‘Would you make it a special point that this married pedlar should return you your ribbon, Miss Bartrand?’ ‘I make it a point that Mr. Arbuthnot shall do so.’ Marjorie delivered her ultimatum unflinchingly. ‘The ribbon is worthless, except as a memento of some happy days I spent in Cadiz once, totally worthless to any living person but me.’ ‘And why should it not be a memento of happy days spent in Guernsey by myself?’ She looked him straight between the eyes, too hotly, dangerously irate to make immediate answer. ‘Suppose, leading a prosaic life in the thick of bricks and mortar, that length of ribbon could act as a kind of talisman.’ ‘I don’t understand you in the least.’ ‘A charm bringing back to one’s tired eyes and heart the blue summer night, the smell of moon-coloured hayfields, the whole moment when it was given to me.’ ‘I will suppose nothing of the sort. It was not given. This is vapid, sentimental talk,’ said Marjorie, concentrating her thoughts firmly on absent Dinah. ‘And I abhor sentiment.’ ‘On that solitary point we agree.’ ‘The ribbon I lent you to tie round Mrs. Arbuthnot’s flowers is just a yard of woven, parti-coloured silk. Buy the best match you can find to it in the nearest mercer’s shop. It will be as good a talisman.’ ‘Are you a materialist, Miss Bartrand? Would you say that the ragged colours of one of the Duke’s regiments, the pennants of one of Nelson’s ships, were so much woven silk, more or less stained and weather torn?’ ‘I do not see that my sash ribbon can or should be of the smallest interest to Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,’ observed Marjorie, the blood leaping, more swiftly than it had done under his praise, to her cheek. In this moment she was a woman, the childish cotton frock, the hair hung out to dry, the slim immature figure notwithstanding. A dawning of her sex’s shame burned at her heart as she turned her looks away from him. In this moment, were it possible to assign place and date to matter so intangible, I should say that Geff Arbuthnot first, distinctly, began to fall in love. ‘And suppose _I_ feel that your sash can and ought to be of the greatest possible interest to me?’ he urged. Marjorie found no answer to her hand. If she had been reared under a different rule to Andros Bartrand’s, if she had associated more with girls, had frequented afternoon-teas and garden-parties, she would, doubtless, even in innocent little Sarnia, have learned the formula by which a married man, hazarding idle speeches, ought mildly and effectually to be crushed.