Athalie

"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.