Page 447 - women-in-love

He gave her a little bit of screwed-up paper. She took it
and opened it.
‘How lovely,’ she cried.
She examined the gift.
‘How perfectly lovely!’ she cried again. ‘But why do you
give them me?’ She put the question offensively.
His face flickered with bored irritation. He shrugged his
shoulders slightly.
‘I wanted to,’ he said, coolly.
‘But why? Why should you?’
‘Am I called on to find reasons?’ he asked.
There was a silence, whilst she examined the rings that
had been screwed up in the paper.
‘I think they are BEAUTIFUL,’ she said, ‘especially this.
This is wonderful-’
It was a round opal, red and fiery, set in a circle of tiny
rubies.
‘You like that best?’ he said.
‘I think I do.’
‘I like the sapphire,’ he said.
‘This?’
It was a rose-shaped, beautiful sapphire, with small bril-
liants.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is lovely.’ She held it in the light. ‘Yes,
perhaps it IS the best-’
‘The blue-’ he said.
‘Yes, wonderful-’
He suddenly swung the car out of the way of a farm-cart.
It tilted on the bank. He was a careless driver, yet very quick.

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