"Jesus, I almost forgot," he said.
"Forgot what?"
He went into the bathroom. After a moment, curiosity got the better of her and she followed him. He was rooting around in his toilet kit.
"What on earth are you doing?" Dorotea demanded.
He handed her a ring. She looked at it dubiously.
"What's this?"
"It's my mother's," Clete said. "My grandfather gave it to me. Her high-school ring. I... uh... when he gave it to me, I thought maybe you'd like to have it."
"It's beautiful," she said, not very convincingly. "It looks Catholic."
"Yeah. Sacred Heart Convent in New Orleans. About as Catholic as you can get. All the nice girls in New Orleans go to Sacred Heart."
"I thought your mother was Church of England."
"She was Episcopalian. More or less the same thing. She converted to Catholicism when she married my father."
And it killed her.
"I want to be married in the Anglican Church. I want our baby to be raised as an Anglican."
"I haven't even asked you to marry me yet."
She slipped the ring on her finger.
"It fits," she said. "And it was your mother's. I'll never take it off." She im-mediately had second thoughts, and took it off. "After you talk to Daddy. After that, I'll never take it off. I don't want to get him hysterical before you talk."
She pulled her sweater up and put the ring into her white brassiere, which was all she had on under the sweater. Cletus found the act excruciatingly erotic.
"Until then, I'll keep it next to my heart," she said, and looked at him, read his mind, and announced: "They're swelling."
"Really?"
"They're swelling, and they're tender. Would you like to see?"
"Christ!"
"Not until you've proposed properly," she said.
"You first," Clete said.
"Me propose?"
"Show me first," he said.
"You are really a very wicked man," Dorotea said. "My father's probably right about you."
Then, her eyes locked on his, she very deliberately pulled the sweater over
her head, dropped it onto the floor, then reached behind her back and unfastened her brassiere.
The telephone on the bedside table rang.
"Who the hell can that be?" Dorotea snapped. '"Don't answer it, Cletus!"