countless airy
spires and pinnacles; and here, there, everywhere, its walls were gay
with gold and crimson, as with drooping banners.

"'Tis a city _en fete_," said John. "'Tis the city where marriages are
made. They must have one in hand."

"Hark," said she, putting up a finger. "There are your nightingales
beginning."

But the raised finger reminded him of something. "Have you a rooted
objection to rings?" he asked.

"Why?" asked she.

"I notice that you don't wear any."

"Oh, sometimes I wear many," she said. "Then one has moods in which one
leaves them off."

"I have a ring in my pocket which I think belongs to you," said he.

"Really? I don't know that any of my rings are missing."

"Here it is," said he. He produced the little old shagreen case he had
received from Lady Blanchemain, opened, and offered it.

"It is a singularly beautiful ring," said she, her eyes admiring. "But
it doesn't belong to me."

"I think it does," said he. "May I try it on your finger?"

She put forth her right hand.

"No--your left hand, please," he said. He dropped upon one knee before
her, and when the delicate white hand was surrendered, I imagine he made
of getting the ring upon the alliance finger a longer business by a good
deal than was necessary. "There," he said in the end, "you see. It looks
as if it had grown there. Of course it belongs to you." He still held
her hand, warm and firm and velvet-soft. I think in another second he
would have touched it with his lips. But she drew it away.

She gazed into the depths of the heart-shaped ruby, tremulous with
liquid light, and smiled as at secret thoughts.

"But I don't see," said John, getting to his feet, "how any man can ask
a Princess of the House of Zelt to marry him and live on six hundred
pounds a year."

"She would have to modify her habits a good deal, that is very certain,"
said Maria Dolores.

"She would have to modify them utterly," said John. "Six hundred a year
is poverty even for a single man. For a married couple it would be
beggary. She would have to live like the wife of a petty employe. She
would have to travel second class and stay at fourth-rate hotels. She
would have to turn her old dresses and trim her own bonnets. She would
have to do without a maid. And all this means that she would have
virtually to renounce her caste, to give up the society of her equals,
who demand a certain scale of appearances, and to live among pariahs or
to live i