"Well, she neither returned it nor kept it. I have it. I don't want it. Will you take it?" I fetched it from my pocket and held it out to her. Her hand found my sleeve, almost as if that brilliance underfoot unsteadied her head. Her eyes had closed and there was a little hard crumple between her brows. I put my other hand on her shoulder. "Let's get up the beach--this is too dazzling--it's making you dizzy," I said. Faintly she murmured, "Yes--it does get in your eye----" VII On the hot loose sand above the highest seaweed I made her sit down. Presently she had recovered a little. Her manner was now undoubtedly that of a person on whose back a half-withdrawn burden is reimposed. But she shouldered it. "Where did you get it?" she asked, her eyes on the ring in my palm. "Do you remember Philip asking me to pack up some sketches for him and sending me his key?" "He did say something about it. Monty had left." "I found the ring on the Sunday afternoon I went for the sketches. It was in a hole in the studio floor." "In a hole.... Ah-h-h-h!" I looked sharply at her, but continued. "Stuck quite firmly in: in fact, I had to prise it out with a screwdriver. I didn't know which of them it belonged to--I don't know now--so I slipped it into my pocket. Perhaps you'd better take it." But she made no movement to do so. She was picking up handfuls of sand and allowing it to slip through her fingers again. She made quite a number of little heaps, which her eyes attentively watched, but her mind was elsewhere--perhaps on that last letter of Audrey Cunningham's, when apparently the engagement had been neither off nor on. She made no sign when I placed the ring in her lap. I had to speak. "Queer, wasn't it?" Her murmur was so low that I scarcely heard it. "Of course a thing like that _would_ make it definitely off." "A thing like what?" "Losing it like that--after all the other." "Come, she can hardly have 'lost' it, since I had to get a screwdriver to prise it out!" "I don't mean 'lost' in that way--be quiet and let me think." The fingers began to make a fifth sandhill. I hope I have made it clear that I was confining myself quite strictly to Monty Rooke's affair. If it was simply a misunderstanding I did not think I was going beyond my business in discussing with Mollie whether that misunderstanding might not be removed. But it now seemed to me that I was once more on the verge of far more than this. That deep long-drawn "Ah-h-h-h!" that "A thing like that _would_ make it definitely off" were enough to convince me of this. Evidently my words had meant more to her than to myself who had uttered them. Therefore if Mollie claimed time to think, so did I.