ut will you not accept them?' Knight returned, feeling less her master
than heretofore.

'I would rather not. They are beautiful--more beautiful than any I
have ever seen,' she answered earnestly, looking half-wishfully at the
temptation, as Eve may have looked at the apple. 'But I don't want to
have them, if you will kindly forgive me, Mr. Knight.'

'No kindness at all,' said Mr. Knight, brought to a full stop at this
unexpected turn of events.

A silence followed. Knight held the open case, looking rather wofully
at the glittering forms he had forsaken his orbit to procure; turning it
about and holding it up as if, feeling his gift to be slighted by her,
he were endeavouring to admire it very much himself.

'Shut them up, and don't let me see them any longer--do!' she said
laughingly, and with a quaint mixture of reluctance and entreaty.

'Why, Elfie?'

'Not Elfie to you, Mr. Knight. Oh, because I shall want them. There,
I am silly, I know, to say that! But I have a reason for not taking
them--now.' She kept in the last word for a moment, intending to imply
that her refusal was finite, but somehow the word slipped out, and undid
all the rest.

'You will take them some day?'

'I don't want to.'

'Why don't you want to, Elfride Swancourt?'

'Because I don't. I don't like to take them.'

'I have read a fact of distressing significance in that,' said Knight.
'Since you like them, your dislike to having them must be towards me?'

'No, it isn't.'

'What, then? Do you like me?'

Elfride deepened in tint, and looked into the distance with features
shaped to an expression of the nicest criticism as regarded her answer.

'I like you pretty well,' she at length murmured mildly.

'Not very much?'

'You are so sharp with me, and say hard things, and so how can I?' she
replied evasively.

'You think me a fogey, I suppose?'

'No, I don't--I mean I do--I don't know what I think you, I mean. Let us
go to papa,' responded Elfride, with somewhat of a flurried delivery.

'Well, I'll tell you my object in getting the present,' said Knight,
with a composure intended to remove from her mind any possible
impression of his being what he was--her lover. 'You see it was the very
least I could do in common civility.'

Elfride felt rather blank at this lucid statement.

Knight continued, putting away the case: 'I felt as anybody naturally
would have, you know, that my words on your choice the other day were
invidious