She stepped backward with a smile.
"Are you laughing at them?" she asked. She drew back her skirt slightly and exhibited a pair of rubber sea boots which were inches too large for her. There was something boyish in the action that did draw a smile from Lavelle. "You are laughing," she went on, and pouted prettily. "But do so as much as you wish. They're sensible."
"Right you are. They're the very thing for decks like this. We should have thought of them before."
"They're much too large, but I've put on socks and socks and stuffed the toes with things."
This statement of a most obvious fact brought a genuine laugh from Paul. It passed quickly as the pain caused by the ring reasserted itself.
"Oh, let me do that for you," Emily said, crossing to his side. Before he could object she had knelt by him and taken his hand. "Why did I not think of this hours ago? Poor, poor fingers. Am I hurting you? There?"
The perfume of her hair, of her breath, of her whole being was about him. As the ring came off his hand closed on hers and he slipped the jade, with its strange seal in Chinese hieroglyphics, over her third finger. It was her left hand that he had chosen.
"I want you to take this, Emily—to wear it." He was fighting hard to control his voice. "Chang gave it to me the day I left Yokohama—when the old chap thought he would never see me again: the day you and I met."
"But, Paul, I——Poor old Chang would——"
"You must keep it. Have I never told you what it says—that seal?" She shook her head. "In Canton there is a very old temple. It is doubtful who built it. It stands near—not far from the Hall of the Five Hundred Wise Men. This seal is copied from its altars: 'Man has many reckonings with man, but only one with God.'"