"Yes, it's a star sapphire, Geoffrey gave it to me." There was a long pause. "We had a quarrel," she said at last, "nothing very much; it began just as a disagreement of opinion, but I was very hot-tempered; I always said more than I meant. So Geoffrey gave me this brooch," she ended, inconsequently, a little furrow of pain forming between her eyebrows at the recollection. Miss Dorset murmured something inaudible, unable to offer any comfort for a quarrel which had begun and ended probably thirty years ago. Rather awkwardly, anxious to make a diversion, she moved come cases nearer to Mrs. Greene. By chance one of them contained the brooch which had been spoken of in the morning. "That's what I want," said Mrs. Greene triumphantly, her depression completely banished. "That's the brooch I want you to have; it was another of my wedding presents and I used to wear it a great deal, but I never wear rubies now, and I would like you to have it." It was a very fine ruby. The sun lit up its dark wine-coloured heart and turned to fire the diamond pentacle in which it was set. Miss Dorset caught something of its glow and radiance. "I can't possibly thank you," she said, "I've never had anything so lovely before; it will give me real happiness." With an unusually impulsive and graceful movement she lifted Mrs. Greene's hand and kissed it. The old lady was amazed at the happiness she had caused. She remembered her thoughts of the morning. The brooch had seemed then a cold and trivial thing. Now, lying on Miss Dorset's hand, enriched by her unconcealed pleasure, it became a warm symbol of affection and gratitude. Mrs. Greene thought of services rendered, of fine discretions, of considerateness carried far beyond the borders of duty into the realm of intuition, and she was filled with immense satisfaction. There were good things in life: loyalties, restraints, disinterested devotion. One lived from day to day, from year to year, and at the end it was bitten deep into the mind that baseness was transitory, but that good quality endured. Mrs. Greene braced herself. "Miss Dorset," she said sternly, "all my life I've cared for the quality of things and people. I'm old now; old enough to know the truth that lies in platitudes, but if you see me slipping into an easy tolerance, and putting up with the second rate, you'll know that I'm dead, though my body lives on." Miss Dorset was startled. Inadvertently she expressed her crude and simple opinion, speaking as to an equal, happily forgetful of the responsibility of youth towards age; a responsibility that leads to concealments and subterfuges, to the elimination from conversation of anything that might be unpalatable or alarming; to the whole softening process that makes for safety and, presumably, content.