of it. She wouldn't
mean to be hateful. That night-hawk isn't hateful when it spears a
mole."

"Do you mean," said Lydia, "that just because Madame Beattie has her
necklace back, they couldn't arrest me? Because if they could I've
certainly got to go away. I can't kill Farvie and Anne."

"Nobody will arrest anybody," said Jeff. "You are absolutely out of it.
And you must keep your mouth tight and stay out."

"But you said Esther knew I did it."

"She guessed. Let her keep on guessing. Let Madame Beattie keep on. I
have told them I did it and I shall keep on telling them so."

Lydia turned upon him.

"You told them that? Oh, I can't have it. I won't. I shall go to them at
once."

She had even turned to fly to them.

"No," said Jeff. "Stay here, Lydia. That damnable necklace has made
trouble enough. It goes slipping through our lives like a detestable
snake, and now it's stopped with its original owner, I propose it shall
stay stopped. It's like a property in a play. It goes about from hand to
hand to hand, to bring out something in the play. And after all the play
isn't about the necklace. It's about us--us--you and Esther and Choate
and Madame Beattie and me. It's betraying us to ourselves. If it hadn't
been for the necklace in the first place and Esther's coveting it, I
might have been a greasy citizen of Addington instead of a queer half
labourer and half loafer; my father wouldn't have lost his nerve,
Choate wouldn't have been in love with Esther, and you wouldn't have
been doing divine childish things to bail me out of my destiny."

Lydia selected from this the fact that hit her hardest.

"Is Alston Choate in love with Esther?"

"He thinks he is."

"Then I must tell Anne."

"For God's sake, no! Lydia, I'm talking to you down here in the dusk as
if you were the sky or that star up there. The star doesn't tell."

"But Anne worships him."

"Do you mean she's in love with Choate?"

"No," said Lydia, "I don't mean that. I mean she thinks he's the most
beautiful person she ever saw."

"Then let her keep on thinking so," said Jeff. "And sometime he'll think
that of her."

Lydia was indignant.

"If you think Anne----" she began, and he stopped her.

"No, no. Anne is a young angel. Only a feeling of that kind--Lydia, I am
furious because I can't talk to you as I want to."

"Why can't you?" asked Lydia.

"Because it isn't possible, between men and women. Unless they've got a
right to. Unless they