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 throat that made speech impossible for a moment.

She brushed her hand over the top of the box. It was as smooth as a piano-key almost. The execution of the inlay-work was exquisite. But oh, the design—the design! It wasn't right somehow. The letters were too tall for their width—and were framed too close. It was simply tragic to Sheilah, sensitive to nice proportions, that such infinite pains had been expended on a piece of work that could never be anything but crippled and deformed when finished. Well, Felix shouldn't guess! She went on exclaiming gently, softly. 'There must be hundreds of little pieces! And each one so beautifully fitted! I didn't know you could do this sort of thing! And yet I do remember back in the high-school how you loved manual training. But this is like a piece of jewelry, with the mother-of-pearl in the corners, and everything. It's beautiful!'

'There's something inside,' he told her apologetically.

She placed the box on the desk under the droplight, which he had lit now, and raised the cover. The box was lined with bright blue satin (Mrs. Sparks had lined it), loose and puffy like a choppy sea with a generous ruffle of white lace all around the edge, and rosettes of lace here and there in the troughs of the waves. It was just like the inside of a work-box, which a sister of Mrs. Sparks had sent her