"Ah, I thought you only ran back to hide in your doll's house." She laughed. Such a picture of her! "Well, at any rate, now I've come out, what have you to say to me?" "Now you've come out," he repeated, and looked at her this time with full gravity, as if he realized finally how far she'd come. She had taken the chair in the light of the eastern windows. She lay back in the cushions, her head a little bent, her hands interlaced with a perfect imitation of quietude. The dull satin of her slender foot was the only motion about her, but the long, slow rise and fall of her breath was just too deep-drawn for repose. He looked down upon her from his height. "I'm sorry I frightened you last night," he said, "but I'm not sorry I came, since you've seen me. You needn't have, you know, if you didn't want to. You could have stayed in the doll's house; and there, I suppose, you think I should never have found you--or _it_ again?" He was silent a moment, leaning on the chair opposite, watching her with knitted forehead, while her apprehension fluttered for what he should do next. He had done away with all the amenities of meeting and attacked his point with a directness that took her breath. "You know what I've come for," he said, "but now I'm here, now that I see you, I wonder if there's something I haven't reckoned on." He looked at her earnestly. "If you think I've taken advantage of you--if you say so--I'll go away, and give you a chance to think it over." It would have been so easy to have nodded him out, but instead she half put out her hand toward him. "No; stay." He gave her a quick look--surprise and approbation at her courage. He dropped into a chair. "Then tell me about it." Flora's heart went quick and little. She held herself very still, afraid in her intense consciousness lest her slightest movement might betray her. She only moved her eyes to look up at him questioningly, suspending acknowledgment of what he meant until he should further commit himself. "I mean the sapphire," he said. He waited. "Yes," she answered coolly. "I saw that it interested you last night, but I couldn't think especially why. It's a beautiful stone." He laughed without a sound--shook noiselessly for a minute. "Meaning that a gentleman shouldn't pounce upon any beautiful stone he may happen to see?" He got up and moved about restlessly in the little space between their two chairs. "Quite so; lay it to my being more than a gentleman; lay it to my being a crack-brained enthusiast, a confounded beauty worshiper, a vicious curio dealer, an ill-mannered ass! But"--and he flashed around at her with a snap of his nervous fingers--"where did you get it?" For the life of her she couldn't help her wave of color, but through it all she clung to her festal smile. Sheer nervousness made it easy.