Winny seemed to be scoring points in the bazaar.
Then, before she knew where she was, Ranny, with all the power of the Exhibition at his back, had bought her a present, a little heart-shaped brooch made of Florentine turquoises.
That came of looking at things. She might have known it would.
"I'm tired of these shops," said Winny. "We shall be too late to hear anything of the band."
Thus she drew him to the Western Garden, so that for the moment she seemed to have it all in her own hands. For here there were more lights, and even more extravagant and fantastic display of electric jewelry, more garlands of diamond and crystal, illuminating, decorating everything. And there were rubies hanging in strange trees, and at their feet the glamour of light dissolved, half of it perished, gone from the world, drunk up by the earth, half living on where gray walks wound like paths in a dream, between rings of spectral green, islands of dimmed, mysterious red, so transformed, so unclothed and clothed again by glamour, as to be hardly discernible as beds of geraniums in grass.
Here they wandered for what seemed an eternity of bliss.
"What more do you want?" said Winny. "Isn't this beautiful enough for anybody?" Neither of them had any idea that the beauty and the glamour of it was in their own souls as they drank each other's mystery.
"Let's just sit and listen to the band," she said. And they sat and listened to it for another eternity, till Ranny became restless. For thirteen and eleven pence halfpenny was burning in his pocket.
The thought of it made him take her to a restaurant where they sat for quite a long time and drank coffee and ate ices. Winny submitted to the ices. They were delicious, and she enjoyed them without a shadow of misgiving. She was, in fact, triumphant, for she looked on ices as the close and crown of everything, and she calculated that out of that sovereign there would be exactly eleven and twopence halfpenny left.
"Well—it's been lovely. And now we must go home," she said.