
trivial action. For all its intensity, how could it
be construed otherwise than a lively if unconven-
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A S P A R K OF HO R. R O R
tional interest? It must have been her own fancy
which had discerned anything more than that in
his first look at her. And yet, when he had laid
her hand lightly back, and readjusted his mon-
ocle, and looked out, away from her, across the
black house, she didn’t know whether she was
more reassured or troubled because he had not
spoken a word. Yet the next moment he looked
around at her.
“We shan’t meet every evening in such a way
as this,” he said, and left the statement dangling
unanswerable between them. It sounded por-
tentous—final. She wondered that in the mid-
dle of her fear it could strike such a sharp note
of regret in her. She knew she would regret
not meeting him again; and yet she shrank from
the thought she could still want to meet him.
By one look her whole feeling of sympathy, of
reliance, of admiration, that had flowed out to
him so naturally she had scarcely been aware of
it, had been troubled and mixed with fear. She
couldn’t answer. She could only look at him
with a reflection of her trouble in her face.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“Are you surprised that I thought of that?”
he inquired. “It’s not so odd as you seem to
think that I should want to see you again. I
don’t want to leave it to chance; do you?” He
shot the question at her so suddenly, with such
a casual eye, and such dry gravity of mouth,
that he had her admission out of her before she
realized the extent of its meaning. And the way
he took that admission for granted, and over-
looked her confusion, made her feel that for the
sake of whatever he was after he was intention-
ally ignoring what it did not suit his convenience
to see. She knew he must have seen; that every
moment while she had changed and fluttered his
eye had never left her.
“Then when are you at home?” he asked her;
and by his tone, he conveyed the impression that
he was only making courteous response to some
invitation she had offered him; though, when
she thought, she had not offered it, he had got
it out of her. He had got it by sheer imperti-
nence. But none the less he had it. She couldn’t
escape him there.
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A S P A R K OF HO R R O R
She answered somewhat stiffly: “Fridays, sec-
ond and fourth.”
He looked at her with a humorous twist of
mouth. “What? So seldom?”
She was impotent if he wouldn’t be snubbed;
but at the worst she wouldn’t be cornered. “Oh,
dear, no—but people who come at other times
take a chance.”
“Does that mean that I may take mine to-
morrow?”
He was pressing her too hard. Why was he
so anxious to see her, as he had not been the
first night or yesterday, or even ten minutes ago?
She, who, ten minutes ago, would have been
glad, now was doing her best to put him off.
She was silent a moment, considering the con-
ventions, and then, like him, she abandoned them.
Without a word she turned away from him.
Whatever she said, he had her. But, if she said
nothing and still he came to-morrow, whatever
she did then, he would have to take the conse-
quences of his insistence. Her only desire now
was to evade him, lest he should force her out
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
of her non-committal attitude. She wanted to
shield herself from further pursuit.
She couldn’t escape yet, for the figures on the
stage were still gesticulating and trilling, and
the people around her, in the small inclosure
where she sat, hemmed her in so that she could
no more move away from Kerr than if she had
been that impaled specimen he had made her
feel at their first meeting. The most she could
do was to turn away, but even thus, with her
eyes averted and her ears full of Ella's voice,
she was still acutely aware of him, sitting look-
ing straight before him across the black house
with a face worn, wary, weathered to any catas-
trophe, and such an air of being alertly fixed on
something a long way off, that her silence made
no more difference to him than her flutterings
and her rudeness. And yet she knew he was
only waiting; waiting his chance to get at her
again and make her commit herself; and that,
she was determined, should not happen.
What had already happened, through its very
violence, had left an impression like a dream.
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A S P A R K OF HO R. R O R
It seemed unreal, and yet it had made her forget
everything else—the stage, the people around
her, and even the very sapphire that had gen-
erated her inexplicable situation. She drew her
glove over the ring. The lights were imminent.
It would be hard to hide the great flash of the
jewel. And besides, she didn’t trust it. She
couldn't tell in what direction it might not strike
out a spark of horror next.
The rustle of final departure was all over the
house. The people in the box were stirring and
beginning to stand up; and Flora saw Kerr
turn and look at her. She wanted some one to
stand between herself and Kerr, and it was to
Harry that she turned; not alone that he was
so large and adequate, but because she thought
she saw in him an inclination to step into that
very place where she wanted him. She saw he
was a little sullen, and though she didn’t suspect
him quite of jealousy, she wondered if he had
not a right to blame her for the appearance of
flirtation that she and Kerr must have presented.
Then how much more might he blame her for
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
what she had actually done—for deliberately
showing the sapphire to Kerr! The very thought
of it frightened her. She knew she was rattling
to Harry all the while he fetched her cloak and
put it on her, and she was glad now of that abil-
ity she had cultivated in herself of making a
smooth crust of talk over her seething feelings.
She talked the harder, she even took hold of Har-
ry’s arm to be sure of keeping him there between
her and what she was afraid of, as they came out
on the sidewalk and stood waiting in the windy
night for the approach of their carriage lights.
Row upon row of street lamps flared in the
traveling gusts. The midnight noises of the
city were at their loudest; and half their vol-
ume seemed to be a scattered chorus of hoarse
voices yelling all together like a pack of wolves.
Thin, ragged shapes shot in and out among the
crowd, ducked under horses’ feet and cut wild
zigzags across the street like flying goblins. The
sense of their cry was indistinguishable, but it
was the same—the same inarticulate shape of
sound on every tongue. First one throat, then
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A S P A R K OF HO R R O R
another took up the raucous singsong shout,
then all together again, as if the pack were in
full cry on the scent of something. What was
this fresh quarry of the press, Flora wondered,
that made it give tongue so hideously? The
hunting note of it made her want to cover her
ears, and yet she strained to catch its meaning.
She had stooped her head to the carriage
door, when Harry stopped and took one of the
damp papers from a crier in the pack. She saw
the head-line. It covered half the sheet—the
great figure that was offered for the return of
the Chatworth ring.
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IX
ILLUMINATION
UST when the two ideas had coalesced in
her mind Flora couldn’t be sure. It had
been some time in the first dark hour that
she had spent wide awake in her bed. There
had been two ideas distinctly. Two impressions
of the evening remained with her; and the last
one, the great figures that had stared at her
from the paper, the fact that had been Harry's
secret, made common now in round numbers, had
for the moment swallowed up the first.
For all the way home that sum was kept be-
fore her by Clara's talk. She could remember
nothing of that talk except that it hadn’t been
able for a moment to leave the Chatworth ring
alone. It had been aimed at Harry, but it had
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I L L U M I N A TI O N
fallen to Flora herself to answer Clara’s quick
speculations, for Harry had been obstinately
silent, though not indifferent, as if in his own
mind he was as unable to leave it alone as
Clara. One with his silence, one with her talk,
they had written the figures of the reward so
blazingly in Flora’s mind that for the moment
she could see nothing else. Yet now she was alone
her first adventure recurred to her. As soon as
she was quiet in the dark there came back with
reminiscent terror the look that Kerr had given
her in the box. She wasn’t really afraid of Kerr
himself. She was afraid of the meaning of his
look which she didn’t understand. It only es-
tablished in her mind a great significance for
the sapphire, if it could produce such an ex-
pression on a human face. It had given him
more than a mere expression. It had given him
an impulse for pursuit, as if, like a magnet, it
was fairly dragging him. He had covered his
impulse by his very frankness, but she knew he
had pursued her—that for the matter of seeing
her again he had hunted her down. And what
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
/
had followed that? Why, she was back again to
the great figures in the paper.
At first it seemed as though she had taken a
clean leap from one subject to another. She had
in no way connected them. But all at once they
were connected. She couldn’t separate them.
She didn't know whether she had been stupid not
to have seen them so before, or whether she was
stupid to see them so now. For the thought that
had sprung up in her mind was monstrous. It
startled her so broad awake that she sat up in
bed to meet it the more alertly. She sat up
trembling. She felt like one who has walked a
long way in a wood, hearing crafty footsteps
following in the bushes. And now the beast had
sprung out, and she was panting, terrified, not
knowing which way to run.
The room was dark except for now and again
the yellow square of light, from some passing
cable car, traveling along the ceiling. The four
walls around her, their dark bulks of furniture
and light ripple of moving curtains, shut her up
with this monster of her mind. The longer she
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I L L U M I N AT I O N
looked at it the less she felt sure it was real,
and yet it was before her. It was there with
none of the loveliness of her first fancies about
the ring. It was there with grisly reality. It
had not been conjured up. It had sprung upon
her from the solid actualities of the night. And,
yes, of the day before—and the night before
that. Oh, she had known well enough that there
had been something wrong at the goldsmith's
shop. She had felt it even before she had seen
the sapphire; and afterward how it had held
them, both herself and Harry! To have moved
Harry it must be something indeed! Had he
suspected it then, or had he only wondered?
If he had suspected why hadn’t he spoken of
it? Well, her appalling fancy prompted, hadn’t
he spoken of it?—though not to her. There
flashed back to her the memory of him there in
the back of the shop with the blue-eyed China-
man. How furiously he had assailed the little
man! How uneasily, with what a dissatisfied air
he had looked at the ring even after it was on
her finger, as if, after all, he had not compassed
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
what he had wanted. She could be almost sure
that the monstrous idea which had just overtaken
her had, however fleetingly, flashed before
Harry’s mind in the goldsmith’s shop. But
surely he couldn’t have entertained it for a mo-
ment. That was impossible, or he would never
have let her take the sapphire—Harry, who had
seen the ring, the very Crew Idol itself, within
the twenty-four hours.
“A little heathen god curled round himself
with a big blue stone on the top of his head.”
Harry hadn’t said what sort of stone it was;
but Kerr had said it was a sapphire. There was
a sapphire on her hand now. She touched it with
her finger-tips cautiously, as if to touch some-
thing hot. So near to her! In the same room
with her! On her own hand! It was too much to
be alone with in the dark | She reached out
softly, as if she feared to disturb some threaten-
ing presence lurking around her, and lit the
small night lamp on the low table by her bed.
The shade was yellow, and that contended with
the blue of the sapphire, but couldn’t break its
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I L L U M I N A T I O N
light. With the first flash of its splendor in her
face she felt certainty threatening her. She
shook the ring quickly off her finger and it fell
with a light clatter on the table’s marble top—
fell with the sapphire face down, and all its light
hidden. She took it up again a little fearfully,
as if it might have got some harm; and again
while she looked at it it seemed to her that noth-
ing that happened about this jewel could be too
extraordinary. If only it had been less wonder-
ful, less beautiful, she would not have felt so
terribly afraid! She put it back on the table and
for a moment held her hand over it, as if she im-
prisoned a living thing.
Then, without looking again, she got out
of bed and went to the window. It overlooked
the dark steep of the garden, the moving
trees and the lighter plane of the water. She
leaned out, far out. Black housetops marched
against the bay, and between them, light by
light, her eyes followed the street-lamps down
to the shore. If one could recover from such a
nightmare as she had it would be by leaning out
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I L L U M I N A TI O N
would be to take it—that beautiful thing—and
throw it; throw it as hard as she could, and let
the night take care of it. The window was open,
as if it stood ready, and there was the ring on
the table. She went to it, looked at it a moment
without touching it, holding her hands away.
Then with a little shiver she backed away from
it and sat down on the foot of the bed. She looked
pale and little, as if the eye of the ring, blazing
under the feeble lamp, like the evil eye, had
sapped her fire and youth. The only thing about
her of any size and color was the heavy braid
of hair fallen over her shoulder. She hugged
her arms around her updrawn knees, and resting
her chin upon them eyed the sapphire bravely.
“What shall I do with you?” she somberly in-
quired of it. “You are a dreadful thing. I
don’t know where you came from nor what you
are, but I am afraid—I am afraid you are—”
She hesitated. The sapphire lay shining like
some idol set up for worship, and in spite of
herself its beauty moved her, if not to worship,
at least to awe and fear.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“I suppose you know I can’t throw you away,”
she murmured, “and yet I can’t keep you!” She
pondered, chin in hand. To take it to Harry!
That seemed the natural thing to do—the sim-
plest way to be rid of it. She hesitated.
“If I only knew! If I only were sure!” She
locked her fingers closer, staring hard. If it
had been the whole Crew Idol, the undismembered
god himself, then there would have been less ter-
ror, and one plain thing to do. She looked hard
at the sapphire setting, as if she hoped to dis-
cover upon its brilliance some tell-tale trace of
old soft gold; but there was only one great,
glassy, polished eye, and out of what head it
had come, whether from the forehead of the
Crew Idol, or from that of some unheralded
deity, who was there who could tell her?
She tried to summon a coherent thought, but
again it was only a flash out of the darkness.
“Kerr! Why, he knows more than I.” She
looked at this stupidly for a moment as if it
were too large to take in at once. Of course he
must have known! Why hadn't she thought of
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I L L U M I N A TI O N
that before? Why hadn’t she thought of it that
first moment, when he had turned on her in the
box with such terrible eyes? She drew in her
shoulders, looking all around at the dim cor-
ners of the room which the lamp flame failed to
penetrate. Behind her present lively fear a
second shadow was growing, more dim, more
formless, more vast and dubious.
What series of circumstances might have led
up to Kerr's knowledge she could not dream. He
was one of whom nothing was incredible. From
the first moment his face had shot into the light,
from the moment she had heard his voice, like
color in the level voices around him, she had
been bewildered by his variety. He had caught
her up to the clouds. He had whirled her along
dubious levels, and more than once he had shown
her that the lines she had supposed drawn so
sharply between this and that could no more be
discerned than meridians on green earth.
If she had noticed any earnestness in him, it
was his relish, his gusto for the whole of life.,
He had no theory to set up. Just as it was he
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
took it. If he persisted in requiring people to
be themselves it was for no good to themselves,
but for the pleasure he himself got out of it.
If he made society into a little ball, and threw
it away, it was only to show it could be done.
And where, she asked herself in a summing
up, might such a man not be found? But there
were few places, indeed, in even the broadest
plain of possibility, which could hold knowledge
of so particular and piercing a quality as his
look had implied. There had been so much more
than curiosity or surprise in it. She could
hardly face the memory of it, so cruelly it had
struck her. There was no doubt in her mind
that Kerr had seen the ring. Somewhere in the
pageant of his experience he had met it, known
it—but what he wanted of it—
She broke off that thought, and looked long
at the little flame of the lamp. It was strange,
but there was no doubt in her mind but that he
wanted it. That had been the strongest thing
in his look. She felt herself picking her way
along a very narrow path, one step over either
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I L L U M I N A TI O N
edge of which would plunge her chasms deep.
Now she snatched at a frail sapling to save her-
self. The fact that Kerr knew her stone didn’t
prove it belonged to the Crew Idol. And if it
didn’t-if it wasn’t the crown of the heathen
god, then her whole dreadful supposition fell
to pieces. But she hadn’t proved it and the sim-
plest way was just to ask Kerr. Her chance for
that was the chance he had fought so hard for,
the chance of their meeting the next day.
She hadn’t wanted that meeting when he had
first asked her for it in the box. She had feared
it then, and all the more she feared it now, be-
cause now she would have to do more than de-
fend herself. She would take the offensive; she
would make the attack, now that she had a ques-
tion to ask. Why should the thought of it
frighten her? If this was not the Crew sapphire
she would be no worse off than she had been. If
it was, her course would be clear. It seemed it
should be simple, it should be easy to face Kerr
with her question; but she was possessed by the
apprehension that it would be neither. Would
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
the question she had to ask be a safe thing to
give him? And if she dared undertake it and
should be overpowered after all—then every-
thing would be lost.
What the “everything” was she feared to lose
would not come clear to her. The only thing
that did emerge definitely from the agitation of
her mind was the knowledge that this question
that had been thrust upon her made it tenfold
more difficult to meet Kerr. And yet, to refuse
to meet him now would be as cowardly as throw-
ing the ring out of the window.
174


X
A LADY UN WEIL ED
HE wakened in the morning to some one
knocking. She thought the sound had
been going on for a long time, but, now
she was finally roused, it had stopped. This was
odd, for no one came to her in the morning ex-
cept Marrika, and it was tiresome to be thus im-
peratively beset before she was half awake. Now
the knocking came again with a level, unimpa-
tient repetition, and she called, “Come in P’ at
which Clara, in a pale morning gown, promptly
entered—an apparition as cool and smooth and
burnished as if she had spent the night, like a
French doll, in tissue paper.
Clara’s coming in in the morning was an un-
heard-of thing. Flora was taken aback.
“Why, Clara!” She was blank with astonish-
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T H E COAST OF C H A N CTE
ment. She sat up, flushed and tumbled, and still
blinking. “I hope I didn't keep you knocking
long.”
“Oh, no, indeed; only three taps.” Clara
looked straight through Flora’s astonishment, as
if there had been no such thing in evidence. She
drew up a chair and sat down beside the bed. It
was a rocking-chair, but it did not sway with
her calm poise. In the fine finish of her morn-
ing attire, with her hands placidly folded on her
knee, she made Flora feel taken at a disadvan-
tage, thus scarcely awake, disheveled and all but
stripped. But Clara, if she looked at anything
but Flora’s eyes, looked only at her hands, one
and then the other as they lay upon the coverlet.
“It isn't so very late,” she said, “but I have
ordered your breakfast. I thought you would
want it if you had that ten-o’clock appointment;
and there is something I want to ask you before
you go out.” Flora was conscious of a little
apprehension. “It’s about that place you talked
of taking for the summer.” She felt vaguely re-
lieved, though she had had no actual grounds for
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A L A D Y UN W E I L E D
anticipating an awkward question. “I came
upon something in the oddest way you can im-
agine,” Clara pursued her subject. “Had you
any idea the Herricks were in straits?”
“The young Herricks?”
“Oh, no! The old Herricks, the Herricks,
Mrs. Herrick whom you so much admire! Of
course, one isn’t told; but they must be, to be
willing to let the old place.”
“Not the San Mateo place?” said Flora, with
a stir of interest. She felt as astonished as if
some Confucian fanatic had set up his joss at
auction.
Clara complacently nodded.
“Mrs. Herrick spoke to me herself. They
don’t want any publicity about it, but she had
heard that we were looking, and she did me the
favor”—Clara smiled a little dryly—“of telling
me first.”
Flora looked reflective. “I’ve never seen it,
but they say it’s beautiful.”
“It is, in a way,” Clara grudgingly admitted,
“but it isn't new; and the ridiculous part is that
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
she will let it only on condition that it shall not
be done over. It is in sufficiently good shape, but
it stands now just as Colonel Herrick furnished
it forty years ago.”
“Why, I should love that!” Flora frankly con-
fessed, and gave a wistful glance at the walls
around her, wondering how long before the soft,
dark bloom of time, of use and wont, should de-
scend on their crude faces.
“Well,” Clara conceded, “at any rate we
know it’s genuine, and that’s a consolation. The
number of imitations going about and the way
people pick them up is appalling! While I was
getting that rug for you at Vigo's yesterday,
Ella Buller came in and bought three imitation
Bokharas, with the greatest enthusiasm. She
buys quantities, and she’s always taken in. It
is enough to make one nervous about the people
one sits next to at dinner there. One can not
help suspecting them of being some of Ella's
bargains. I wonder, now, where she picked up
that Kerr.”
This finale failed to take Flora off her guard.
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A L A D Y U N V E L L E D
“At any rate, he is odd enough to be genuine,”
she said with a gleam of malice.
“Oh, no doubt of that,” Clara mildly as-
sented, “but genuine what?”
“Why, gentleman at large,” said Flora, and
quickly wanted to recall it, for Clara’s glance
seemed to give it a double significance. “I
mean,” she added, “just one of those chronic
travelers who have nothing else to do, and whose
way must be paved with letters of introduction”
—she floundered. “At least, that was the idea
he gave of himself.” She broke off, doubly an-
gry that she had tried to explain Kerr, and tried
to explain herself, when the circumstances re-
quired nothing of the sort. She was sure Clara
had not missed her nervousness, though Clara
made no sign. Her eyes only traveled a second
time to Flora's hands, as if among the flare of
red and white jewels she was expecting to see
another color. To Flora’s palpitating conscious-
ness this look made a perfect connection with
Clara’s next remark.
“At least his manners are odd enough! There
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
was a minute last night when he was really quite
startling.”
Flora felt a small, warm spot of color increas-
ing in the middle of each cheek. She drew a long
breath, as if to draw in courage. Then Clara
had really seen! That smooth, blindish look of
hers, last night, had seen everything! And here
she was owning up to it, and affably offering
herself as a confidante; and for what reason un-
der the sun unless to find out what it was that
had so startled Kerr; Flora felt like crying out,
“If you only knew what that thing may be, you
would never want to come nearer to it!”
“I am afraid he annoyed you, Flora.”
The girl looked into the kindly solicitude of
Clara’s face with a hard, almost passionate in-
credulity. Was that really all Clara had sup-
posed?
“These Continentals,” she went on, now
lightly swaying to and fro in her chair, “have
singular notions of American women. They take
us for savages, my dear.”
“Then isn’t it for us to show them that we are
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A L A D Y U N W E I L E D
more than usually civilized? I can’t run away
from him like a frightened little native.”
“Of course not; but that is where I come in ;
it’s what I’m for—to get rid of such things for
you.” That small, cool smile made Flora feel
more than ever the immature barbarian of her
simile. Clara sat throwing the protection of her
superior knowledge and capability around her,
like a missionary garment; but Flora could have
laughed with relief. Then Clara merely sup-
posed Kerr had been impertinent. Her little in-
vasion had been really nothing but pure kind-
ness and protection; and Flora couldn’t but feel
grateful for it. Last night she had thought
herself so absolutely alone; and here was a friend
coming forward again, and stepping between
her and the thing above all others she was help-
less about—the real world.
Clara had risen, and stood considering a mo-
ment with that same sweet, impersonal eye which
Flora found it hardest to comprehend.
“What I mean,” she explicitly stated, “is that
if he should undertake to carry out his prepos-
181
tº


