"You might have saved your fears and your fancies," she answered with a delicately ironical smile. "He does not want me. He would, I think, like the amulet. Nevertheless, he declined it."
"Then you offered it to him? Really!"
"Yes," the irony still in her voice. "You were a better prophet than you dreamed, Eugene, you predicted exactly what happened. I offered it to him and he declined." Her voice faltered.
"Naturally," laughing, "what else could he do under the circumstances? Even he, with all a collector's greed, would hardly care for a gift which is supposed to be invariably accompanied by the heart's love of the donor. He knew, poor wretch, that all he was getting was the bit of glass, while the heart's love was mine, for ever and ever mine."
His voice sank to those musical cadences which ever prove so enthralling to the ear. And Dita, who loved music and beauty and romance, smiled dreamily. But doubt, like a shadow, lay in her eyes and about her mouth.
"No," she cried, "oh, I do not know, Eugene. When I am with you, you throw a glamour over me. I believe that I am just on the eve of loving you—that any minute you will say the word which will make me fully realize that I do, but as soon as you leave me, Eugene, the moment passes."
"It is because you are perplexed, worried about this other matter, that is all, dearest. When that is settled and you are free, then I will sweep away at once and for ever all these doubts in your mind, sweep them away as if they were cobwebs."
"Will you? Perhaps," but she shook her head as if only half convinced. "Hush! What is that! I think it was the bell of the outer door. You must go at once, Eugene. Cresswell was to be here at twelve o'clock. It must be quite that now."
"And I have no desire to meet him." He picked up his hat. "I will step through the little back room into the hall, and thence out. I dare say you and he have some final arrangements to make. Is that it, eh?"
She nodded, but without looking at him. Her face had grown very pale and the hand which she placed on the tall back of a chair to steady herself trembled a little.