All fight had left the pretty girl; she sat listlessly on the sofa and gave way to her misery. “Oh, you beast, you beast!” she kept whispering between dry sobs. The cavalier of the streets stared at the stone in his hand. It winked and glittered, a bright white light on a dingy palm in a dingy room, arrogantly daring the eye with its innumerable carats. He whistled softly, in wonder. “And they say,” he murmured, “that diamonds aren’t fashionable nowadays!” From the diamond in his palm he looked at the bowed head of the girl. He said harshly: “Haven’t I told you I’m going to give you half of what I get?” “I don’t want to sell it,” sobbed the girl. “I got reasons. You wouldn’t understand--_you_ wouldn’t understand anything to do with sentiment. You was born without a heart, Michael Wagstaffe. When young Thomas Felix Waite loved me he promised me that he’d get that diamond-ring from his mother and give it to me. I didn’t want it then, nor believe him, but he went on so about it that I came to fix my mind on it. And then one day he left me--just like that, without a word. He was a weak idiot, but I loved him--_you_ wouldn’t understand. And when he left me my mind somehow ran on that diamond-ring he’d promised me--I wanted it, d’you see, as I might want some money that’s owing to me. God’s treated me pretty rough, I thought, and so He owes me that diamond-ring just so as I can look at it now and then. And I been thinking about it months and months, not thinking to steal it, you know, but just wanting it. _You_ wouldn’t understand how soft a girl gets when she’s eaten up with loneliness in a big place like London. Why didn’t you let me be at Oxford, Michael, living with my father? And so when I saw this garden-party billed in the Society columns this morning, I just thought I’d try to get in and have a look at the diamond on her hand. I never thought she’d be fool enough to take it off in that catch-as-catch-can crowd to show to a friend, and then lay it on the edge of the fight-for-a-cup-of-tea-table to grab a cake which she could have done well without, she being already so fat with over-feeding....” And for the first time she looked up at the young man, who stood above her absently playing with the glittering toy in his hand. She stared at him with babyish, unbelieving eyes. “Gawd, you’re a bad kind of man, Michael Wagstaffe. You’re very bad.” “You don’t want to sell it, then?” he asked sardonically. “I want the diamond--my diamond!” she whispered. “Give me back my diamond-ring, Michael Wagstaffe. It’ll do for the sun you’ve took from me since we met at Oxford....” He smiled at her suddenly. “Here you are, pretty Betty,” he said, and held out the diamond. But Betty was afraid; she didn’t believe the _beau geste_. Few _beaux gestes_ had come pretty Betty’s way. “Don’t play with me,” she whispered.