"Stuck quite firmly in: in fact, I had to prise it out with a screwdriver. I didn't know which of them it belonged to—I don't know now—so I slipped it into my pocket. Perhaps you'd better take it."
But she made no movement to do so. She was picking up handfuls of sand and allowing it to slip through her fingers again. She made quite a number of little heaps, which her eyes attentively watched, but her mind was elsewhere—perhaps on that last letter of Audrey Cunningham's, when apparently the engagement had been neither off nor on. She made no sign when I placed the ring in her lap. I had to speak.
"Queer, wasn't it?"
Her murmur was so low that I scarcely heard it. "Of course a thing like that would make it definitely off."
"A thing like what?"
"Losing it like that—after all the other."
"Come, she can hardly have 'lost' it, since I had to get a screwdriver to prise it out!"
"I don't mean 'lost' in that way—be quiet and let me think."
The fingers began to make a fifth sandhill.
I hope I have made it clear that I was confining myself quite strictly to Monty Rooke's affair. If it was simply a misunderstanding I did not think I was going beyond my business in discussing with Mollie whether that misunderstanding might not be removed. But it now seemed to me that I was once more on the verge of far more than this. That deep long-drawn "Ah-h-h-h!" that "A thing like that would make it definitely off" were enough to convince me of this. Evidently my words had meant more to her than to myself who had uttered them. Therefore if Mollie claimed time to think, so did I.