n
she gets it. It may be seen from this that his knowledge of Sally
was supremely slight. He had a broad judgment for all women, a
pigeon-hole in his mind into which he threw them without
discrimination. When, therefore, he came across the exception in
Sally, he did not recognize her, flung her in with the rest, folded
more carefully perhaps, tied even with a little distinguishing piece
of ribbon. But into that same receptacle in his mind she went,
nevertheless. Yet Traill was not without shrewdness in his wide
judgment of the sex. He could read his sister as you read a book in
which the pages only need cutting, and the glossary sometimes
referred to.

On this evening, certainly, he had failed to see the point towards
which she drove; but in her dealings with another of her sex, a woman
is most inexplicable of all to a man. For this edition de luxe, he
needs reference, dictionary, and magnifying glass, with a steady
finger always to keep his place on the line should his eyes for one
moment lift or wander from the print.

Sally, as yet, he had classified broadly. In the very next moment
he was to learn more of her, to take her down from that
indiscriminating file in his mind, and scrutinize her afresh.

She took the bangle out of its velvet case and clasped it--with pride
even then--upon her wrist.

"You see it fits--perfectly," she said, looking up pathetically.

"Then--Good Lord! why do you bring it back?"

She unclasped it, letting it lie in the palm of her hand,
half-stretched out towards him.

"Because I mustn't accept it--I can't. If, after the last time I was
here, when you said good-bye, you'd said to me you were going to buy
it, I should have told you that I would not take it."

He paid no attention to her outstretched hand. At her eyes he looked.

"Why not? Why particularly after I'd said good-bye?"

"Because you have no right to give it me, and I have less right to
accept it."

He half-laughed. "Isn't that rather childish?"

"I don't think so."

"But do you like it? Isn't it a sort of thing you'd like?"

"A sort of thing? I think it's beautiful. I've never had a present
like it in my life--never had anything that was so valuable."

"And you're going to refuse it?"

"I must."

He still made no offer to take it from her, but looked persistently
at her eyes.

"If I asked you quite straight," he said, "would you tell me quite
straight--why?"

Now it must be the truth or the lie. No silen