Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/567

Rh He looked up, the color rushing over his face.

"I know to whom it belongs!" he said, eagerly. "This is different from anything else, quite different. A moment ago it was only a pain to me to look at this. It recalled a time—If you could change all that, if you could make it be that I shall only think of this ring with great happiness, you wouldn't deny that to me, would you? The ring belongs to Rose. I gave it to her. To-morrow I shall change it for what will buy for her the greatest gift in the world. You will take it then and manage the rest? You can't refuse—not coming in this way. Think what it will mean to Rose—all her life. No, you can't refuse this to her—or to me."

She stood motionless, looking up at him, moved, shaken, unable to reply. He could feel his heart beating as he waited, watching her gentle, flowerlike face, the soft, changing color, the deep, sweet eyes. How good she was! How fine and strong, and yet so loving, so lovely and girl-like. It seemed to him that he was wandering once more in the glamour of that old garden of simple, sweet flowers—the delicate tinted bloom of the nasturtiums on slender stems about him. He knew that never in his life had he looked into eyes so gravely deep, so soft, so intimately sweet. Her voice, when she spoke, would be as were her eyes—soft, penetrating, deeply moved.

"I—I cannot answer yet—not yet. I must think first, but—Good night—and—God bless you, Mr. Courtney!"

At her motion he opened his door for her, but as she passed near him he saw that she was trembling from head to foot, and with a quick, hopeful impulse he stretched out his hand to her entreatingly. Again she glanced up at him, faltered, stood irresolute, then, her eyes still lifted, for a moment she laid her hand in his. It brushed his palm like soft, warm velvet, but no velvet was ever so informed with life, with unimagined fire, telling him with a touch all she could not speak—her gratitude, her consent. He lifted her hand reverently to his lips, then as gently released it. The next moment he was alone in the room.

Courtney moved slowly back to the table. He lifted the little white velvet ring-box and opened it, absently slipping the ring more closely into the satin slit. He touched both ring and case with slow, careful touches, and then sat motionless, the case still held in his open hand. When he roused at last it was to find that his room was in darkness save for the firelight from his hearth. He looked down wondering at his hand. His fingers had clasped down closely on the soft, warm velvet that touched his palm. His thoughts—where had they been? This strange, vague emotion, this pitying, overmastering tenderness—for what, for whom were they? Pity? No! She would have none of his pity.

He sat upright, startled, staring into the dim spaces of his room, his eyes fixed on the doorway where no one now stood. Again the slender upright figure, the flowerlike face, swayed there before him, the soft gray eyes spoke into his, and suddenly he knew.