“It’s a strange and wonderful world!” she told herself. “Sometimes quite terrible, too.”
Once more she allowed her mind to drift over the events of the past few days. She saw it all as in a dream: the auction house, the mysterious chest, the fire on the beach, and the Chinaman fleeing into the night with the three-bladed knife.
“Florence will never rest until she has found him and has that precious knife back,” she told herself. “But will she find him?”
Once again in her imagination she saw their room in wild confusion—saw, too, the empty chest.
“I never told Florence about—about that laundry bag I left with the check boy at the hotel. I wonder if I should? And should I leave it there any longer? The mandarin said they were worth many, many dollars, those ancient pieces of embroidery work all done in threads of silver and gold.
“Ah well, the place to hide things is where no one will expect to find them. And as for Florence, the things you do not seem to possess are the ones that trouble you least.”
Again she sat wriggling her pink toes and staring away at that one yellow light far out upon the lake.
“But this moving picture!” she exclaimed at last. “Why did I say ‘yes’? How can I be some one else for even two short weeks?
“But then—” Her face took on a rapt expression. “If one could but make a success of that picture when every one believes it is to be a failure. Ah, that would be marvelous! So very, very superb!”
Leaping to her feet, she danced across the floor and at last tucked herself into her bed.