int 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
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 peering, between them she caught gleams
of veritable 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.

"But this isn't Chinese," she objected, turning her surprise on Harry.

"Lots of 'em aren't. These men glean everywhere. 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 wishing it
might be this one--this cracke