"I see that you honour me by wearing my mascot. The magpie pearl most excellently becomes your beautiful hand, my dear!"
They had reached Regents Park Square and were turning into the Broad Walk. She plucked the ring from her bare finger, and held it out to him, saying in a low tone:
"Please take it back!"
"I am to take it back? ... You are in earnest?"
She repeated her words, holding out the bauble. He released his gloved left hand from the steering-wheel to take it. His eyes were on the road ahead and his face was hard as pink stone. But she heard him give a little sigh of relief as he slipped the ring into an inside coat-pocket. He said, as though to excuse the sigh:
"It was given me in April, when I made my raid on Paris from Hanover, landing my Albatros once only during two days' flight. The weather was magnificent. My engine gave no trouble. That is why I call the ring my mascot, you understand. Now that it has been worn by you, it is more precious than when I first received it. Whenever I look at it, it will speak to me of you."
"Don't let it!"
"Why should it not speak of you? Isis! My heart's Queen!"
"I have told you—don't revolt me with—piffle of that kind. And don't touch me, unless you want me to jump out of the car!"
A voice that he barely knew had issued from the face she turned on him—a face all violet shadows and haggard drawn lines, under the burning splendour of the dead beech-leaf hair. She vibrated like an electrified wire, and round her pale pinched mouth and about her blue-veined temples were little points of moisture, fine and glittering as diamond-dust.