"This," she flung out her hand with the amulet in it; "while I sat here talking to Cresswell, I was turning this square bit of crystal this way and that, watching it catch the light. Suddenly, as I held it between my thumb and forefinger, I saw you, it reflected you quite clearly. You thrust your head a little forward from the door, down there," indicating by a gesture the door at the lower end of the room, "anxious to hear the better what Cresswell was saying and quite sure from the position of our chairs that we could not see you. Then I sent him away and waited. I knew, I knew instinctively, that you would do just as you did, Eugene, and--so I waited. I knew that I should hear that outer door close, that I should hear you walk across the floor, I knew it." The moments pulsed like heartbeats between them. "I shall not deny it," he said at last, "but Dita, Dita, I did it for you. I felt that you would follow some quixotic course, which you would regret for a lifetime. I know so well your mad, impulsive recklessness. Oh, Dita," he stretched out his arms to her. There was no responsive movement on her part. She stood mute, immovable, eyes downcast, as if she could not bear to look upon his humiliation. The long chain had slipped through her fingers, and the amulet swung at the end of it, to and fro between herself and him, like the pendulum of an inflexible fate. "Dita," his voice was irresistibly appealing, "you will not thrust me thus out of your heart, oh, not for this!" "You never had a place in my heart, Eugene, I know that now." She swept across the floor, but as she put up her hand to pull aside the curtain before the door, she paused. "I--I'm sorry, Eugene," she faltered and by an effort of will lifted her eyes to him at last. But they fell neither on the shamed nor the conquered. His head was thrown back, his eyes met hers. He was smiling, and his smile held unfathomable things. It spoke of a spirit eternally young and yet which had felt the weary weight of all dead and crumbling centuries. It was sad, disillusioned, yet eagerly joyous. It had tasted all things and found them vanity, yet pursued an unending quest with infinite zest. "Dear Dita," he murmured, "never doubt that I loved you, love you still, but as the artist loves, not the plodder. You or any woman can only be to him the 'shadow of the idol of his thought,' the mere symbol of beauty, but what he really loves, Dita, is beauty's self." [Illustration: Before she knew it, his arms were about her.]