Flames Coming out of the Top Read Online Free PDF Page A

beautiful about it. It was as though by giving Kay this shining talisman he could keep her his for ever. The jeweller had been very polite about it: the stone, he said, would fetch its own price any day.
    He was quite out of breath when he reached the Bartons’. They were all ready for him. Kay had changed her dress into something that he had never seen before, and Mrs. Barton had put on something black. He often wondered how many dresses Kay really had, and speculated anxiously as to whether he would be able to afford that number when she was married to him. Like so many other girls earning two pounds ten a week, she appeared, under the influence of love, to spend several hundreds a year on clothes.
    Mrs. Barton was really quite cordial now that he was going. She shook hands with him as though he were an ordinary human being and not an intruder who was planning to run away with her daughter, and then had the decency to leave them alone together.
    â€œI’ve got you a little present …” Dunnett began.
    â€œShow me.”
    He removed the tiny box and handed it to her.
    â€œHow heavenly,” she exclaimed. “What is it?”
    â€œIt’s nothing really,” he said. “It’s … it’s something that I picked up before I came along here.”
    â€œOh,” she exclaimed. “How lovely! It’s heavenly!” She held the ring out in front of her and turned it backwards and forwards so that it caught the light.
    â€œWon’t you wear it?” he asked at length.
    She put it cautiously on her middle finger and looked at it. But he saw that she had suddenly grown very serious.
    â€œDon’t … don’t you like it?” he asked.
    â€œOh, it’s not that,” she answered at once. “I think it’s lovely. I do really.”
    â€œThen what’s the matter?”
    â€œNothing’s the matter.”
    â€œBut you’ve come over all quiet.”
    â€œDon’t you know that it’s terribly unlucky to give a girl a ring when you’re not engaged to her?”
    â€œThen why not be engaged—secretly?” he asked.
    Her face lit up. “Shall we?” she said. “And not tell anyone?”
    He put his arms around her and kissed her. “I love you,” he said.
    She closed her eyes and held her face up towards him. “I shouldn’t know what to do if I hadn’t got you,” she said almost in a whisper. “I never knew I could love anybody like this.”
    â€œYou think that you could wait for me until I get back?”
    â€œOh, my darling, I could wait for ever. If anything happened to you I should go on waiting always.”
    It was Mrs. Barton who interrupted them. She came back into the room with the expression of a sensible woman who hopes that nothing foolish has happened since she went away. She darted a quick glance at both of them before she sat down.
    There was a pause, and then Kay went over and sat on the arm of her chair. “Look what Harold’s given me,” she said.
    â€œA ring,” exclaimed Mrs. Barton sharply.
    â€œIt’s only an ordinary ring,” Kay explained with a laugh. “We’re not engaged or anything like that, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She held out her hand to show on what finger she was wearing the stone.
    Mrs. Barton looked from one to the other and pursed her lips still tighter. She did not approve of the gift. “There’s a meal ready,” was all she said.
    It was Kay who suggested that they should read their fortunes afterwards: there was a note of daring in her voice as she said it, as though she expected to see black flags and gallows in the cards. She didn’t believe in it herself, she told them, but she knew plenty of people who did. Mrs. Barton assented eagerly; she seemed to derive some special consolation from drawing-room necromancy, and picked her cards first. But when Kay looked there