y make, sat down before it and began to unlock its
many drawers and take therefrom a number of little jewel-cases. One by
one she opened these and spread before her the radiant, sparkling
things they contained with their myriad points of light and dancing
colour. She ran the things through her fingers and bathed her hands in
them like water. Then she curved her palms into a cup and held them
filled to the brim with such a sparkling draught as only a god could
drink--a draught with fire and ice in it, blood and crystal water,
purity and evil. The roses of life and the blue flowers of death were
all intermingled and reflected in that magic draught of frozen fire and
liquid crystal. As the girl gazed into it, colour came back to her
pale face, and her eyes caught and returned the flashing beams of
light. It almost seemed as if she and the stones, able to communicate,
were exchanging the signals of some secret code.

One jewel was more beautiful than all the rest, the lovely, flexible
chain of stones she had been holding to her breast that night when
Harlenden surprised her coming from the garden into the veranda--the
thing he had shaken from her hand into her lap as if it had been a
toad. She remembered Harlenden, now, as she gazed into the iridescent
shapes of light, seeming to see in their brilliant, shallow depths
worlds of romance that every-day life knew not of. At last she caught
the thing up and kissed it burningly, then pressed it against her heart
as if it possessed some quality of spikenard to ease the pain she still
felt aching there. The sound of the dinner-gong shook her from her
strange dreams, and hastily, yet with a sort of lingering regret, she
began to gather up the jewels and lay them once more into their downy
nests of white velvet. Her fingers caressed and her eyes embraced
every single stone as she laid it away.

"I must get some more," she murmured feverishly to herself; "I must get
some more--soon!"

She had forgotten Denis Harlenden now. Her lips took on a hungry, arid
line, and her eyes were suddenly hard and more brilliant than the
stones she handled. The lust of diamonds, which is one of the greatest
and most terrible of all the lusts, had got her in its scorpion-claws
and was squeezing love from her heart and beauty from her soul.

"Rosanne, your sister is worse," her mother said, at dinner. They had
reached dessert, but these were the first words that had passed between
them.