She couldn’t help kissing him for that.
“As if I cared! We’ll take a bus ride, then.”
“No, we won’t do that, either,” said he, half laughing. “We’ll stay where we are. I want to talk to you. I—does this suit you, Pem?”
From his pocket he pulled out a ring, carried loose in there, without a box, without even a bit of paper, and laid it in her hand. There it was, honest and unashamed, like himself—the tiniest little diamond. She stared down at it through a veil of tears.
“Best I could do,” he said a little forlornly. “You see, I never tried to save my pay, and it’s darned small, Pem, old girl. I’m only third mate. I dare say I don’t make as much as you do.”
“Never mind! That doesn’t matter,” she answered, so low that he could scarcely hear.
It seemed to her the most touching and beautiful thing that had ever happened, that he should come to her with his poor little ring, so simply and loyally offering her all he had.
“But we can manage,” he went on more cheerfully. “I’ve figured it out. We can take a little flat, you know, and if we’re careful, we can get on. You won’t mind a pretty quiet life, will you, Pem? Nickie told me you weren’t keen on going out and all that. I’m not, either—at least, not now. I was, you know, but not now. We’ll settle down—”
He stopped short, looking at her with a faint frown, but she did not meet his eyes. She was shocked, appalled, at her own traitorous thoughts. She glanced again at the ring, and tried in vain to recapture the tenderness and pity she had felt.
To settle down and marry this boy—not to dance with him, not to listen to his love-making to the accompaniment of music, in a bright dazzle of light, but to marry him and settle down to a deadly quiet life—she knew very well what that meant. She had often enough been in the sort of little flat they would have to live in. She went into such places when sickness was already there. She had seen all the makeshifts, all the sordid and pitiful anxieties of such existences—people who hadn’t enough towels and sheets, who couldn’t afford hot water bottles, who couldn’t afford even the necessary sunlight.