Don't you think the blue pin's better

　　"Don't you think the blue pin's better?" he suggested,and immediately she saw that the lily of the valley wasmere trumpery compared to the small round stone, blueas a mountain lake, with little sparks of light allround it. She coloured at her want of discrimination.
　　"It's so lovely I guess I was afraid to look atit," she said.
　　He laughed, and they went out of the shop; but a fewsteps away he exclaimed: "Oh, by Jove, I forgotsomething," and turned back and left her in the crowd.
　　She stood staring down a row of pink gramophone throatstill he rejoined her and slipped his arm through hers.
　　"You mustn't be afraid of looking at the blue pin anylonger, because it belongs to you," he said; and shefelt a little box being pressed into her hand. Herheart gave a leap of joy, but it reached her lips onlyin a shy stammer. She remembered other girls whom shehad heard planning to extract presents from theirfellows, and was seized with a sudden dread lest Harneyshould have imagined that she had leaned over thepretty things in the glass case in the hope of havingone given to her....
　　A little farther down the street they turned in at aglass doorway opening on a shining hall with a mahoganystaircase, and brass cages in its corners. "We musthave something to eat," Harney said; and the nextmoment Charity found herself in a dressing-room alllooking-glass and lustrous surfaces, where a party ofshowy-looking girls were dabbing on powder andstraightening immense plumed hats. When they had goneshe took courage to bathe her hot face in one of themarble basins, and to straighten her own hat-brim,which the parasols of the crowd had indented. Thedresses in the shops had so impressed her that shescarcely dared look at her reflection; but when she didso, the glow of her face under her cherry-coloured hat,and the curve of her young shoulders through thetransparent muslin, restored her courage; and when shehad taken the blue brooch from its box and pinned it onher bosom she walked toward the restaurant with herhead high, as if she had always strolled throughtessellated halls beside young men in flannels.
　　Her spirit sank a little at the sight of the slim-waisted waitresses in black, with bewitching mob-capson their haughty heads, who were moving disdainfullybetween the tables. "Not f'r another hour," one of themdropped to Harney in passing; and he stood doubtfullyglancing about him.
　　"Oh, well, we can't stay sweltering here," he decided;"let's try somewhere else--" and with a sense of reliefCharity followed him from that scene of inhospitablesplendour.
　　That "somewhere else" turned out--after more hottramping, and several failures--to be, of all things, alittle open-air place in a back street that calleditself a French restaurant, and consisted in two orthree rickety tables under a scarlet-runner, between apatch of zinnias and petunias and a big elm bendingover from the next yard. Here they lunched on queerlyflavoured things, while Harney, leaning back in acrippled rocking-chair, smoked cigarettes between thecourses and poured into Charity's glass a pale yellowwine which he said was the very same one drank in justsuch jolly places in France.