"I suppose you know I can't throw you away," she murmured, "and yet I can't keep you!" She pondered, chin in hand. To take it to Harry! That seemed the natural thing to do--the simplest way to be rid of it. She hesitated.
"If I only _knew_! If I only were sure!" She locked her fingers closer, staring hard. If it had been the whole Crew Idol, the undismembered god himself, then there would have been less terror, and one plain thing to do. She looked hard at the sapphire setting, as if she hoped to discover upon its brilliance some tell-tale trace of old soft gold; but there was only one great, glassy, polished eye, and out of what head it had come, whether from the forehead of the Crew Idol, or from that of some unheralded deity, who was there who could tell her?
She tried to summon a coherent thought, but again it was only a flash out of the darkness.
"Kerr! Why, he knows more than I." She looked at this stupidly for a moment as if it were too large to take in at once. Of course he must have known! Why hadn't she thought of that before? Why hadn't she thought of it that first moment, when he had turned on her in the box with such terrible eyes? She drew in her shoulders, looking all around at the dim corners of the room which the lamp flame failed to penetrate. Behind her present lively fear a second shadow was growing, more dim, more formless, more vast and dubious.
What series of circumstances might have led up to Kerr's knowledge she could not dream. He was one of whom nothing was incredible. From the first moment his face had shot into the light, from the moment she had heard his voice, like color in the level voices around him, she had been bewildered by his variety. He had caught her up to the clouds. He had whirled her along dubious levels, and more than once he had shown her that the lines she had supposed drawn so sharply between this and that could no more be discerned than meridians on green earth.
If she had noticed any earnestness in him, it was his relish, his gusto for the whole of life. He had no theory to set up. Just as it was he took it. If he persisted in requiring people to be themselves it was for no good to themselves, but for the pleasure he himself got out of it. If he made society into a little ball, and threw it away, it was only to show it could be done.