Of this affair Elsie had spoken quite freely to Lawson. "It only shows what an unmitigated idiot a girl is. She is bound to love some one. I knew quantities of nice boys, and why I should have selected poor Sammy as the centre of all my hopes and affections I don't know. I dimly recall thinking he had nice ears and hands, but even they do not now seem a reasonable basis for wild passion, do they?" Lawson had been amused. "Love at that age isn't a creature of reason." "Evidently not, if mine was a sample." "Ours now is so reasonable as to seem insecure and dangerous." Her intimacy with Lawson, therefore, had begun on the plane of good-fellowship while they were in Paris together, and for two years he seemed quite satisfied. Of late he had been less contained. After her outburst of anger at her father's ejectment of Curtis, she met Lawson with a certain reserve not common to her. At the moment, she more than half resolved that the time had come to leave her father's house for Lawson's flat, and yet her will wavered. She said as little as possible to him concerning that last disgraceful scene, as much on her own account as to spare Curtis, but her restlessness was apparent to Lawson and puzzled him. Two or three times during the summer he had openly, though jocularly, alluded to their marriage, but she had put him off with a keen word. Now that her father seemed intolerable, she listened to him with a new interest. He became a definite possibility--a refuge. Encouraged by this slight change in her attitude towards him, Lawson took a ring from his pocket one night and said, "I wish you'd wear this, Elsie Bee Bee." She drew back. "I can't do that. I'm not ready to promise anything yet." "It needn't bind you," he pleaded. "It needn't mean any more than you care to have it mean. But I think our understanding justifies a ring." "That's just it," she answered, quickly. "I don't like you to be so solemn about our 'understanding.' You promised to let me think it all out in my own way and in my own time." "I know I did--and I mean to do so. Only"--he smiled with a wistful look at her--"I would have you observe that I have developed three gray hairs over my ears." She took the ring slowly, and as she put the tip of her finger into it a slight premonitory shudder passed over her. "You are sure you understand--this is no binding promise on my part?" "It will leave you as free as before." "Then I will wear it," she said, and slipped it to its place. "It is a beautiful ring." He bent and kissed her fingers. "And a beautiful hand, Elsie Bee Bee."