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
terous suggestion, and call this afternoon, I am
quite ready, if you wish, to take him off your
hands.”
This last took Flora’s breath away. It had
not occurred to her that Clara had overheard.
It shocked her, frightened her; and yet Clara’s
way of stating the fact, as if it were the most
natural thing in the world, made Flora feel that
she herself was in the wrong to feel thus. For,
after all, Clara had been most tactful, most con-
siderate and delicate in conveying her knowledge,
not hinting that Flora could have been in the
slightest degree responsible for Kerr's behavior;
but simply sweetly taking it for granted that
they, of course, were banded together to exclude
this outlander. Under her sense of obligation,
and what she felt ought to be gratitude, Flora
floundered for words.
“You’re very kind,” she managed to get out;
and that seemed to leave her committed to hand
Kerr over, tied hand and foot, when she wasn’t
at all sure she wanted to.
“Then shall I tell Mrs. Herrick that you will
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A L A D Y U N V E I L E D
consider the house?” said Clara, already in the
act of departure. “She is to call to-day to go
into it with me more thoroughly. Thus far we’ve
only played about the edges.”
Her eyes strayed toward the dressing-table
as she passed it, and as she reached the door she
glanced over the chiffonier. It was on the tip
of Flora’s tongue to ask if she had mislaid some-
thing, when Clara turned and smiled her small,
tight-curled smile, as if she were offering it as
a symbol of mutual understanding. Curiously
enough, it checked Flora’s query about the stray-
ing glances, and made her wonder that this was
the first time in their relation that she had
thought Clara sweet.
But there was another quality in Clara she
did not lose sight of, and she waited for the
closing of a door further down the hall before
she drew the sapphire from under her pillow.
With the knocking at the door her first act
had been to thrust it there. The feeling that it
was going to be hard to hide was still her strong-
est instinct about it; but the morning had dis-
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
sipated the element of the supernatural and the
horrid that it had shown her the night before.
It seemed to have a clearer and a simpler beauty;
and the hope revived in her that its beauty, after
all, was the only remarkable thing about it.
Her conviction of the night before had sunk
to a shadowy hypothesis. She knew nothing—
nothing that would justify her in taking any
step; and her only chance of knowing more lay
in what she would get out of Kerr; for that he
knew more about her ring than she, she was
convinced. She was afraid of him, yet, in spite
of her fear, she had no intention of handing him
over to Clara. For on reflection she knew that
Clara’s offer must have a deeper motive than
mere kindness, and she had a most unreasonable
feeling that it would not be safe. She felt a little
guilty to have seemed to take her companion's
help, while she left her so much at sea as to the
real facts. But, after all, it was Clara who had
forced the issue.
She thought a good deal about Clara while
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A L A D Y U N V E I L E D
she was dressing. A good many times lately she
had looked forward to the fall, the time of her
marriage, when their rather tense relationship
would be ended. This house in the country,
which was to be her last little bachelor fling,
was to be Clara’s last commission for her.
Think how she would, she could but feel as
if she were ungratefully abandoming Clara.
Clara had done so well by her in their three years
together! There surely must be immediately
forthcoming for such a remarkable person an-
other large opportunity, and yet she couldn’t
help recalling their first encounter in the par-
ticularly dull boarding-house where Clara was
temporarily shelved; where, nevertheless, she
had not conceded an inch of her class, nor a
ray of her luster to circumstance. This sur-
prising luster was the gloss of her body, the
quality of her clothes and accessories, the way
she traveled and the way she smiled. It was the
bloom of luxury she kept about her person
through all her varying surroundings. She had
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
never to rise to the level of a new position; she
was there already; and she never came down.
Flora knew it was for just her air of being
ready that she had trusted Clara, and for the
three years of their association she had never
failed to find her companion ready wherever their
common interests were concerned. She had no
reason for not trusting Clara now, except the
knowledge that, by her own approaching mar-
riage, their interests would be separated, and
her feeling that Clara’s prudence must already
be by way of looking out for itself alone.
Yet Clara would do a kindness if it did not
inconvenience her, and surely this morning she
had been kind. Still Flora felt she didn’t want
to reveal anything until she was a little surer of
her own position. When she knew better where
she stood she would know what she could confide
to Clara. Meanwhile, if there was any one to
whom she could turn now it would surely be
Harry.
Yet, if she did, what a lot of awkward ex-
planations! She could not return the sapphire
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A L A D Y U N V E I L E D
without giving a reason, and what a thing to
explain—that she had not only worn it, but, in
a freak, shown it to the one of all people he most
objected to.
Nevertheless the most sensible thing clearly
was to go through with it and confess to Harry.
Then she must communicate with him at once.
No—she would wait until after breakfast. There
was plenty of time. Kerr would not come until
the afternoon. But after breakfast, she won-
dered if it wouldn't be as well to ring him up
at luncheon time? Then she would be sure of
finding him at the club.
Meanwhile she dared not let the sapphire out
of her grasp; and yet she could not wear it on
her hand. She had thought of the tear-shaped
pouch of gold which it was her custom to wear;
but the slender length of chain that linked it to
her neck was too frail for such a precious weight.
At last she had fastened it around her neck on
the strongest chain she owned, and thus she car-
ried it all the morning under her bodice with a
quieter mind than had been hers on the first day
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
she had worn it, when there had been nothing
to explain her uneasiness.
She was quite sure she was going to give back
the sapphire to Harry, yet she couldn’t help
picturing to herself what her meeting with Kerr
would have been, supposing she had decided dif-
ferently. As the morning slipped by she found
herself doubting that he would come at all. Her
attitude of the night before had surely been
enough to discourage any one. Yet if he didn’t
come she knew that she would be disappointed.
She was alone at luncheon, and in a dream.
She glanced now and then at the clock. She rose
only ten minutes before the hour that Harry was
in the habit of leaving the club. She went up-
stairs slowly and stopped in front of the tele-
phone. She touched the receiver, drew her hand
back and turned away. She shut the door of
her own rooms smartly after her.
She did not try to—because she couldn't—
understand her own proceeding. She merely sat,
listening, as it seemed to her, for hours.
But when at last Kerr's card was handed in
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A L A D Y U N V E L L E D
to her, it gave her a shock, as if something
which couldn’t happen, and yet which she had
all along expected, had come to pass.
In her instant of indecision Marrika had got
away from her, but she called the girl back from
the door and told her to say to Mrs. Britton that
Mr. Kerr had called, but that Miss Gilsey would
see him herself.
She started with a rush. Half-way down the
stairs she stopped, horrified to find what her
fingers were doing. They were closed around the
little lump that the ring made in the bosom of
her gown, and she had not known it. What if
she had rushed in to Kerr with this extraordi-
nary manifestation? What if, while she was
talking to him, her hand should continue to creep
up again and yet again to that place, and close
around the jewel, and make it evident, even in
its hiding-place? The time had come when she
must even hide it from herself. And yet, to creep
back up the stair when she made sure Kerr must
have heard her tumultuous downward rush! It
would never do to soundlessly retreat. She must
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
go back boldly, as if she had forgotten nothing
more considerable than a pocket handkerchief.
Yet before she reached the top again she
found herself going tiptoe, as if she were on
an expedition so secret that her own ears should
not hear her footsteps. But she went direct and
unhesitating. It had come to her all in a flash
where she would put the sapphire. The little
buttoned pocket of her bath-robe. There it hung
in the bath-room on one unvarying peg, the most
immovable of all her garments, safe from the
excursions of Marrika’s needle or brushes, not
to be disturbed for hours to come.
She passed through her bedroom, through her
dressing-room into the bath-room. The robe
was hanging behind the door. It took her a mo-
ment to draw out the ring and disentangle its
chain, and while she was doing this she became
aware of movings to and fro in her bedroom.
She drew the door half open, the better to con-
ceal herself behind it, and at the same time,
through the widened crack of the jamb, to keep
an eye on the dressing-room, and hurried lest
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A L A D Y U N V E L L E D
Marrika should surprise her. But nevertheless
she had barely slipped the ring into the little
pocket and refastened the flap, when Clara
opened the bedroom door and stood looking into
the dressing-room.
Flora experienced a sharp start of surprise,
and then of wonder. Here was Clara again seek-
ing her out! Here she stood, brushed and pol-
ished, and finished to a pitch of virtue, again
taking F lora at a disadvantage, hiding behind
her own door. But at the least she was grateful
that Clara had not seen her. She stood a minute
collecting herself. She wasn’t doing anything
she need be ashamed of, or that she need explain,
or that need even awaken suspicion. But before
she could take her courage in both hands and
come out of her retreat, Clara had reached the
middle of the dressing-room, and stood still.
Her lifted veil made a fine mist above the
luster of her eyes. She was perfect to the tips
of her immaculate white gloves, and she wore
the simple, sober look of a person who thinks
himself alone. Then it wasn't Flora, Clara was
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
looking for! She was looking all around—over
the surface of every object in the room. Pres-
ently she went up to the dressing-table. She
laid her gloved hands upon it, and looked at the
small objects strewn over its top. She took a
step backward and opened the top drawer. She
reached into it, and delicately explored.
Flora could see the white gloves going to and
fro among her white handkerchiefs, could see
them find, open and examine the contents of her
jewel-box. And the only thing that kept her
from shrieking out was the feeling that this
abominable thing which was being enacted before
her eyes couldn’t be a fact at all.
Clara took out an old pocket-book, shiny with
years, shook from it a shower of receipts, news-
paper clippings, verses. She let them lie. She
took out a long violet box with a perfumer's seal
upon it. It held a bunch of dried violets. She
took out a bonbonnière of gold filigree. It was
empty. A powder box, a glove box, a froth of
lace, a handful of jewelers’ boxes, a jewel flung
loose into the drawer. This she pounced upon.
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A L A D Y U N V E I L E D
It was a brooch! She let it fall—turned to the
chiffonier; upended the two vases of Venetian
glass, lifted the lids of jars and boxes, finally
came to the drawers. One by one she took them
out, turned the contents of each rapidly over,
and left them standing, gaping white ruffles and
lace upon the floor. She took up daintily, in her
white kid fingers, slippers, shook them upside
down. She opened the door of the closet, and
disappeared within. There was audible the flut-
terings of all the distressed garments, with lit-
tle busy pauses. Then Clara came out, with her
hat a little crooked; and stood in the middle of
the room still with her absorbed and sober face,
looking over the gaping drawers, pulled out and
rifled, with their contents heaped up and stream-
ing over the floor.
Her eye fell upon the waste basket. She
turned it upside down, and stooped over the lit-
ter. She gathered it up in her white gloves and
dropped it back. Then, for the first time, she
glanced at the bath-room door; stood looking
at it, as if it had occurred to her to look in the
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
soap dish. Then she turned again to the room,
to the dressing-table. She put back the paste-
board jewelers’ boxes, the jeweled pin, the laces,
which she shook out and folded daintily, the
glove and powder boxes, the gold bonbonnière,
the long violet box, the leather pocket-book,
each deftly and unhesitatingly in the place from
which she had taken it, and all the heaps of
white handkerchiefs.
One by one she laid back in the chiffonier
drawers, the garments, properly and neatly
folded, that she had so hastily snatched out of
them. The sun, streaming full into the room,
caught gleams in her pale hair, and struck
blindingly upon the heaps of white around her,
and made two dazzling points of her gloved
hands that moved as deftly as hands uncovered.
She slid back the last drawer into the chiffonier,
and rose from her knees, lightly dusting off the
front of her gown; went to the closet door and
closed it. She stood before it a moment with a
face perplexed and thoughtful, then turned
alertly toward the outer door. As she passed the
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A L A D Y U N V E I L E D
mirror she looked into it, and touched her hat
straight again, but the action was subconscious.
Clara wasn’t thinking of it.
Flora stood as if she were afraid to move,
while Clara crossed her bedroom, stopped, went
on and closed the outer door behind her. And
even after that soft little concussion she stood
still, burning, choking, struggling with the over-
whelming force of an affront whose import she
did not yet realize. Out in her sunny dressing-
room all the outraged furniture stood meek and
in order, frauding the eye to believe that nothing
had happened! She felt she couldn’t look things
in the face a moment longer. She hid her face
in the folds of her dressing-gown.
Why, she had thought that such things
couldn’t happen! She had thought that people’s
private belongings, like their persons, were in-
violable. They all always talked, she had talked,
about such things as if they were mere nothings.
They had talked about the very taking of the
Crew Idol as if it were a splendid joke! But
she had not dreamed what such things were like
195


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
when they were near. When they were held up
to you naked they were like this! In the shame
of it she could no more have faced Clara than
if she had surprised Clara naked.
She snatched the ring out of the pocket of her
gown and clutched it in her hand. Was there
no place in the world where she could be sure
of safety for this?
With trembling fingers she fastened it again
to the chain about her neck. She thought of
Kerr down-stairs waiting for her. Well, she
would rather keep it with her. Then, at least,
she would know when it was taken from her.
Still in the fury of her outraged faith, she
passed through her violated rooms, and slowly
along the hall and down the stairs.
196


XI
THE MYSTERY TAKES HUMAN
FORM
*
E turned from the window where he
had presented a long, drooping, pa-
tient back, and his warm, ironic mirth
—the same that had played with her the first
night—flashed out at sight of her. But after
a moment another expression mixed with it,
sharpened it, and fastened upon her with an in-
credulous intentness.
She stood on the threshold, pale, and brilliant
still in her blaze of anger, equal, at last, to any-
thing. Kerr, as he signaled to her with every
lineament of his enlivened face, his interest, his
defiance, his uncontrollability, was not the man
of her imaginary conversations. He was not
here to be used and disposed of; but, as he came
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
toward her, the new admiration in his face was
bringing her reassurance that neither was she.
The thought that her moment of bitter incred-
ulity had made her formidable gave her courage
to fight even him, of whom she was so much in
awe; gave her courage even to smile, though she
grew hot at the first words he spoke.
“You should not be brave and then run away,
you know.”
She thought of her rush up the stairs again.
“I had to go back to see Mrs. Britton.” (Oh,
how she had seen her!)
It seemed to Flora that everything she had
been through in the last few moments was blaz-
oned on her face. But he only looked a little
more gravely at her, though his sardonic eye-
brow twitched.
“Ah, I thought you only ran back to hide in
your doll's house.”
She laughed. Such a picture of her
“Well, at any rate, now I’ve come out, what
have you to say to me?”
“Now you’ve come out,” he repeated, and
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T H E M Y S T E R Y TAKES H U M.A.N FORM
looked at her this time with full gravity, as if
he realized finally how far she’d come.
She had taken the chair in the light of the
eastern windows. She lay back in the cushions,
her head a little bent, her hands interlaced with
a perfect imitation of quietude. The dull satin
of her slender foot was the only motion about
her, but the long, slow rise and fall of her
breath was just too deep-drawn for repose.
He looked down upon her from his height.
“I’m sorry I frightened you last night,” he
said, “but I’m not sorry I came, since you’ve
seen me. You needn’t have, you know, if you
didn’t want to. You could have stayed in the
doll’s house; and there, I suppose, you think I
should never have found you—or it again?”
He was silent a moment, leaning on the chair
opposite, watching her with knitted forehead,
while her apprehension fluttered for what he
should do next. He had done away with all the
amenities of meeting and attacked his point with
a directness that took her breath.
“You know what I’ve come for,” he said, “but
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
now I’m here, now that I see you, I wonder if
there's something I haven’t reckoned on.” He
looked at her earnestly. “If you think I’ve
taken advantage of you—if you say so—I’ll go
away, and give you a chance to think it over.”
It would have been so easy to have nodded
him out, but instead she half put out her hand to-
ward him. “No; stay.”
He gave her a quick look—surprise and ap-
probation at her courage. He dropped into a
chair. “Then tell me about it.”
Flora’s heart went quick and little. She held
herself very still, afraid in her intense con-
sciousness lest her slightest movement might be-
tray her. She only moved her eyes to look up at
him questioningly, suspending acknowledgment
of what he meant until he should further com-
mit himself.
“I mean the sapphire,” he said. He waited.
“Yes,” she answered coolly. “I saw that it
interested you last night, but I couldn’t think
especially why. It’s a beautiful stone.”
He laughed without a sound—shook noise-
200


T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
“That's rather neat, the way you dodge me,”
he said, dodging in his turn. “But I don’t see it
now. You’re not wearing it?”
She played indifference with what a beating
heart! “Oh, I only wear it off and on.”
“Off and on " His voice suddenly rang at
her. “Off and on Why, my good woman, it's
just two days you could have worn it at all!”
She stood up—stood facing him. For a mo-
ment she knew nothing except that her horrible
idea was a fact. She had the eye of the Crew
Idol, and this man knew it! Yet the fact de-
clared gave her courage. She could face his
accusal if only he could give the reason for it.
But after a moment, while they looked silently
at each other, she saw he was not accusing her.
He was threatening her and beseeching her in-
dulgence in the same look. He opened his lips,
hesitated, turned sharp about and walked away
from her.
She watched him with increasing doubt. After
saying so much, was he going to say nothing
more? She had a feeling that she had not heard
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
mere presence of his body beside her. In a con-
fusion she heard what he was saying.
He was speaking, almost coaxingly, as if to
a child. “I understand,” he was saying. “I
know all about it. It’s a mistake. But surely
you don’t expect to keep it now. It will only be
an annoyance to you.”
She turned on him. “What could it be to
you?”
Kerr, planted before her, with his head
dropped, looked, looked, looked, as if he gave
silence leave to answer for him what it would.
It answered with a hundred echoes ringing up
to her from long corridors of conjecture, half-
articulated words breathing of how extraordi-
nary the answer must be that he did not dare to
make. He looked her up and down carefully,
impersonally, with that air he had of regarding
a rare specimen, thoughtfully; as if he weighed
such ephemeral substance as chance.
“What will you take for it?” he said at last.
She was silent. With a sick distrust it came
204


T H E M YSTERY TAKES H U M A N FORM
to her that it was the very worst thing he
could have said after that speaking silence.
She stepped away from him. “This thing
is not for sale.” -
He stared at her with amazement; then threw
back his head and laughed as if something had
amused him above all tragedy.
“You are an extraordinary creature,” he said,
“but really I must have it. I can’t explain the
why of it; only give the sapphire to me, and
you’ll never be sorry for having done that for
me. Whatever happens, you may be sure I won’t
talk. Even if the thing comes out, you shan’t
be mixed up in it.” He had come near her again,
and the point of his long forefinger rested on her
arm. She was motionless, overwhelmed with
pure terror, with despair. He was smiling, but
there was a desperate something about him,
stronger than the common desire of possession,
terrifying in its intensity. She looked behind
her. The thick glass of the window was there, a
glimpse of the empty street and the figure of a
205


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
woman in a blowing green veil turning the cor-
ner.
“Why not give it to me now,” he urged,
“since, of course, you can’t keep it? I could
have it now in spite of you.”
Everything in her sprang up in antagonism
to meet him. “I know what you are,” she cried,
“but you shan’t have it. You have no more
right to it than I. You can’t get it away from
me, and I shan’t give it to you.”
He had grown suddenly paler; his eyes were
dancing, fastened upon her breast. His long
hands closed and opened. She looked down, ar-
rested at the sight of her hand clenched just
where her breath was shortest, over the sap-
phire's hiding-place.
He smiled. How easily she had betrayed
herself! But she abated not a jot of her de-
fiance, challenging him, now he knew its hiding-
place, to take the sapphire if he could. But he
did not move. And it came to her then that she
had been ridiculous to think for an instant that
this man would take anything from her by
206


T H E CO. A S T OF C H A N C E
where she had held it clenched upon her breast
and stretched it out to Mrs. Herrick.
The lady had stood in the doorway a mo-
ment—a long-featured, whitish, modeled face,
draped in a dull green veil, a tall figure whose
flowing skirts of black melted away into the
background of the hall—before she came for-
ward and met her hostess’ hand with a clasp
firm and ready.
“I’m so glad to find you here,” she said. She
looked directly into Flora's eyes, into the very
center of her agitation. She held her tremulous
hand as if neither of these manifestations sur-
prised her; as if a young woman and a young
man in colloquy might often be found in such
a state of mind.
Flora’s first emotion was a guilty relief that,
after all, her face had not betrayed Kerr. But
she had no sooner murmured his name to Mrs.
Herrick, no sooner had that lady's gray eyes
lighted upon him, than they altered their clear
confidence. The situation as reflected in Flora
looked naïve enough, but there was nothing
208


T H E M YSTERY TAKES H U M A N FORM
naïve about Kerr. The very perfection of his
coolness, there in the face of her burning agita-
tion, was appalling. Oh, why couldn’t he see,
Flora thought wildly, how it was damning him
—how it was showing him so practised, so mar-
velously equal to any emergency, that his pres-
ence here among fleeces could be nothing less
than wolfish?
Mrs. Herrick’s face was taking on an ex-
pression no less than wary. What he was, Mrs.
Herrick could not dream. She could not even
suspect what Flora believed. But in the light
of her terrible discovery Flora dared not have
him suspected at all. The chasms of distrust
and suspicion that had been opening between
them she forgot. In a flash she was ready to
throw herself in front of this man, to cover
him from suspicion, even though by so doing
she took it upon herself.
Now, if she had ever in her life, she talked
over the top of her feelings; and though at
first to her ears her voice rang out horribly
alone, presently Mrs. Herrick was helping her,
209


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
adding words to words. It was the house they
spoke of, the San Mateo house, the subject
about which Flora knew Mrs. Herrick had come
to talk; but to Flora it was no longer a sub-
ject. It was a barrier, a shield. In this emer-
gency it was the only subject large enough to
fill the gap, and much as Flora had liked the
idea of it, she had never built the house so
large, so vivid, so wonderfully towering to
please her fancy as she was doing now to cover
Kerr. With questions she led Mrs. Herrick on
to spin out the subject, to play it over with
lights and shades, to beat all around it. And
all the while she knew that Kerr was watching
her; watching her once again in dubious ad-
miration. It was a look that made Mrs. Herrick
seem ready at a movement of his to lay her
hand on Flora in protection.
The lady’s clear gray eyes traveled between
Flora's face and his. Under their steady light
there was a strange alertness, as if she sat there
ready enough to avert whatever threatened, but
anxious to draw her skirts aside from it, dis-
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
after all. Wasn’t Clara the safest of the lot?
Clara at least kept her gloves on, while she her-
self was shamelessly arrayed on the side of disor-
der. She was clinging to a piece of property
that wasn’t hers, and whatever way she dressed
her motives they looked too much of a piece with
the operations of the original miscreant.
Flora saw the evil spirit of tragic-comedy.
He fairly grinned at her.
212


XII
DISEN CHANTMENT
HEN this was the end of all romance?
T She must turn her back on the
charm, the power, the spell that had
been wrought around her, and, horror-struck,
pry into her own mind to discover what lawless
thing could be in her to have drawn her to
such a person, and to keep her, even now that
she knew the worst, unwilling to relinquish the
thought of him. His depravity loomed to her
enormous; but was that all there was to be
said of him? Did his delicacy, his insight, his
tempered fineness, count for nothing beside it?
Must their talks, their walking through the
trees, the very memory of his voice, be lost in-
spiration?
She couldn’t believe that this one spot could
213


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
make him rotten throughout. Her mind ran
back into the past. She could not recall a word,
an action, or a glance of his that had shown
the color of decay. He had not even been in-
sincere with her. He had come out with his
convictions so flatly that when she thought of
it his nonchalance appalled her. He had been
the same then that he was now. But the thing
that was natural for him was impossible for
her, and she had found it out—that was all.
Yet the mere consideration of him and his
obsession as one thing was intolerable. She
curiously separated his act from himself.
She thought of it, not as a part of him, but
as something that had invaded him—a disease
—something inimical to himself and others,
that mixed the thought of him with terrors, and
filled her way with difficulties. Now it was no
longer a question of how to meet him, but of
how she was not to. It was not his strength
she feared, but her own weakness where he was
concerned. Her tendency to shield him—she
must guard against that—and that disturbing
214


D IS E N C H A N T M E N T
influence he exercised over her, too evidently
without intention. But he would be hard to
avoid. This way and that she looked for a
way out of her danger, yet all the while she
was conscious that there was but one plain way
of escape open to her. She could give the sap-
phire back to Harry within the twenty-four
hours.
215


XIII
THRUST AND PARRY
MY DEAR FLORA–I am going out early and shall not
be back to dinner. CLARA.
LORA let the little note fall as if she
F disliked the touch of it. She was re-
lieved to think she would not have to
see Clara that day. It was her desire never to
see Clara again. If only they could part here
and now! How she wanted to shake the whole
thing off her shoulders! How foolish not to
have gone to Harry when she had first made
up her mind to For why, after all, make
him any explanations? Suppose she should
just take the ring to him and say: “It gives
me the shivers, Harry. Let’s take it back and
get something else.” If he didn’t suspect the
sapphire already, he would never suspect it
216


T H R U S T A N D P A R R Y
from that. The worst he could do would be
to laugh, to tease, to tell her she could not live
up to her own romantic notions, since, after all,
she had weakened and was wanting the usual
thing.
But there had been times when she had
thought that he did suspect the sapphire. Well,
if he did, giving it back to him would practi-
cally be giving it back into public custody in
the most decorous manner for a properly bred
young woman. And how beautifully it would
extricate her from her wretched situation!
Logically, there was no fault to be found with
such a course. It was eminently sane and safe.
Yet it still appeared to her as if she were acting
a coward’s part. She was neither frankly giv-
ing the jewel to the authorities with the proper
information, nor frankly handing it over to
Kerr. But she was trying to slip it back into
the questionable nook from which it had been
taken, and she grew hot at the thought of how
Kerr would despise her if he knew the craven
course she was meditating. She seemed to hear
217


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
him saying, “I had thought braver things of
you.”
Of course, that was his way of expecting that
she would give him the ring. And she felt a
sort of rage against him that he should want
that, and only that, so very much. Yet she
didn’t know what else she wanted him to want.
Every time she thought of Kerr she found her-
self growing unreasonable; and she had to whip
up her resolution with the hard facts of the case
to prevent herself from drifting over on to his
side completely.
But did she really want Harry to rid her of
the ring? She would get hold of him first and
then she would see what she would do.
She stepped into the hall with all the confi-
dence of one who has fully made up her mind
to carry matters with a high hand; but at the
telephone she hesitated. Calling him up at
such an hour of the morning demanding his
attendance on such a fanciful errand—wouldn’t
he think it odd? No, he would think it the most
natural thing in the world for her to be so
218


T H R U S T A N D P A R R Y
flighty. Reassured, she gave the club number
and stood waiting, listening to the half-syllables
of switched-off voices and the crossing click,
click, that was bringing her fate nearer to her.
She heard some one coming up the stairs and
down the hall toward her. Marrika stood stolid
at her elbow.
“Mr. Cressy,” she pronounced.
“Yes, yes,” said Flora, with the club clam-
oring in her left ear.
“He is down-stairs,” said Marrika. *
Flora nearly let the receiver fall. Harry
here? What a piece of luck! But here on his
own account, at such an hour—how extraor-
dinary 1
“Hello, hello,” persisted the club. “What's
wanted?”
“Why, I–” Flora stammered. “It’s a mis-
take; never mind. I don’t want him now.”
She hoped that Harry had not heard her as he
came in, since it was his informal fashion to
await her in the large entrance hall. She didn’t
want to spoil the chance he had given her of
219


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
seeming offhand about the ring. But the hall
was empty, and as she descended the stairs she
amused herself with the fancy that Shima had
had a vision, and that she would still have to
ring up the club and explain to the attendant
that, after all, she wanted Mr. Cressy.
Then from the drawing-room threshold she
caught sight of Harry standing in the big bay
window of the drawing-room, in the same spot
where Kerr had awaited her the afternoon be-
fore. Harry was tall and large and freshly
colored, and yet he did not fill the room to her
as the other man had done. He met her, kissed
her, and she turned her head so that his lips
met her cheek close beside her ear. She did not
positively object to his kissing her on the lips,
but her instinct was strong to offer him her
cheek. He had sometimes laughed at this, but
now he resented it. He insisted on his privilege,
and she was passive to him, conscious of less
love in this than assertion of possession.
“You are not going to Burlingame, are you?”
she asked him with her first breath.
220


T H R U S T A N D P A R R Y
He looked down at her with a flushed and
sulky air. “What difference would that make
to you? I am, as it happens, but I suppose
you think that’s no reason for disturbing you
so early.” He was angry, but at what, she
wondered, with creeping uneasiness. He held
her and caressed her with a morose satisfaction,
as if he had to make sure to himself that she was
really his, and she permitted it and abetted it
with a guile that astonished her.
“What is the matter?” she urged. “Are
things going crookedly at Burlingame?”
“Things are going as crooked as you please,
but not at Burlingame. Sit over there,” he said,
nodding toward the window-bench; “I want to
talk to you.”
Harry had the air of one about to scold, and
certainly Flora thought if anybody was carry-
ing matters with a high hand, it wasn’t herself;
but she didn’t follow his direction. She con-
tinued to stand, while he, sitting on the table's
edge, drumming the top of his hat, gloomily
regarded her.
221


