She gave it up reluctantly, kissing it much as she had kissed him during their engagement; warm, lingering, but almost impersonal kisses. The ruby seemed miraculously to have restored her beaten youth. She sat on the edge of a chair as he opened the safe and placed the jewel in its box and drawer. "There is one other thing I wanted to ask," he said as he rose. "Is your allowance sufficient? It has sometimes occurred to me that you wanted more--for some feminine extravagance." The light went out of her face. He wondered whimsically if he had locked it in with the ruby, and once more he was conscious that something intangible floated between them. But she looked at him squarely with her shadowed eyes. "Oh, one could spend any amount, of course, but I really have quite enough." "You shall have double your present allowance when these cursed times improve. And I have always intended to settle a couple of hundred thousand on you--a quarter of a million--as soon as I could realize without loss on certain investments. But one day I want you to be quite independent." Her eyes had opened very wide. "A quarter of a million? And it would be all my own? I could do anything with it I liked?" "Well--I think I should put it in trust. I haven't much faith in the resistance of your sex to tempting investments promising a high rate of interest." "I have heard you say that when rich men die the amount of worthless stock found in their safe deposit boxes passes belief." "Quite true. But that is hardly an argument in favor of trusting an even more inexperienced sex with large sums of money." She laughed, but less naturally than when he had been seized with an unwonted spasm of jealousy. "You will always get the best of me in an argument," she said with her exquisite politeness. "Really, I think I love being wholly dependent upon you. Here comes your detective. What a bore. But at least we lunch together if we do have company. And thank you, thank you a thousand times for promising I shall wear the ruby at last." She slipped her hand into his for a second, then left the room, smiling over her shoulder, as the locally celebrated "Jake" Spaulding entered. Both Ruyler and his general manager had thought it best to have their cashier watched. There were rumors of gambling and other road house diversions, and they proposed to save their man to the firm, if possible; if not, to discharge him before he followed the usual course and involved Ruyler and Sons in the loss of thousands they could ill afford to spare. CHAPTER III I