He had selected it half tentatively for Demeter Cass, knowing it could be returned if he decided against giving it to her. It was in a way symbolic of what he would like to think the handsome Demeter was like, and yet all the while in his heart he had known she wasn’t. He had had a passing thought that perhaps he might make it a test of her. If she liked it she must have the true fineness of soul he had sometimes fancied he saw behind the veneer of sophistication that the times demanded. If she did not, then she wasn’t what he wanted. He had almost come to the point of letting that pin make his decision about Demeter, whether or not she was the girl he wanted in his life. He was still doubtful as to whether Demeter as he knew her would ever count it a treasure among her possessions. That was why, now, he could consider the pin as a gift to another.

Strange how he felt about that pin. As if it were a thing with a personality that needed to be appreciated. Now take this other girl—or either of the two girls in the house for the matter of that. There would be nothing incongruous about either of those girls wearing a pin like that. Even on a plain dress it would seem at home, though it would grace a royal garment anywhere.

And how he would like to give that to Daryl. But he mustn’t, of course. Girls like Daryl and Ruth did not accept jewelry from strangers. Not even from strangers who had played some small part in saving a brother’s life—after he had put it in peril for his own needs. And besides, a gift like that might likely make trouble for her with that Harold person, through he found himself wishing fervently that it might.

But then a pleasant thought came to him. There was no reason why he couldn’t give it to Daryl Devereaux’s mother, nor why she shouldn’t accept it. She had put a motherly kiss upon his forehead that he would never forget. He would like to give the pin to her! It would be lovely fastening the lace around her neck; it would set off her sweet face under her wavy white hair. He would give the pin to the mother, of course! What a pleasure that would be! And now he suddenly saw that to subject that pin to the test of a Demeter Cass was being unfair to it. He liked the pin for itself, because it was something he would have liked to give to his own beloved mother if she had been alive. And he suddenly knew definitely that Demeter never would have liked it, and probably wouldn’t have even taken the trouble to dissemble enough about it to make him think she liked it. It wasn’t unlikely that she might have screamed out with merriment, in that half-childish way she had sometimes, and called the crowd to laugh over the gift, saying he had gone puritan on them—yes, and kept it up all day as a good joke, and then asked him at night to please take it back and exchange it for jade. He knew now that he had never really meant to try her out with that pin, not unless some miracle occurred that would put her to the test before she ever saw the pin. He couldn’t have exposed that pin to ridicule. It was too exquisite.

Yes, he would give it to Mother Devereaux! That was settled. Sometime perhaps Daryl would borrow it and he would see her wear it, and that would give him pleasure, too.

So he wrapped it carefully and labeled it.

He looked over his remaining property, perplexed. What could he give the girls? He finally decided on two lovely scarfs, made of some rare wool, soft as kittens’ ears. He had bought them dubiously, as he had bought all the things he really liked, feeling that in a mixed company such as a house party there would surely be one or two people who would appreciate their beauty. Also the salesman had assured him that they were exceedingly smart.