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“Well?” she persisted, troubled by this look
of his, and this silence.
“Look here,” he began, “I have to be away
a couple of days and I wish you’d do me a
favor.”
Flora's thought flew to the ring. Was he
going to ask for it back, to have it reset, as he
had promised on the threshold of the goldsmith's
shop? Here might be the chance she had hoped
for of getting rid of it. She grasped at it
before she had time to waver.
“I wonder if it's the very favor I was going
to ask of you.”
But he didn’t take it up. He seemed hardly
to hear her, as if his mind was too much ab-
sorbed with quite another question—a question
that the next moment came out flat. “What was
that Kerr doing here yesterday?”
She was taken aback, so far had her appre-
hension of Harry's jealousy slipped into the
background in the last twenty-four hours. But
her consciousness that Harry was not behaving
222


T H R U S T A N D P A R R Y
well, even for a jealous man, made her take it
up all the more lightly.
“Why, he was calling, chatting, taking tea
—what anybody else would do from four to
six. What in the world gave you the idea that
he was doing anything extraordinary?”
“Well,” he said, “you shouldn't do the sort
of thing that makes you talked about.”
“‘That makes me talked about’?” It made
her pause in front of him.
“Why, yes, it isn't like you. It's never hap-
pened before. Look here. I drop into the Bullers’
yesterday; find Clara sidled up to the judge;
look around for you. “Hello,” I say, “where’s
Flora?’ ‘Oh,' says she, “Flora's at home amusing
Mr. Kerr.” “Amusing Mr. Kerrſ’’’ he repeated.
“That's a nice thing to hear.”
Flora went red. She walked down the room
from him to give her suddenly tumultuous
heart time. However little he might guess
the real trend of her interview with Kerr, she
couldn’t hear him come near it without appre-
223


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
hension. She was angry, helplessly angry at
Harry that he had taken this moment for his
stupid jealousy. But she was more angry at
Clara, since such a speech on Clara’s part
wasn’t carelessness. She had meant it to work
upon him, and here he stood, like the fine ani-
mal that he was, smoldering with the suspicion
of encroachment on his prey.
She tried to laugh him out of it.
“Why, Harry, I never saw you jealous be:
fore P’
“It’s all very well to say that—and you know
I’ve never made a row about the other John-
nies. I knew you didn’t care for any of them.”
Her eyes narrowed and darkened.
“And you take it for granted I care for Mr.
Kerr P.”
“Oh, no, no!” He pushed his hand through
his hair with an irascible gesture. “But it’s
plain enough you like him—you women always
like a fellow that flourishes—but that’s not the
sort of man I care to see hanging around my
girl.”
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T H R U S T A N D P A R R Y
Flora stood leaning on the table, breathing
a little hurriedly, feeling rather as if she had
been shaken. Harry, standing with his hands
in his pockets, looked not unlike the threatening
image he had appeared in the back of the gold-
smith's shop.
“Of course, the fellow can talk,” he admitted,
“and he has a manner. But Lord knows where
he comes from or who he is. Why, even the
Bullers don’t know.”
Flora turned sharply on him. “Who told you
that?”
“The judge. He picked him up at the club.”
“Well,” she kept it up, “some one had to
introduce him there.”
Harry smiled. “You wouldn’t care to bow to
some of those club members.”
“Harry, do you know how you sound to me?”
She was trembling at the daring of what she
was going to say. “You talk as if you knew
something against him.”
Her statement seemed to bring him up short.
“No, no, I don’t,” he said hastily.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
She made a little gesture of despair. How
was she to count on Harry if he was going to
behave like this? How trust him when he was
shuffling so?
She made one more bold stroke to make him
speak out.
“Harry, you do know something about him!
I know you have seen him before.”
“Why, yes, I’ve seen him before. But that's
got nothing to do with it.”
He looked surprised that she should seem to
accuse him of it, and she wondered if he could
have forgotten how he had denied it before.
“And that isn't why you distrust him?”
The devil’s tattoo that he beat on his hat
stopped.
“I don’t distrust him.”
“Well, dislike him, then. When was it that
you saw him before?”
“Isn’t it enough for me to tell you that I
don’t want you to see him?”
“Oh!” She turned away from him. Every
nerve in her was in revolt. Then he really
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T H R U S T A N D P A R R Y
wasn’t going to tell her anything. He was
keeping her out of it as if she were a child.
She had relied on him to return the ring. She
had counted upon his indifference and good na-
ture. And he was neither indifferent nor good-
natured. All desire of even mentioning the ring
to him left her; and as to giving him her con-
fidence— These hints that he had thrown out
about Kerr–they might be mere jealousy—but
he might have actual knowledge, knowledge
that, with her own fitted to it, would make for
him a complete figure. She caught her breath
at the thought of how near she had come to
actually betraying Kerr. Until that moment
she had not realized that through all her waver-
ings her one fixed intention had been not to be-
tray him.
Harry had risen and was buttoning his over-
coat. “You know you’re never at home if you
don’t want to be,” he said.
She stood misleadingly drooping before him.
But though her appearance was passive enough
for the most exacting lover her will had never
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
been in more vigorous revolt. She knew Harry
was taking her weariness for acquiescence, and
she let him take it so. She even followed him
into the hall, and with a vague idea of further
propitiation, nodded away Shima and opened
the door for him herself.
The fog was a chasm of white outside.
Harry turned on the brink of it. “By the way,
where’s Clara?”
“Why, do you want to see her? She’ll be
out all day. She's dining with the Willie Her-
ricks.”
“No, I don’t want to see her, but, by the way,
she's not dining with the Willie Herricks; she’s
dining with the Bullers. I heard her make the
engagement yesterday.”
“Oh, no, Harry, I’m sure you’re mistaken.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. All I want to know
is, why did you show that ring to Clara before
it was set?” -
She was genuinely aghast. “I didn’t,” she
flashed. “What made you think I had?”
He shrugged. “Well, she asked me where
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T H R U S T A N D P A R R Y
we got it. I don’t see why women always talk
those things over.” He was looking at her in-
quiringly.
“Well, I haven’t,” she said quickly. “Have
you?”
He looked out upon the fog. “Told her
where we got it, do you mean? No, I just
chaffed her. I’d look out, if I were you. She
strikes me as damned curious.” He stood a
moment on the threshold, looking from Flora to
the chasm of fog outside, as if he were choosing
between two chances. “I think I’ll take that
ring this morning,” he said slowly.
The deliberate words came to her with a
shock. But in the moment, while she looked into
Harry’s moody face, she realized how impos-
sible to make a scene over what must still be
maintained as a trivial matter betwixt them—
the mere resetting of a jewel; what should she
do to put him off? She looked up at him, and
saw with relief that his face was turned from
her to the fog, as if he had forgotten her. Then,
still with averted head, as if he addressed the
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
whiteness, or himself, “No,” he determined, “I
won’t. I’ll take it when I come back.” He
pulled himself together with an effort, with a
smile. “That is,” he turned to her, “if you’re
in no great hurry about the setting? Wery
well, then. In a day or two.”
He plunged away into the fog. A few rods
from the door he disappeared, but she could still
hear his footsteps growing thinner, lighter,
passing away in the whiteness.
230


XIV
COMED Y CON V E Y S A WARNING
HE stood where he had left her in the
S 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 an-
other engagement.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
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 turn-
ing 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 de-
clared 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
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C O M E D Y CON V E Y S A. W. A R N IN G
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. Wague 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 she had gone to get it, before
anything had happened and the lure of life had
been so exquisite. Now that it had come near—
if this indeed were life that she was laboring in
—it was steep and crabbed, like the brown hills
in summer, far off, like velvet, to climb, plowed
ground and stubble.
And yet she didn’t wish herself back, but
only forward. Now she had no leisure to
imagine, to pretend, to enjoy, only the breath-
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
less sense that she must get forward. The chat-
tering clock on her mantel warned her of the
passing time and set her hurrying into her walk-
ing-gown, her hat, her gloves, as if the object
of her errand would only wait for her a moment
longer. When, for the second time, she opened
the house door, she didn’t hesitate. She descend-
ed into the white fog that covered all the city.
Above her the stone façade of her house
loomed huge and pinkish in the mist. Her spirits
rose with the feeling that she was going adven-
turing again, leaving that house where for the
last two days she had awaited events with such
vivid apprehensions. She hurried fast down
the damp, glistening pavement, seeing long,
dim gray faces of houses glimmer by, seeing
figures come toward her through the fog, grow
vivid, pass, and hearing at intervals the hoarse,
lonely voice of the fog-horn at “The Heads”
reaching her over many intervening hills. She
did not feel sure what she should do at the end
of her journey or what awaited her there. She
knew herself a most unpractised hunter, she,
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C O M E D Y CON V E Y S A. W. A R N IN G
who, all her life, had been the most artful of
quarries. A quarry she was still, but in this
chase she had to come out and stalk the facts
in order to see which way to run; if, she told
herself in her exhilaration, she decided to run
at all.
She turned in at the low gate of imitation
grill in front of an enormous wooden mansion,
with towers and cupolas painted all a chill slate
gray, with fuchsias, purple and red, clambering
up the front. She rang, and was admitted into
a hall, ornate and very high, with a wide stair-
case sweeping down into the middle of it.
The maid looked dubiously at Flora and
thought Miss Buller was not at home, but
would see. Flora turned into the room on her
left and sat down among the Louis Quinze
sofas and potted palms with a feeling that Miss
Buller was at home, and, for one reason or an-
other, preferred not to be seen. She waited ap-
prehensively, wondering whether Ella was not
seeing the world-in-general, or had really
specified against herself. Could it be that Ella
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
was one of those women whom Harry had al-
luded to as running after Kerr? In the short
twenty-four hours every individual help she had
counted upon had seemed to draw away from
her—Kerr, whose understanding she had been so
sure of; Clara, whose propriety had never failed;
Harry, whose comfortable good nature she had
so taken for granted! It seemed as if the sap-
phire, whose presence she was never unconscious
of, for all she wore it out of sight, had a power
like the evil eye over these people. But if it could
turn such as Ella against her, why, the Brussels
carpet beneath her might well open and let her
down to deeper abysses than Judge Buller's wine-
cellar.
She started nervously at the step of the maid
returning. The message brought was unex-
pected. “Miss Buller says will you please walk
up-stairs?”
Flora was amazed. That invitation would
have been odd enough at any time, for she and
Ella were hardly on such intimate footing. But
now she was ushered up the majestic stair, and
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C O M E D Y CON V E Y S A. W. A R N IN G
from the majestic upper hall abruptly into a
wild little cluttered sewing-room, and thence into
a wilder but more spacious bedroom, large cur-
tains at the windows, large roses on the carpet,
and over all objects in the room a clutter of mis-
cellaneous articles, as if Ella's band-boxes,
bureaus, and work-baskets habitually refused to
contain themselves.
From the midst of this Ella confronted her,
still in her “wrapper” and with the large puff of
her hair a little awry. Under it her face was
curiously pink, a color deepening to the tip of
her nose and puffing out under her eyes.
“Well, Flora,” she greeted her guest. “You
were just the person I wanted to see. Sit down.
No, not there—that's my bird of paradise
feather! Oh, no, not there—that's the break-
fast. Well, I guess you’ll have to sit on the
bed.”
Flora swept aside the clothes that streamed
across it and throned herself on the edge of the
high, white plateau of Ella’s four-poster. Ella,
for all her eager greeting, looked upon her
237


T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
friend doubtfully, and Flora recognized in her-
self a similar hesitation, as if each were trying
to make out, without asking, what thoughts
the other harbored.
“I was afraid I shouldn’t see you at all,”
Flora began at last.
“Well, you wouldn't if it hadn't happened to
be you,” said Ella paradoxically. “Look at
me; did you ever see such a sight?”
“You don't look very well,” Flora cautiously
admitted. “Why, Ella, you’ve been crying!”
“Yes, I’ve been crying,” said Ella, mopping
her nose, which still showed a tendency to distil
a tear at its tip. “And it’s perfectly awful to
me to think you’ve been living so long in the
same house with her.”
Flora murmured breathlessly, “What in the
world do you mean?”
“If you don’t know, I certainly ought to tell
you. I mean Clara,” said Ella distinctly.
Flora, sitting up on the edge of the high
bed with the tips of her little shoes hardly
touching the floor, looked at Ella fascinated,
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C O M E D Y CON V E Y S A. W. A R N IN G
her lips a little apart. Ella had so exactly pro-
nounced her own secret thought of Clara. She
was breathless to know what had been Clara’s
performance at the Bullers’.
“Of course I’ve always known she was like
that,” said Ella, leaning back in her chair with
an air of resignation. “She’s always getting
something. It’s awful. It was the same even
when we were at boarding-school. I suppose
she never did have enough money, though her
people were awfully nice; but she worked us all
for invitations and rides in our carriages, and
I remember she got lots through Lillie Lewis’
elder brother, and he thought she was going to
marry him, but she didn’t. She married Lulu
Britton’s father; and I guess she worked him
until he went under and they found there really
was no money. So she’s been living on people
ever since.” Ella rocked gloomily.
“But she does it so nicely,” Flora suggested.
She still had the feeling that it was not decent
to own up to these most secret facts of people's
failings.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“Oh, yes, she’s a perfect wonder,” Ella ad-
mitted grudgingly; “look at what she’s done
for you!” Ella's gesticulation was eloquent
of how much that had been. “But don’t you
imagine she cares about you any more than she
cares about me!” Ella began to cry again.
“You were an awfully good thing for her,
Flora, and now that you’re going to be married
she’s got to have something else. But I do
think she might have taken somebody besides
papa.”
Flora gasped. “‘Taken!" Ella, what do you
mean?”
“I mean married,” said Ella.
“‘Married!’” For the time Flora had be-
come a helpless echo.
“Oh, not yet,” Ella defiantly nodded. “Not
while there's anything left of me.”
Flora stammered. “Oh, Ella, no. Oh, Ella,
are you sure?” She felt a hysterical impulse
to giggle.
“Sure?” Miss Buller cried. “I should think
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C O M E D Y CO N V E Y S A. W. A R N IN G
so! Why, she’s simply making a dead set for
him.”
This dénouement, this climax to her somber
expectations, struck Flora as something wildly
and indecently ridiculous. “Why, but it’s im-
possible!” she protested, and began helplessly to
laugh.
“Well, I’d like to know why?” Ella snapped.
“I’m sure papa is twice as rich as old Britton
was, and twice as easy.” She went off into sobs
behind her handkerchief.
“Oh, don’t, Ella, don’t cry!” Flora begged,
petting the large expanse of heaving shoulders.
“I didn’t mean anything. I was just silly. Of
course it may be that she wants to marry him.
But she never has before—at least, I mean, I
don’t believe she wants to now. What makes
you think she does? What has she done?”
“Well,” Ella burst out, “why is she coming
here all the time, when she never used to, and
petting papa? Why does she bother to be so
agreeable to me when she never was before?
241


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
Why does she make me ask her to dinner, when
I don’t want to?”
Each question knocked on Flora's brain to
the accompaniment of Ella's furious rocking.
She could not answer them, and Ella's explana-
tion, absurd as it seemed, coming on top of her
high expectations, wasn’t impossible. It was
like Clara to have more than one iron in the
fire; but when Flora remembered the passionate
intentness with which Clara had demolished the
order of her room, she couldn’t believe that
Clara would pause in the midst of such pur-
suit to pounce on Judge Buller.
“Oh, Ella,” Flora sympathetically urged, “I
don’t believe there’s really any danger. And sure-
ly, even if she meant it, Judge Buller wouldn’t
be—”
“Oh, yes, he would,” Ella cut her short.
“Why, when she came yesterday he was just
going out, and she went for him and made him
stop to tea. Think of it—papa stopping to tea!
And he was as pleased as Punch to have her
make up to him. He hasn’t the least idea of
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C O M E D Y CON V E Y S A. W. A R N IN G
what she’s after. Papa isn’t used to ladies.
He's always just lived with me.”
This astonishing statement looking at Flora
through Ella's unsuspecting eyes had neverthe-
less a pathos of its own. It conjured up a long
vista of harmonious existence which the two, the
daughter and the father, had made out of their
mutual simplicity, and their mutual gusto for
the material comforts which came comfortably.
“But I’ll tell you one thing,” Ella ended, still
rocking vigorously; “if she comes here to-night
to dinner when she knows I don’t want her I
shall tell her what I think of her, before she
leaves this house! See if I don't.”
“Don’t do that, Ella,” Flora entreated,
“that would be awful.” She was certain that
such an interview would only end in Clara’s
making Ella more ridiculous than she was al-
ready. “Let me speak to her. I don’t mind at
all,” she declared bravely, and in a manner truly,
though she was fully aware that speaking to
Clara would be anything but a treat.
“Oh, would you?” said Ella eagerly. “I
243


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
really would be awfully obliged. I hated to
ask you, Flora, but I thought perhaps you
might be able to-to, well, perhaps be able to
do something,” she ended vaguely. “Do you
think you could?”
“I’ll speak to Clara to-night,” said Flora
heroically, “or to-morrow,” she added; “I’m
afraid I won’t see her to-night.”
“Well, I’ll let you know if it makes any dif-
ference,” said Ella hopefully.
Flora knew that nothing either of them could
say would make any difference to Clara, or turn
her from the thing she was pursuing; but by
speaking she might at least find out if Judge
Buller himself were really her object. And
Ella’s wail of assured calamity, “Papa has al-
ways been so happy with me,” touched her with
its absurd pathos.
She kissed Ella’s misty cheek at parting. It
wasn’t fair, she thought remorsefully, for peo-
ple like the Bullers to be at large on the same
planet with people like Clara—and herself—
and—and like— Her thoughts ran off into the
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C O M E D Y CO N W E Y S A. W. A R N IN G
fog. At least, thank heaven, it was the judge
Clara was trailing and not Kerr.
The bells and whistles of one o’clock were
making clangor as she ran up the steps of her
house again. In the hall Shima presented her
with a card. She looked at it with a quickening
pulse. “Is he waiting?”
“No, madam. Mr. Kerr has gone. He waited
half an hour.”
Down went her spirits again. Yet surely
after their last interview she ought not to be
eager to meet him again. “In the morning,”
she thought, “and waited half an hour. How
he must have wanted to see me!” She didn’t
know whether she liked that or not. “When
did he come?”
“At eleven o’clock.”
At this she was frightened; he had missed
Harry by less than half an hour.
“He waited all that time alone?”
“No. Mr. Cressy came.”
Flora felt a cold thrill in her nerves. Then
Harry had come back! What had he come for?
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“He also would wait,” the Japanese ex-
plained.
Flora gasped. “They waited together!”
The Japanese shook his head. “They went
away together.”
She didn’t believe her ears. “Mr. Kerr went
away with Mr. Cressy;”
The Japanese seemed to revolve the problem
of mastery. “No, Mr. Cressy accompanied Mr.
Kerr.” He had made a delicate oriental dis-
tinction. It put the whole thing before her in
a moment. Harry had been the resistant, and
the other with his brilliant initiative attacking,
always attacking when he should have been hid-
ing, had carried him off. “What had he done,
and how had he managed, when Harry must
have had such pressing reasons for wanting to
stay?” Ah, she knew only too well Kerr's ex-
quisite knowledge of managing; but why must
he make such a reckless exposure of himself?
Did he suppose Harry was to be managed?
Had he no idea where Harry stood in this af-
fair? In pity’s name, didn’t he know that
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C O M E D Y CON V E Y S A. W. A R N IN G
Harry had seen him before—had seen him un-
der circumstances of which Harry wouldn’t
talk? They were circumstances of which she
knew nothing, and yet from that very fact there
was left a horrible impression in her mind that
they had been of a questionable character.
247


XV
A LADY IN DISTRESS
HE had returned, ready for pitched bat-
tle with Clara, and on the threshold
there had met her the very turn in the
affair that she had dreaded all along—the set-
ting of Kerr and Harry upon each other.
These were two whom she had kept apart even
in her mind—the man to whom she was pledged,
with whom she had supposed herself in love,
and the man for whom she was flying in the
face of all her traditions. She had not scru-
tinized the reason of her extraordinary behavior;
not since that dreadful day when the vanishing
mystery had taken positive form in him had she
dared to think how she felt about Kerr. She
had only acted, acted; only asked herself what
to do next, and never why; only taken his cause
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A L A D Y IN DIS T R E S S
upon herself and made it her own, as if that was
her natural right. She could hardly believe that
it was she who had let herself go to this extent.
All her life she had been docile to public opinion,
buxom to conventions, respectful of those legal
and moral rules laid down by some rigid material
spirit lurking in mankind. But now when the
moment had come, when the responsibility had
descended upon her, she found that these things
had in no way persuaded her. They were not
vital enough for her proposition. They had no
meaning now—no more than proper parlor fur-
niture for a castaway on a desert island.
Then this was herself, a creature too much
concerned with the primal harmonies of life to
be impressed by the modulations her decade set
upon them. This was that self which she had
obscurely cherished as no more real than a
fairy; but at Kerr's acclamation it had pro-
claimed itself more real than flesh and blood,
and Kerr himself the most real thing in all her
life.
Then what was Harry? The bland implacable
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
pronouncement of Shima had summoned him
up to stand beside Kerr more clearly than her
own eyes could have shown him. Surely she was
giving to Kerr what belonged to Harry, or
else she had already given to Harry what
ought to have been Kerr's. That was her last
conclusion. It was horrible, it was hopeless, but
it was not untrue. It had crept upon her so
softly that it had taken her unawares. She
was appalled at the unreason of passion. Un-
sought by him, unclaimed, in every common
sense a stranger to him—how could she belong
to him? And yet of that she was sure by the
way he had unveiled her the first night, by the
way he had quickened her dreaming into life.
As many times as she had fancied what love
was like she had never dreamed it could be like
this. It was mockery that she could be con-
cerned for one who only wanted of her—plun-
der. Yet it was so. She was as tremblingly
concerned for his fate as if she owned his whole
devotion; and his fate at this moment, she was
convinced, was in Harry’s hands.
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A L A D Y IN D IS T R E S S
Kerr, with his brilliant initiative, might carry
him off, but Kerr was still the quarry. For had
not Harry, from the very beginning, known
something about him? Hadn't he at first denied
having seen him before, and then admitted it?
Hadn’t he dropped hints and innuendoes without
ever an explanation? She remembered the sin-
gular fact of the Embassy ball, twice mentioned,
each time with that singular name of Farrell
Wand. And to know—if that was what Harry
knew—that a man of such fame was in a com-
munity where a ring of such fame had disap-
peared—what further proof was wanted?
Then why didn't Harry speak? And what
was going on on his side of the affair? Harry’s
side would have been her side a few days be-
fore. Now, unaccountably, it was not. Nor
was Kerr's side hers either. She was standing
between the two—standing hesitating between
her love of one and her loyalty to the other and
what he represented. The power might be hers
to tip the scales Harry held, either to Kerr's
undoing, or to his protection. At least she
251


