'You are not,' said Josephine energetically. 'Now be good, Hazel! I came to you, because I thought you were the only creature that would have a little feeling for me. Everybody else says it's such a grand thing.' 'Well, I _have_ some feeling for you, and so I don't say it. Much more feeling than patience. Why do you sell yourself, if you do not like the price, Josephine Powder?' 'What can one do?' said the girl disconsolately. 'Let me see the first instalment,' said Hazel. 'Is it paid in?' 'I don't know what you mean,' said Josephine. 'I tell you, they were all at me, and said I should be such a fool if I let it slip; and that I should be very happy;—but I don't feel so.' 'Not when everybody says you are?' Hazel enquired with slight scorn. 'Of course one likes to have other people think one is happy,' said Josephine; 'you don't want to have them pitying you. I thought I should feel better when I was engaged and the whole thing settled. I wish people could live without getting married!' 'Well,' said Wych Hazel, 'there is one thing I could not do without,—if I had to marry John Charteris.' 'What is that?' 'A pocket pistol.' 'A pocket pistol, Hazel! He isn't as bad as that. What's the matter with him?' 'Just a trifle. You do not love him.' 'They said that would come,' said Josephine dolefully. 'By express, from the land of nowhere,' said Miss Wych nibbling her nuts. 'Marked "Very perishable!!!" '— 'But I don't find that it comes.' 'No,' said Hazel coolly, 'that land is a good way off. Isn't it cold work waiting all alone with the diamonds?' Josephine displayed a magnificent finger. But she looked at it with no reflection of its light in her eyes. 'You speak very coolly,' she said, then letting her hand drop. 'I thought you would feel for me somehow.' 'I tell you I do, or I should not take the trouble of pinching you to see if you have any feeling left for yourself. Does not that ring make you shiver?' 'Sometimes. But what can I do, Hazel? It may as well be John Charteris as anybody else, as long as one can't please oneself. One must marry somebody. You know one _must!_' 'Look at them,' said Hazel. 'As cold and hard as he is. Flashing up nothing deeper than the pocket they came from.' 'There is no fault in the diamonds,' said Josephine sulkily. 'They ought to be hard. And these are beauties. And Charteris isn't harder than other people, that I know of. It is only that—I don't want to marry him. And he is in an awful hurry. If it was a long way off, I wouldn't mind so much.' Wych Hazel dropped the chestnuts. 'Josephine,' she said gravely, 'do you see these rings on my hands?' 'Yes. I have seen them and admired them often enough. There's a splendid emerald though. I never saw that before. O Hazel!' the girl cried suddenly. 'It's on _that_ finger!'