rst put her hand in her lap and then rather awkwardly in front of
him. But men are often blind to rings. He seemed to be.

In the afternoon she had considered certain doubts very carefully,
and decided on a more emphatic course of action. "Are these ordinary
sapphires?" she said. He bent to her hand, and she slipped off the ring
and gave it to him to examine.

"Very good," he said. "Rather darker than most of them. But I'm
generously ignorant of gems. Is it an old ring?" he asked, returning it.

"I believe it is. It's an engagement ring...." She slipped it on her
finger, and added, in a voice she tried to make matter-of-fact: "It was
given to me last week."

"Oh!" he said, in a colorless tone, and with his eyes on her face.

"Yes. Last week."

She glanced at him, and it was suddenly apparent for one instant of
illumination that this ring upon her finger was the crowning blunder
of her life. It was apparent, and then it faded into the quality of an
inevitable necessity.

"Odd!" he remarked, rather surprisingly, after a little interval.

There was a brief pause, a crowded pause, between them.

She sat very still, and his eyes rested on that ornament for a moment,
and then travelled slowly to her wrist and the soft lines of her
forearm.

"I suppose I ought to congratulate you," he said. Their eyes met, and
his expressed perplexity and curiosity. "The fact is--I don't know
why--this takes me by surprise. Somehow I haven't connected the idea
with you. You seemed complete--without that."

"Did I?" she said.

"I don't know why. But this is like--like walking round a house that
looks square and complete and finding an unexpected long wing running
out behind."

She looked up at him, and found he was watching her closely. For some
seconds of voluminous thinking they looked at the ring between them,
and neither spoke. Then Capes shifted his eyes to her microscope and
the little trays of unmounted sections beside it. "How is that carmine
working?" he asked, with a forced interest.

"Better," said Ann Veronica, with an unreal alacrity. "But it still
misses the nucleolus."

CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH

THE SAPPHIRE RING

Part 1

For a time that ring set with sapphires seemed to be, after all, the
satisfactory solution of Ann Veronica's difficulties. It was like
pouring a strong acid over dulled metal. A tarnish of constraint that
had recently spread over her intercourse with Capes vanished again. They
emba