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
thought she might protect him, if she could
discover Harry's secret. Her special, author-
ized relation to him—her right to see him often,
question him freely—even cajole—should make
that easy. But she shrank from what seemed
like betrayal, even though she did not betray him
to Kerr by name.
Then, on the other hand, she doubted how
much she could do with Harry. She wasn’t
sure how far she was prepared to try him after
that scene of theirs. She had no desire to pique
him further by seeing too much of Kerr. On
her own account she wanted for the present to
avoid Kerr. He roused a feeling in her that she
feared—a feeling intoxicating to the senses,
dazzling to the mind, unknitting to the will.
How could she tell, if they were left alone to-
gether for a long enough space of time, that
she might not take the jewel from her neck, at
his request, and hand it to him—and damn them
both? If only she could escape seeing him al-
together until she could find out what Harry
was doing, and what she must do!
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A L A D Y IN D IS T R E S S
Meanwhile, there was her promise to Ella.
She recalled it with difficulty. It seemed a
vague thing in the light of her latest discov-
ery, though she could never meet Clara in dis-
agreement without a qualm. But she made the
plunge that evening, before Clara left for the
Bullers’, while she was at her dressing-table in
the half-disarray which brings out all the soft-
ness and the disarming physical charm of
women. From her low chair Flora spoke laugh-
ingly of Ella’s perturbation. Clara paused, with
the powder puff in her hand, while she listened to
Flora’s explanation of how Ella feared that some
one might, after all these years, be going to
marry Judge Buller. Who this might be she did
not even hint at. She left it ever so sketchy.
But the little stare with which Clara met it, the
amusement, the surprise, and then the shortest
possible little laugh, were guarantee that Clara
had seen it all. She had filled out Flora’s sketch
to the full outline, and pronounced it, as Flora
had, an absurdity. But though Clara had
laughed she had gone away with her delicate
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
brows a little drawn together, as if she'd really
found more than a laugh, something worth con-
sidering, in Ella’s state of mind.
Flora was left with the uneasy feeling that
perhaps she had unwittingly delivered Ella into
Clara’s hands; that Ella, too, was in danger of
becoming part of Clara’s schemes. Danger
seemed to be spreading like contagion. It was
borne in upon her that from this time forward
dangers would multiply. That nothing was
going to be easier, but everything infinitely
harder, to the end; and now was the time to act
if ever she hoped to make way through the
tangle.
She heard the wheels of Clara’s departing
conveyance. Now was her chance for an in-
terview with Harry. She spent twenty minutes
putting together three sentences that would
not arouse his suspicions. She made two
copies, and sent them by separate messengers,
one to his rooms, one to the club, with orders
they be brought back if he was not there to
receive them. Then—the miserable business of
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A L A D Y IN D IS T R E S S
waiting in the large house full of echoes and
the round ghostly globes of electric lights, with
that thing around her neck for which—did they
but know of it—half the town would break in
her windows and doors.
The wind traveled the streets without, and
shook the window-casings. She cowered over
the library fire, listening. The leaping flames
set her shadow dancing like a goblin. A bell
rang, and the shadow and the flame gave a
higher leap as if in welcome of what had ar-
rived. She went to the library door. In the
glooms and lights outside Shima was standing,
and two messengers. It was odd that both
should arrive at once. She stepped back and
stood waiting with a quicker pulse. Shima en-
tered with two letters upon his tray. She had
a moment's anxiety lest both her notes had been
brought back to her, but no—the envelope
which lay on top showed Harry's writing. She
tore it open hastily. Harry wrote that he would
be delighted, and might he bring a friend with
him; a bully fellow whom he wanted her to
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
meet? He added she might send over for some
girl and they could have a jolly little party.
Flora looked at this communication blankly.
Was Harry, who had always jumped at the
chance of a tête-à-tête, dodging her? In her
astonishment she let the other envelope fall.
She stooped, and then for a moment remained
thus, bent above it. The superscription was not
hers. The note was not addressed to Harry, but
to her, and in a handwriting she had never seen
before
Again the peal of the electric bell. Shima ap-
peared with a third envelope. This time it was
her own note returned to her. With the feeling
she was bewitched she took up the mysterious
letter from the floor and opened it. She read
the strange handwriting:
May I see you, anywhere, at any time, to-night?
Robert KERR.
It was as if Kerr himself had entered the
room, masked and muffled beyond recognition,
and then, face to face with her, let fall his dis-
guise. She gazed at the words, at the signa-
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A L A D Y IN D IS T R E S S
ture, thrilled and frightened. She looked at
Harry’s note, hesitated; caught a glimpse be-
tween the half-open doors of the two messen-
gers waiting stolidly in the hall. Waiting for
answers! Answers to such communications!
She made a dash for the table where were pens
and ink and on one sheet scrawled:
“Certainly. Bring him,” appending her ini-
tials; on the other the word “Impossible,” and
her full name. Then she hurried the letters into
Shima’s hands, lest her courage should fail her
—lest she should regret her choice.
“Anywhere, at any time, to-night,” she re-
peated softly. Why, the man must be mad!
Yet she permitted herself a moment of imagin-
ing what might have been if her answers had
been reversed.
But no, she dared not meet Kerr's impetuous
attacks yet. First she must get at Harry. And
how was that to be managed if he insisted on
surrounding himself with “a jolly little party?”
She found a moment that evening in which to
ask him to walk out to the Presidio with her
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
the next morning. But he was going to Bur-
lingame on the early train. He was woefully
sorry. It was ages since he had had a moment
with her alone, but at least he would see her that
evening. She had not forgotten? They were
going to that dinner—and then the reception
afterward? Her suspicion that he was delib-
erately dodging wavered before his boyish,
cheerful, unconscious face. And yet, following
on the heels of his tendency to question and
coerce her, this reticence was amazing. The
next day would be lost with Harry beyond reach
—twelve hours while Kerr was at the mercy of
chance, and she was at the mercy of Kerr.
His tactics did not leave her breathing space.
She felt as the lilies wavering just beyond his
reach. She remembered his ingenuity. She
thought of the blows of his cane. Lucky for
her she was not rooted like the lilies! The only
safety was in keeping beyond his reach.
Yet when his card was brought up to her the
next morning she looked at the printed name
as wistfully as if it had been his face. It cost
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
drawing-room. As he crossed the hall he glanced
up at the stair and as much as was visible of
the landing. He hadn’t taken Shima's word for
it, after all!
The vestibule door closed noiselessly after him,
the outer door shut with a heavy sound. Yet be-
fore that sound had ceased to vibrate, she heard
it shut again. Was he coming back? There
was a presence in the vestibule very vaguely seen
through the glass and lace of the inner door.
Her heart beat with apprehension. The door
opened upon Clara.
Flora precipitately retreated. She was more
disturbed than relieved by the unexpected ap-
pearance. For Clara must have seen Kerr leave
the house. Three times now within three days
he had been found with her or waiting for her.
She wondered if Clara would ask her awkward
questions. But Clara, when she entered Flora's
dressing-room a few moments later with the
shopping-list, instead of a question, offered a
statement.
“I don’t like that man,” she announced.
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A L A D Y IN D IS T R E S S
“Who?”
“That Kerr. I met him just now on the
steps. Don’t you feel there is something wrong
about him?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Flora vaguely.
Clara gave her a bright glance.
“But you weren't at home to him.”
“I’m not at home to any one this morning,”
Flora answered evasively, feeling the probe of
Clara’s eyes. “I’m feeling ill. I’m not going
out this evening either. I think I’ll ring up
Burlingame and tell Harry.” It was in her
mind that she might manage to make him stay
with her while Clara went on to the reception.
“Burlingame! Harry!” Clara echoed in sur-
prise. “Why, he’s in town. I saw him just
now as I was coming up.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. He was walking up Clay from
Kearney. I was in the car.”
“Why that—that is—” Flora stammered in
her surprise. “Then something must have kept
him,” she altered her sentence quickly. But
*
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
though this seemed the probable explanation
she did not believe it. Harry walking toward
Chinatown, when he had told her distinctly he
would be in Burlingame! She thought of the
goldsmith shop and there returned to her the
memory of how Harry and the blue-eyed China-
man had looked when she had turned from the
window and seen them standing together in the
back of the shop.
“You do look ill,” Clara remarked. “Why
don’t you stay in bed, and not try to see any
one?”
Flora murmured that that was her intention,
but she was far from speaking the truth. She
only waited to make sure of Clara’s being in
her own rooms to get out of the house and tele-
phone to Harry.
It was not far to the nearest booth, a block
or two down the cross-street. She rang, first,
the office. The word came back promptly in
his partner's voice. He had gone to Burlin-
game by the early train. It was the same at
the club. He must be in town, then, on secret
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A L A D Y IN D IS T R E S S
“Has it taken you all the morning?”
She could see she had not fooled him.
“I had a great many other things to do.”
She was resolved not to admit anything.
“No doubt, but I wanted to see you very much
last night, and again this morning. I may see
you this evening, perhaps?” He was grave now.
She saw that he awaited her answer in anxiety.
“But—” she hesitated just a moment too
long before she added, “I’m going out this even-
ing.
She started nervously to rise.
“Wait,” he said in a voice that was audible
to the shop-girl, “your package has not come.”
35
She looked at him helplessly, so attractive
and so inimical to her. He swung around, back
to the counter, and lowered his voice. “Did you
know I called upon you yesterday morning,
also?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Mr. Cressy and I waited for you together.
Did he mention it to you?”
“No.” Her lips let the word out slowly.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“That's a reticent friend of yours!” The ex-
clamation, and the truth of it, put her on her
guard.
“I can’t discuss him with you,” she said
coldly.
“Yet no doubt you have discussed me with
him?”
“Never!”
“You haven’t told him anything?” The in-
credulity, the amazement of his face put before
her, for the first time, how extraordinary her
conduct must seem. What could he think of
her? What construction would he put upon
it? She blushed, neck to forehead, and her
voice was scarcely audible as she answered
“No.”
But at that small word his whole mood
warmed to her. “Why, then,” he began eagerly,
“if Cressy doesn't know—”
“Oh, but he-” Flora stopped in terror of
herself. “I can’t talk of him, I must not. Don’t
ask me!” she implored, “and please, please don’t
come to my house again!”
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A L A D Y IN D IS T R E S S
He gave his head a puzzled, impatient shake.
“Then where am I to see you?”
“In a few days—perhaps to-morrow—I will
let you know.” She rose. She had her pack-
age now. She was getting back her courage.
There was no further way of keeping her.
But he followed her closely through the crowd
to the door. “Yes,” he said quickly under his
breath, “in a few days, perhaps to-morrow, as
soon as you get rid of it, you won’t mind meet-
ing me! What are you afraid of? Surely not
me?”
She was, but hotly denied it.
“I am not afraid of you. I am afraid of
them!”
“Of them!” He peered at her. “What are
you talking about now?”
Ah, she had said too much! She bit her lip.
They had reached the corner, and the gliding
cable car was approaching. She turned to him
with a last appeal.
“Don’t ask me anything! Don’t come with
me! Don’t follow me!”
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
Not until she was safely inside the car did
she dare look back at him. He was still on the
corner, and he raised his hat and smiled so re-
assuringly that she was half-way home before
she realized that, in spite of all she had urged
upon him, he had not committed himself to any
promise. And yet, she thought in dismay, he
had almost made her give away Harry’s confi-
dence. She was seeing more and more clearly
that this was the danger of meeting him. He
always got something out of her and never, by
chance, gave her anything in return. If he
should seek her to-night she dared not be at
home! Any place would be safer than her own
house. It would be better to fulfil her engage-
ment and go to the reception with Clara and
Harry. That was a house Kerr did not know.
It was awkward to have to announce this sud-
den change of plan after her pretenses of the
morning, but of late she had lived too constantly
with danger for Clara’s lifted eyebrows to
daunt her. The mere trivial act of being
dressed each day was fraught with danger. To
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A L A D Y IN D IS T R E S S
get the sapphire off her person before Marrika
should appear; to put it back somehow after
Marrika had done; to shift it from one place
to another as she wore gowns cut high or low
—and every moment in fear lest she be discov-
ered in the act! This was her daily manoeuver.
To-night she clasped the chain around her
waist beneath her petticoats. But Marrika’s
sensitive fingers, smoothing over, for the last
time, the close-fitting front of the gown, felt the
sapphire, fumbled with it, and tried to adjust it
like a button.
“That is all right,” Flora said quickly.
“Nothing shows.” Was it always to make it-
self known, she thought uneasily, no matter
how it was hid?
She was ready early, in the hope that Harry
might come, as he had been wont to do, a little
before the appointed hour. But he turned up
without a moment to spare. Clara was down-
stairs in her cloak when he appeared. There
was no chance for a word at dinner. But if
she could not manage it later in the wider field
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
of the reception, why, then she deserved to fail
in everything.
But she found, upon their arrival that even
this was going to be hard to bring about. For
she was immediately pounced upon—first, by
Ella Buller.
“Why, Flora,” at the top of her voice, “where
have you been all these days!” Then in a hot
whisper, “Did you speak to her? It hasn’t done
one bit of good.”
“I think you are mistaken,” Flora murmured.
“But be careful, and let me know—” She had
only time for that broken sentence before she
was surrounded; and other voices took up the
chorus.
She was getting to be a perfect hermit.
She was forgetting all her old friends.
And a less kindly voice in the background
added, “Yes, for new ones.”
She realized with some alarm that though
she had forgotten her public, it had kept its
eye on her. She answered, laughing, that she
was keeping Lent early, and allowed herself to
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A L A D Y IN D IS T R E S S
be drifted about through the crowd by more or
less entertaining people, now and then getting
glimpses of Harry, tracking him by his bur-
nished brown head, waiting her opportunity to
get him cornered. At last she saw him making
for the smoking-room. Connecting this with
the drawing-room where she stood was a small
red lounging-room, walls, floor and furniture all
covered with crimson velvet. It had a third
door which communicated indirectly with the
reception-rooms, by means of a little hall. She
was near that hall, and it would be the work of
a moment to slip by way of it into the red room
and stop Harry on his way through. She had
not played at such a game since, as a child, she
had jumped out on people from dark closets, and
Harry was as much astonished as she could re-
member they had been. He was cutting the end
of a cigar and he all but dropped it.
“What in the world are you doing here
alone?” He spoke peevishly. “I don’t see how
a crowd of men can leave such a bundle of fas-
cination at large!”
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
She made him a low courtesy and said she
was preventing him from doing so.
“It’s very good of you, and you are very
pretty, Flora,” he admitted with a grudging
smile, “but I’ve got to see a man in there.” His
eyes went to the door of the smoking-room
whence was audible a discussion of voices, and
among them Judge Buller’s basso. She was
between Harry and the door. Laughingly, he
made as if to put her aside, when the door
through which she had entered opened again
sharply; and Kerr came in.
“Forgive me. I followed you,” he began. Then
he saw Harry. “I-ha—ha—I’ve been hunting
for you, Cressy, all the evening!”
Harry accepted the statement with a cynical
smile. It was too evidently not for him Kerr had
been hunting, and after the first stammer of
embarrassment, the Englishman made no at-
tempt to conceal his real intentions. His words
merely served him as an excuse not to retreat.
“This is a good place to sit,” he said, push-
272


|
|
-
|


·


A L A D Y IN DIS T R E S S
ing forward a chair for Flora. She sank into
it, wondering weakly what daring or what dan-
ger had brought him into a house where he
was not known, to seek her. He sat down in
the compartment of a double settee near her.
Harry still stood with a dubious smile on his
face. The look the two men exchanged ap-
peared to her a prolongment of their earnest in-
terrogation in the picture gallery; but this time
it struck her that both carried it off less well.
Harry, especially, bore it badly.
“Did you say you were looking for me?” he
remarked. “Well, Buller’s been looking for
Ayou. He wants to know about some English-
man that they’re trying to put up at the club.”
“How's that? Oh, yes! I remember.” Kerr
shrugged. “Never heard of him at home, and
can't vouch for every fellow who comes along,
just because he is English.”
“Quite so!” said Harry, with a straight look
at Kerr that made Flora uncomfortable.
“But Judge Buller has already vouched for
273


T H E C Q A S T OF C H A N C F.
that man,” she said quickly, “so he must be all
right.”
Kerr inclined his head to her with a smile.
“Buller is easily taken in,” said Harry
calmly. Under the direct, the insolent meaning
of his look Flora felt her face grow hot—her
hands cold. Harry could sit there taunting this
man, hitting him over another man's back, and
Kerr could not resent it. He could only sit—
his head a little canted forward—looking at
Harry with the traces of a dry smile upon his
lips.
She thought the next moment everything
would be declared. She sprang up, and, with
an impulse for rescue, went to the door of the
smoking-room. “Judge Buller,” she called.
There was a sudden cessation of talk; a
movement of forms dimly seen in the thick blue
element; and then through wreaths of smoke,
the judge's face dawned upon her like a sun
through fog.
“Well, well, Miss Flora,” he wanted to know,
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A L A D Y IN D IS T R E S S
“to what bad action of mine do I owe this good
fortune?”
She retreated, beckoning him to the middle of
the room. “You owe it to the bad action of
another,” she said gaily. “Your friends are
being slandered.”
Harry made a movement as if he would have
stopped her, and the expression of his face, in
its alarm, was comic. But she paid no heed.
She laid her hand on Harry’s arm. “Mr. Kerr
is just about to accuse us of being impostors,”
she announced. She had robbed the situation
of its peril by gaily turning it exactly inside
out.
The judge blinked, puzzled at this extraor-
dinary statement. Harry was disconcerted; but
Kerr showed an astonishment that amazed her—
a concern that she could not understand. He
stared at her. Then he laughed rather shakily as
he turned to her with a mock gallant bow.
“All women impose upon us, madam. And
as for Mr. Cressy”—he fixed Harry with a
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A L A D Y IN DIS T R E S S
tongs all the evening. Every man in town has
his idea on that subject.”
“For instance, what is that one?” Kerr’s cas-
ual voice was in contrast to his guarded eyes.
The judge looked pleased. “That one? Why,
that’s my own—was, at least, half an hour ago.
You see, about that twenty-thousand-dollar
proposition—” They moved nearer him. They
stood, the four, around the red velvet-covered
table, like people waiting to be served. “The
trouble is right here,” said the judge, emphasiz-
ing with blunt forefinger. “The crook has a
pal. That's probable, isn’t it?”
Harry nodded. Flora felt Kerr's eyes upon
her, but she could not look at him.
“And we see the thing is at a deadlock, don’t
we? Well, now,” the judge went on trium-
phantly, “we know if any one person had the
whole ring it would be turned in by this time.
That is the weak spot in the reward policy.
They didn’t reckon on the thing's being split.”
“Split? No, really, do you think that pos-
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
sible?” Kerr inquired, and Flora caught a glim-
mer of irony in his voice.
“Well, can you see one of those chaps trust-
ing the other with more than half of it?” The
judge was scornful. “And a fellow needs a
whole ring if he is after a reward.” He rolled
his head waggishly. “Oh, I could have been
a crook myself!” he chuckled, but his was the
only smiling face in the party.
For Kerr's was pale, schooled to a rigid self-
control.
And Harry’s was crimson and swollen, as if
with a sudden rush of blood. His twitching
hands, his sullen eyes, responded to Judge Bul-
ler's last word as if it had been an accusation.
“It makes me damned sick, the way you fel-
lows talk—as if it was the easiest thing in the
world to-" He broke off. It was such a tone,
loose, harsh and uncontrolled, as made Flora
shrink.
As if he sensed that movement in her, he
turned upon her furiously.
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A L A D Y IN D IS T R E S S
“Well, are we going to stand here all night?”
He took her by the arm.
She felt as if he had struck her. Buller was
staring at him, but Kerr had opened the door
through which she had entered, and now, turn-
ing his back upon Harry, silently motioned her
out.
She had a moment’s fear that Harry’s grasp,
even then, wouldn’t let go. Indeed, for a mo-
ment he stood clutching her, as if, now that his
rage had spent itself, she was the one thing
he could hold to. Then she felt his fingers
loosen. He stood there alone, looking, with his
great bulk, and his great strength, and his
abashed bewilderment, rather pathetic.
But that aspect reached her dimly, for the
fear of him was uppermost. Her arm still
burned where he had grasped it. She moved
away from him toward the door Kerr had
opened for her. She passed from the light of
the crimson room into the dark of the passage.
Some one followed her and closed the door.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
Some one caught step with her. It was Kerr.
He bent his dark head to speak low.
“I don’t know why you did it, you quixotic
child, but you must not expose yourself in this
way, for any reason whatsoever.”
The light of the crowded rooms burst upon
them again.
“Oh,” she turned to him beseechingly, “can’t
you get me away?”
“Surely.” His manner was as if nothing
had happened. His smile was reassuring. “I’ll
call your carriage, and find Mrs. Britton.”
When Flora came down from the dressing-
room she found Clara already in the carriage,
and Kerr mounting guard in the hall. As he
handed her in, Clara leaned forward.
“Where is Mr. Cressy;” she inquired.
“He sent his apologies,” Kerr explained.
“He is not able to get away just now.”
Clara could not control a look of astonish-
ment. As the carriage began to move and
Kerr's face disappeared from the square of the
window, she turned to Flora.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
looked at her. The judge's theory might be
close to facts that Harry was cognizant of.
For herself she had had no way of finding out
how the sapphire had got adrift. But hadn’t
Harry? Hadn’t he followed up that singular
scene with the blue-eyed Chinaman by other vis-
its to the goldsmith's shop? Why, yesterday,
when he was supposed to be in Burlingame,
Clara had seen him in Chinatown. The idea
burst upon her then. Harry was after the whole
ring. He counted the part she held already his,
and for the rest he was groping in Chinatown;
he was trying to reach it through the imper-
turbable little goldsmith. But he had not reached
it yet—and she could read his irritation at his
failure in his violent outburst when Judge Bul-
ler so innocently flung the difficulties in his face.
She knew as much now as she could bear. If
Harry did not suspect Kerr, it would be strange.
But—Harry waiting to make sure of a reward
before he unmasked a thief! It was an ugly
thought!
And would he wait for the rest now—now
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A L A D Y IN DIS T R E S S
that the situation was so galling to him? Might
not he just decide to take the sapphire, and with
the evidence of that, risk his putting his hand
on the “Idol” when he grasped the thief?
The carriage was stopping. Clara was mak-
ing ready to get out. She braced herself to face
Clara, in the light, with a casual exterior—but
when she had reached her own rooms she sank
in a heap in the chair before her writing-table,
and laid her head upon the table between her
arms.
In her wretchedness she found herself turn-
ing 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,
283


