'd done unworthy things to get
it your charm would be broken and he'd be free."

This was so true that Choate could only stare at him and wish he would
either give over or brutally tell him whether he was to be free.

"Madame Beattie uses the necklace as a means of livelihood," said Jeff.
He was growing quite happy in the way his mind was leading him, because
it did seem to be getting him somewhere, where all the links would hold.
"Because she can get more out of it, in some mysterious way I haven't
fathomed, than by selling it. And so she's prisoner to it, too."

"I shall be able to tell what the reason is," said Choate, "before long,
I fancy. I've sent for the history of the Beattie necklace. I know a man
in Paris who is getting it for me."

"Good!" said Jeff. "Now I propose we all escape from the necklace. We're
prisoners, and let's be free."

"How are you a prisoner?" Alston asked him.

Jeff smiled at him.

"Why," said he, "if, as I told you, I took the necklace from this house,
I'm a criminal, and the necklace has laid me by the heels. Who's got it
now?"

This he asked of Esther and she returned bitterly:

"Aunt Patricia's got it. She walked out of the room with it, shaking it
in the sun."

"Good!" said Jeff again. "Let her have it. Let her shake it in the sun.
But we three can escape. Have we escaped? Choate, have you?"

He looked at Choate so seriously that Choate had to take it with an
equal gravity. He knew how ridiculous the situation could be made by a
word or two. But Jeff was making it entirely sane and even epic.

"We know perfectly well," said Jeff, "that the law wouldn't have much to
do if all offenders and all witnesses told the truth. They don't,
because they're prisoners--prisoners to fear and prisoners to
selfishness and hunger. But if we three told each other the truth--and
ourselves, too--we could be free this instant. You, Esther, if you would
tell Choate here how you've loved that necklace and what you've done for
it, why, you'd free him."

Esther cried out here, a little sharp cry of rage against him.

"I see," said she, "it's only an attack on me. That's where all your
talk is leading."

"No, no," said Jeff earnestly. "I assure you it isn't. But if you owned
that, Esther, you'd be ashamed to want glittering things. And Choate
would get over wanting you. And that's what he'd better do."

The impudence of it, Choate knew, was only equalled by its coolness.
Jeff was at this moment believing so intently in himself that he could
have made anybody--but an angry woman--believe also. Jeff was telling
him that he mustn't love Esther, and virtually also that this was
because Esther was not worthy to be loved. But if Choate's only armor
was silence, Esther had gathered herself to snatch at something more
effectual.

"You say we're all prisoners to something," she said to Jeffrey. Her
face was livid now with anger and her eyes glowed upon him. "How about
you? You came into this house and took the necklace. Was that being a
prisoner to it? How about your being free?"

Choate turned his eyes away from her face as if it hurt him. The taunt
hurt him, too, like unclean words from lips beloved. But he looked
involuntarily at Jeff to see how he had taken them. Jeff stood in
silence looking gravely at Esther, but yet as if he did not see her. He
appeared to be thinking deeply. But presently he spoke, and as if still
from deep reflection.

"It's true, Esther. I'm a prisoner, too. I'm trying to see how I can get
out."

Choate spoke here, adopting the terms of Jeff's own fancy.

"If you want us all to understand each other, you could tell Esther why
you took the necklace. You could tell us both. We seem to be thrown
together over this."

"Yes," said Jeff. "I could. I must. And yet I can't." He looked up at
Alston with a smile so whimsical that involuntarily Alston met it with a
glimmer of a smile. "Choate, it looks as if I should have to be a
prisoner a little longer--perhaps for life."

He went toward the door like a man bound on an urgent errand, and
involuntarily Alston turned to follow him. The sight hurt Esther like an
indignity. They had forgotten her. Their man's country called them to
settle man's deeds, and the accordance of their going lashed her brain
to quick revolt. It had been working, that shrewd, small brain, through
all their talk, ever since Madame Beattie had denied Jeff's having taken
the necklace, and now it offered its result.

"You didn't take it at all," she called after them. "It was that girl
that's had the entry to this house. It's Lydia French."


XXX


At the words Alston turned to Jeff in an involuntary questioning. Jeff
was inscrutable. His face, as Alston saw it, the lines of the mouth, the
down-dropped gaze, was sad, tender even, as if he were merely sorry.
They walked along the street together and it was Choate who began
awkwardly.

"Miss Lydia came to me, some weeks ago, about these jewels."

Here Jeff stopped him, breaking in upon him indeed when he had got thus
far.

"Alston, let's go down under the old willow and smoke a pipe."

Alston was rather dashed at having the tentative introduction of Lydia
at once cut off, and yet the proposition seemed to him natural. Indeed,
as they turned into Mill Street it occurred to him that Jeff might be
providing solitude and a fitting place to talk. As they went down the
old street, unchanged even to the hollows worn under foot in the course
of the years, something stole over them and softened imperceptibly the
harsh moment. There was Ma'am Fowler's where they used to come to buy
doughnuts. There was the house where the crippled boy lived, and sat at
the window waving signals to the other boys as they went past. At the
same window a man sat now. Jeff was pretty sure it was the boy grown up,
and yet was too absorbed in his thought of Lydia to ask. He didn't
really care. But it was soothing to find the atmosphere of the place
enveloped him like a charm. It wasn't possible they were so old, or
that they had been mightily excited a minute before over a foolish
thing. Presently after leaving the houses they turned off the road and
crossed the shelving sward to the old willow, and there on a bench
hacked by their own jackknives they sat down to smoke. Jeff remembered
it was he who had thought to give the bench a back. He had nailed the
board from tree to tree. It was here now or its fellow--he liked to
think it was his own board--and he leaned against it and lighted up. The
day's perturbation had taken Choate in another way. He didn't want to
smoke. But he rolled a cigarette with care and pretended to take much
interest in it. He felt it was for Jeff to begin. Jeff sat silent a
while, his eyes upon the field across the flats where the boys were
playing ball. Yet in the end he did begin.

"That necklace, Choate," said he, "is a regular little devil of a
necklace. Do you realise how much mischief it's already done?"

Between Esther's asseverations and Lydia's theories Choate's mind was in
a good deal of a fog. He thought it best to give a perfunctory grunt and
hope Jeff would go on.

"And after all," said Jeff, "as I said, the devilish thing isn't of the
slightest real value in itself. It can, in an indirect way, send a
fellow to prison. It can excite an amount of longing in a woman's mind
colossal enough to make one of the biggest motives possible for any sort
of crime. Because it glitters, simply because it glitters. It can cause
another woman who has done caring for glitter, to depend on it for a
living."

"You mean Madame Beattie," said Alston. "If it's her necklace and she
can sell it, why doesn't she do it? Royal personages don't account for
that."

But Jeff went on with his ruminating.

"Alston," said he, "did it ever