"Ah, yes, but I had failed, you know, and I was afraid to try again. I knew that you were doing big things, but you never would talk of them to me, and I thought that you considered me too stupid to understand them." "Dita, how blindly we have misunderstood each other. Is it too late?" He whispered the words as he put her wrap about her shoulders, his voice ardent, impassioned as she had never heard it. She cast one astonished, almost frightened glance upon him. Then, as in a daze, a dream, walked down the room, never seeing the admiring eyes that everywhere met her. She might have been in the desert, as far as they were concerned. As the door of the motor closed on them a panic of shyness seized her. "You, you spoke of your new amulet," she said, snatching at a topic. "Have you it with you?" "Yes. But I do not know whether you can get a very good idea of it in these shifting lights." He took the case from his pocket and, lifting out the ornament, gave it into her hands. It was fashioned of half a dozen uncut diamonds in a setting of the most delicate and exquisite filigree. "Old Spanish, you see," he said. "Beautiful!" she exclaimed, turning it over and looking at it more closely. But the attention she was bestowing upon it was a mere seeming. She was thinking, or rather attempting to think, but her heart was fluttering wildly, her whole impulsive nature seemed to impel her to the action she was meditating. "Cresswell," she lifted a face white as a snowdrop to his, "will you make an exchange with me? Will you give me this amulet and take mine?" "Perdita!" he cried, "you do not--" his voice broke. "Yes, I do," she exclaimed, "it is not a wild whim, a caprice on my part. I have been thinking about it all day, ever since this morning." "This morning!" sharply; looking at her keenly, quickly. "Ah," with a long breath, "it was this morning that Hewston drove poor Isabel to your house to prevent the duel between Gresham and myself." He laughed, but it was dreary mirth. "Hewston is a most imaginative fellow. I have a railway deal on which I spoke of to him as a duel. And so, you were going to sacrifice yourself in order to make quite sure that I would spare Eugene. Oh, rest content, Perdita. He is quite safe from my poignard or pistol. Never fear." It seemed to her that the satire in his voice bit into her soul. With a great gasp of relief she realized that the car had stopped before her door. "Oh, take your amulet," she cried, "since you will not have mine." She almost threw it at him. He thought that she was angry and sullen as she walked up the steps and into the house without a word to him, and with the barest inclination of the head. In reality, she was striving hard to control her sobs. CHAPTER XXIII ITS ANCIENT CHARM