figure before it, distressed her. How long were they going on putting an
edge to their argument? There was continually with her the fear that it
might sharpen into a quarrel; for now the goldsmith had ceased his
gesticulation and became suddenly immobile, and still Harry was
requiring of him the same thing. It was insisted upon, by all the lines
of his stiff braced figure, and she had a fluttered expectancy that if
the little man didn't do something quickly, now--now it would happen.

What she expected of Harry, a violent act or a quick relaxation of his
iron mood, she had not time to consider, for the shopkeeper had moved.
He was jerking his head, his thumb, and finally his arm in the direction
of the long, dim passage--such a pointed direction, such a singular
gesture, as to startle her with its incongruity. What had that to do
with the price of the ring? And if it had nothing to do with the price
of the ring, what had they been talking about? Her small scruple against
knowing what was going on behind her was forgotten. Indeed, now she was
oblivious of everything else. She was taking it in with all her eyes,
when Harry turned and looked at her. And, oddly enough, she thought he
looked as if he wondered how she came there. She saw him return to it
slowly. Then, in a flash, he met her brilliantly. He came toward her
out of the gloom, holding the ring before him, as if with the light of
that, and the flash of his smile, he was anxious immediately to cover
his deficit.

"I had the very devil of a time getting it," he said. "The little beggar
didn't want to let me have it." But there was a subsiding excitement in
his face, and a something in his manner, both triumphant and troubled,
which his explanation did not reasonably account for. Had Harry felt the
touch of the same strange influence that the little shop, and the
blue-eyed Chinaman, and the sapphire, had wrought around her? Or was it
something more salient, the same thing that had suggested itself to her
with the violent gesticulation of the shopkeeper at the passage--that
some question other than the mere transfer of the ring had come up
between them?

"Harry"--she hesitated--"are you quite sure it's all right?"

"All right?" The sudden edge in his voice made her look at him. "Why,
it's genuine, if that's what you mean."

It hadn't been, quite; but her meaning was too vague to put into
words--a mere sensation of uneasiness. She watched Harry turn the ring
over