She held her left hand low in the shadow of her chair; and if, as the lights went up again, there was any change in the sapphire, it was merely a sharper brilliance, as if, like an eye, it had moods, and this was one of its moments of excitement. In its extraordinary luster it seemed to possess a beauty that could not be valued; and she wanted to hold it up to Kerr, to see if she couldn't startle him out of his mood--to see if he wouldn't respond to it, "Yes, there is more in it than you can touch."
She turned to him with the daring flash of timid spirits. It was so sharp a motion that he started instantly from his reverie to meet it, but his alacrity was mechanical. She felt the smile he summoned was slow, as if he returned, from a long distance, a little painfully to his present surroundings.
The _Intermezzo_ was playing, and to speak under the music he leaned so close his shoulder touched her chair. Through that narrow space between them, almost beneath his eyes, she moved her hand--a gesture so slightly emphasized as to seem accident. He had started to speak, but her motion seemed to stop his tongue. He looked hard at her hand, and something violent in his intentness made her clutch the side of the chair. Instantly she met his look, so fiercely, cruelly challenging, that it took her like a blow. For a moment they looked at each other, her eyes wide with fright, his narrowed to a glare under the terrible intentness of his brows. What had she done? What threatened her? What could save her in this sea of people? Then, while she gazed, his challenge burned out to a pale hard scrutiny, that faded to no expression at all--or was it that any expression would have seemed dim after the terrible one that had flashed across his face?
She was as shaken as if he had seized hold of her. If he had snatched the ring off her finger she wouldn't have been more shocked. The whole box must be transfixed by him, and the whole house be looking at nothing but their little circle of horror! She was ready for it. She was braced for anything but the fact which actually confronted her--that no one had noticed them at all. It was monstrous that such a thing could have been without their knowing! But there was no face in all the orchestra, the crowded galleries, or the tiers of boxes to affirm that anything had happened; no face in their own box had even stirred, but Clara's, and that had merely turned from profile to the full, faintly inquiring, mild, and palely pink in the warm reflections of the red velvet curtains.