"Here it is," said he. He produced the little old shagreen case he had received from Lady Blanchemain, opened, and offered it. "It is a singularly beautiful ring," said she, her eyes admiring. "But it doesn't belong to me." "I think it does," said he. "May I try it on your finger?" She put forth her right hand. "No--your left hand, please," he said. He dropped upon one knee before her, and when the delicate white hand was surrendered, I imagine he made of getting the ring upon the alliance finger a longer business by a good deal than was necessary. "There," he said in the end, "you see. It looks as if it had grown there. Of course it belongs to you." He still held her hand, warm and firm and velvet-soft. I think in another second he would have touched it with his lips. But she drew it away. She gazed into the depths of the heart-shaped ruby, tremulous with liquid light, and smiled as at secret thoughts. "But I don't see," said John, getting to his feet, "how any man can ask a Princess of the House of Zelt to marry him and live on six hundred pounds a year." "She would have to modify her habits a good deal, that is very certain," said Maria Dolores. "She would have to modify them utterly," said John. "Six hundred a year is poverty even for a single man. For a married couple it would be beggary. She would have to live like the wife of a petty employé. She would have to travel second class and stay at fourth-rate hotels. She would have to turn her old dresses and trim her own bonnets. She would have to do without a maid. And all this means that she would have virtually to renounce her caste, to give up the society of her equals, who demand a certain scale of appearances, and to live among pariahs or to live in isolation. Don't you think a man would be a monster of selfishness to exact such sacrifices?" "Oh, some men have excessively far-fetched and morbid notions of honour," said she. "Do you think the Princess, with all this brought to her attention, would ever dream of consenting?" "Women in love are weak--they will consent to almost anything," said she, her dark eyes smiling for an instant into his. Why didn't he take her in his arms? Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but to defer the consummation of a joy assured (observes the Persian poet) giveth the heart a peculiar sweet excitement. "Well," said John. "I'm glad to think she is weak; but I'll never ask my wife to consent to anything so unpleasant. A Princess and a future peeress, living on six hundred pounds a year! It's unheard of." She looked at him, puzzled, incredulous. "Oh--? Can you possibly mean--that you will--take back your condition?" "Yes," said he, humbly. "Who am I to make conditions?" "You will let her spend as much of her own money as she likes?" she wondered, wide-eyed. "As a lover of thrift, I shall deprecate extravagance," said John. "But as a submissive husband, I shall let her do in all things as her fancy dictates."