“That is all it is worth to us,” the girl answered.  She regarded the ring indifferently and laid it away from her on the counter.  The action was final.

Helen’s hands rose slowly to her breast, where a pretty watch dangled from a bow-knot of crushed diamonds.  It was her only possession, and she was very fond of it.  It also was the gift of one of the several great ladies who had adopted her since her residence in London.  Helen had painted a miniature of this particular great lady which had looked so beautiful that the pleasure which the original of the portrait derived from the thought that she still really looked as she did in the miniature was worth more to her than many diamonds.

But it was different with Helen, and no one could count what it cost her to tear away her one proud possession.

“What will you give me for this?” she asked, defiantly.

The girl’s eyes showed greater interest.  “I can give you twenty pounds for that,” she said.

“Take it, please,” Helen begged, as though she feared if she kept it a moment longer she might not be able to make the sacrifice.

“That will be enough now,” she went on, taking out her ten-pound note.  She put Lady Gower’s ring back upon her finger and picked up Philip’s ring and watch with the pleasure of one who has come into a great fortune.  She turned back at the door.

“Oh,” she stammered, “in case any one should inquire, you are not to say who bought these.”

“No, miss, certainly not,” said the woman.  Helen gave the direction to the cabman and, closing the doors of the hansom, sat looking down at the watch and the ring, as they lay in her lap.  The thought that they had been his most valued possessions, which he had abandoned forever, and that they were now entirely hers, to do with as she liked, filled her with most intense delight and pleasure.  She took up the heavy gold ring and placed it on the little finger of her left hand; it was much too large, and she removed it and balanced it for a moment doubtfully in the palm of her right hand.  She was smiling, and her face was lit with shy and tender thoughts.  She cast a quick glance to the left and right as though fearful that people passing in the street would observe her, and then slipped the ring over the fourth finger of her left hand.  She gazed at it with a guilty smile, and then, covering it hastily with her other hand, leaned back, clasping it closely, and sat frowning far out before her with puzzled eyes.

To Carroll all roads led past Helen’s studio, and during the summer, while she had been absent in Scotland, it was one of his sad pleasures to make a pilgrimage to her street and to pause opposite the house and look up at the empty windows of her rooms.  It was during this daily exercise that he learned, through the arrival of her luggage, of her return to London, and when day followed day without her having shown any desire to see him or to tell him of her return, he denounced himself most bitterly as a fatuous fool.