The Flaming Jewel

"I need the city, Mr. Stormont. I need all it can give: I'm starving for it. That's all."

She turned on her pillow, and he saw that she was smiling faintly. Her face bore no trace of the tragic truth she had uttered. But the tragedy was plain enough to him, even without her passionless words of revolt. The situation of this young, educated girl, aglow with youth, bettered, body and mind, to the squalor of Clinch's dump, was perfectly plain to anybody.

She said, seeing his troubled expression: "I'm sorry I spoke that way."

"I knew how you must feel, anyway."

"It seems ungrateful," she murmured. "I love my step-father."

"You've proven that," he remarked with a dry humour that brought the hot flush to her face again.

"I must have been crazy that day," she said. "It scares me to remember what I tried to do. ... What a frightful thing -- if I had killed you -- How can you forgive me?"

"How can you forgive me, Eve?"

She turned her head: "I do."

"Entirely?"

"Yes."

He said, -- a slight emotion noticeable in his voice: "Well, I forgave you before the darned gun exploded in our hands."

"How could you?" she protested.

"I was thinking all the while that you were acting as I'd have acted if anything threatened my father."

"Were you thinking of that?"

"Yes, -- and also how to get hold of you before you shot me." He began to laugh.

After a moment she turned her head to look at him, and her smile glimmered, responsive to his amusement. But she shivered slightly, too.

"How about that egg?" he inquired.

"I can get up----"

"Better keep off your feet. What is there in the pantry? You must be starved."

"I could eat a little before supper time," she admitted. "I forgot to take my lunch with me this morning. It is still there in the pantry on the bread box, wrapped up in brown paper, just as I left it----"

She half rose in bed, supported on one arm, her curly brown-gold hair framing her face: "-- Two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate in a flat brown packet tied with a string," she explained, smiling at his amusement.

So he went down to the pantry and discovered the parcel on the bread box where she had left it that morning before starting for the cache on Owl Marsh.