."

"But that's not the right finger."

"Isn't it?"

"No. My grandmother gave me that."

He held her eyes--forced her to see the comprehension in his.

"Then you won't help me?" he said.

"Help you? How?"

"You don't want to tell me anything about yourself?"

"But I have nothing to tell. I'm a very uninteresting person, I'm
afraid."

This was shyness, this dropping into conventional phrases. He led
her deftly through them to a greater confidence in his interest, as
you steer a boat through shallow, rapid-running water. He wanted to
get to the woman beneath it all, knowing that the woman was there.
So he made for deep water, guiding her through the shoals. Before
they had finished their second course, she was telling him about Mr.
Arthur.

"And you don't love him?" he said.

"No."

"Respect him?"

She paused. The pause answered him. The tension of the moment lifted.

"Yes. I respect him. I know he's honourable. He must be reliable.
After all he's offering me everything."

You would have thought, to hear her, that the matter was yet in the
balance, swaying uncertainly before it recorded the weight. There
is the instinct of the woman in that. She felt the shadow of his
apprehension; knew that she raised her value in his eyes by the
seeming presence of debate. Yet none realized better than she, that
Mr. Arthur had been stripped of all possibility now. The fateful
comparison had been made--the comparison which most women make in
the decision of such momentous issues--one man against another.
Their emotions are the agate upon which the scales must swing. In
favour of the man before her, they swung with ponderous obviousness.

"Then you'll marry him?" said Traill.

She looked at him questioningly--raised eyebrows--the look of mute
appeal. You might have read anything behind her eyes--you might have
read nothing. Traill studied them wonderingly.

"You'll marry him--of course," he repeated. He was taking the risk.
He might be forcing her to say yes. He prepared himself for it. To
take that risk, knowing one way or another, rather than blindly
groping to the end, this was typical of him. But he could not force
her to the answer that he sought for.

"Do you think I ought to?" she asked.

He drummed his fingers on the table and looked through her.

"Why do you ask me?"

"I'm sorry." She returned sensitively to the food that was before
her--"I thought you had seemed interested. I'm sorry--I took too mu