"Yes, yes; you told me why you kept the sapphire from me, but"—he hung fire, then fetched it out with an effort—"why did you take it in the first place?"
She looked at him in clear astonishment. "I didn't know what it was."
"You didn't!"
It seemed to Flora the whole situation was turning exactly inside out. The light that was breaking upon her was more than she could bear. "Oh," she wailed, "you couldn't have thought I meant to take it!"
"Then if you didn't," he burst out, "why, when I told you what it was, didn't you give it to me?"
The cruel comic muse, who makes our serious suffering ridiculous, had drawn aside the last curtain. Flora felt the laughter rising in her throat, the tears in her eyes.
"You guessed who I was," he insisted, advancing, "at least what I represented."
She hid her face in her hands, and her voice dropped, tiny, into the stillness.
"I guessed you were Farrell Wand."