It is always a difficult thing to a woman to bring herself to refuse diamonds, but doubly difficult once she has seen them positively adorning her own person.
Monica looks at the ring, then sighs, then turns it round and round mechanically, and finally glances at Desmond. He returns the glance by passing his arm round her shoulders, after which there is never another word said about the ownership of the ring.
"But it will put my poor little pigs in the shade, won't it?" says Monica, looking at her other hand, and then at him archly. "Oh! it is lovely—lovely!"
"I think I might have chosen you a prettier one, had I run up to Dublin and gone to Waterhouse myself," says Desmond; "but I knew if I went I could not possibly get back until to-morrow evening, and that would mean losing two whole days of our precious seven."
This speech pleases Monica, I think, even more than the ring.
"I am glad you did not go," she says, softly.
"So am I—especially as——" Here he pauses, and then goes on again hurriedly. "If I had gone, Monica, you would not have forgotten me?"
"How could I forget you in two little days?"
"They would have been two very big days to me. But tell me, if I were to go away from you for a far longer time—say for a whole month—would you still be faithful? Should I find you as I left you,—indifferent to others at least, if not wholly mine?"
"Why should I change?"