XVI
THE HEART OF THE DILE M M A
HERE 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 every-
where, from the small round of Clara’s move-
ment to the larger wheel of the public aspect.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
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 mur-
mur of astonishment at this strange vanishing,
after a little vain conjecture as to the reason of
it, the subject dropped out of the public mouth.
The silence was so sudden it was like a suppres-
sion. To Flora it shadowed some forces work-
ing so secretly, so surely, that they had extin-
guished 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
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T H E H E A R T OF T H E D I L E M M A
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 stand-
ing stiffly on one side, while she hesitated be-
tween, 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
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
Clara after she had begun her attack on the
Bullers, her appearance of being busy with
something, absorbed with, intent upon, some-
thing, 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 glanc-
ing at her down decorous dinner-tables, and
with the same fatal facility he had displayed in
getting at her, now keeping away from her, out
of all possible reach.
He was playing her own trick on her, but her
chances for getting at him again were fewer
than his had been with her. She could not be-
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T H E H E A R T OF T H E D I L E M M A
siege him in his abode; and in the places where
they met, large houses crowded with people, the
eye of the world was upon her. For how long
had she forgotten it—she who had been all her
life so deferential toward it! Even now she re-
membered it only because it interfered with what
she wanted to do.
For the eye of her small society was very
keenly upon Kerr. She realized, all at once, that
he had become a personage; and then, by smiles,
by lifted eyebrows, by glances, she gathered that
her name was being linked with his. She was
astonished. How could their luncheon together
at the Purdies', their words that night in the
opera box, their few minutes' talk in the shop,
have crystallized into this gossip? It vexed her
—alarmed her, how it had got about when she
had seen him so seldom, had known him scarcely
more than a week. It was simply in the air.
It was in her attitude and in his, but how far it
had gone she did not dream, until in the dense
crowd of some one’s at-home she caught the
words of a young girl. The voice was so sweet
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T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
and so prettily modulated that at its first notes
Flora turned involuntarily to glimpse the
speaker, a slender creature in a delicate mist of
muslin, with an indeterminate chin and the cheek
of a pale peach.
“Just think,” Flora heard her saying, “he
went to see her three times in two days, but to-
day, did you notice, he wouldn’t look at her until
she went up and spoke to him. I don’t see how a
girl can! Harry Cressy—”
She moved away and the words were lost.
Flora looked after her. For the moment she felt
only scorn for the creatures who had clapped
that interpretation upon her great responsibil-
ity. These people around her seemed poor in-
deed, absorbed only in petty considerations, and
seeing everything down the narrow vista of the
“correct.” Her eyes followed the young girl's
course through the room, easy to trace by her
shining blond head, and the unusual deliciousness
of her muslin gown. She stopped beside two
women, and with a certain sense of pleasure and
embarrassment Flora recognized one of them—
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T H E H E A R T OF T H E DI L E M M A
Mrs. Herrick. She caught the lady’s eye and
bowed. Mrs. Herrick smiled, with a gracious
inclination in which her graceful shoulders had
a part.
It gave Flora the sense Mrs. Herrick’s pres-
ence always brought her, of protection, or
security, and the possibility of friendship finer
than she had ever known. She started forward.
But Mrs. Herrick, presenting instantly her pro-
file, drew the young girl’s hand through her arm
and moved away.
Flora winced as if she had received a blow.
The other people who had heard the same gossip
of her had been, on account of it, all the more
amused, and anxious to talk to her. But Mrs.
Herrick, though she bowed and smiled, did not
want her too near her daughter; perhaps, her-
self, would have preferred not to speak to her.
She felt herself judged—judged from the
outside, it is true—but still there was justice in
it. She had been flying in the face of custom,
ignoring common good behavior, in short, stick-
ing to her own convictions in defiance of the
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
world's. And she must pay the penalty—the
loss of the possibility of such a friend.
But it was hard, she thought, to pay the price
without getting the thing she had paid for. It
was more like a gamble in which she had staked
all on a chance. And never had this chance ap-
peared more improbable to her than now. For
if Kerr valued the ring more than he valued his
safety, what argument was left her? She
thought—if only she had been a different sort of
woman—the sort with whom men fall in love—
ah, then she might have been able to make one
further appeal to him—one that surely would
not have failed.
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T H E D E M I G O D
posing she ever had a chance to see him again?
The possibility that at this moment he might
actually have gone had almost escaped her. She
recalled it with a disagreeable shock, but,
after all, that was the best she could hope, never
to see him again! She ought to be grateful to
be sure of that, and yet if she were, oh, never
could she deprive him of so much beauty and
light by her keeping of the sapphire as he would
then have taken away from her!
She would come down then, indeed, level with
plainest, palest, hardest things—people and
facts. Her romance—she had seen it; she had
had it in her hands, and it had somehow eluded
her. It had vanished, evaporated. It had come
to her in rather a terrific guise, presented to her
on that night at the club by the first debonair
wave of the man’s hand; and now he might have
gone out through that white way into the east,
taking back her romance as the fairy takes back
his unappreciated gift.
She leaned and looked through the thin veil
of her curtains at the splendid day. It was one
–
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
of February's freaks. It was hot. The white
ghost of noon lay over shore and sea. Beneath
her the city seemed to sleep gray and glistening.
The tops of hills that rose above the up-creep-
ing houses were misted green. Across the bay,
along the northern shore, there was a pale green
coast of hills dividing blue and blue. Ships in
the bay hung out white canvas drying, and the
sky showed whiter clouds, slow-moving, like sails
upon a languid sea. Beneath her, directly down,
through hanging darts of eucalyptus leaves,
hemmed with high hedges, the oval of her gar-
den showed her a pattern like a Persian carpet.
Roofs sloped beyond it, and beyond these the
diagram of streets and houses, and empty un-
built grassy lots.
She looked down upon all, as lone and lonely
as a deserted lady in a tower, lifted above these
happy, peaceful things by her strange responsi-
bility. Her thoughts could not stay with them;
her eyes traveled seaward. She parted the cur-
tains and, leaning a little out, looked westward
at the white sea gate.
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T H E D E M I G O D
A whistle, as of some child calling his mate,
came sweetly in the silence. It was near, and
the questing, expectant note caught her ear.
Again it came, sharper, imperative, directly be-
neath her. She looked down; she was speechless.
There was a sudden wild current of blood in her
veins. There he stood, the whistler, neither
child nor bird, but the man himself—Kerr, look-
ing up at her from the gay oval of her garden.
She hung over the window-sill. She looked di-
rectly down upon him, foreshortened to a face,
and even with the distance and the broad glare
of noon between them she recognized his as-
pect—his gayest, of diabolic glee. There lurked
about him the impish quality of the whistle that
had summoned her.
“Come down,” he called.
All sorts of wonders and terrors were beating
around her. He had transcended her wildest
wish; he had come to her more openly, more
daringly, more romantically than she could have
dreamed. All the amazement of why and how
he had braved the battery of the windows of her
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
house was swallowed up in the greater joy of
seeing him there, standing in his “grays,” with
stiff black hat pushed off his hot forehead, hands
behind him, looking up at her from the middle
of anemones and daffodils.
“Come down,” he called again, and waved at
her with his slim, glittering stick. How far he
had come since their last encounter, to wave at
and command her, as if she were verily his
own She left the window, left the room, ran
quickly down the stair. The house was hushed;
no passing but her own, no butler in the hall, no
kitchen-maid on the back stair. Only grim faces
of pictures—ancestors not her own—glimmered
reproachful upon her as she fled past. Light
echoes called her back along the hall. The fur-
niture, the muffling curtains, her own reflection
flying through the mirrors, held up to her her
madness, and by their mute stability seemed to
remind her of the shelter she was leaving—
seemed to forbid.
She ran. This was not shelter; it was prison.
He was rescue; he was light itself. The only
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T H E D E M I G O D
chance for her was to get near enough to him.
Near him no shadow lived. The thing was to get
near enough. She rushed direct from shadow into
light. She came out into the sun, into the gar-
den with its blaze of wintry summer, its whisper-
ing life and the free air over it. The man stand-
ing in the middle of it, for all his pot hat and
Gothic stick, was none the less its demigod wait-
ing for her, laughing. He might well laugh that
she who had written that unflinching letter
should come thus flying at his call; but there
was more than laughter, there was more than
mischief in him. The high tide of his spirits was
only the sparkle of his excitement. It was evi-
dent that he was there with something of mighty
importance to say.
Was it that her letter had finally touched him?
Had he come at last to transcend her idea with
some even greater purpose? She seemed to see
the power, the will for that and the kindness—
she could not call it by another word—but
though she was beseeching him with all her si-
lent attitude to tell her instantly what the great
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
thing was, he kept it back a moment, looking at
her whimsically, indulgently, even tenderly.
“I have come for you,” he said.
“Oh, for me!” she murmured. Surely he
couldn’t mean that! He was simply putting her
off with that.
“I mean it, I mean it,” he assured her. “This
doesn’t make it any less real, my getting at you
through a garden. Better,” he added, “and
sweet of you to make the duller way impossible.”
She took a step back. It had not been play to
her; but he would have it nothing else. He, too,
stepped back and away from her.
“Come,” he said, and behind him she saw the
lower garden gate that opened on the grassy
pitch of the hill, swinging idle and open. The
sight of him about to vanish lured her on, and
as he continued to walk backward she advanced,
following.
“Oh, where?” she pleaded.
“With me!” Such a guaranty of good faith
he made it!
She tried to summon her reluctance.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
the hill she saw white sails sink out of sight. All
the little panorama upon which she had looked
down sprang up around her, large and living.
He whistled to the car as he helped her down the
last steep pitch, whistled and waved, and they
ran for it. No time for back-looking, no time
now for a faint heart. Before she knew they
were fairly crowded into the narrow front seat,
and the long street was running up to them and
streaming by.
This was never the car one went out the front
door to take. This creaked and crawled low,
taking the corners comfortably, past houses
with all their windows blinking recognition.
Hadn’t it passed them so for twenty years? Old
houses in long gardens, and little houses creep-
ing back behind their yards, not yet encroached
upon by fresher ties of living. Past all these
and gliding down under high, ragged banks,
green grass above with wooden stairways strag-
gling up their naked faces; past these again;
past lower levels; past little gray and cluttered
houses; past loaded carts of vegetables; past
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T H E D E M I G O D
children playing shrilly, bearing down always
on the green square of the plaza wide, worn and
foreign, and the Greek church “domed” with blue
and yellow, bearing down as if it had fairly de-
termined to make its course straight through
this stable center. Then in the very shadow it
swerved aside to clatter off in quite another
direction along a wider street with whiter shops,
and more glittering windows with gilded letters
flashing foreign names, with more marked and
brilliant colors moving in the crowd, with a
clearer stamp on all of Latin living.
Then suddenly for them the sliding panorama
ceased. The car had stopped and they had left
it, and were standing upon the corner of a
still street that came down from the high hills
behind them and crossed the car-track and
climbed again a little way to curve over into the
sky. Dingy houses two blocks above them stood
silhouetted against the blue. They were walking
upward toward this horizon, leaving color and
motion behind them. With every step the street
grew more empty, lonely and colorless. Many
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T H E D E M I G O D
of the rock itself, and made so secret with tight-
drawn curtains that it seemed to have shut
itself up against the world for ever. She wa-
vered. She wasn't afraid of herself out here, out-
of-doors under the sky, but she was afraid that
those four walls might shut out her new un-
reasoning joy, might steal away his new tender-
ness, and bring her back face to face with the
same ugly fact that had confronted her in her
drawing-room.
“Oh, no,” she said, and put her hands behind
her with a determination that she wasn’t going
to move.
“Oh, yes,” he said, but he didn’t smile. He
looked at her quite gravely, reproachfully, and
the touch of his fingers on her arm was fine,
was delicate, as if to say, “I wouldn’t harm you
for the world.”
She blushed a slow, painful crimson. She
hadn’t meant that. She hadn't even thought of
it; but, since he had, there was nothing for it
but to go in. The door shut behind her sharply,
with a click like a little trap; and she breathed
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
such an atmosphere, flat, faint and stale, the
mere ghost of some fuller, more fragrant flavor.
In the little anteroom where they stood, whose
faded ceiling all but brushed their heads, and in
the larger little room beyond the Nottingham
lace curtains, prevailed a mild shabbiness, a re-
spectable decay. Curtains and table-cloths alike
showed a dull and tempered whiteness as if the
shadow of time had fallen dim across the whole.
The little restaurant seemed left behind in the
onward march of the city, and its faded, kindly
face was but a shadow of what had been of the
vigor and flourish of bourgeois Spain thirty
years before. There was no one eating at the
little tables, no one sitting behind the high cash-
desk in the anteroom. Not a stir of human life
in all the place.
“Hello,” said Kerr among the tables looking
around him, “we’ve caught them asleep.” He
rapped on the wall with his cane. Flora peered
at him between the curtains, all her fascinated
apprehension of what was to follow plain upon
her face. “Shall it be a giant or dwarf?” he
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T H E D E M I G O D
asked her. “There’s nothing I won’t do for you,
you know.”
The door opened and a little girl with a long
black braid and purple apron came in.
“A dwarf,” cried Flora. She laughed with a
quick relaxing of her strained nerves. It might
almost have been the truth from that old little
swarthy face and sedate demeanor that hardly
noticed them. The child walked gravely up to
the desk and mounting to the high stool struck
a faint-voiced bell.
“There,” said Kerr, “ends formality. Now
let the real magic begin!”
“Not black magic,” Flora took up his fancy.
He had drawn out a chair for her. “That de-
pends on you. I’m not the magic maker. I have
no talisman.”
She felt the conscious jewel burn in her pos-
session. She looked up beseechingly at him, but
he only laughed, and, with a swing, lifted the
chair a little off the ground as he set her up to
the table, as if to show how easily he could put
forth strength. There was nothing defiant in
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
him. He was taking her with him—taking her
upon the wings of his high spirits; but mischiev-
ously, obstinately, he would not show her where
the flight was leading, nor let her listen to any-
thing but the rustling of those wings. He was
determined to make holiday, whatever was to fol-
low. For the glimpse of blue through the dim
window might be the Bay of Naples; and, ah!
Chianti. Perhaps the sort one gets down Monte
Video way, where France fades into Italy—per-
haps, at least if her kind fancy could get the
better of the reality. In Sicily there were just
such table-cloths as these, and just such fat floor-
shaking contadini to wait upon you. And look
now at the purple one behind the desk—child or
gnome—feet not touching the floor—centuries
of Italy in her face. Oh, calculation, indifference!
“She wouldn’t care if you jumped up and
threw me out of the window,” he affirmed.
“That’s why this hole is so harmless. Oh, isn’t
that harmless? What’s more harmless than to
let one alone? There's only one dangerous thing
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T H E D E M I G O D
here,” he grinned and let her take her choice of
which.
She came straight at it.
“You know I can’t let you alone.”
He laughed. “Well, isn’t that why we’re here
at last—that you may dictate your terms?”
“I have. Didn't you get my letter?”
“Oh, indeed I did. Haven’t I obeyed it?
Haven’t I kept away from your house? Have I
tried to approach you?”
“Haven’t you, though?” she threw at him ac-
cusingly.
“Ah,” he deprecated, “you came to me. I was
down in the garden.”
She looked at him through his persiflage wist-
fully, searchingly. “But there were other things
in that letter.”
“There were?” He regarded her with grave
surprise. Oh, how she mistrusted his gravity!
“Why, to be sure there were things—things that
you didn’t mean—one thing above all others
you couldn’t mean, that you want me to drop
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
out when the game is half done, to slink away
and leave it all like this—abandon you and my
Idol so to each other! My dear, for what do you
take me?”
She burst out. “But can’t you see the dan-
ger?”
He met it quietly.
“Certainly. I have been seeing nothing else
but the danger—to you. Do you think I’ve been
idle all these days? Every line I have followed
has ended in that. It’s brought me finally to
this.” The gesture of his hand included their
predicament and the dingy little room. “You’ll
really have to help me, after all.”
“Oh, haven’t I tried to? That is why I wrote.
Don’t you see your own danger at all?”
“No, but I’d like to.” He leaned toward her,
brows lifted to a quizzical peak.
“Oh, I can’t tell you,” she despaired. “But
somehow I shall have to make you go.”
“That will be easy,” he said. Leaning back,
nursing his chin in his hand, he watched her with
a gloomy sort of brooding. “You know what it
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T H E D E M I G O D
is I’m waiting for. You know I won’t go with-
out it.” His words came sadly, but doggedly,
with a grim finality, as if he gave himself up to
the course he was following as something he
knew was inevitable. The faintness of despair
came over her. Only the narrow table was be-
tween them, yet all at once, with the mention of
the ring, he seemed a long way off. What was
this terrible obsession that outweighed every
other consideration with him? How get at it?
How get through it? Or was it between them
for ever?
“Do you care for it so very much?” she asked
him, trembling but valiant.
“I care so very much,” he repeated slowly,
and after a moment of wonder: “Why, don’t
you?” -
“Oh, not for that,” she cried sharply. “Not
for the sapphire!”
He stared. She had startled him clean out of
his brooding. “In Heaven’s name, for what,
then?”
Oh, she could never tell him it was for him!
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
In her distress and embarrassment she looked all
ways.
His quick white finger touched her on the
wrist. “For Cressy"
The abrupt stern note of his question startled
her. She held herself stiff and still for a mo-
ment, then: “For every one in this wretched
business. I have to.”
“Ah,” he sighed out the satisfaction of his
long uncertainty, “then Cressy is in it.”
“No, I didn’t mean that—you mustn't think
it—I can’t discuss him with you!” She was hot
to recapture her fugitive admission.
“Don’t let that disturb you. You haven’t
given him away to me. I had all I’m likely to
get from the man himself.”
“He-he told you?” she faltered.
“He told me nothing. Don't you know that he
misdoubts me? I got it out of him, by sleight of
hand—where we had met before. Has he never
told you anything of that morning when we left
your house together?”
“Never.” The admission cost her an effort.
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T H E D E M I G O D
He mused at her. “As I said, he told me noth-
ing, but it occurred to me when he came in that
we might be there on the same errand.”
She paled. “You mean—?”
“I mean I thought it might be safer all around
that you should not see him that morning; so I
got him away. He hasn’t asked you for it
since?”
“The sapphire?” she faltered. “No” The
more her instinct warned that it had been the
jewel Harry had returned for, the more she re-
pudiated the idea to Kerr.
“Why should you think he came for that?
What has he to do with it?” she murmured.
“My God! how you do champion him!” He
leaned forward sharply across the table. “What
is this man to you?”
He was going too far. He had no right to
that question. “The man I have promised to
marry.” Her hot look, her cold manner defied
him to command her here. Yet for a moment,
leaning forward with his clenched hands on the
table, he looked ready to spring up and force her
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
words back on her. The next he let it go and
dropped back in his chair again.
“Quite so,” he said. “But I didn’t believe it.”
He stared at her with a dull, profound resent-
ment. “Yet it’s most possible; since it isn’t the
sapphire it would be that.” He mused. “But,
you extraordinary woman, why on earth—” he
broke off, still looking at her, looking with a
persistent, sharp, studying eye, as if she were
the most puzzling and, it came to her gradually,
the most dubious thing on earth. He was verily
a magician, a worker of black magic; for under
the spell of his eyes she felt herself turning into
something horrible. However innocent she was
in intention, the ugly appearance was covering
her.
“Then what are you doing here with the ring
on you?” he demanded solemnly. “Why are you
dealing with me? What do you think you’ll get
out of it? Good God! women are hideous! How
can you betray the man you love?”
“Oh,” she cried, with a wail of horror. She
stood up trembling and pale. “I don't—I don’t
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T H E D E M I G O D
—I don't! I’ve kept it from them. I’m standing
against them all. I shall never give it to them.
When have I ever betrayed you?”
He drew back, away from her, as if to ward
off her meaning, but she leaned toward him, her
hands flung out, holding herself up to him for
all she meant. He got up slowly and the creep-
ing tide of red, dusky and violent, rising over
his face, swelling his features, darkening his
eyes, hung before her like a banner of shame.
“I didn’t know, I didn't know,” he repeated
in a low voice. His eyes were on the ground.
Then, with a sharp motion, as if merely stand-
ing in front of her was unendurable, “Oh,
Lord!” he said, and, turning, walked from her
toward the window. He went precipitately, as
if he meant to go through it, but he only leaned
against it and stood motionless; and from her
side of the table, trembling, breathless, she
watched his stricken silhouette black upon the
gray, fading light.
The knowledge of how far she had gone, of
how much she had betrayed herself, swelled and
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
swelled before her mind until it seemed to fill her
life, but she looked at it hardily and unabashed.
All the decencies in the world should sink before
he thought her a traitor. She came softly up be-
side him.
“Don’t be sorry for what I told you.”
“I’m not,” he said. His voice sounded muffled.
He did not look at her, only held out his arm in
a mute sign to her to come. She felt it around
her, but it was a mere symbol of protection. It
lay limp on her shoulder, and he continued to
stare through the window at the street. “I’m
not sorry for what you said,” he repeated slowly.
“I’m glad; but, child, I wish it wasn’t true.”
“Don’t, don't!” she besought him, “for I
don’t.” -
He gave her a look. “That's beautiful of you,
but”—and he turned to the window again and
spoke to himself—“it puts an awful face on my
business. All along you’ve made me think for
you, and of you, more than you deserve, more
than I can afford.” The stare she gave this
forced out of him a reluctant smile. “Why,
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T H E D E M I G O D
didn't you know it? Do you think I couldn’t
have had the sapphire that first night I saw it
on your hand, if it hadn't been—well, for the
way I thought of you? I fancied you knew that
then.” He made a restless movement. His arm
fell from her shoulder. “There’s been only one
thing to do from the first,” he said, “and I don’t
see my way to it.”
“Oh, don’t take it! Leave it!” she pleaded.
“Leave it with me! What does it matter so
much? A jewel! If only you would leave it and
go away from me!”
He whirled on her. “In Heaven’s name, a fine
piece of logic! Leave the sapphire to people
who can make no better use of it than I? Leave
you to go on with this business and marry this
Cressy? Even suppose you gave me the sap-
phire, I couldn’t let you do that!”
“If I gave you the sapphire,” Flora said,
“oh, he wouldn’t marry me then!” She couldn’t
tell how this had come to her, but all at once it
was clear, like a sign of her complete failure;
but Kerr only wondered at her distress.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“Well, if you don’t want to marry him, what
do you care?”
“Oh, I don’t, I don’t care for that.” She sank
back listlessly in her chair again. She couldn't
explain, but in her own mind she knew that if
she lost the sapphire she would so lose in her
own esteem; so fail at every point that counted,
that she would never be able to see or be seen
in the world again as the same creature. Even
to Kerr–even to him to whom she would have
yielded she would have become a different thing.
She realized now she had staked everything on
the premise that she wouldn’t have to yield; and
now it began to appear to her that she would.
His weakness was appearing now as a terrible
strength, a strength that seemed on the point
of crushing her, but it could never convince her.
That strength of his had brought her here.
Was it to happen here, that strange thing she
had foreseen, the end of her? Was it here she
was to lose the sapphire, and him?
She looked vaguely around the room, at the
most impassive aspect of the place, as at a place
3.18


T H E D E M I G O D
she never expected to leave; the darkening win-
dows, the fast-shut door, the child leaning on
the desk, watching them with sharp, incurious
eyes—this would be her niche for ever. She
would be left for ever with the crusts and the
dregs. And Kerr's figure in the twilight seemed
each time it moved to be on the point of vanish-
ing into the grayness. He moved continually up
and down the narrow spaces between the tables.
He troubled the dry repose of the place. Some-
times he looked at her, studying, questioning,
undecided. Once he stopped, as if just there an
idea had arrested him. He looked at her, as if,
she thought, he were afraid of her. Then for
long moments he stood looking blankly, steadily
out of the window. He did not approach her.
He seemed to avoid her, until, as though he had
come at last to his decision, he walked straight
up to her and stood above her. She rose to meet
him. He was smiling.
“Don’t you know that you could easily get
rid of me?” he demanded. “Cressy would be too
glad to do it for you; and there are more ways
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
than one that I could get the sapphire from
you, if I could face the idea of it—but really,
really we care too much for each other. There’s
only one way out for you and me and the sap-
phire. I’ll take you both.”
Her clenched hands opened and fell at her
sides. A great wave of helplessness flowed over
her. Her eyes, her throat filled up with a rush
of blinding tears. She put out her hands, trying
to thrust him off, but he took the wrists and held
them apart, and held her a moment helpless
before him.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
“But I love you.”
Her head fell back. She looked at him as if he
had spoken the incredible.
“I love you,” he repeated, “though God knows
how it has happened!”
The blood rushed to her heart.
He was drawing her nearer.
She felt his breath upon her face; she saw
the image of herself in his eyes. She started to
herself on the edge of danger, and made a strug-
320


T H E D E M I G O D
gle to release her wrists. He let them go. She
sank down into her chair.
“Why not? Why won’t you go with me?” she
heard him say again, still close beside her.
“I can't, I can't!” She clung to the words,
but for the moment she had forgotten her rea-
sons. She had forgotten everything but the won-
derful fact that he loved her. He was there
within reach, and she had only to stretch out her
hand, only to say one word, and he would cut
through the ranks of her perplexities and ter-
rors, and carry her away.
“Why not, if you love me?” he insisted. “Are
you afraid of those people? Are you afraid of
Cressy; He shall never come near you.”
She shook her head. “No, it isn’t that.”
He stooped and looked into her face. “Then
what keeps you?”
She looked up slowly.
“My honor.”
“Your honor P” For a moment her answer
seemed to have him by surprise. He mused, and
again it came dreamily back to her that he was
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
looking at her across a vast difference no will
of hers could ever bridge.
“Don’t you see what I am?” she murmured.
“Can’t you imagine where I stand in this hideous
business? It’s my trust. I’m on their side; and,
oh, in spite of everything, I can’t make myself
believe in giving it to you!”
He pondered this very gravely.
“Yes, I can see how you might feel that way.
But is the feeling really yours? Are you sure
they haven’t put it on you? Might not my honor
do as well for you, if you were mine?” It struck
her she had never connected him with honor, and
he read her thought with a flash of humor.
“Evidently it hasn’t occurred to you that I have
an honor.”
She looked at him sadly. “In spite of every-
thing I’m on the other side. I belong to them.”
“You belong to me.” His hand closed on hers.
“Mine is the only honor you have to think of.
Can’t you trust that I am right? Can't you
see it through my eyes? Can’t you make your-
self all mine?” His arm was around her now,
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T H E D E M I G O D
around her for the first moment she could hardly
stand. She took an uncertain step forward; then
with a rush she reached the white curtains. They
flapped behind her. She heard Kerr laugh, a
note, quiet, caressing, almost content. It came
from the gloom like a disembodied voice of tri-
umph. Her rush had carried her into the middle
of the anteroom. At this last moment was there
to be no miracle to save her? There was no
rescue among these dumb walls and closed-
up windows. The purple child gave her a sharp,
bird-like glance, as if the most that this wild
woman could want was “change.” Flora looked
behind her and saw Kerr, who had put aside the
curtains and was standing looking at her. He
was bright and triumphant in that twilight room.
He was not afraid of losing her now. He knew
in that one moment he had imprisoned her for
ever! She saw him approaching, but though
all her mind and spirit strained for flight, some-
thing had happened to her will. It tottered like
her knees.
He stooped and picked up an artificial rose,
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T H E Co As T o F c H A N C E
which had fallen from her hat, and put it into
her hand. A moment, with his head bent, he
stood looking into her face, but without touching
her.
“Sit down over there,” he said, and pointed
toward a chair against the wall. She went
meekly like a prisoner. He spoke to the child in
the purple apron, who was still sitting behind
the desk. He put some money on the cash-desk
in front of her. It was gold. It shone gor-
geously in the dull surrounding, and the child
pounced upon it, incredulous of her luck. Then
he turned, crossed the room, soundlessly opened
the door, and went out into the violet dark of
the street.
The child furtively tested her coin, biting it
as if to taste the glitter, and Flora waited, lost,
given up by herself, passively watching for the
room to be filled again with his presence. He
was back after a long minute, and this time took
up his stand at the door, where, pushing aside
the tight-drawn curtain a little, from time to
time he looked out into the street. Sometimes his
326


T H E D E M I G O D
eyes followed the cracks of the plastered wall,
sometimes he studied the floor at his feet; every
moment she saw he was alert, expectantly watch-
ing and waiting; and though he never looked at
her sitting behind him, she felt his protection
between her and the darkening street. She sat in
the shadow of it, feeling it all around her, claim-
ing her as it would claim her henceforth, from
the world. A ghost of light glimmered along
the curtains of the window, and stopped, quiver-
ing, in the middle of the curtained door. Then
he turned about and beckoned her. Sheer weak-
ness kept her sitting. He went to her, took her
face between his hands, and looked into it long
and intently.
“You don’t want to go!” The words fell from
his lips like an accusal. His sudden realization
of what she felt held him there dumb with dis-
appointment. “You have won me,” her look was
saying, “and yet I have immediately become a
worthless thing, because I am going; and I don’t
believe in going.” She felt she had failed him—
how cruelly, was written in his face. But it was
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
only for a moment that she made him hesitate.
The next he shook himself free.
“Well, come,” he said.
She felt that all doors would fly open at his
bidding. She felt herself swept powerless at his
will with all the yielding in her soul that she had
felt in her body when his arms were around her.
He had taken her by the hand—he was leading
her out into the gusty night, where all lights
flared—the gas-lights marching up the street
over the hill into the unknown, and the lights
gleaming at her like eyes in the dark bulk of
the carriage waiting before the door. It all
glimmered before her—a picture she might never
see again—might not see after she passed
through the carriage door that gaped for her.
The will that had swept her out of the door was
moving her beyond her own will, as it had moved
her that morning in the garden, beyond all
things that she knew. There was no feeling left
in her but the despair of extreme surrender.
She found herself in the carriage. She saw
his face in the carriage door as pale as anger,
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T H E D E M I G O D
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.
329


XVIII
GO BLIN TACTICS
OR a little she kept her face hidden, shut-
ting out the present, jealously living
with the wonderful thing that had hap-
pened to her. It was as wonderful as anything
she had dreamed might come when she had writ-
ten 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 whisper-
ing; and again she seemed to see him standing
outside the window in the deep blue evening hold-
ing out his hands to her cry of “I love you!”
330


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
jolting as if every spring were at its last leap.
She was out of the quiet, blue street. Mont-
gomery Avenue, with its lights, its glittering
gilt names and Latin insignia, was traveling by
on either side of her. The voice of the city was
growing louder in her ears, the crowd on the
pavement increased. At intervals the carriage
dipped through glares of electric lights that il-
luminated its interior in a flash broader than day
—the ragged cushions, the raveled tassels, the
limp-swinging shutters, and, glimmering in the
midst, wild and disheveled, herself in all the lit-
tle wavy mirrors. She sat looking out at the
maze of moving lights and figures without see-
ing them, intent on an idea that was growing
clearer, larger, moment by moment in her mind.
Kerr's appearance in her garden—his cap-
ture of her—had not been the fantastic freak
it had seemed. He had had his purpose. He had
taken her out of her environment; he had car-
ried her beyond succor or menace just that he
might carry them both so much further and
faster through their differences. They had not
332


