Flora's, if anything, rose higher in despair. "Oh, Ella!"
"Doesn't it seem ridiculous," Ella argued, "that if she really wanted him she'd give him up for that?"
"Oh, no--I mean yes," Flora stammered. "Yes, of course! thank you, Ella, very much--very much." The last words were hardly audible. The receiver fell jangling into its bracket, and Flora leaned against the wall by the telephone and closed her eyes.
For a moment all she could see was Clara with that little, little picture. How well she could remember how Clara had looked that night of the club supper!
From the moment Judge Buller had spoken of the picture, how all three of them had changed, Clara and Kerr and Harry. Everything that had seemed so phantasmal then, everything she had put down as a figment of her own imagination, had meant just this plain fact. All three of them had wanted the picture. For his own reason Kerr had turned aside from the chase, but Harry had stood with it to the last, and now, when finally the prize had been assured to him, Clara had it!
At this moment she had it in her hand. At this moment she knew what was the aspect of the figure in the picture, whether it showed a face, and, if a face, whose. Flora's hands opened and closed. "Oh," she whispered to the great silence of the great house awaiting him; "where is he? Why isn't he here?"
All those terrible things which might be happening beyond her reach processioned before her. Had Clara already snapped the trap of the law upon Kerr? And if she hadn't yet, what could be done to hold her off? Flora turned again to the telephone. Slowly she took down the receiver and gave into the bright mouthpiece of the instrument the number of her own house.
Presently the voice of Shima spoke to her. Mrs. Britton had gone out to dinner.
"Tell her, Shima," Flora commanded, "tell her to come down on the earliest train." She hesitated, then finished in a firm voice. "Tell her not to do anything until she has seen me."
Shima would tell her--but Mrs. Britton had been out all day. He did not know when she would be back.
The words sounded ominous in Flora's ears. She turned away. Was everything to be finished just as she had light enough to move, but before she had a chance?