The principal expert rose sublimely to the great height of the occasion. He had a courageous mind and was moreover well acquainted with the fantastic folly of allowing customers to call again. Within his experience of some thirty years he had not met half a dozen exceptions to the rule that customers who called again, if ever they did call, called in a mood of hard and miserly sanity which for the purposes of the jewellery business was sickeningly inferior to their original mood.
"Please, please, Mr. Prohack!" said he, with grand deprecation, and departed out of the room with his fellow.
No sooner had they gone than the wall sank. It did not tumble with a crash; it most gently subsided.
"Arthur!" Eve exclaimed, with a curious uncertainty of voice. "Are you mad?"
"Yes," said Mr. Prohack.
"Well," said she. "If you think I shall walk about London with sixteen thousand five hundred pounds round my neck you're mistaken."
"But I insist! You were a martyr and our marriage was ruined because I didn't give you real pearls. I intend you shall have real pearls."
"But not these," said Eve. "It's too much. It's a fortune."
"I am aware of that," Mr. Prohack agreed. "But what is sixteen thousand five hundred pounds to me?"
"Truly I couldn't, darling," Eve wheedled.