She paled. "You mean—?"
"I mean I thought it might be safer all around that you should not see him that morning; so I got him away. He hasn't asked you for it since?"
"The sapphire?" she faltered. "No!" The more her instinct warned that it had been the jewel Harry had returned for, the more she repudiated the idea to Kerr.
"Why should you think he came for that? What has he to do with it?" she murmured.
"My God! how you do champion him!" He leaned forward sharply across the table. "What is this man to you?"
He was going too far. He had no right to that question. "The man I have promised to marry." Her hot look, her cold manner defied him to command her here. Yet for a moment, leaning forward with his clenched hands on the table, he looked ready to spring up and force her words back on her. The next he let it go and dropped back in his chair again.
"Quite so," he said. "But I didn't believe it." He stared at her with a dull, profound resentment. "Yet it's most possible; since it isn't the sapphire it would be that." He mused. "But, you extraordinary woman, why on earth—" he broke off, still looking at her, looking with a persistent, sharp, studying eye, as if she were the most puzzling and, it came to her gradually, the most dubious thing on earth. He was verily a magician, a worker of black magic; for under the spell of his eyes she felt herself turning into something horrible. However innocent she was in intention, the ugly appearance was covering her.
"Then what are you doing here with the ring on you?" he demanded solemnly. "Why are you dealing with me? What do you think you'll get out of it? Good God! women are hideous! How can you betray the man you love?"
"Oh," she cried, with a wail of horror. She stood up trembling and pale. "I don't—I don't—I don't! I've kept it from them. I'm standing against them all. I shall never give it to them. When have I ever betrayed you?"
He drew back, away from her, as if to ward off her meaning, but she leaned toward him, her hands flung out, holding herself up to him for all she meant. He got up slowly and the creeping tide of red, dusky and violent, rising over his face, swelling his features, darkening his eyes, hung before her like a banner of shame.