"You'll last quite as long—" Here Fleda suddenly hesitated. Fleda vaguely demurred. "His dreadful quarrel?"!

Fleda wondered. "To me, do you mean?" Owen stared. "You haven't lifted a finger! It's I who have taken possession."

Mrs. Gereth stood there in all the glory of a great stroke. "I've settled you." She filled the room, to Fleda's scared vision, with the glare of her magnificence. "I've sent everything back." "A bibelot the more or the less," Fleda said, "could have made little difference in this grand general view of you. I take you simply for the greatest of all conjurers. You've operated with a quickness—and with a quietness!" Her voice trembled a little as she spoke, for the plain meaning of her words was that what her friend had achieved belonged to the class of operation essentially involving the protection of darkness. Fleda felt she really could say nothing at all if she couldn't say that she knew what the danger had been. She completed her thought by a resolute and perfectly candid question: "How in the world did you get off with them?" "Then won't yours do?" Mrs. Gereth demanded. "Haven't I had it from your own mouth that he cares for you?"