She had learned to do without it.

She had talked very little, but Christopher had talked a great deal. She
had been content to listen. He really told such wonderful things--he
gave her to-night the full story of her silver beads, and how they had
been filched from an ancient temple--and he had bought them from the
thief. "Until I saw you wear them, I always had a feeling that they
ought to go back to the temple--to the god who had perhaps worn them for
a thousand years. If I had known which god, I might have carried them
back. But the thief wouldn't tell me."

"It would have done no good to carry them back," Ridgeley had said, "and
they are nice for Anne." His big hand had patted his wife's shoulder.

"Oh," Christopher had been eager, "I want you to hear those temple bells
some day, Anne. Why won't you take her, Dunbar? Next winter--drop your
work, and we'll all go--"

"I've a fat chance of going."

"Haven't you made money enough?"

"It isn't money. You know that. But my patients would set up a howl--"

"Let 'em howl. You've got a life of your own to live, and so has Anne."

Dunbar had hesitated for a moment--then, "Anne's better off here."

Anne, thinking of these things as she got out of her dinner dress and
into a sheer negligee of lace and faint blue, wondered why Ridgeley