More clearly with each minute, these hours had been showing me one thing at least. Whatever he chose to say, however he rated me, dictated to me what I should or should not have done—to listen to his voice was pure joy. Just to be—in Battersea, Anglesey, anywhere!—the sea itself, but _with him_, was like coming out of a stifling tunnel into sunshine and air. He didn’t want me, but I was helplessly his. A mere summer-holiday attraction? No, so much the worse for me. _That_ wouldn’t have meant this sense that every thread of me was knit up and together into one strand that drew me, tied me to him; and must be broken or unravelled now; for neither broken nor unravelled threads are much more good for working! A passing fancy? Not it; not this helpless enchantment that had been growing and growing over me—for how long I didn’t know. It didn’t even allow me to wish that I’d never known the man beside me except as Still Waters of the Near Oriental, that I’d never seen him in his home, never listened to tones of his voice unknown before, never realized what a perfect darling he could be, this “real Billy,” or how it would be heaven to be made love to by him! His hand up the cliff-path once or twice.... Three kisses ... three-and-a-half, if I count that Sevenoaks time, were all I should have to think of for the rest of my life.... Wildly I thought that, if he suggested it, I’d be humbly content to remain his official _fiancée_ for ever. Only not to be sent away! Not to be cut off from the sight and sound of him! Not left to a life that must be all echoes and shadows; desperate, threadbare memories of everything he’d looked and said, every note of his songs, the very gestures with which he’d feel in his coat-pocket for matches, each movement of his lips and eyes! I had to keep my own eyes resolutely from his as we turned away from the cycle-track, afraid that even he might notice. Presently he stopped again. Already? I daren’t look at him. I looked down at his shadow on the dusty road, a pool of black—the sun was high above us, time was getting on. And I mustn’t show him how desperately I would have clutched it back if I could. (Oh, to think of those other hours, days—a whole long week of them!—that I had wasted in sulks, in “baiting” him, at The Lawn!) We were standing by one of the bridges. Here, where I had once thrown away flowers of his—oh! how could I?—I remembered something else that must come into our parting. A smaller thing, but a more barbed one. Not to be shirked, though. “Your ring!” I said. I took it off and handed it to him. It flashed its green and blue and orange sparks in the sunlight as it lay in his palm. He looked at it, hard. No harder than I did. I was looking my good-bye to something that had meant so little—and so much. Too much. I didn’t know how I was going to bear another second of this; and then, quickly, he closed his brown hand over his diamonds and dropped them into his jacket-pocket. Gone.