"Aren't they?" she muttered. She sank into a chair. "Why?"
"You aren't obliged to earn a living—you have a home, anyhow. Plenty of women haven't that; there are plenty of them worse off than you, I give you my word!"
"There aren't," she cried, "there's nobody worse off than I am! Some people are resigned to drig on all their lives and never have enough of anything. I'm not resigned. I hate the scrimping and scraping, and the peal of the lodgers' bells, and the drabs of servants who think they can be impudent to you because you 'let.' I'm sick, sick, sick of it all. I got away from it once, and now I'm in a back parlour again, with never a soul to speak to. How would you like it? But you don't know what loneliness means. How can you understand what I feel—you?"
"Why should you say I can't understand?" he answered. "Because my name is printed in large letters on the bills, and I've got all that you want? I haven't got all that I want. Doesn't it strike you that inside here I may feel all that a white man feels, though no white woman will ever feel the same for me? Ah, that's news to you, eh? But it's true. People say of fools like me, 'Oh, he keeps low company, he's happiest in the gutter.' Liars! Some of us take what we can get, that's all. The moon we cry for is over our heads, and we make shift with its reflection in the puddle. I do know what loneliness, means—when I let myself think about it. Do I think about it often? No, not me, I'm not such a blooming fool: I enjoy. But the knowledge is there, and the loneliness is worse than yours. Money? I make pots of money—I never sing under eighty pounds—money isn't everything. You see these rings? They cost—Lord knows!—three hundred. I'll give them to you. All of them: here—one, two, three, four!" He threw them into her lap. "They belong to you now. Are you quite happy? No, you're not; you still want something. Well, with me it's the same. I still want something—and I shall go wanting all my life."
"So shall I," she returned. She picked the rings up one by one, and held them out to him with a sigh.
"What, you won't keep them?" he inquired. Though his impulse had taken a theatrical form, it was quite sincere.
"Keep them?" She looked at him amazed. "Do you mean to say you really gave them to me to keep?"
"Why shouldn't I give them to you? I'll give you anything you like. Go on, put them on, or—they're too big for you—put them in your pocket. Yes, I mean it—they're yours."
"Oh," she exclaimed, "I can't keep things from you like——But you're joking?"
"I mean it," he repeated. "Bless me, why not? I want you to have them. They're a present."