“I believe it is. It’s an engagement ring....” She slipped it on her finger, and added, in a voice she tried to make matter-of-fact: “It was given to me last week.”
“Oh!” he said, in a colorless tone, and with his eyes on her face.
“Yes. Last week.”
She glanced at him, and it was suddenly apparent for one instant of illumination that this ring upon her finger was the crowning blunder of her life. It was apparent, and then it faded into the quality of an inevitable necessity.
“Odd!” he remarked, rather surprisingly, after a little interval.
There was a brief pause, a crowded pause, between them.
She sat very still, and his eyes rested on that ornament for a moment, and then travelled slowly to her wrist and the soft lines of her forearm.
“I suppose I ought to congratulate you,” he said. Their eyes met, and his expressed perplexity and curiosity. “The fact is—I don’t know why—this takes me by surprise. Somehow I haven’t connected the idea with you. You seemed complete—without that.”
“Did I?” she said.
“I don’t know why. But this is like—like walking round a house that looks square and complete and finding an unexpected long wing running out behind.”