He seemed to revel in the memory of what, in time, he knew, would be humiliating to him.

It was a puny little diamond ring, of but three or four carats' weight, he mused, and yet with it had come the actual, if not the moral, turn in the tide of all his restless activities.

It marked the moment when life seemed to fall back to its older and darker areas; it was the first diminutive milestone on his new road of adventure.

But he would return the ring, of that he stoutly reassured himself, for he still nursed his ironic sense of justice in the smaller things.

Yes, he would return the ring, he repeated, with his ever-recurring inapposite scrupulosity, for the young Princess was a lady of fortune under an unlucky star, like himself.
Durkin smiled a little, over his wax-covered key, as he still filed and fitted and listened.