"You lost them in the theater-box during the first act," I told her. Her brother Benny wiped his forehead.
"And it's up to a woman to drop forty thousand dollars and never know it," he cried.
I watched her as she turned them over in her hands. Then she suddenly looked up at me, then down at the pearls, then up at me again.
"This is not my necklace," were the astonishing words that I heard fall from her lips. I knew, of course, that she was mistaken.
"Oh, yes, it is," I quietly assured her.
She shook her head in negation, still staring at me.
"What makes you think so?" she asked.
"I don't think it, I know it," was my response. "Those aren't the sort of stones that grow on every bush in this town."
She was once more studying the necklace. And once more she shook her head.
"But I am left-handed," she was explaining, as she still looked down at them, "and I had my clasp, here on the ruby at the back, made to work that way. This clasp is right-handed. Don't you see, it's on the wrong side."