She drew out the sapphire and held it in her hand. The cloud of events had cast no film over its luster, but she looked at it now without pleasure. For all its beauty it wasn't worth what they were doing for it. Well, to-day they were both of them to see the last of it. To-day she was going to take it to Mr. Purdie to deliver it into his hands, to tell him how it had fallen into hers in the goldsmith's shop--all of the story that was possible for her to tell. For the rest, how she came to fix suspicion on the jewel, he might think her fanciful or morbid. It didn't matter as long as the weary thing was out of her hands. It couldn't matter! She had made it out all clear in her mind that this was the right thing to do. It hadn't occurred to her she had made it out only on the hypothesis of Kerr's certainly going. It had not occurred to her that she might have to make her great moral move in the dark; or, what was worse, in the face of his most gallant resistance. In this discouraging light she saw her intention dwindle to the vanishing point, but the great move was just as good as it had been before--just as solid, just as advisable. Being so very solid, wouldn't it wait until she had time to show him that she really meant what she said, supposing she ever had a chance to see him again? The possibility that at this moment he might actually have gone had almost escaped her. She recalled it with a disagreeable shock, but, after all, that was the best she could hope, never to see him again! She ought to be grateful to be sure of that, and yet if she were, oh, never could she deprive him of so much beauty and light by her keeping of the sapphire as he would then have taken away from her! She would come down then, indeed, level with plainest, palest, hardest things--people and facts. Her romance--she had seen it; she had had it in her hands, and it had somehow eluded her. It had vanished, evaporated. It had come to her in rather a terrific guise, presented to her on that night at the club by the first debonair wave of the man's hand; and now he might have gone out through that white way into the east, taking back her romance as the fairy takes back his unappreciated gift.