It gave Flora the sense Mrs. Herrick's presence always brought her, of protection, or security, and the possibility of friendship finer than she had ever known. She started forward. But Mrs. Herrick, presenting instantly her profile, drew the young girl's hand through her arm and moved away.
Flora winced as if she had received a blow. The other people who had heard the same gossip of her had been, on account of it, all the more amused, and anxious to talk to her. But Mrs. Herrick, though she bowed and smiled, did not want her too near her daughter; perhaps, herself, would have preferred not to speak to her.
She felt herself judged—judged from the outside, it is true—but still there was justice in it. She had been flying in the face of custom, ignoring common good behavior, in short, sticking to her own convictions in defiance of the world's. And she must pay the penalty—the loss of the possibility of such a friend.
But it was hard, she thought, to pay the price without getting the thing she had paid for. It was more like a gamble in which she had staked all on a chance. And never had this chance appeared more improbable to her than now. For if Kerr valued the ring more than he valued his safety, what argument was left her? She thought—if only she had been a different sort of woman—the sort with whom men fall in love—ah, then she might have been able to make one further appeal to him—one that surely would not have failed.
XVII
THE DEMIGOD
On the third day she opened her eyes to the sun with the thought: Where is he? From the windows of her room she could see the two pale points and the narrow way of water that led into the western ocean. Had he sailed out yonder west into the east, into that oblivion which was his only safety, for ever out of her sight? Or was he still at hand, ignoring warning, defying fate? "What difference can that make to me now?" she thought, "since whether he is here or yonder I've come to the end."
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!