Gay sprang up in alarm, the ukulele being the only weapon handy, holding her off at arm's length. "How low!" he chattered. "How d-disgustingly low----" "Is it? I'll show you--I'll show you whether or not you can wear diamond stickpins while I have to endure a wedding ring like a washwoman's!" Before Gay knew what was happening Trudy had left the house. A half hour later a suave clerk's voice from the jewellery store was asking him to step down at once, his wife had requested it, she had decided on a ring for herself but wished his seal of approval--so did the store--and a small deposit--would he be able to be with them shortly? He would, struggling with a man-size rage. After all, the little five-eighths-carat stone he had so proudly adorned his bosom with would be dearly paid for in the end. That was what came of marrying beneath him, he reproached himself as he locked up the apartment and went down to the store. To make a scene in a fifty-cent cafe was not worth the effort, Trudy had once proclaimed, but to run the gauntlet of real rough-house emotion in a jewellery store frequented by his clientele would be social suicide. The only thing was to make Beatrice pay a larger commission on the things for her new tea house so that he could pay for this red-haired vixen's ring. But this would not in the least dim the red-haired vixen's triumph, which was the issue at stake. From that moment he began really to hate Trudy. To her amazement he greeted her in honeyed tones, approved the ring, and suggested that the wedding ring be turned in for old gold and replaced by a modern creation and so on, produced a deposit, and walked out with Trudy, who wore the new symbol of triumph on her finger, proposing that they lunch downtown. He was determined to carry it through without a moment's faltering. Even Trudy was nonplussed. Once the treasure was secure in her possession she told herself it had been so easy that she was a fool not to have tried it before--she even complimented Gay on his scarfpin. But she began hating him also. No one would have suspected it, to watch these diamond-adorned young people guzzling crab-meat cocktails and planning fiercer raids on Beatrice O'Valley's pocketbook. Moreover, Trudy did not change in her decision to make someone unhappy. She found that possessing a diamond ring did not remove her discontent--and a shamed feeling stole over her, causing her to wonder how loudly she had screamed at Gay and how she must have looked when she started to strike him in her blind rage; how horrible it was to go off on tangents just because you wanted rings on your fingers and bells on your toes when all the time the world did contain such persons as Mary Faithful, who did not choose to claim a paradise which longed to be claimed.