His surprise at this matter-of-fact reception made his expression almost ludicrous. “Cane! Oh, that’s so. Why I left it. Must have left it.”
In the years that followed she learned what the absence of the malacca stick meant. It had come to be a symbol in every pawnshop on Clark Street. Its appearance was bond for a sum a hundred times its actual value. Gaylord Ravenal always paid his debts.
She finished undressing, in silence. Her face was red and swollen. She looked young and helpless and almost ugly. He was uncomfortable and self-reproachful. “I’m sorry, Nola. I was detained. We’ll go to the theatre to-morrow night.”
She almost hated him then. Being, after all, a normal woman, there followed a normal scene—tears, reproaches, accusations, threats, pleadings, forgiveness. Then:
“Uh—Nola, will you let me take your ring—just for a day or two?”
“Ring?” But she knew.
“You’ll have it back. This is Wednesday. You’ll have it by Saturday. I swear it.”
The clear white diamond had begun its travels with the malacca stick.
He had spoken the truth when he said that he had been unavoidably detained.
She had meant not to sleep. She had felt sure that she would not sleep. But she was young and healthy and exhausted from emotion. She slept. As she lay there by his side she thought, before she slept, that life was very terrible—but fascinating. Even got from this a glow of discovery. She felt old and experienced and married and tragic. She thought of her mother. She was much, much older and more married, she decided, than her mother ever had been.