For herself she had had no way of finding out how the sapphire had got adrift. But hadn't Harry? Hadn't he followed up that singular scene with the blue-eyed Chinaman by other visits to the goldsmith's shop? Why, yesterday, when he was supposed to be in Burlingame, Clara had seen him in Chinatown. The idea burst upon her then. Harry was after the whole ring. He counted the part she held already his, and for the rest he was groping in Chinatown; he was trying to reach it through the imperturbable little goldsmith. But he had not reached it yet--and she could read his irritation at his failure in his violent outburst when Judge Buller so innocently flung the difficulties in his face. She knew as much now as she could bear. If Harry did not suspect Kerr, it would be strange. But--Harry waiting to make sure of a reward before he unmasked a thief! It was an ugly thought! And would he wait for the rest now--now that the situation was so galling to him? Might not he just decide to take the sapphire, and with the evidence of that, risk his putting his hand on the "Idol" when he grasped the thief? The carriage was stopping. Clara was making ready to get out. She braced herself to face Clara, in the light, with a casual exterior--but when she had reached her own rooms she sank in a heap in the chair before her writing-table, and laid her head upon the table between her arms. In her wretchedness she found herself turning to Kerr. How stoically he had endured it all, though it must have borne on him most heavily! How kind he had been to her! He had not even spoken of himself, though he must have known the shadows were closing over his head. Any moment he might be enshrouded. If it came to a choice between having him taken and giving him the blue jewel, she wondered which she would do. In the gray hours of the morning she wrote him. She dared not put the perils into words, but she implied them. She vaguely threatened; and she implored him to go, avoiding them all, herself more than any; and, quaking at the possibility that he might, after all, overcome _her_, she declared that before he went she would not see him again. She closed with the forbidding statement that whether he stayed or went, at the end of three days she would make a sure disposal of the ring. She put all this in reckless black and white and sent it by the hand of Shima. Then she waited. She waited, in her little isolation, with the sapphire always hung about her neck, waited with what anticipation of marvelous results--avowals, ideal farewells, or possibly some incredible transformation of the grim face of the business. And the answer was silence. XVI THE HEART OF THE DILEMMA