“Tired of it?”
“Not so very.”
“Let me show you something,” he said, affably, coming over and taking out of his pocket a little lithographed card which had been issued by a wholesale tobacco company. On this was printed a picture of a pretty girl, holding a striped parasol, the colours of which could be changed by means of a revolving disk in the back, which showed red, yellow, green, and blue through little interstices made in the ground occupied by the umbrella top.
“Isn’t that clever?” he said, handing it to her and showing her how it worked. “You never saw anything like that before.”
“Isn’t it nice?” she answered.
“You can have it if you want it,” he remarked.
“That’s a pretty ring you have,” he said, touching a commonplace setting which adorned the hand holding the card he had given her.
“Do you think so?”
“That’s right,” he answered, making use of a pretence at examination to secure her finger. “That’s fine.”
The ice being thus broken, he launched into further observation pretending to forget that her fingers were still retained by his. She soon withdrew them, however, and retreated a few feet to rest against the window-sill.