"Odd!" he remarked, rather surprisingly, after a little interval.
There was a brief pause, a crowded pause, between them.
She sat very still, and his eyes rested on that ornament for a
moment, and then travelled slowly to her wrist and the soft lines
of her forearm.
"I suppose I ought to congratulate you," he said. Their eyes met,
and his expressed perplexity and curiosity. "The fact is--I
don't know why--this takes me by surprise. Somehow I haven't
connected the idea with you. You seemed complete--without that."
"Did I?" she said.
"I don't know why. But this is like--like walking round a house
that looks square and complete and finding an unexpected long
wing running out behind."
She looked up at him, and found he was watching her closely. For
some seconds of voluminous thinking they looked at the ring
between them, and neither spoke. Then Capes shifted his eyes to
her microscope and the little trays of unmounted sections beside
it. "How is that carmine working?" he asked, with a forced
interest.
"Better," said Ann Veronica, with an unreal alacrity. "But it
still misses the nucleolus."
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