"Nonsense!" he glanced at her bare wrist and laughed.
"I do," she insisted. "It is only because I have just bathed and am
prepared for the night that I am not wearing it now."
He looked up, incredulous, then his expression changed subtly.
"Is that so?" he asked.
But the hint of seriousness confused her and she merely nodded.
He had freed the case from the sealed paper and now he laid it on her
knees, saying: "Thank the Lord I'm not such a piker now as I was,
anyway. I hope you'll wear it, Athalie, and fire that other affair out
of your back window."
"There is no back window," she said, raising her charming eyes to
his,--"there's only an air-shaft.... Am I to open it?--I mean this
case?"
"It is yours."
She opened it daintily.
"Oh, C. Bailey, Junior!" she said very gently. "You mustn't do this!"
"Why?"
"It's too beautiful. Isn't it?"
"Nonsense, Athalie. Here, I'll wind it and set it for you. This is how
it works--" pulling out the jewelled lever and setting it by the tin
alarm-clock on the mantel. Then he wound it, unclasped the woven gold
wrist-band, took her reluctant hand, and, clasping the jewel over her
wrist, snapped the catch.
For a few moments her fair head remained bent as she gazed in silence
at the tiny moving hands. Then, looking up: "Thank you, C. Bailey, Junior," she said, a little solemnly perhaps.
He laughed, somewhat conscious of the slight constraint: "You're
welcome, Athalie. Do you really like it?"
"It is wonderfully beautiful."
"Then I'm perfectly happy and contented--or I will be when you read
that letter and admit I'm not as much of a piker as I seemed."
She laughed and coloured: "I never thought that of you. I only--missed
you."
"Really?"
"Yes," she said innocently.
For a second he looked rather grave, then again, conscious of his own
constraint, spoke gaily, lightly: "You certainly are the real thing in friendship. You are far too
generous to me."
She said: "Incidents are not frequent enough in my life to leave me
unimpressed. I never knew any other boy of your sort. I suppose that
is why I never forgot you."
Her simplicity pricked the iridescent and growing bubble of his
vanity, and he laughed, discountenanced by her direct explanation of
how memory chanced to retain him. But it did not occur to him to ask
himself how it happened that, in all these years, and in a life so
happily varied, so delightfully crowded as his own had always been, he
had never entirely forgotten her.