He met it quietly.
"Certainly. I have been seeing nothing else but the danger—to you. Do you think I've been idle all these days? Every line I have followed has ended in that. It's brought me finally to this." The gesture of his hand included their predicament and the dingy little room. "You'll really have to help me, after all."
"Oh, haven't I tried to? That is why I wrote. Don't you see your own danger at all?"
"No, but I'd like to." He leaned toward her, brows lifted to a quizzical peak.
"Oh, I can't tell you," she despaired. "But somehow I shall have to make you go."
"That will be easy," he said. Leaning back, nursing his chin in his hand, he watched her with a gloomy sort of brooding. "You know what it is I'm waiting for. You know I won't go without it." His words came sadly, but doggedly, with a grim finality, as if he gave himself up to the course he was following as something he knew was inevitable. The faintness of despair came over her. Only the narrow table was between them, yet all at once, with the mention of the ring, he seemed a long way off. What was this terrible obsession that outweighed every other consideration with him? How get at it? How get through it? Or was it between them for ever?
"Do you care for it so very much?" she asked him, trembling but valiant.
"I care so very much," he repeated slowly, and after a moment of wonder: "Why, don't you?"
"Oh, not for that," she cried sharply. "Not for the sapphire!"
He stared. She had startled him clean out of his brooding. "In Heaven's name, for what, then?"