G O B L IN TA CT I CS
reached the point of agreement yet, but might
they not on some other ground, where they could
be unchallenged? It seemed to her if she could
only meet him on her own ground for once—
instead of for ever on Clara’s or Harry's—only
meet him alone, somewhere beyond their reach, it
might be accomplished, it might be brought to
the end she so wished. Yet where to go to be rid
of Clara and Harry, the two so closely asso-
ciated with every fact of her life?
The hack, which had been moving along at a
rapid pace, slowed now to a walk among the
thickening traffic, and from a mere moving mass
the crowd appeared as individuals—a stream of
dark figures and white faces. Her eyes slipped
from one to another. Here one stood still on the
lamp-lit corner, looking down, with lips moving
quickly and silently. It was strange to see those
rapid, eager, moving lips with no sound from
them audible. Then her eyes were startled by
something familiar in the figure, though the di-
rect down-glare of the ball of light above him
distorted the features with shadows. She pressed
333


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
her face against the window-glass in palpitating
doubt. It was Harry.
She cowered in the corner of the carriage. In
a moment the risks of her situation were before
her. Had he seen her? Oh, no, at least not yet.
He had been too intent on whomever he was talk-
ing to. She peered to make sure that he was still
safely on the street corner. He was just op-
posite, and now that the eddy of the crowd had
left a little clear space around him she saw with
whom he was talking. It was a small, very small,
shabby, nondescript man—possibly only a boy,
so short he seemed. His back was toward her.
His clothes hung upon him with an odd un-
Anglo-Saxon air. He was foreign with a for-
eignness no country could explain—Italian, Por-
tuguese, Greek—whatever he was, he was a
strange foil to Harry, so bright and burnished.
The hack was turning. She realized with dis-
may that it was turning sharp around that very
corner where they stood. Suppose Harry should
chance to glance through its window and
see Flora Gilsey sitting trembling within. The
334


G O B L I N T A CT I C S
hack wheezed and cramped, and all at once she
heard it scrape the curb. Then she was lost!
She looked up brave in her desperation, ready to
meet Harry’s eyes. She saw the back of his head.
For a moment it loomed directly above her, then
it moved. He was separating from his com-
panion. With one stride he vanished out of the
square frame of the window, and there remained
full fronting her, staring in upon her, the face
of his companion.
Back flashed to her memory the goldsmith’s
shop—dull hues and odors all at once—and that
wide unwinking stare that had fixed her from
the other side of the counter. The blue-eyed
Chinaman! In the glare of white light, in his
terrible clearness and nearness, she knew him
instantly.
The hack plunged forward, the face was
gone. But she remained nerveless, powerless to
move, frozen in her stupefaction, while her ve-
hicle pursued its crazy course. It was clatter-
ing up Sutter Street toward Kearney, where at
this hour the town was widest awake, and the
335


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
crowd was a crowd she knew. At any instant
people she knew might be going in and out of
the florists’ shops and restaurants, or passing
her in carriages. And what of Flora Gilsey in
her morning dress and garden hat, in a night-
hawk of a Telegraph Hill hack, flying through
their midst like a mad woman? They were the
least of her fears. She had forgotten them. The -
only thing that remained to her was the memory
of Harry and the blue-eyed Chinaman together
on the street corner.
She had been given a glimpse of that large
scheme that Harry was carrying forward some-
where out of her sight—such a glimpse as Clara
had given her in the rifling of her room, as Ella
had shown in her hysterical revelation. Again
she felt the threat of these ominous signs of
danger, as a lone general at a last stand with his
troops clustered at his back sees in front, and
behind, on either side of him, the glitter of bayo-
nets in the bushes.
She was in the midst of the tangled traffic of
Kearney Street. Swimming lights and crowds
336


G O B L IN TA CT I CS
were all around her. She peered forth cau-
tiously upon it. She saw a florid face, a woman
she knew casually—and there her eyes fastened,
not for the woman’s brilliant presence, but for
what she saw directly in front of it, thrown into
relief upon its background—a short and shabby
figure, foreign, equivocal, reticent, the figure of
a blue-eyed Chinaman.
He was standing still while the crowd flowed
past him. This time he was alone. He seemed
to be waiting, yet not to watch, as if he had al-
ready seen what he was expecting and knew
that it must pass his way. It was uncanny, his
reappearance, at a second interval of her route,
standing as if he had stood there from the first,
patient, expectant, motionless. It was worse than
uncanny.
All at once an idea, wild and illogical enough,
jumped up in her mind. Couldn’t this miserable
vehicle that was lumbering like a disabled bug
move faster and rattle her on out of reach of
the glare, the publicity, the threat of discovery,
and, above all, of her discomforting notion?
337


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
She breathed out relief as the carriage dipped
into the comparative quiet again, and she felt
herself being driven on and up a gently rising
street between block-apart, lone gas-lamps. She
thrust her face as far out of the window as she
dared, looking back at the lights and traffic
which were drifting behind her. At this distance
she could single out no one figure from the
crowd, and no figure which could possibly be
that of the blue-eyed Chinaman was moving up
the street behind her. There only remained a
disquieting memory of him on the corner with
Harry. Together they made a combination, to
her mind, threatening to the man she loved, for
whom she so desperately feared.
If ever she had felt herself helpless, it was
in this moment passing along the half-lit, half-
empty city street. By what she knew, by what
she wore around her neck, she was separated
from all peace-abiding citizens—she was out-
lawed. Every closed door and shaded window
(so many she had opened or looked out of !) now
seemed shut and shaded against her for ever.
338


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
the driver to peer down like an old bird of prey
from his perch and demand her reason. But
he made no sound or sign. It may have been
that in his time he had heard even wilder re-
quests than hers. He only sent his whip crack-
ing forward to the ears of the lean horse, and
the cab began to rattle like a mad thing.
Flora leaned back with a sigh of relief. The
mere sensation of being borne along at such a
rate, the sight of houses, lamp-posts, even people
here and there, flitting away from the eye, unable
to interrupt her course, or even to glimpse her
identity, gave her a feeling of safety. The more
she was getting into the residence part of the
city, the more deserted the streets, the closer shut
the windows of the houses, the more it seemed to
her as if the night itself covered and abetted her
flight. So swiftly she went it was only a wonder
how the cab held together. She had never trav-
eled more rapidly in her light and silent car-
riage. Now they whirled the corner and plunged
at the steep rise of a cross street. Just above,
over the crown of the hill, she saw the sky, moon-
340


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
unconscious hand was doubled to a fist upon
her breast, fast closed upon the sapphire.
With all her body braced, she leaned and
looked far backward, and far forward, and now
for a long time saw nothing. The distance was
empty. The glare of arc-lights showed her
the shadows of her own progress—the shadow
of her vehicle shooting huge and misshapen
now on the cobbles, now along a blank wall,
wheels, body and driver, all lurching like one;
now heaped on each other, now tenuously drawn
out, now twisting themselves into shapes the
mind could not account for. For here, whirling
the corner, the carriage seemed to wave an arm,
and now between the wheels, fast twinkling, she
saw a pair of legs. She leaned and looked, so
mesmerized with this grotesque appearance that
it scarcely troubled her that all the way down the
last long hill she knew it must be that a man
was running at her wheel.
The warm lights of her house were just be-
fore her, offering succor, stiffening courage. It
would be but a dash from the door of the cab to
342


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
on beyond the curtains of the drawing-room,
but all her listening power was concentrated on
the silence without—a silence that remained un-
broken, and out of which Shima returned with
the same imperturable countenance.
“He wants ten dollars.”
“Oh, yes, give him anything,” Flora gasped.
If that was all the Chinaman had followed her
for But her relief was momentary, for in-
stantly Shima was back again.
“I gave him ten dollars, the cabman.”
Now she gasped indeed. “Oh, the cabman'
But the other one!” For an instant Shima
seemed to hesitate; glancing past her shoulder
as if there was something that he doubted be-
hind her. Then as she still hung on his an-
swer he brought it out in a lowered voice.
“Madam, there was no one else there.”
344


XIX
THE FACE IN THE GAR DEN
ITH her hand at her distressed
forehead she turned, and saw, be-
tween the curtains of the drawing-
room, Harry, and behind him Clara, looking out
at her with faces of amazement, and she fancied,
horror. Harry came straight for her.
“Why, you poor child, what's happened to
you?”
She gave him a look. She couldn't forget
their scene in the red room, but the mixture of
apprehension and real concern in his face went
far toward melting her. She might even have
told him something, at least a part of the truth,
but for that other standing watching her from
the drawing-room door. With Clara, there was
nothing for it but to ignore her disordered hair,
345


T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
her hat in her hand, her ruffle torn and trailing
on the floor.
She put on a splendid nonchalance, as if it
were none of their business. “Oh, I am sorry
if I kept you waiting.”
It was Clara who spoke to her, past Harry’s
blank astonishment. “Why, we don’t mind
waiting a few moments more while you dress.”
“I shan’t have to dress.” Such a statement
Flora felt must amaze even Shima, waiting like
an image on the threshold of the dining-room.
But if these people were waiting to be amazed
she felt herself equal to amazing them to the
top of their expectations.
“Oh, but at least go up and let Marrika
give you some pins,” Clara protested, hurrying
forward as if fairly to drive her.
“Thank you, no, this will do,” Flora said.
On one point she was quite clear. She wasn’t
going to leave those two together for a mo-
ment to discuss her plight; not till she could first
get at Harry alone. Then and there she turned
to the mirror and with her combs began to catch
346


T H E FA C E IN T H E G A R D E N
back and smooth the disorder of her hair, seeing
all the while Clara’s reflection hovering per-
turbed and vigilant in the background of her
OWn.
While her hands were busy seeming to ac-
commodate Clara, her mind was marshaled to
Clara’s outwitting. The only thing to do was
to tell nothing. Let Clara spend her time in
guessing. Unless by some wild chance she had
seen Kerr in the garden she couldn’t come near
the truth of what had happened. But what was
to be done with Harry? Harry was too close
to her to be ignored. Her attitude toward him
had undergone a change. In the moment in
the red room, when she had seen him break the
one feeling that had held her to him, the feeling
of awe and respect had evaporated. She felt
that it was quite impossible now for them to go
on on the same footing; yet, as long as she
kept the sapphire she must somehow manage to
keep up an appearance of it. She must tell
him something.
At that dreadful dinner, where she sat a con-
347


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
something extraordinary. I would have told
you on the spot, only I thought you would
rather Clara didn’t know it.”
“I?” That left him staring. “What have
I to do with it?”
At this she gave him a long look. “It was
through you he ever had the chance of seeing
me. I mean the blue-eyed Chinaman. He has
followed me all the evening. He followed me
here to the very door.” Flora’s array of facts
fell so fast, so hard, so pointed, that for a mo-
ment they held him speechless in the middle of
the room.
Any fleeting suspicion she might have had of
his complicity in the Chinaman’s pursuit van-
ished. He showed plain bewilderment. For a mo-
ment he was more at sea than herself. The next
she saw the shadow of a thought so disturbing
that it sharpened his ruddy face to harshness.
He stepped toward her. “What did he say to
you?” He loomed directly above her, threaten-
ing. i.
“Nothing. He didn't say anything. But I
350


T H E FA C E IN T H E G A R D E N
know he followed me quite to the house, for I
saw his shadow all the way down the hill.”
Harry still breathed quickly. “Where—how
did he come across you?”
She'd been prepared for that question.
“I was driving down Sutter Street and he
saw me at the carriage window.”
Harry stood tense, poised, catching every-
thing as she tossed it off; then as if all at once
he felt the full weight of the burden, “Lord!”
he said, and let himself down heavily into a
chair. It was plain in his helpless stare that he
knew exactly what it all meant. Laying her
hands on the high chair-arms, leaning down so
that she could look into his face, Flora made
her thrust.
“What do you think he wants?” she gently
asked. It was as if she would coax it out of him.
His answer was correspondingly low and soft.
“It’s that damned ring.”
She heard her secret fear spoken aloud with
such assurance that she waited, certain at the
next moment Harry's voice would people the si-
351


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
lence with all the facts that had so far escaped
her. But when, after a moment of looking be-
fore him he did speak, he went back to the begin-
ning, which they both knew.
“You know he didn’t want to part with it in
the first place.”
“Yes, yes; but he did,” Flora insisted.
“Well,” he answered quickly, “but that was
before—” He caught himself and went on with
a scarcely perceptible break: “He may have had
a better offer for it since.”
He couldn’t have put it more mildly, and yet
that temperate phrase brought back to her in
a flash a windy night full of raucous voices and
the great figures in the paper that had covered
half a page—the reward for the Crew Idol.
Could it be that—that sum so overwhelming to
human caution and human decency which Harry
had cloaked by his grudging phrase “some bet-
ter offer”? What else could he mean? And what
else could the blue-eyed Chinaman mean by his
strange pursuit of her?
“Some one must have wanted it awfully,”
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T H E FA C E IN T H E G A R D EN
Flora tried again, keeping step with his mild ad-
mission.
Harry covered her with an impressive stare.
“There’s something queer about that ring,” he
nodded to her. He was going to tell her at last!
She gazed at him in expectation, but presently
she realized that nothing more was coming. He
had stopped at the beginning. She tried to
urge him on.
“Queer, what do you mean?” She was feign-
ing surprise.
He looked at her cautiously. “Why, you
must have noticed it yourself when we were at
the shop. And now, to-night, his having fol-
lowed you.”
She could see him hesitate, choosing his
words. She knew well enough her own fear of
saying too much—but, what was Harry afraid
of? Did he suspect her feeling for Kerr? Was
that why he was holding back, leaving out, giv-
ing her the small, expurgated version of what
he knew. She tried again, making it plainer.
“You think the ring is something he ought
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ſ T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
not to have had; something that belongs some-
where else?”
He looked away from her, around the room,
as if to pick up his answer from some of the
corners. “Well, anyway, it’s lucky we waited
about that setting,” he said with quick irrele-
vance. “If you’re going to be annoyed in this
way you’d better let me have it.”
Why hadn’t she thought of that! It was
what any man might say, after hearing such a
story as hers, yet it was the last thing she had
thought of, and the last thing she wanted.
“Oh, leave it with me,” she quavered, “at .
least till you’re sure!”
“Oh, no!” He gave his head a quick, decided
shake. “If something should come out you
wouldn’t want to be mixed up in it.”
“Then why not give it back to the China-
man?” she tried him.
“Oh, that's ridiculous.” He was in a passion.
His darkening eyes, his swelling nostrils, his
aspect so out of proportion to her mild and al-
most playful suggestion, frightened her. He
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T H E FA C E IN T H E G A R D EN
saw it and instantly his mood dropped to mere
irritation. “Oh, Flora, don’t make a scene about
it. This thing has been on my mind for days
—the thought that you had the ring. I was
afraid I had no business to let you have it in
the first place, and what you’ve told me to-
night has clean knocked me out. I don’t know
what I’m saying. Come, let me have it; and if
there’s anything queer about the business, at
least we’ll get it cleared up.”
But, smiling, she retreated before him.
“Why, Flora,” he argued, half laughing, but
still with that dry end of irritation in his voice,
“what on earth do you want to keep the thing
for?”
By this time she backed against the window,
and faced him. “Why, it’s my engagement
ring.”
He looked at her. She couldn't tell whether
he was readiest to laugh or rage.
“You gave it to me for that,” she pleaded.
“Why shouldn’t I keep it, until you give me a
real reason for giving it up? If you really know
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T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
anything, why don’t you tell me?” She was sure
she had him there; but he burst out at last:
“Well, for a fact, I know it is stolen!” He
leaned toward her; and his arms, still flung
out with the hands open as argument had left
them, seemed to her frightened eyes all ready
for her, ready with his last argument, his
strength.
Once before she had feared herself face to
face with the same threat in the eyes and body of
another man, but here, her only fear was lest
Harry should get the sapphire away from her.
His doing so would dash down no ideal of him. It
was mere physical terror that made her tremble
and raise her hand to her breast. Instantly
she saw how she had betrayed the sapphire
again. He had taken hold of her wrist, and,
twist as she might, he held it, horribly gentle.
She pressed back against the glass until she
felt it hard behind her.
“Harry,” she whispered, “if you care any-
thing, if you ever want me for yours, you’ll
take your hands away.” She meant it; she was
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T H E FA C E IN T H E G A R D EN
sincere in that moment, for all she shrank from
him. Her body and mind would not have been
too great a price to give him for the sapphire.
But these he seemed to set aside as trivial.
These he expected as a matter of course; he was
going to have that other thing, too—the thing
she had clung to as a man clings to life; and
that now, parting from, she would give up not
without a struggle as sharp as that with which
the body gives up breath. She wrestled. He
seemed all hands. He put aside her struggles,
her pleadings, as if they were thistle-down.
Then all at once she felt his arm around her
neck. She couldn’t move her body. She could
only turn her head from his hot breath. For
a moment he held her, and yet another moment;
and then, terrified at what this strange immobil-
ity might mean, she raised her eyes and saw he
was not looking at her. Though he held her fast
he was not conscious of her. Straight over her
head he looked, through the window and down
into the garden. Her eyes followed. It lay be-
neath, the wonder of its morning aspect all
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
blanched and dim. She saw the silhouette of
rose branches in black on the sky. She saw
the flowers and bushes all one dull tone. But in
the midst of them the oval of the path shone
white; and there, as in the afternoon, standing,
looking upward, was the dark figure of a man.
Her heart gave a great leap. Just so she'd
been summoned once before that day, but what
infernal freak had fetched him back to repeat
that dangerous sally, and brought him finally
into his enemy’s grasp? She tried to make a
gesture to warn him, and just there Harry re-
leased her, dropped her so that she half fell
upon the window-seat, and made a dash across
the room for the light. In a moment they were
in darkness. In a moment, to Flora pressed
against the window, the garden sprang clear,
and on the formless figure below the face ap-
peared, white in the starlight looking up. She
cried out in wonder. It was not Kerr. It was
the blue-eyed Chinaman.
TAfter her haunted drive, after her escape,
after Shima’s search, he was there, still inex-
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T H E FA C E IN T H E G A R D EN
orably there; small, diminished by the great
façade of the house, but looking up at it with
his calm eye, surveying it, measuring its height,
numbering its doors, trying its windows. Harry
was beside her again. He was tugging fran-
tically at the window. It resisted. She saw
his hands trembling while he wrestled with it.
Then it went shrieking up and he leaned out.
“What do you want?” he called, and, though
he used no name, Flora saw he knew with whom
he was speaking. The Chinaman stood immobile,
lifting his round, white face, whose mouth seemed
to gape a little. Harry leaned far out and low-
ered his voice.
“Go away, Joe! Don't come here; never
come here!” There was a quiver in his voice.
Anger or apprehension, or both, whatever his
passion was, for the moment it overwhelmed
him, and as the Chinaman stood unmoved, un-
moving, at his commands, Harry turned sharp
from the window and dashed out of the room.
Flora heard him running, running down the
stairs. She hung there breathless, waiting to
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
see him meet the motionless figure; but while
she looked and waited that motionless figure
suddenly took life. It moved, it turned, it flit-
ted, it mixed with shadows, became a shadow;
and then there was nothing there.
Nothing was there when Harry burst out of
the garden door and stood staring in the empty
oval. How distracted, how violent he looked,
balked of his prey! He was stalking the gar-
den, beating the bushes, walking up and down.
All at once he stopped and raised a white baf-
fled face to her window. She shrank away.
She was in peril of Harry now. He knew her
no longer innocent. She had held the ring
against him in the face of the fact he had told
her it was stolen. And he must guess her mo-
tive. He must suspect her now.
In her turn she ran, up and up a twisted
side stair, shortest passage to her own rooms.
At least lock and key could keep her safe for
the next few hours. After that she must think
of something else.
360


