a delicacy that went to her heart:
what he would really have liked, as he saw them tumbled about, was one
of the splendid stuffs for a gown--a choice proscribed by his fear of
seeming to patronize her, to refer to her small means and her
deficiencies. Fleda found it easy to chaff him about his exaggeration of
her deserts; she gave the just measure of them in consenting to accept a
small pin-cushion, costing sixpence, in which the letter F was marked
out with pins. A sense of loyalty to Mona was not needed to enforce this
discretion, and after that first allusion to her she never sounded her
name. She noticed on this occasion more things in Owen Gereth than she
had ever noticed before, but what she noticed most was that he said no
word of his intended. She asked herself what he had done, in so long a
parenthesis, with his loyalty or at least his "form;" and then reflected
that even if he had done something very good with them the situation in
which such a question could come up was already a little strange. Of
course he wasn't doing anything so vulgar as making love to her; but
there was a kind of punctilio for a man who was engaged.

That punctilio didn't prevent Owen from remaining with her after they
had left the shop, from hoping she had a lot more to do, and from
pressing her to look with him, for a possible glimpse of something she
might really let him give her, into the windows of other establishments.
There was a moment when, under this pressure, she made up her mind that
his tribute would be, if analyzed, a tribute to her insignificance. But
all the same he wanted her to come somewhere and have luncheon with him:
what was that a tribute to? She must have counted very little if she
didn't count too much for a romp in a restaurant. She had to get home
with her trimming, and the most, in his company, she was amenable to was
a retracing of her steps to the Marble Arch and then, after a discussion
when they had reached it, a walk with him across the Park. She knew Mona
would have considered that she ought to take the omnibus again; but she
had now to think for Owen as well as for herself--she couldn't think for
Mona. Even in the Park the autumn air was thick, and as they moved
westward over the grass, which was what Owen preferred, the cool
grayness made their words soft, made them at last rare and everything
else dim. He wanted to stay with her--he wanted not to leave her: he had
dropped into complete silence, but th