laughed, more and more relieved. "Yes, please remain young until you
are twenty-five. By that time I hope the world will have adjusted itself
and I shall have the leisure to companion you. Meanwhile, be a child. It
is very refreshing to me. Come. I must lock this thing up. I have an
interview here with Spaulding in about ten minutes."

She gave it up reluctantly, kissing it much as she had kissed him during
their engagement; warm, lingering, but almost impersonal kisses. The ruby
seemed miraculously to have restored her beaten youth.

She sat on the edge of a chair as he opened the safe and placed the jewel
in its box and drawer.

"There is one other thing I wanted to ask," he said as he rose. "Is your
allowance sufficient? It has sometimes occurred to me that you wanted
more--for some feminine extravagance."

The light went out of her face. He wondered whimsically if he had locked
it in with the ruby, and once more he was conscious that something
intangible floated between them. But she looked at him squarely with her
shadowed eyes.

"Oh, one could spend any amount, of course, but I really have
quite enough."

"You shall have double your present allowance when these cursed times
improve. And I have always intended to settle a couple of hundred
thousand on you--a quarter of a million--as soon as I could realize
without loss on certain investments. But one day I want you to be quite
independent."

Her eyes had opened very wide. "A quarter of a million? And it would be
all my own? I could do anything with it I liked?"

"Well--I think I should put it in trust. I haven't much faith in the
resistance of your sex to tempting investments promising a high rate of
interest."

"I have heard you say that when rich men die the amount of worthless
stock found in their safe deposit boxes passes belief."

"Quite true. But that is hardly an argument in favor of trusting an even
more inexperienced sex with large sums of money."

She laughed, but less naturally than when he had been seized with an
unwonted spasm of jealousy. "You will always get the best of me in an
argument," she said with her exquisite politeness. "Really, I think I
love being wholly dependent upon you. Here comes your detective. What
a bore. But at least we lunch together if we do have company. And
thank you, thank you a thousand times for promising I shall wear the
ruby at last."

She slipped her hand into his for a second, then left the room, smiling