XX
FLIGHT
Y five o'clock in the morning she was
B already moving softly to and fro, so
softly as not to rouse the sleeping
Marrika. By seven her lightest bag was
packed, herself was bathed, brushed, dressed
even to hat and gloves, and standing at her
window with all the listening alert look of one
in a waiting-room expecting a train. She was
watching for the city to begin to stir; watch-
ing for enough traffic below in the streets to
make her own movement there not too notice-
able. Yet every moment she waited she was
in terror lest her fate should take violent form
at last and assail her in the moment of escape.
She listened for a foot ascending to her room
with a message from Clara demanding an au-
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F L I G HT
and gleaming vista of formal houses and formal
gardens that she knew and that knew her so
well. It was a cross-town car bound for quite
another locality that she climbed aboard. It
was filled only with mechanics and workmen with
picks and shovels. She sat crowded elbow to
elbow among odors of stale tobacco, stale garlic,
stale perspiration, and looking straight before
her through the car window watched the aspect
of the city, still gray, grow less gleaming and
formal and finally quite dirty, and quite, quite
dull.
This was all as she had intended, very much
in the direction of her errand, and safe. But in
Market Street the car-line ended, and she was
turned out again in this broad artery of com-
merce where she was in danger of meeting at
any moment people she knew. She made straight
across the thoroughfare to its south side, turned
down Eighteenth and in a moment was hidden in
Mission Street.
Now really the worst danger of detection
was over. She saw no reason why a woman with
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T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
a small hat and a hand-bag should not pass for
a school-teacher. Indeed, the men did let her
go at that, but the women—women with shawls
over their heads, and women with uncovered
heads and ear-rings in their ears, and thin,
weak-eyed women with bags in their hands—the
teachers themselves, one of whom she hoped to
pass for—all stared at her. It didn’t matter
much, she thought, whether they thought her
queer or not since they couldn’t stop her.
She went, glancing at windows as she passed,
looking for a place where she could go to break-
fast. She turned into the first restaurant that
offered, and after a hasty glance around it to
be sure no one lurked there that might betray
her she subsided into the clatter with relief. It
was one more place to let time pass in, for it
would be full two hours before she could fulfil
her errand. She stayed as long as she dared,
drinking two cups of the hideous coffee; stayed
while many came and went, until she felt the
proprietor noticing her. That revived her con-
sciousness of the possible dangers still between
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
was looking. Her breath was short from fast
climbing. Her cheeks under her thin veil were
hot and bright.
As she neared the hilltop she glanced at a
card from her chatelaine, consulting the ad-
dress upon it. Then anxiously she scanned the
house-fronts. It was not this one, nor this;
but the square white mansion she came to now
stood so far retired at the end of its lawn that
she could not make out the number. As she
peered a young girl came down the steps be-
tween the dark wings of the cypress hedge, a
slim, fair, even-gaited creature dressed for the
street and drawing on her gloves. As she
passed Flora made sure she had seen her before.
There was something familiar in the carriage
of the girl's head and hands; something also
like a pale reflection of another presence. Pale
as it was, it was enough to reassure her that
this was the house she wanted.
She ascended the steps beneath the arch of
cypress and immediately found herself entering
an atmosphere quieter even than that of the little
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F L I G HT
street below. It was quiet with the quiet of pro-
tectedness, as if some one brooding, vigilant care
encircled it, defending it against all inroads of
violent action and thought. It had been long
since any young girl had carried such a heart of
passionate hopes and fears up this mossed path
between these peaceful flower-beds.
This appearance of the place began to bring
before Flora the full enormity and impertinence
of her errand, but though her heart beat on her
side as loud as the brass knocker upon the door,
she had no mind for turning back.
A high, cool, darkly gleaming interior, mel-
low with that precious tint of time which her
own house so lacked, received her. And here, as
well as out of doors, all the while she sat wait-
ing she felt that protected peace was still the
deity of the place. To Flora’s eager heart time
was streaming by, but the tall clock facing her
measured it out slowly. Its longest golden fin-
ger had pointed out five minutes before the
sweeping of a skirt coming down the hall
brought her to her feet.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
Mrs. Herrick came in hatless, a honeysuckle
leaf caught in her gray crown of hair, gera-
niums in her hand. Flora had never seen her so
informal and so gay.
“I would have asked you to come out into the
garden, except that it’s so wet, and there’s no
place to sit,” she said.
Flora apologized. “I knew if I came at this
hour I should interrupt you, but really there was
no help for it.” She glanced down at her satchel.
“I had to go this morning, and before I went I
had to see you about the house. I’m going down
to look at it and—and to stop a while.”
Mrs. Herrick hesitated, deprecated. “But
you know Mrs. Britton wasn't satisfied with the
price I asked.”
“Oh,” said Flora promptly, “but I shall be
perfectly satisfied with it, and I want to take
possession at once.”
The positive manner in which she waved
Clara out of her way brought up in Mrs. Her-
rick’s face a faint flash of surprise; but it was
gone in an instant, supplanted by her question-
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
it first with you, to have you go over it with me
and tell me how to take care of it, as it’s al-
ways been done. I should hate to do it any dis-
respect.”
Her hostess smiled with ready answer. “Of
course I will go down. I should be glad, but
it must be in a day or two. Indeed, perhaps it
would be better for you to have your people
first, and I can come down, say Monday after-
noon or Tuesday.”
Flora faced this unexpected turn of the mat-
ter a little blankly. “Ah, but the trouble is I
can’t go down alone.”
It was Mrs. Herrick’s turn to look blank. “But
Mrs. Britton?”
“Mrs. Britton isn't going with me; she
can’t.”
“I see.” Mrs. Herrick with a long, soft
scrutiny seemed to be taking in more than
Flora’s mere words represented. “And you
wouldn’t put it off until she can?”
“I couldn't put it off a moment,” Flora ended
with a little breathless laugh. “I do so wish
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F L I G HT
you would come down with me this morning, for
I must go, and you see I can’t go alone.”
Mrs. Herrick, sitting there, composed, in her
cool, flowing, white and violet gown with the red
flowers in her lap, still looked at Flora inquir-
ingly. “But aren’t there some women in your
party old enough to make it possible and
young enough to take pleasure in it?”
Flora shook her head. “Oh, no,” she said.
Her house of cards was tottering. She could
not keep up her brave smiling. She knew her
distress must be plain. Indeed, as she looked at
Mrs. Herrick she saw the effect of it. Gaiety
still looked at her out of that face, but the
warmth, the spontaneity were gone; and the
steady eyes, if anything so aloof could be sus-
picious, surely suspected her.
Her heart sank. If only she had told the
truth—even so much of it as to say there was
something she could not tell. What she had
said was unworthy not only of herself but of
the end she was so desperately holding out for.
Now in the lucid gaze confronting her she knew
a
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
all her intentions were taking on a dubious color,
stained false, like her words, under the dark
cloud of her own misrepresentation. Yet they
were not false, she knew. Her motives, the end
she was struggling for, were as austere as truth
itself. She could not give up without one bold
stroke to clear them of this accusation.
“Do you think there's anything queer about
it?” she faltered.
“Queer?” To Flora’s ears that sounded the
coldest word she had ever heard. “I hardly
think I understand what you mean.”
“I mean is it that you think there’s more in
what I’m asking of you than I have said?” The
two looked at each other and before that flat
question Mrs. Herrick drew back a little in her
chair.
“I have no right to think about it at all,” she
said.
“Well, there is,” Flora insisted. “There’s a
great deal more. I am sorry. I should have
told you, but I was afraid. I don't know why
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F L I G H T
I was afraid of you, except that in this matter
I’ve grown afraid of every one. It’s true that
there may be people going down—at least, a
person. But it isn’t, as I let you think it, a
house party at all. It’s for something, some-
thing that I can’t do any other way—some-
thing,” she had a sudden flash of insight, “that,
if I could tell you, you would believe in, too.”
Mrs. Herrick’s look had faded to a mere con-
centrated attention. “You mean that there is
something you wish to do for whoever is going
down?”
“Oh, something I must do,” Flora insisted.
Mrs. Herrick considered a moment. “Why
can’t he do it for himself?” she threw out sud-
denly.
It made Flora start, but she met it gallantly.
“Because he won’t. I shall have to make him.”
“You!” For a moment Flora knew that she
was preposterous in Mrs. Herrick’s eyes—and
then that she was pathetic. Her companion
was looking at her with a sad sort of humor.
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
“My dear, are you sure that that is your re-
sponsibility?”
Flora’s answering smile was faint. “It seems
as strange to me as it seems absurd to you, but
I think I have done something already.”
“Are you sure, or has he only let you think
so? We have all at some time longed, or even
thought it was our duty, to adjust something
when it would have been safer to have kept our
hand off,” Mrs. Herrick went on gently.
“Oh, safer,” Flora breathed. “Oh, yes; in-
deed, I know. But if something had been put
into your hands without your choice; if all the
life of some one that you cared about depended
on you, would you think of being safe?” Flora,
leaning forward, chin in hand, with shining
eyes, seemed fairly to impart a reflection of her
own passionate concentration to the woman be-
fore her.
Mrs. Herrick, so calm in her reposeful atti-
tude, calm as the old portrait on the wall be-
hind her, none the less began to show a curious
sparkle of excitement in her face. “If I were
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F L I G H T
sure that person’s life did depend on me,” she
measured out her words deliberately. “But that
so seldom happens, and it is so hard to tell.”
“But if you were sure, sure, sure!” Flora
rang it out certainly.
Mrs. Herrick in her turn leaned forward.
“Ah, even then it would depend on him. And
do you think you can make a man do otherwise
than his nature?”
“You think I should fail?” Flora took it up
fearlessly. “Well, if I do, at least I shall have
done my best. I shall have to have done my best
or I can never forgive myself.”
“I see,” Mrs. Herrick sighed. “But it sounds
to me a risk too great for any reward that
could come of its success.” She thought. “If
you could tell me more.” Then, as Flora only
looked at her wistfully and silently: “Isn’t there
some one you can confide in? Not Mrs. Brit-
ton?”
“Clara? Oh, no; never!” Flora startled
Mrs. Herrick with the passionate repudiation.
“But could not Mr. Cressy—” and with that
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
broken sentence several things that Mrs. Her-
rick had been keeping back looked out of her
face.
Flora answered with a stare of misery. “I
know what you must be thinking—what you can
not help thinking,” she said, “that the whole
thing is unheard-of–outrageous—especially
for a girl so soon to—to be—” She caught her
breath with a sob, for the words she could not
speak. “But there is nothing in this disloyal to
my engagement, even though I can not speak
of it to Harry Cressy; and nothing I hope to
gain for myself by what I am trying to do. If
I succeed it will only mean I shall never see him
—the other one—again.”
Mrs. Herrick rose, in her turn beseeching.
“Oh, I can’t help you go into it! It is too du-
bious. My dear, I know so much better than
you what the end may mean.”
“I know what the end may mean, and I can’t
keep out of it.”
“But I can not go with you.” There was a
stern note in Mrs. Herrick's voice.
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F L I G HT
Flora looked around the room, the sunny win-
dows, the still shadows, the tall, monotonous
clock, as if this were the last glimpse of peace
and protection she would ever have. She rose
and put out her hand.
“I’m afraid I didn’t quite realize how much
I was asking of you. You have been very good
even to listen to me. It’s right, I suppose, that
I should go alone.”
Mrs. Herrick looked at her in dismay. “But
that is impossible!” Then, as Flora turned
away, she kept her hand. “Think, think,” she
urged, “how you will be misunderstood.”
“Oh, I shall have to bear that—from the peo-
ple who don't know.”
“Yes, and even from the one for whom you
are spending yourself!”
Flora gave her head a quick shake. “He un-
derstands,” she said.
“My dear, he is not worth it.”
Flora turned on her with anger. “You don’t
know what he is worth to me!”
Mrs. Herrick looked steadily at this unan-
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F LIG HT
tears before she was able to see what she was
writing.
It had all been brought about more quickly
and completely than she had hoped, but it was
in her mind all the while she indited her mes-
sage to Clara, that Kerr, for whom it had been
accomplished, was not yet informed of the ex-
istence of the scheme, or the part of guest he
was to play. Yet she was sure that if she asked
he would be promptly there. She wrote to him
briefly:
At San Mateo, at the Herricks'. I want you there to-
night. I have made up my mind.
As she was sealing it she started at a step ap-
proaching in the hall. She had wanted to con-
ceal that betraying letter before Mrs. Herrick
came back. She glanced quickly behind her,
and saw standing between the half-open folding
doors, the slim figure of a girl—slimmer,
younger even than the one who had passed her
at the gate, but like her, with the same large
eyes, the same small indeterminate chin. Just
at the chin the likeness to Mrs. Herrick failed
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
Flora stood perplexed. “I hardly know. You
see I can’t tell how soon my letter would reach
—would be received.”
“Then we would better meet them all,” the
elder woman decided.
They drove away into the face of the wet,
fresh wind and flying drops of rain. Flora,
leaning back in the carriage, looked out through
the window with quiet eyes. The spirited move-
ment of the sky, the racing of its shadows on the
grass, the rolling foliage of the trees, seen tem-
pestuous against flying cloud, were alike to her
consoling and inspiring. She had never felt
so free as now, driving through the fitful
weather, nor so safe as with this companion who
was sitting silent by her side. She was driving
away from all her complications. She was re-
treating to a fresh stronghold, where her con-
flict would be a duel hand to hand, and where
the outside forces, which had harassed her and
threatened ignobly to down her antagonist with
a stab in the back, could be held at bay.
Already she was looking toward the house
382


T H E H o U S E o F QUIET
which she had never seen as her own kindly cas-
tle; and the generous opening of its gate—old
granite crowned with rose of sharon—did not
disappoint her. The house was hidden in the
swelling trees, but the drive winding beneath
them gave glimpses through of lawns, of roses
wreathing scarletly the old gray fountain basin,
of magnolia and acacia, doubly delicate and
white and fragile beneath the thunderous sky.
The house, when finally it loomed upon them,
with its irregular roofs topped by curious
square turrets, with its tremendous ground floor
rambling away in wings on every side, with its
deep upper and lower verandas, looked out upon
by a multitude of long French windows, seemed
too large, too strangely imposing for a struc-
ture of wood. But whatever of original ugli-
ness had been there was hidden now under a
splendid tapestry of vines, and Flora, looking
up at the rose and honeysuckle that panoplied
its front, felt her throat swell for sheer delight.
For a moment after they had left the car-
riage they stood together in the porte-cochère,
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
looking around them. Then half wistfully, half
humorously, Mrs. Herrick turned to Flora. “I
do hope you won't want to buy it!”
“Oh, I’m afraid I shall,” Flora murmured,
“that is, if—” She left her sentence hanging,
as one who would have said “if I come out of this
alive,” and Mrs. Herrick, with a quick start of
protection, laid her hand on Flora's arm.
“If you must,” she said lightly, “if you do
buy it, then at least I shall know it is in good
hands.”
Flora gave her a look of gratitude, not so
much for the slight kindness of her words as for
the great kindness of her attitude in thus so
readily resuming the first assumption on which
her presence there had been invited. That was
the house itself.
It was plain to Flora from the moment she
set foot over the threshold that the house was
to be no mean ally of theirs, but Mrs. Herrick
was making it help them doubly in their hard
interval of waiting. Alone together with un-
spoken, unspeakable things between them—
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T H E H o Us E of Q U 1 ET
things that for mere decency or honor could not
be uttered—with nothing but these to think of,
nothing but each other to look at, they must
yet, in sheer desperation and suspense, have in-
evitably burst out with question or confession,
had not the great house been there to interpose
its personality. And the way Mrs. Herrick
was making the most of that! The way imme-
diately, even before she had shown anything,
she began to revivify the spirit of the place, as
the two women stood with their hats not yet off
in the room that was to be Flora's, talking and
looking out upon the lawn!
With her silences, with her expressive self as
well as with her words, Mrs. Herrick was reani-
mating it all the while they lunched and rested,
still in the upper-rooms overlooking the garden.
And later, when they made the tour of the house,
she began unwinding from her memory incidents
of its early beginnings, pieces of its intimate,
personal history, as one would make a friend fa-
miliar to another friend. And these past his-
tories and the rooms themselves were leading
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
dim in Flora's mind, and even now that Mrs.
Herrick’s words confronted her with it she
couldn’t fancy what it would be like. She
couldn’t imagine her existence going on at all
on the other side of failure.
“But suppose,” she tremulously urged, “sup-
pose there seemed only one way to take what
had happened to you, and that way, if it failed,
would leave you no afterward at all, no peace,
no courage, nothing.”
Mrs. Herrick's eyes fixed her with their deep
pity and their deeper apprehension. “There
are few things so bad as that,” she said slowly,
“and those are the ones we must not touch.”
Flora paused a moment on the brink of her
last plunge. “Do you think what I am going
to do is such a thing as that?”
“Oh, my poor child, how do I know? I hope,
I pray it is not!” Her fingers closed on Flora's
hand, and the girl clung to the kind grasp. It
was a comfort, though it could not save her
from the real finality.
In spite of the consciousness of a friendly
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T H E H o U S E o F QUIET
presence in the house her fears increased as the
afternoon waned, and her thoughts went back
to what she had left behind her, and forward to
what might be coming—the one person whom
she so longed for, and so dreaded to see. He
might be on his way now. He might at this
moment be hurrying down the hedged lane
from the station; and when he should come,
and when they two were face to face, there
would be no other “next time” for them. Every-
thing was crystalizing, getting hard. Everything
was getting too near the end to be malleable any
more. It was her last chance to make him re-
linquish his unworthy purpose; perhaps his last
chance to save himself from captivity. She
found she hadn’t a thing left unsaid, an argu-
ment left unused. What could she do that she
had not done before, except to show him by just
being here, accessible and ready to serve him at
any risk, how much she cared? Could his
generosity resist that?
Beyond the fact of getting him away safe
she didn’t think. Beyond that nothing looked
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T H E H o U S E o F QUIET
losing themselves in shrubbery. But one made a
clear turn across the lawn for the rose-garden,
where in the midst a round pool of water lay like
a flaming bit of the sunset sky. Among the
bushes red and rose and white, the elder woman
in her black, the younger in her gown more glow-
ing, with a veil over her hair, walked, and, loiter-
ing, looked down into the water, seeing their
faces reflected, and, behind, the tangled brambles
and the crimson sky. They did not speak, but at
last their companionship was peaceful, was per-
fect. The only sounds were the sleepy notes
of birds and that faint, high whisper of the tree
tops on an evening that is not still.
Loud and shrill and shriller and more pierc-
ing, from the west wing of the house, overhang-
ing the garden, the sound reached them—an
alarum that set Flora's heart to leaping. Star-
tled apart, they listened.
“Would that be—is that for you?”
“I think it’s for me.”
The words came from them simultaneously,
and almost at the same instant Flora had started
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T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
across the lawn. The sight of an aproned maid
coming out on the veranda and peering down the
garden set her running fleetly.
“It’s a telephone for Miss Gilsey,” the girl
said.
“Oh, thank you,” Flora panted.
She knew so well the voice she had expected
at the other end of the wire that the husky, boy-
ish note which reached her, attenuated by dis-
tance, struck her with dismay and disappoint-
ment.
“Ella, oh, yes; yes; Ella.” What was she
saying? Ella was using the telephone as if it
were a cabinet for secrets.
“Clara told me you were down there,” she
was explaining. “I saw her this morning, yes.
Well,”—and she could hear Ella draw in her
breath—“I’m so relieved! I thought you’d be,
too, to know. I was perfectly right. She was
after him.”
Flora faltered, “After whom?” There flashed
through her mind more than one person that,
by this time, Clara might possibly be after.
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T H E H o U S E of Q UI ET
“Why, after papa, of course!” Ella's injured
surprise brought her back to the romance of
Judge Buller. Her voice rose in sheer bewil-
derment. “Well?”
Ella's voice rose triumphantly. “I got it out
of her myself. I just came right out to her at
last. She seemed awfully surprised that I knew;
but she owned up to it, and what do you think?
I bought her off!”
“Bought her off?” Flora cried. Each fact
that Ella brought forth seemed to her more pre-
posterous 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 lit-
tle, little picture—that picture of the man called
Farrell Wand. Don't you remember, papa men-
tioned it at supper that evening at the club?
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T H E COAST O, F C H A N C E
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 audi-
ble. The receiver fell jangling into its bracket,
and Flora leaned against the wall by the tele-
phone 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
394


T H E coast of c H AN ce.
mouthpiece of the instrument the number of her
own house.
Presently the voice of Shima spoke to her.
Mrs. Britton had gone out to dinner.
“Tell her, Shima,” Flora commanded, “tell
her to come down on the earliest train.” She
hesitated, then finished in a firm voice. “Tell
her not to do anything until she has seen me.”
Shima would tell her—but Mrs. Britton had
been out all day. He did not know when she
would be back.
The words sounded ominous in Flora’s ears.
She turned away. Was everything to be fin-
ished just as she had light enough to move, but
before she had a chance?
The sound of spinning wheels on the drive
startled her to fresh hope, and sent her hurrying
down the stair. It was the phaëton returning
from the last train. Through the open door she
saw the figure of Mrs. Herrick expectant on the
veranda. Then the carriage came into the porte-
cochère and passed. With a rush she reached the
veranda, and stood there looking after it. She
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T H E H o Us E o F QUIET
near. His was the seeming of a quiet guest at
the quietest of house parties. To meet him Flora
saw she must meet him on the high ground of his
reserve. As he came under the light of the porte-
cochère his look, his greeting, his hand, were first
for Mrs. Herrick.
“We were afraid we had missed you alto-
gether,” said she.
“It was I who somehow missed your carriage,
Was hardly expecting to be expected at such an
hour.”
Flora watched them meeting each other so
gallantly with a trembling compunction. Mrs.
Herrick, who trusted her, was giving her hand
in sublime ignorance. It was vain that Flora
told herself she had given warning. She knew
she had thrown the softening veil of her spirit-
ual crisis over the ugly material fact. Had she
said, “I want you to uphold me while I meet a
thief whom I love and wish to protect. He's
magnificent in all other ways except for this one
obsession,” she knew Mrs. Herrick simply would
have cried, “Impossible, outrageous!” Yet
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
there they stood together, and as Flora looked
at them she could not have told which was of the
finer temper. Kerr's bearing was so unruffled
that it seemed as if he had flown too high to
feel the storm Flora was passing through. But
when he turned toward her, in spite of himself,
there was eagerness in his manner. He looked
questioningly at her, as if no time had inter-
vened, as if a moment before he had said to
her through the carriage window, “I will give
” and now her time had
you twenty-four hours,
come to speak.
Only the thought that time was crowding him
into a bag’s end gave her courage to vow she
would speak that night. Yet not now, while
they stood just met in the deepening dusk, in
the sweet breath of the early flowers; nor later
when they passed in friendly fashion, the three
of them, through fairy labyrinths of arch and
mirror, into the long, high, glistening room,
whose round table, spread, seemed dwarfed to
mushroom height; nor yet, while this semblance
of companionship was between them, and the
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T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
“He is coming in.” As she spoke the girl
shrank a little to one side.
With his long coat open, hanging from the
armpits, with ruffled hair, and lips apart, and
from breathlessness a little smiling, Harry ap-
peared in the doorway. Kerr leaned forward.
Mrs. Herrick did not move. She was facing
the last arrival and she was smiling more flexi-
bly, more naturally, than Harry; but it was
Flora who found the first word.
“You! I—I thought it was Clara.” She
was struggling for nonchalance, for poise, at
this worst blow, so unexpected.
“Clara won’t be down,” Harry said, advanc-
ing. “How d'ye do, Mrs. Herrick? How d'ye
do, Kerr?”
“How d'ye do?” said the Englishman, with-
out rising.
Flora gripped the arms of her chair to keep
from springing up in sheer nervous terror. A
possible purpose in Harry’s coming, that even
Mrs. Herrick’s presence would not defer, shot
through her mind. Was he alone? Or were
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T H E H o Us E of Q U 1 ET
there others—men here for a fearful purpose
—waiting beyond in the hall? But Harry had
turned his back upon the door behind him with
a finality that declared whatever danger had
come into the house was complete in his pres-
ence.
“I’ve dined, thanks,” he said, but, stripping
off his greatcoat, accepted a chair and the glass
of cordial Mrs. Herrick offered him. The ruddy,
hard quality of his face, were it divested of its
present smile, Flora thought, might well have
frightened the maid; but, for all that, it was
not so implacable as Kerr's face confronting it.
The look with which he met the intrusion had
a quality more bitter than the challenge of an
antagonist, more jealous than a mere lover's;
and that bitterness, that jealousy which was be-
tween them came out stingingly through their
small pleasantness. It could not be, Flora
thought in terror, that Mrs. Herrick intended
to leave these two enemies to each other! Mrs.
Herrick had risen; and Flora, following, saw
both men, also uprisen, hang hesitatingly, as
403


T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
if unready to be deserted; yet with well-filled
glasses, and newly smoking tobacco, both were
caught.
Then Kerr, with a quick dash of his hand,
picked up his glass. “Let us be Continental,”
he begged, and followed close at Flora's side.
Without moving his lips Kerr was speaking.
“What does this mean?”
She sensed the anger in his smothered voice,
but she dared not look at him.
“I have no idea; but I will see you.”
“When?”
Her answer leaped to her mind and her lips
at the same moment.
“In the rotunda when the house is quiet.”
Harry had followed leisurely in their wake.
The flush of haste had subsided in his face,
and when the four regrouped themselves in the
high, darkly-paneled room, among the low lights,
Flora remarked his extraordinary composure.
Bitter he might be; but all the nervousness, sus-
picion, uneasiness, that he had shown of late had
404


T H E H o U S E o F QUIET
vanished. There was a tremendous confidence
about him, the confidence of the player who holds
cards that must win the game, and sits back wait-
ing for his moment.
But she was ready to laugh at him in his se-
curity. He had underestimated his opponent.
In spite of him she was to have her meeting with
Kerr! Harry had waited too long to prevent
that, whatever he might do afterward. In this
inspired moment she felt herself touching con-
quering heights which before she had only
touched in imagination. She felt enough power
in herself to move even such a mountain of ob-
stinacy as Kerr. She stole a look at him—a
look of glad intelligence. He understood as if
she had spoken. They were to meet, while all
the house slept fast, to meet for his great re-
nunciation. Then, in the morning, when Harry
was ready with whatever move he was holding
back, Kerr would be gone. There would be no
Kerr–but she must not think of that! She
glanced at him again in the thick of the talk,
405


T H E H O U S E O F QUI ET
fully dressed. It had been early when they had
separated. The strain of the four together had
been terrific; and she was still feeling it, though
an hour had passed. She was feeling that, now
her situation was upon her, she was alone. Mrs.
Herrick could only be near her, not with her, and
Kerr was still an unknown quantity—except that
he was fire.
And there was Harry, with his terrible cer-
tainty, and no apparent thing to account for it.
It could not be there were men in the house
without the servants remarking it; but in the
garden? She peered out upon it. Only tree
shadows moved upon the lawn. Nothing glim-
mered in the walks or drives. The solitude held
her like an enchantment. She listened for the
small sounds in the house to cease, for the lights
in the lower story to go out, proclaiming all the
servants were in bed. Even after the stillness
she waited—waited to be sure it was the long
stillness.
Finally she crept to the door and opened it
boldly wide.
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T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
She stood where she was upon the threshold
trembling in a cruel fright. A gas-jet burning
far up at the end of the hall, threw a dim light
down the pale, pinkish, maked vista, void of
furniture, window or curtain; and, leaning
against the blank wall almost opposite her door,
and directly facing her, was Harry.
Without speaking they looked at each other.
He was fully dressed, but lacking his shoes, as
she noted in the acuteness of her startled senses.
The furtive suggestion of those shoeless feet
struck her with horror—formless, unreasoning.
It was like an evil dream to find him there,
stolen to her door in the night, waiting outside
it without a sound, looking her steadily, hardily
in the eye without a word.
She tried to speak, but, with terror sobbing
in her throat, the words failed. She made a
step forward with a crazy impulse to rush past
him.
He straightened, with a quick movement
toward her. She recoiled before him, precipi-
tately retreated, closed the door, shot the bolt,
408


T H E H O U S E O F QUIET
and leaned, for faintness, against the wall. She
expected each moment to hear him tap. She
neither heard a knock nor the sound of soft, de-
parting feet. He was still there! He was on
guard! He had had good reason for his terrible
certainty. He had foreseen what her plan might
be, and she knew he would no more let her get
past him down the hall than the turnkey will let
the wretched prisoner escape.
The last flicker of her courage died at that
thought. All her fine exultation was beaten
out by the fact of the brute force outside her
door. She could not get to Kerr now. Cower-
ing behind her door she could only fancy him
waiting for her in the rotunda while the mo-
ments lengthened into hours, each moment dis-
trusting her more.
409


XXII
CLARA’S MAR RET
LL night she sat awake huddled under
A her greatcoat in the chilly darkness.
She could not lie down, she could not
close her eyes. At long intervals she heard the
tread of unshod feet along the hall, and then
she held her breath lest at her slightest stir
they approach her door. Why, since he wanted
the sapphire, hadn’t he tried to get it from her
when he had had her unawares, upon her thres-
hold with the house asleep? It began to seem
to her as if he were waiting, as if he were forced
to wait, for some appointed moment. She knew
if it were his moment it would be hers, too, as
long as she had the sapphire upon her. She
recalled fearfully the moment when she had
crouched against the window with her hand pro-
410


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
relief, since this was the one person she did want
to see, drew her inside.
“Why, my child, you haven’t slept, at least
not properly.” Mrs. Herrick herself looked
anxious and weary. “I’ve come to tell you that
Mrs. Britton is here. She came an hour ago.”
“Where is she?”
“In the breakfast-room with Mr. Cressy.”
“Oh,” Flora cried, “you know I didn’t ex-
pect them. I didn’t want them. It wasn’t for
them I asked you to come.”
“But can’t you tell me what it is you’re
afraid of?” the other urged. “Between us
can’t we prevent it? Is there nothing I can do
to help you?”
“Ah, if you knew how much you have al-
ready helped me by just being here.”
Her companion laughed a little. “Can't I
do something more active than that?”
Flora pondered. “Where is Mr. Kerr?”
“In the garden, in the willow walk.”
“Do you think you can manage that the
others don’t get at him?”
412


f
/
T H E co As T of c H A N c E
fast-room with trepidation, and stood a full min-
ute before the door gathering courage to go in.
When she did open it, it was so suddenly that
both occupants faced her with a start. They
were standing close together, and between them,
on the glare of the white table-cloth, lay a lit-
tle heap of gold. As they peered at her she saw
that both were highly excited, but in Clara it
showed like a cold sparkle; in Harry it gloomed
like a menace. His hand hovered, clenched, above
the money in a panic of irresolution; then, as if
with an involuntary relax of nerves, opened and
let fall one last piece of gold. Like a flash the
whole disappeared in a sweep of Clara's hand.
It passed before Flora’s eyes like a presti-
digitator's trick, so rapid as to seem unreal, and
left her staring. Harry gave Clara a look, half
suspicious, half entreating; and then, to Flora’s
astonishment, turned away without a word to
either of them.
Clara stood still, even after the door had
closed upon Harry, and oddly, and rather hor-
ridly, she wore the same aspect she had worn
414


