“_They say—What do they say?—Let them say!_” The average person will always find that a counsel of perfection.—Especially the average girl. The impulse _not_ to let them “say” if we can help it is nearly as strong in us as the instinct of self-preservation, and of touching our hair when we pass a mirror. So that there must be some really important basic reason for it. I do wish I knew what would happen if that suddenly crumbled away ...? But it isn’t “away” yet: it spoiled every trace of amusement that I might otherwise have enjoyed in the lunch and the people that passed. I’ve merely a vague impression of cab-whistles, of taxis whirling up beyond the trellis of the low balustrade, of obviously American figures appearing and disappearing among the evergreens; of a small, unhappy-looking face with dark eyes that stared resentfully at me out of the bowls of spoons, and of a voice that said half-absently, “I’m afraid you’ve made a very poor lunch, Miss Trant.” “Oh, not at all.” “Perhaps you are tired?” “Oh, not in the least, thank you.” “Not too tired to come on somewhere? I thought if you didn’t mind”—this always preludes an order—“we’d drive to Gemmer’s in Bond Street, and choose that ring for you.” “Ring?” I repeated vaguely, as I put on my gloves. “You will have to have one, you know. An engagement ring, as the outward and visible sign of the new conditions,” he said nonchalantly, as we rose. “Must have a ring to clinch the effect!” Yes, I thought resentfully, that “clinches” it—for him. He doesn’t think of my side of the affair at all! He doesn’t see that his accurately mapped-out time-table includes any unpleasantness—just because _he_ doesn’t choose to admit it! I turned to him as we sat in the cab. I felt like “the turning worm” as I pulled myself together for what I meant to say. CHAPTER VII CHOOSING THE RING “About that—engagement ring, Mr. Waters——” “Yes?” “You want me to take to wearing it, as soon as you have got it, I suppose?” “That’s the idea,” he said, turning a little to look at me while I stared straight at the big white-and-blue buses lumbering up the Strand, but saw, clearer than the traffic, the faces of Miss Robinson, Miss Holt, and Smithie wearing that partly contemptuous, but more angry, expression with which I suppose a decent Trades-Unionist on strike might be entitled to look down upon a blackleg. “Yes, of course it’s for you to wear at once. What else?” “And—to show the others?” “Of course!” He looked still more surprised; a little impatient, too. I suppose he felt that again an irritating spoke was being thrust into the well-oiled wheel of his plan. “I am to show it to them and let them know, in that way, that I am supposed to be engaged to you?” He answered this with another question. “Tell me, Miss Trant, have you been having any unpleasantness in the office about this—coming out to lunch with me?”