d 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 solitary 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!"

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.

"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 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
account."

It might be because Harry's eyes were so taken with the jewel that his
tongue ran recklessly. He had