C LA R A 's M A R K E T
the day when she had looked intently and ab-
sorbedly upon the rifled contents of Flora's room.
“Good morning,” she said, and, pushing up
her little misty veil, sat down with her back to
the deserted breakfast table, and waited meekly,
like one who has been summoned.
“I am very glad you’ve come,” Flora said.
Her wits were still all a-flutter from the appear-
ance of that little heap of gold. She came for-
ward and stood in Harry's place. She was face
to face with the person and the question, but be-
fore the great import of it, and before the marble
front of Clara's patience, she felt helpless.
There was silence in the room, perfect silence in
the garden; but moving along the hedged walk
all at once she saw the flutter of Mrs. Herrick’s
gown, and then in profile Kerr beside her. The
sight of him gave her her proper inspiration.
She turned upon Clara.
“What are you going to do with the picture
of Farrell Wand?”
For the first time she saw Clara startled. Her
lips parted, and the breath that came and went
415


C LA R A 's M A R K E T
information? My dear Flora, don't you think
you want me to do more than is honest?”
“Honest!” Flora cried. The words sounded
hideous to her on Clara’s tongue; and yet what
right had she, she thought with shame, to judge
of Clara’s honesty when she herself was leagued
with a thief? “Clara,” she said humbly, before
this upholder of the right, “I can’t pretend I’m
not suppressing things. I’ve only asked you to
see me before you do anything more. Now,
you’ve come. Will you tell me one thing—did
you bring the picture with you?”
Clara weighed it. “Well, if I did—”
This was the considering Clara, and Flora
realized whatever she could expect from her she
couldn’t expect mercy. It was another thing she
must appeal to.
“Clara,” she urged, “wait three days, and you
shall have the whole of it. You have only the
picture now. You shall have the jewel, too.
Then you can get the reward and still be—hon-
est.”
She let the word fall into the silence fearfully,
417


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N CE
as if she were afraid Clara might detect its sneer.
But this time Clara neither smiled nor frowned.
“It isn't the reward I’m thinking about.
That’s really very little, considering.”
“Twenty thousand dollars!”
“Would that be much to you?”
“No,” Flora admitted; “at least I mean I
could pay it.”
“Well, then,” Clara triumphed, “why, the
picture alone, if it’s worth anything, is worth
more than that.” With a bird-like lifting of the
head she gave a sidelong interrogative glance.
Flora, for a moment, steadily returned the
look. It was coming over her what Clara meant;
a meaning so simple it was absurd she had not
thought of it before—so hateful that it was all
she could do to face it. She felt a tightness in
her throat that was not tears. Shame and anger
contended in her. Oh, for the power to have re-
fused that shameful bargain—to have scorned.
it! She turned away. She closed her eyes. In
her mind she saw the figure of Kerr moving
quietly about the winding walks with Mrs. Her-
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C LA R A 's M A R K E T
rick. She faced sharply about. “What is it
worth to you?”
Clara put her off with the last sweet meekness
of her cleverness. “Whatever it’s worth to you
—and him.”
Flora was in command of herself now. “There
are some things I can not set a price on. If this
is what you have come down for, we are simply
waiting for you to name it.” She looked over
Clara’s head. She had stood abashed when Clara
had put on the majesty of right, but now it was
Clara herself who was abashed, not at the thing
itself, but at the fact of having to utter it. She
sat grasping one of her gloves in her doubled
fist; and, leaning forward, with her eyes like
jewels in her little pale face and the white aura
of her veil, waited as if she thought that by some
silent agency of understanding Flora would
presently take up a pen and write the desired fig-
ure in her check-book.
But Flora stood inexorable, straight and
black, crowned with her helmet of gleaming hair;
and, with her hands behind her, looked over
419


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
Clara’s head through the window into the gar-
den. She would not help Clara gloss over this
ugly fact.
A curious grimace distorted Clara’s features,
as if with an effort she gulped something bitter,
and then into the silence her voice fell—a gasp,
a breath—“Fifty thousand.”
All sums had become the same to Flora, even
her year's income. As if she were verily afraid
Clara might take it back, she turned precipi-
tately to a writing-table. But Clara had risen,
and though still pale, in a measure she seemed
to have recovered herself.
“Wait. I can’t give it to you now. I will
meet you here in two hours and bring the pic-
ture. You can let me have it then.”
“Oh, two hours!” Flora objected.
But Clara was firm. “No, I can't bring it
sooner. It will make no difference in your af-
fair.” She was panting in her excitement. “In
two hours you shall have the picture here. I
promise you.”
Flora wondered. Depth below depth. She
420


C LA R A 's M A R K E T
could never seem to get to the bottom of this
business. There was only one thing she could
count on, and that was Clara’s impeccable honor
in living up to a bargain. Flora sealed that bar-
gain now. She held out her fluttering slip of
paper, still wet with ink.
“Very well, in two hours—but take this now.
I would rather you did.”
Clara reached the tips of her fingers, touched
the paper—and then it was no longer in Flora’s
hand, and Clara was walking from her across
the room.
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T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
Her other hand crept downward stealthily and
gathered up her swinging pouch of gold. Trem-
bling, she let him drag her back, but when they
faced each other behind the plumes and swords
of a great pampas clump she was shocked at the
emotion in his face; and as if what he had just
seen had given the last touch, his voice had risen
a key, and between every half-dozen words it
broke for breath.
“Look here, Flora,” he began; “I know you’ve
been trying to give me the slip ever since night
before last. I frightened you then. I didn’t
mean to, but you had no business to keep the
ring after what I told you. No, I’m not going
to touch you,” as she shrank back against the
pampas swords, “but I want you to give it to
me, yourself, right here and now.”
She looked up into his face, burning fiery
in the sun beating down on his bare head. “No,
no, Harry; I shan’t give it to you. Last time
I said I would give it to you for a good reason,
but now I wouldn’t give it to you for anything.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he cried.
424


T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
stooped and kissed her lightly. To that moment
she had pitied him, but his touch she loathed.
She thrust him away with both hands. He
turned. Without speaking, without looking at
her again he walked away. She watched him with
a desperate feeling of being abandoned, of losing
something powerful and valuable. The faint,
thin screech of a locomotive from a station far
down the line made him pause, and turn, and
gaze under his hand in the strong sun. So for a
moment she saw him, a lowering, peering figure
moving away from her over the lawn between
broad flower-beds. Then he disappeared among
the shrubbery.
This encounter, that had stopped her in full
open field, had not been the fatal thing she had
feared. It had been a peril met that nerved her
to a higher courage. Now she could walk gal-
lantly to the most uncertain moment of her life.
Between the glimmering willows down the long
still avenue she passed, her flowing draperies
borne backwards as by triumphant airs. The
426


T O U C H E
wind of her approach seemed to reach the two
still far in front of her.
They turned and watched her drawing nearer,
and before she had quite reached them Kerr
stretched out his hand as if to help her over a
last rough place, and drew her toward him and
held her beside him with his fingers lightly
clasped around her wrist. She saw that he looked
pale, worn, as he had not been last night, and,
what struck her most strangely, angry. The
hand that held hers shook with the violent pulse
that was beating in it. He turned to Clara.
“Will you pardon us, Mrs. Britton?” Then
after another patient moment, “Miss Gilsey has
something to say to me.” Still he made no mo-
tion to move away, and at last Clara seemed to
understand what was expected of her. She
flushed, and in the middle of that color her eyes
flashed double steel. For the first time in Flora’s
memory she was at a loss. She passed them with-
out a word.
Kerr looked after the little brilliant figure,
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
moving daintily away through sun and shadow,
with deep disgust in his face. But when he
turned to Flora disgust lifted to high severity.
It was she who appeared the guilty one, and he
the accuser.
“Why didn't you come, last night?”
“I couldn’t. He was there, Harry, outside my
door.”
“In God's name! What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. We did not speak—but I couldn’t
get past him!” The suspicion in his face was
more than she could bear. “You must believe
me—for, if you don’t, we’re both lost!”
He had her by both wrists, now, and gently
made her face him. “I have believed in you to
the extent of coming alone to a place I know
nothing of, because you wanted me. Now that
I am here, what is it you have to say to me?”
“Oh, nothing more than I have said before,”
she pleaded; “only that, ten times more ear-
nestly.”
“You extraordinary child!” At first, he was
pure amazement. “You’ve brought me so far,
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T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
He stood steady to this assault, and smiled
down upon her. “Without you and without it
I will not budge. Come now, this is the end. I
never meant to do another thing.”
She covered her face with her hands.
“Come, come.” His voice was urging her, now
very gentle. “It’s more for your sake than for
the jewel now.” And his arm around her shoul-
ders was gently forcing her to walk beside him
not toward the drive, but away into the tree-
grown sheltered wing of the garden. By inter-
lacing paths, from the tremulous gray willows
under the somber, clashing eucalyptus spears,
under dark wings of cypress they were moving.
She was bracing in every nerve against the un-
nerving of his presence.
It had been always so. Even across the dis-
tance of a room the mere sight of him had had
for her the power to summon those wild spirits
of the soul and body that turn reason to a vapor.
And now so close, with his arm around her, that
same power she had felt when she saw him first,
the power that had made her come out and be
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T O U C H E
herself then, the power that had overwhelmed
her in the little restaurant, was leagued against
her again to make her do this one more thing,
which she wouldn’t do. Never, never! Despair-
ing, she wondered that such an evil motive could
have such strength.
“Where have you got it now?” she heard him
asking, and she pointed downward toward where
the pouch at her knee was swinging to and fro.
“Take it up, then,” and like a hypnotized crea-
ture she gathered it into her hand. But, once she
had it, she held it clenched against him.
“You’re going to give it to me,” he prompted,
“aren’t you?—aren’t you?” and looking steadily
in her face his hand shut softly on her wrist, and
held out her clenched hand in front of her. And
still they walked, slowly. Like a pendulum the
long gold chain swung from her clenched fingers.
To the tree-top birds they seemed as quiet as two
lovers speaking of their wedding-day. She felt
her tension give way in this quiet—her hand
relax.
“Dearest.” The word brought up her eyes to
431


T OU C H E
She stood with her hand to her breast, with
the empty pouch spinning in front of her, hear-
ing him crashing in the shrubbery. Then, in sud-
den panic at finding herself alone, she fled back
down the willow avenue, and burst out on the
broad drive in full view of the house.
Kerr was not in sight, but there was a tremor
of disturbance where all had been still. Clara’s
face appeared at one of the upper windows and
looked down into the garden. Then Mrs. Herrick
came down the stairs, and, showing an anxious
profile as she passed the door, hurried away
along the lower hall. There was a flutter in the
servants’ quarter, and from a side door the
coachman appeared hatless, in his shirt sleeves,
and ran toward the stable. All the people of the
house seemed to be running to and fro, but she
didn’t see Harry. This struck her with unrea-
soning terror. She fled up the drive, and Clara’s
small face at the window watched her.
As she came into the hall she heard Kerr's
voice. He was at the telephone speaking names
she had never heard in sentences whose meaning
433


XXIV
THE COMIC MAS K
HE listened to the sound of wheels, first
S rattling loud on the gravel, slowly grow-
ing fainter. Then stillness was with
her again, and inanition. She looked around and
up, and had no start at seeing Clara’s small face
watching her over the gallery of the rotunda.
It seemed to her that appearance was natural
to her existence now, like her shadow. She
looked away. When she raised her eyes again
Clara was coming down the stairs, and even at
that distance Flora saw she carried something
in her hand—something flat and small and
wrapped in a filmy bit of paper.
Out of the chaos of her feeling rose the soli-
tary thought—the picture which she had bought
that morning, the picture of Farrell Wand. She
435


T H E C O M I C M A S K
within her had been drawn tight, too tight to
endure, and every moment she hoped it would
snap and set her free.
“You don’t think I'm mad, do you?” she asked.
Her friend earnestly disclaimed it. “Then things
are,” Flora said, “everything. Oh, oh!” The
memory overwhelmed her. “He took me there
as if by chance! He gave the sapphire to me
for my engagement ring. Oh, dreadful! Oh,
poor Harry!”
All that afternoon and all night she slept fit-
fully, starting up at intervals, trembling at
nameless horrors—the glittering goldsmith's
shop, the Chinaman, the great eye of the sap-
phire, and, worst of all, Harry’s face, always
the same calm, ruddy, good-natured, innocent-
looking face that had led her to the goldsmith’s
shop, that had smiled at her, falling under the
spell of the sapphire, that had covered, all those
days, God knew what ravages of stress and
strain, until the man had finally broken. That face
appeared and reappeared through the flashing
terrors of her dreams like the presiding genius
489


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
of them all. Finally, drifting into complete re-
pose, she slept far into the morning.
She wakened languid and weak. She lay look-
ing about the room, and, like a person recover-
ing after a heavy blow, wondering what had hap-
pened. Then her hand, as with her first waking
thought it had done for the last week, went to
the locket chain around her neck. Oh, yes, yes;
she had forgotten. The sapphire was gone.
Gone by fraud, gone at a kiss for ever with
Harry—no, with Farrell Wand.
For Harry was not Harry; and Kerr was not
Farrell Wand. He was indeed an unknown quan-
tity. Since she had found Harry she had lost
both Kerr's name and his place in her fairy-tale.
She had seen his very demeanor change before
her eyes. Indeed, her hour had come without
her knowing it. The spell had been snapped
which had made him wear the semblance of evil.
His sinister form was dissolving; but what was
to be his identity when finally he stood before
her restored and perfect? If he were not the
thief whom she had struggled so to shield, why,
440


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
saw him come into the city; nothing turned up
in the goldsmith's shop. His friend, the blue-
eyed Chinaman, has dropped out of sight. I
haven’t made it public,” he glanced at Flora—
“but our men think he’s gone out by the water
route—Lord knows in what or where! He must
have had this planned for days.” He didn’t
look at Flora now. He turned his communica-
tion carefully on Mrs. Herrick. “There were
seven vessels sailed, that day, and all were
searched; but there are ways of smuggling
opium, and why not men?”
They were walking toward the house. Kerr
looked up at the window where, a short time be-
fore, Clara’s face had looked down upon the con-
fusion in the garden.
“Is that paid woman still here?”
“Oh, no; she’s gone.” Flora looked at him
warningly. But Mrs. Herrick had caught his
tone. “Why shouldn't she be?” she demanded
with delicate asperity.
Kerr had dropped his monocle. “Because, in
446


T H E COM I C M A S K
common decency, she couldn’t. She sold Cressy
to me for a good round sum.”
Flora and Mrs. Herrick exchanged a look of
horror.
“I’d suspected him,” said Kerr. “I knew
where I’d seen him, but I couldn’t be sure of his
identity till she showed me the picture.”
“What picture?” cried Flora.
“The picture Buller mentioned at the club
that night: Farrell Wand, boarding the Loch
Ettive. Don't you remember?” He spoke
gently, as if afraid that a hasty phrase in such
connection might do her harm. Now, when he
saw how white she looked, he steadied her with
his arm. “We won’t talk of this business any
more,” he said.
“But I must talk of it,” Flora insisted trem-
blingly. “I don’t even know what you are.”
For the first time he showed apologetic. He
looked from one to the other with a sort of help-
less simplicity.
“Why, I’m Chatworth—I’m Crew; I’m the
chap that owns the confounded thing!”
447


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
To see him stand there, announced in that
name, gave the tragic farce its last touch. Flora
had an instant of panic when flight seemed the
solution. It took all her courage to keep her
there, facing him, watching, as if from afar
off, Mrs. Herrick's acknowledgment of the in-
formal introduction.
“I came here, quietly,” he was saying, “so as
to get at it without making a row. Only Purdie,
good man! knew—and he's been wondering all
along why I’ve held so heavy a hand on him.
We’ll have to lunch with them again, eh?” He
turned and looked at Flora. “And make all those
explanations necessitated by this lady's wonder-
ful sense of honorſ”
It was here, somewhere in the neighborhood
of this sentence of doubtful meaning, that Mrs.
Herrick left them. In looking back, Flora could
never recall the exact moment of the departure.
But when she raised her eyes from the grass
where they had been fixed for what seemed to
her eternity she found only Kerr–no, Chatworth
448


T H E COM I C M A S K
—standing there, looking at her with a grave
face.
“Eh!” he said, “and what about that honor
of yours? What shall we say about it, now that
the sapphire's gone and no longer in our way?”
She was breathing quick to keep from crying.
“I told you that day at the restaurant.”
“Yes, yes; you told me why you kept the
sapphire from me, but”—he hung fire, then
fetched it out with an effort—“why did you take
it in the first place?”
She looked at him in clear astonishment. “I
didn’t know what it was.”
“You didn’t P”
It seemed to Flora the whole situation was
turning exactly inside out. The light that was
breaking upon her was more than she could bear.
“Oh,” she wailed, “you couldn’t have thought I
meant to take it!”
“Then if you didn’t,” he burst out, “why,
when I told you what it was, didn't you give it
to me?”
449


XXV
THE LAST EN CHANTMENT
HE tallest eucalyptus top was all of the
T garden that was touched with sun when
Flora came out of the house in the
morning. She stood a space looking at that lit-
tle cone of brightness far above all the other
trees, swaying on the delicate sky. It was not
higher lifted nor brighter burnished than her
spirit then. Shorn of her locket chain, her
golden pouch, free of her fears, she poised look-
ing over the garden. Then with a leap she went
from the veranda to the grass and, regardless
of dew, skimmed the lawn for the fountain and
the rose garden.
There she saw him—the one man—already
awaiting her. He stood back to back with a
mossy nymph languishing on her pedestal, and
451


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
Flora hoped by running softly to steal up be-
hind him, and make of the helpless marble lady
a buffer between their greetings. But either she
underestimated the nymph’s bulk, or forgot how
invariably direct was the man’s attack; for turn-
ing and seeing her, without any circumvention,
with one sweep of his long arm, he included the
statue in his grasp of her. With a laugh of tri-
umph he drew her out of her concealment.
To her the splendor of skies and trees and
morning light melted into that wonderful mo-
ment. For the first time in weary days she had
all to give, nothing to fear or withhold. She
was at peace. She was ready to stop, to stand
here in her life for always—here in the glowing
garden with him, and their youth. But he was
impatient. He did not want to loiter in the
morning. He was hot to hurry on out of the
present which was so mysterious, so untried to
her, as if these ecstasies had no mystery to him
but their complete fulfilment. He filled her with
a trembling premonition of the undreamed-of
452


T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
“I wasn’t going to speak of him,” said Chat-
worth quickly.
“I know,” she answered, “but do you mind
my speaking of him?” They had sat down on
the broad lip of the fountain basin. He was
looking at her intently. “It is strange,” she
said, “but in spite of his doing this terrible thing
I can’t feel that he himself is terrible—like
Clara.”
“And yet,” he answered in a grave voice, “I
would rather you did.”
She turned a troubled face. “Ah, have you
forgotten what you said the first night I met
you? You said it doesn’t matter what a man is,
even if he’s a thief, as long as he’s a good one.”
At this he laughed a little grudgingly. “Oh,
I don’t go back on that, but I was looking
through the great impartial eye of the universe.
Whereas a man may be good of his kind, he’s
only good in his kind. Tip out a cat among
canaries and see what happens. My dear girl,
we were the veriest birds in his paws! And no-
tice that it isn’t moral law—it’s instinct. We
454


T H E L A S T E N C H A N T M E N T
certain pace, looking to and fro. “See, there’s
some one coming.”
“Oh, the gardener!” he said as one would say
“Oh, fiddlesticks!”
The gardener had been her first thought.
But now she rose uneasily, since she saw it was
not he, asking herself, “Who else, at such an
hour?”
By this time Chatworth, still seated, had
caught sight of it. “Hello,” he said, “what sort
of a thing is that?”
It was a short, shabby, nondescript little fig-
ure, shuffling rapidly along the winding walk
between the rose bushes. Now they saw the top
of his round black felt hat. Now only a twin-
king pair of legs. Now, around the last clump
of bushes he appeared full length, and, suddenly
dropping his businesslike shuffle, approached
them at a languid walk.
Flora grasped Chatworth's arm in nervous
terror. “Tell him to go,” she whispered; “make
him go away.”
The blue-eyed Chinaman was planted before
457


T H E L A S T E N C H A N T M E N T
paper. She gave a cry at sight of it. Across the
top in thick black type ran the figures $20,000.
Chatworth pointed a stern forefinger. “What
is it?” he said, though by his tone he knew.
The Chinaman also pointed at it, but cautious
and apologetic. “Twenty thousand dollar. You
likee twenty thousand dollar?” He waited a mo-
ment. Then, with a glimmer as of returning
sight, presented the alternative. “You likee god?
—little joss?—come so?” And with his finger
he traced in the air a curve of such delicate
accuracy that the Englishman with an ex-
clamation made a step toward him. But the
Chinaman did not move. “Twenty thousand dol-
lar,” he stated. It sounded an impersonal
statement, but nevertheless it was quite evident
this time to whom it applied.
The Englishman measured off his words
slowly as if to an incomplete understanding,
which Flora was aware was all too miraculously
quick. “This little god, this ring—do you know
where it is? Can you take me to it?”
The goldsmith nodded emphatically at each
459


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
word, but when all was said he only reiterated,
“Twenty thousand dollar.”
Chatworth gave Flora an almost shamefaced
glance, and she saw with a curious twinge of
jealousy that he was intensely excited. “Might
as well have a pot-shot at it,” he said; and sit-
ting down on the edge of the fountain and tak-
ing out his check-book, rested it on his knee and
wrote. Then he rose; he held up the filled-in
slip before the Chinaman’s eyes.
“Here,” he said, “twenty thousand dollars.”
He held the paper well out of the little man’s
reach. “Now,” he challenged, “tell me where
it is?”
Into the goldsmith's eyes came a lightning
flash of intelligence, such as Flora remembered
to have seen there when Farrell Wand, leaning
on the dusty counter, had bidden him go and
bring something pretty. He seemed to quiver a
moment in indecision. Then he whipped his hand
out of his sleeve and held it forth palm upward.
This time it was Chatworth who cried out. The
thing that lay on the goldsmith's palm Flora
460


T H E L A S T E N C H A N T M E N T
had never seen, though once it had been described
to her—“a bit of an old gold heathen god, curled
around himself, with his head of two yellow sap-
phires and a big blue stone on top.”
There it blazed at her, the jewel she had car-
ried in her bosom, that she had hidden in her
pouch of gold, and that had vanished from it
at the touch of a magic hand, now cunningly
restored to its right place in the forehead of the
Crew Idol, crowning him with living light.
Speechless they looked together at the magic
thing. They had thought it far at sea; and as
if at a wave of a genii’s wand it was here before
them flashing in the quiet garden.
With an effort Chatworth seemed to keep him-
self from seizing on ring and man together. He
looked searchingly at the goldsmith and seemed
on the point of asking a question, but, instead,
he slowly held out his hand. He held it out cup-
fashion. It shook so that Flora saw the China-
man steady it to drop in the ring. Then, fold-
ing his check miraculously small, enveloping it
in the ragged piece of newspaper, the little man
461


T H E CO A S T OF C H A N C E
turned and shuffled from them down the gravel
walk.
Chatworth stood staring after him with his
Idol in his palm. Then, turning slow eyes to
Flora, “How did he come by this?” he asked, as
sternly as if he demanded it of the mystery it-
self.
“He had it, from the very first.” The pieces
of the puzzle were flashing together in Flora’s
mind. “That first time Harry left the exhibit
he took it there.”
“But the blue sapphire?” Chatworth insisted.
“Harry,” Flora whispered, “Harry gave it
up to him.”
“Gave it up to him!” Chatworth echoed in
scorn.
But she had had an inspiration of understand-
ing. “He had to-for money to get off with.
He gave Clara all he had so that she would let
him get away. Poor thing!” she added in a
lower breath, but Chatworth did not hear her.
He had taken the Idol in his thumb and finger,
and, holding it up in the broadening light,
462


T H E L A S T E N C H A N T M E N T
looked fixedly at it with the passionate incred-
ulity with which one might hold and look at a
friend thought dead. She watched him with her
jealous pang increasing to a greater feeling—
a feeling of being separated from him by this
jewel which he loved, and which had grown to
seem hateful to her, which had shown itself a
breeder of all the greedy passions. She came
softly up to him, and, lifting her hand, covered
the Idol.
He turned toward her in wonder.
“Ah, you love it too much,” she whispered.
“That's unworthy of you,” he reproached her.
“I have loved you more; and that in spite of
what I believed of you, and what this means to
me. To me, this ring is not a pretty thing seen
yesterday. It is the symbol of my family. It is
the power and pride of us, which our women have
worn on their hands as they have worn our honor
in their hearts. It is part of the life of my peo-
ple; and now it has made itself part of our life,
of yours and mine. Shall I ever forget how
starkly you held it for the sake of my honor,
463


T H E COAST OF C H A N C E
even against myself? Should I ever have known
you without it?” He put the ring into her hand,
and, smiling with his old dare, held it over the
fountain. “Now, if you want to, drop it in.”
He released her hand and turned to leave her to
her will.
For a moment she stood with power in her
hands and her eyes on his averted head. Then
with a little rush she crossed the space between
them. “Here, take it! You love it! I want you
to keep it! but I can't forget the dreadful things
it has made people do. It makes me afraid.”
In spite of his smiling he seemed to her very
grave. “You dear, silly child! The whole storm
and trouble of life comes from things being in
the wrong place. This has been in the wrong
place and made mischief.”
“Like me,” she murmured.
“Like you,” he agreed. “Now we shall be as
we should be. Give me your hand.”
He drew off all the rings with which she had
once tried to dim the sparkle of the sapphire,
and, dropping them into his pocket like so much
464











THE NEW YORK P1
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