She looked up at Charles, her eyes
bright, her lips a little parted, so young and helpless in that moment
that she drew from him his first cry of passion. 'Henrietta!' His
hands trembled.
'It's only,' she faltered, 'because I like looking at pretty things.'
'I know.' He dropped to the sofa beside her. 'It couldn't be anything
else.'
She turned to him, her face close to his, and she asked plaintively,
'But why shouldn't it be?' She seemed to blame him; she did blame him.
There was something in his presence seductively secure; there was
peace: she almost loved him; she loved her power to make him tremble,
and if only he could make her tremble too, she would be his. 'But it
isn't anything else,' she said below her breath.
'No, it isn't,' he echoed in the loud voice of his trouble. He got up
and moved away. 'So just look at the ring and tell me if you like it.'
He heard the box unwrapped and a voice saying, 'I do like it.'
'Then keep it.'
'But I can't.'
'Yes, you can. It's for you. It's pretty, isn't it? And you like
pretty things.'
'I could just look at it now and then, couldn't I? But no, it isn't
fair.'
'I don't mind about that.
'I mean fair to me.'
He turned at that. 'I don't understand.'
'A kind of hold,' she explained.
'How could it be? I wasn't trying to tempt you, but we're engaged and
you must have a ring.'
She shook her small, clenched fists. 'We're not, we're not! Oh, yes,
you can be, if you like; but I didn't mean it would hold me in that
way.
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