“Oh,” said Amethyst, with streaming tears, “I shall always—I shall always feel—glorified by your having loved me—so.”
He got hold of her hand, and held it gently in both his own, and when she was a little calmer, he said—
“Tell me about your troubles.”
“They’re not worth it,” she said, “hard, sordid money troubles—things that are hateful. And the wrong things I do—and feel—and think.”
“I think there’ll be better times for you,” said Lucian; then he smiled, and said, “As there will be soon for me.”
“If—if you could but get better—”
Lucian gave her the strangest look.
“Oh, no,” he said, quietly, and then, with a little more of his usual manner—
“I’m sorry to have made you cry. But I think you’ll like by and by to know I quite understood. Now there’s just one thing more.”
He took hold of a gold locket that hung from his watch chain, and opened it slowly, then took out of it the broad gipsy ring, set with a big amethyst and two diamonds—the very ring that his boyish taste had thought both handsome and symbolical enough to give his betrothed.