“Is it allowed to look?”
“I think everything must be allowed to you. You would be so surprised if it were not.”
I understood that she was aiming a satirical remark at me: I did not mind that; she had better flay me alive than sit and cry.
“Then I may open the box?”
“The key is in it.”
I drew the box across, and I took a chair that stood by. I turned the key of the box. A glance showed me Marie’s drooped lids half raised and her eyes fixed on my face.
I opened the box: there lay in it, in sparkling coil on the blue velvet, a magnificent diamond necklace; one great stone formed a pendent, and it was on this stone that I fixed my regard. I took it up and looked at it closely; then I examined the necklace itself. Marie’s eyes followed my every motion.
“You like these trinkets?” I asked.
“Yes,” said she, in that tone in which “yes” is stronger than a thousand words of rapture; and the depths of her eyes caught fire from the stones, and gleamed.
“But you know nothing about them,” I pursued composedly.