"A sentimental story, wasn't it?" said Arkright.
"What was it about?" asked Anikin.
"Mr. Arkright will tell it you better than I can," said Kathleen.
"I am afraid I don't remember it well enough," said Arkright.
He remembered the story sufficiently well, although being of no literary importance, it had small interest for him; but he saw that Miss Farrel had some reason for wanting it told, and for telling it herself, so he pressed her to indicate the subject.
"Well," she said, "it's about a man who had been all sorts of things: a soldier, a king, and a savant, and who wants to go into a monastery, and says he had done with all that the world can give, and as he says this to the abbot, a brass ring, which he wears round his neck, falls on to the floor of the cell. The ring had been given him by a queen whom he had loved, a long time ago, at a distance and without telling her or anyone, and who had been dead for years. The abbot tells him to throw it away and he can't. He gives up the idea of entering the monastery and goes away to wander through the world. I think he was right not to throw away the ring, don't you?" she said.
"Do you think one ought never to throw away the brass ring?" said Anikin, with the incomparable Slav facility for "catching on," who instantly adopted the phrase as a symbol of the past.
"Never," said Kathleen.
"Whatever it entails?" Anikin asked.
"Whatever it entails," she answered.