“Not too tired to come on somewhere? I thought if you didn’t mind”—this always preludes an order—“we’d drive to Gemmer’s in Bond Street, and choose that ring for you.”

“Ring?” I repeated vaguely, as I put on my gloves.

“You will have to have one, you know. An engagement ring, as the outward and visible sign of the new conditions,” he said nonchalantly, as we rose. “Must have a ring to clinch the effect!”

Yes, I thought resentfully, that “clinches” it—for him. He doesn’t think of my side of the affair at all! He doesn’t see that his accurately mapped-out time-table includes any unpleasantness—just because he doesn’t choose to admit it!

I turned to him as we sat in the cab. I felt like “the turning worm” as I pulled myself together for what I meant to say.

[77]

[77]

CHAPTER VII CHOOSING THE RING

CHOOSING THE RING

“About that—engagement ring, Mr. Waters——”

“Yes?”

“You want me to take to wearing it, as soon as you have got it, I suppose?”

“That’s the idea,” he said, turning a little to look at me while I stared straight at the big white-and-blue buses lumbering up the Strand, but saw, clearer than the traffic, the faces of Miss Robinson, Miss Holt, and Smithie wearing that partly contemptuous, but more angry, expression with which I suppose a decent Trades-Unionist on strike might be entitled to look down upon a blackleg. “Yes, of course it’s for you to wear at once. What else?”

“And—to show the others?”

“Of course!” He looked still more surprised; a little impatient, too. I suppose he felt that again an irritating spoke was being thrust into the well-oiled wheel of his plan.

[78]

[78]

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