lift to her lips, as
with a slow and thoughtful manipulation of her dainty fingers she moved
the jewel about in this small receptacle and then returned it, after one
quick examining glance, to the very spot on the dresser from which she
had taken it. "If only the madness is great enough!" that smile seemed
to say. Truly, it was much to hope for, but a chance is a chance; and
comforting herself with the thought, Miss Strange put out her light,
and, with a hasty raising of the shade she had previously pulled down,
took a final look at the prospect.

Its aspect made her shudder. A low fog was rising from the meadows in
the far distance, and its ghostliness under the moon woke all sorts of
uncanny images in her excited mind. To escape them she crept into bed
where she lay with her eyes on the end of her dresser. She had closed
that half of the French window over which she had drawn the shade; but
she had left ajar the one giving free access to the jewels; and when she
was not watching the scintillation of her sapphires in the moonlight,
she was dwelling in fixed attention on this narrow opening.

But nothing happened, and two o'clock, then three o'clock struck,
without a dimming of the blue scintillations on the end of her dresser.
Then she suddenly sat up. Not that she heard anything new, but that a
thought had come to her. "If an attempt is made," so she murmured softly
to herself, "it will be by--" She did not finish. Something--she
could not call it sound--set her heart beating tumultuously, and
listening--listening--watching--watching--she followed in her
imagination the approach down the balcony of an almost inaudible step,
not daring to move herself, it seemed so near, but waiting with eyes
fixed, for the shadow which must fall across the shade she had failed
to raise over that half of the swinging window she had so carefully left
shut.

At length she saw it projecting slowly across the slightly illuminated
surface. Formless, save for the outreaching hand, it passed the
casement's edge, nearing with pauses and hesitations the open gap beyond
through which the neglected sapphires beamed with steady lustre. Would
she ever see the hand itself appear between the dresser and the window
frame? Yes, there it comes,--small, delicate, and startlingly white,
threading that gap--darting with the suddenness of a serpent's tongue
toward the dresser and disappearing again with the pendant in its
clutch.

As she realizes this