ng, its beauty in the false setting,
the struggle over it in the shop--all were wine to her imagination. It
was a thing to conjure adventure; it was a talisman of romance.

She colored faintly as she mentally corrected herself. It was her
engagement ring, and as such she had never once thought of it. Strange,
when all the forms of her engagement had been so well observed; when
Harry himself represented that side of life to which she had tried to
form herself from as far back as the old days when her mother had made
fun of her fancies. It must be right, she thought, this life of
conventions and forms; and the queer way she saw things, something
wrong in her. But because she knew herself different, and because she
felt life without understanding it, she feared it. It was too big to
take hold of alone. And she was so alone; and Harry was so strong, so
matter-of-fact; alone like herself, yet adequate in the world she was
afraid of. She had accepted him as naturally, and yet as unreally, as
she took all that life, and to the moment she had never questioned the
wisdom or the happiness. She didn't question now. She only was shocked
that so large a fact in her life as her engagement could be completely
wiped out for the moment by a thing so trivial. It was not even the
ring. It was the feeling she had about the ring. Her imagination was
always running away with her, as it had the night at the club. And here
it was, still uncurbed, speeding her forward into fields of romance.

She went over whole dramas--imaginary histories of chance and
circumstance--woven about the ring, as she walked up and down the long,
windy hills, westward and homeward, the blue bay on the one hand beaten
green under the rising "trade," and the fog coming in before her. With
the experience of the morning, and the exercise and the lively air, her
spirits were riding high. From time to time she had the greatest longing
to peep again at the sapphire, but not until the house door had closed
after her did she dare draw off her glove and look. It was still
glorious. What a pity she must take it off! Yet that point Harry had
made about not showing it had been too sharp to be disregarded. But what
could she say, supposing Clara asked about the morning's expedition? At
this thought all her spring deserted her, and she went slowly up the
stair. Perhaps Clara had forgotten about it, and then it recurred
reassuringly to her mind how seldom Clara touched anywhere near