"I don't know," replied Dic. "He said he valued it above all else he possessed, and told me it had brought him his sweetest joy and his bitterest grief. I think he gave it to a sweetheart long years ago, and she was compelled to return it and to marry another man. I am only guessing. I don't know."
"Perhaps we had better not keep it," returned the girl, with a touch of her forest-life superstition. "It might bring the same fate to us. I could not bear it, Dic, now. I should die. Before you spoke to me—before that night of Scott's social—it would have been hard enough for me to—to—but now, Dic, I couldn't bear to lose you, nor to marry another. I could not; indeed, I could not. Let us not keep the ring."
Dic's ardor concerning the ring was dampened, but he said:—
"Nonsense, Rita, you surprise me. Nothing can come between us."
"I fear others have thought the same way. Perhaps Billy Little and his sweetheart"—she was almost ready for tears.
"Yes, but what can come between us? Your parents, I hope, won't object. Mine won't, and we don't—do we?" said Dic, argumentatively.
"Ah," answered Rita with her lips, but her eyes, whose language Dic was beginning to comprehend, said a great deal more than can be expressed in mere words.
"Then what save death can separate us?" asked Dic. "We would offend Billy Little by returning the ring, and it looks pretty on your finger. Don't you like it, Rita?"
"Y-e-s," she responded, her head bent doubtingly to one side, as she glanced down at the ring.
"You don't feel superstitious about it, do you?" he asked.