iged to let her
take the ring in her own way and examine it, and place it in every
light, and compare it with others worn by her friends, and make little
tentative charges of extravagance in his purchase of it, while he sat
elated and adoring, the simple fellow.

Reluctantly at last she gave up her hand. "But it's only trying on--not
putting on," she told him. He said nothing till it flashed upon her
finger, and in her eyes he saw a spark from below of that instinctive
cupidity toward jewels that man can never recognize as it deserves in
woman, because of his desire to gratify it.

"You'll wear it, Dora?" he pleaded.

"Lorne, you are the dearest fellow! But how could I? Everybody would
guess!"

Her gaze, nevertheless, rested fascinated on the ring, which she posed
as it pleased her.

"Let them guess! I'd rather they knew, but--it does look well on your
finger, dear."

She held it up once more to the light, then slipped it decisively off
and gave it back to him. "I can't, you know, Lorne. I didn't really say
you might get it; and now you'll have to keep it till--till the time
comes. But this much I will say--it's the sweetest thing, and you've
shown the loveliest taste, and if it weren't such a dreadful give-away
I'd like to wear it awfully."

They discussed it with argument, with endearment, with humour, and
reproach, but her inflexible basis soon showed through their talk: she
would not wear the ring. So far he prevailed, that it was she, not
he, who kept it. Her insistence that he should take it back brought
something like anger out of him; and in the surprise of this she yielded
so much. She did it unwillingly at the time, but afterward, when she
tried on the thing again in the privacy of her own room; she was rather
satisfied to have it, safe under lock and key, a flashing, smiling
mystery to visit when she liked and reveal when she would.

"Lorne could never get me such a beauty again if he lost it," she
advised herself, "and he's awfully careless. And I'm not sure that I
won't tell Eva Delarue, just to show it to her. She's as close as wax."

One feels a certain sorrow for the lover on his homeward way, squaring
his shoulders against the foolish perversity of the feminine mind,
resolutely guarding his heart from any hint of real reprobation. Through
the sweetness of her lips and the affection of her pretty eyes, through
all his half-possession of all her charms and graces, must have come
dully the sens