Merlin stared breathlessly, half-hearing through an auditory ether Olive’s low, soft monologue, as like a persistent honey-bee she sucked sweetness from her memorable hour. Merlin was listening to the clinking of ice and the fine laughter of all four at some pleasantry--and that laughter of Caroline’s that he knew so well stirred him, lifted him, called his heart imperiously over to her table, whither it obediently went. He could see her quite plainly, and he fancied that in the last year and a half she had changed, if ever so slightly. Was it the light or were her cheeks a little thinner and her eyes less fresh, if more liquid, than of old? Yet the shadows were still purple in her russet hair; her mouth hinted yet of kisses, as did the profile that came sometimes between his eyes and a row of books, when it was twilight in the bookshop where the crimson lamp presided no more. And she had been drinking. The threefold flush in her cheeks was compounded of youth and wine and fine cosmetic--that he could tell. She was making great amusement for the young man on her left and the portly person on her right, and even for the old fellow opposite her, for the latter from time to time uttered the shocked and mildly reproachful cackles of another generation. Merlin caught the words of a song she was intermittently singing-- “_Just snap your fingers at care, Don’t cross the bridge ’til you’re there--_” The portly person filled her glass with chill amber. A waiter after several trips about the table, and many helpless glances at Caroline, who was maintaining a cheerful, futile questionnaire as to the succulence of this dish or that, managed to obtain the semblance of an order and hurried away.... Olive was speaking to Merlin-- “When, then?” she asked, her voice faintly shaded with disappointment. He realized that he had just answered no to some question she had asked him. “Oh, sometime.” “Don’t you--care?” A rather pathetic poignancy in her question brought his eyes back to her. “As soon as possible, dear,” he replied with surprising tenderness. “In two months--in June.” “So soon?” Her delightful excitement quite took her breath away. “Oh, yes, I think we’d better say June. No use waiting.” Olive began to pretend that two months was really too short a time for her to make preparations. Wasn’t he a bad boy! Wasn’t he impatient, though! Well, she’d show him he mustn’t be too quick with _her_. Indeed he was so sudden she didn’t exactly know whether she ought to marry him at all. “June,” he repeated sternly. Olive sighed and smiled and drank her coffee, her little finger lifted high above the others in true refined fashion. A stray thought came to Merlin that he would like to buy five rings and throw at it. “By gosh!” he exclaimed aloud. Soon he _would_ be putting rings on one of her fingers.