"Dearest Dita," he bent forward with his tenderest, most ingratiating smile, "do not for one moment mistake me. I think, I know we could be happy without a centime between us, but viewing life as it is lived and considering your tastes and my tastes, the mode of existence to which we have accustomed ourselves and all that, I think we, like most other people, would do well to avoid the perilous experiment of comparative poverty. Whether we wish to believe it or not, really to invest life with romance and interest and charm requires more than mere imagination, of which you and I possess an abundant store, Dita. It also requires money."
"It would require a great deal more than that for me, Eugene," she rose to her feet now and stood looking at him as if from mountain heights, so remote and distant she seemed. "Remember the old legend of my amulet,"—she lifted it and swung it to and fro as she talked,—"that sooner or later it would force the one who possessed it to reveal himself in his true character? Well, it has proved its ancient claim. You apparently possessed it long enough for it to force you to reveal your true self; or perhaps that was inevitable under any circumstances."
"What do you mean, Dita?" he, too, had sprung to his feet, and stood facing her, both fear and chagrin in his eyes.
"This," she flung out her hand with the amulet in it; "while I sat here talking to Cresswell, I was turning this square bit of crystal this way and that, watching it catch the light. Suddenly, as I held it between my thumb and forefinger, I saw you, it reflected you quite clearly. You thrust your head a little forward from the door, down there," indicating by a gesture the door at the lower end of the room, "anxious to hear the better what Cresswell was saying and quite sure from the position of our chairs that we could not see you. Then I sent him away and waited. I knew, I knew instinctively, that you would do just as you did, Eugene, and—so I waited. I knew that I should hear that outer door close, that I should hear you walk across the floor, I knew it."
The moments pulsed like heartbeats between them.
"I shall not deny it," he said at last, "but Dita, Dita, I did it for you. I felt that you would follow some quixotic course, which you would regret for a lifetime. I know so well your mad, impulsive recklessness. Oh, Dita," he stretched out his arms to her.
There was no responsive movement on her part. She stood mute, immovable, eyes downcast, as if she could not bear to look upon his humiliation.
The long chain had slipped through her fingers, and the amulet swung at the end of it, to and fro between herself and him, like the pendulum of an inflexible fate.
"Dita," his voice was irresistibly appealing, "you will not thrust me thus out of your heart, oh, not for this!"
"You never had a place in my heart, Eugene, I know that now."