Ah, how gray the beard has grown as we speak! How thin the locks! But
still we know him for the same by that garnet ring. Since it became
his no other eye has seen it, and yet it is her engagement ring. Never
can he give it to her, but must always carry it about with him as the
piteous memory of what had never been. How innocent it looked in his
hand, and with an innocence that never wore off, not even when he had
reached his threescore years. As it aged it took on another kind of
innocence only. It looked pitiable now, for there is but a dishonoured
age for a lonely little ring which can never see the finger it was
made to span.
A hair-shirt! Such it was to him, and he put it on willingly, knowing
it could be nothing else. Every smart it gave him pleased, even while
it pained. If ever his mind roamed again to the world of make-believe,
that ring would jerk him back to facts.
Grizel remembered well her finding of it. She had been in his pockets.
She loved to rifle them; to pull out his watch herself, instead of
asking him for the time; to exclaim "Oh!" at the many things she found
there, when they should have been neatly docketed or in the fire, and
from his waistcoat pocket she drew the ring.
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