Flora watched them meeting each other so gallantly with a trembling compunction. Mrs. Herrick, who trusted her, was giving her hand in sublime ignorance. It was vain that Flora told herself she had given warning. She knew she had thrown the softening veil of her spiritual crisis over the ugly material fact. Had she said, "I want you to uphold me while I meet a thief whom I love and wish to protect. He's magnificent in all other ways except for this one obsession," she knew Mrs. Herrick simply would have cried, "Impossible, outrageous!" Yet there they stood together, and as Flora looked at them she could not have told which was of the finer temper. Kerr's bearing was so unruffled that it seemed as if he had flown too high to feel the storm Flora was passing through. But when he turned toward her, in spite of himself, there was eagerness in his manner. He looked questioningly at her, as if no time had intervened, as if a moment before he had said to her through the carriage window, "I will give you twenty-four hours," and now her time had come to speak. Only the thought that time was crowding him into a bag's end gave her courage to vow she would speak that night. Yet not now, while they stood just met in the deepening dusk, in the sweet breath of the early flowers; nor later when they passed in friendly fashion, the three of them, through fairy labyrinths of arch and mirror, into the long, high, glistening room, whose round table, spread, seemed dwarfed to mushroom height; nor yet, while this semblance of companionship was between them, and the great proportions of the place lifting oppression, left them as unconscious of walls and roof as though they were met in the open. The clock twice marked the passing hour. She had never heard Mrs. Herrick speak so flowingly nor Kerr listen so well, placing his questions nicely to draw out the thread of her theme. Yet Flora guessed his thought must be fixed on their approaching moment, as hers was--on the moment when they should be ready to quit the table and Mrs. Herrick would leave them to themselves. It was the appearance of the aproned maid that broke their unity. The last course was on the table, the last taste of its pungent fruit essence on their tongues--and what was the girl's errand now? The eye of her mistress was inquiring. "Some one has come, Mrs. Herrick." The woman's proper formula seemed to fail her. She looked as if she had been frightened. "Some one?" Mrs. Herrick showed asperity. "What name?" "He is coming in." As she spoke the girl shrank a little to one side. With his long coat open, hanging from the armpits, with ruffled hair, and lips apart, and from breathlessness a little smiling, Harry appeared in the doorway. Kerr leaned forward. Mrs. Herrick did not move. She was facing the last arrival and she was smiling more flexibly, more naturally, than Harry; but it was Flora who found the first word.