Even her own cheek blushed at this casuistry, and a photograph of Pat on the mantelpiece gave her a reproachful glance. She remembered that she had not written to him that day.
“I will after dinner,” she murmured. “Not that he deserves it. If he really cared for me he would not neglect me in this manner.”
Another blush brightened her cheek. But it rally served to enhance the violet of her eyes.
Needless to say, she did not write after dinner. It was so very pleasant sitting in the verandah, smelling the drenched roses out in the gloom of the garden and listening to Quelch’s voice. He no longer talked about diamonds, but about life. Of its loneliness. Of its irony. Of chance that comes too late. Of being rich and going empty. Of suffering thirst and knowing the torment of mirage. Of the desolation of being on the wrong side of the gate of the one “blue garden” in all the wide desert of the world. Among the things that she learned was that it is not right for any woman’s hair to have the rich red browns of the back of an old violin—a priceless Stradivarius—and that when a man sees a certain plaintive priez-pour-moi look in a woman’s eyes, he is ready to throw his immortal soul under her feet.
She felt extremely elated when she went up to bed at somewhere about eleven o’clock. It had been a charming evening, and the morrow held a further prospect. Quelch was to fetch her in his racing car at five and take her to see the Rhodes Memorial.
Her garments of the afternoon still lay in confusion about the room. The servants had turned down the bed and arranged the mosquito-net, but everything else was as she had left it. She began to pick up things and put them away, but her mind was preoccupied. She stopped to examine the colour of her hair in the glass as though she had never seen it before. And she looked long at her eyes. Had they really a priez-pour-moi expression? At last she hung up her gown and prepared leisurely for bed. Her gloves lay flung on the dressing-table, and she took them up and put them into a drawer. Then she stood still staring. Where the gloves had lain something glittered. Something was lying there like a fallen star.
At first she hardly dared touch it. But at length she lifted it tremulously and gazed into its scintillating heart. It was the lovely dog-rose diamond that had nestled in her palm that afternoon. The touch of it warmed her all through, then slowly froze her into fright. How had it come there? The only possible explanation seemed to be that, after playing with and handling the diamonds, this one had slipped into some fold of her clothes and been brought home by her. The alternative was that some one had brought it and placed it on her dressing-table. But that seemed too fantastic. The one person connected in her mind with this stone was Quelch. Yet she had found him in the dining-room when she went down and had been with him ever since. Who on earth would have any object in leaving a valuable diamond on her dressing-table? She must have brought it herself. But how terrible! The watching detectives must know that it was missing. Even now she might be under suspicion of stealing it! A wild impulse came to her to fly and tell Quelch. But he had gone to bed, and she did not know where his room was. Besides, she realised in a moment that was an impossible idea. Quelch was the last person she could go to. Mrs Cork, then? But her room was also unknown. And she was so bad-tempered and would be furious at being disturbed. It was late, too. Midnight. She had been dawdling and dreaming longer than she supposed. Impossible to do anything about it until morning. With the decision came relief. There was poignant pleasure in the thought that she could spend the night alone with the rose-coloured diamond!
For another hour or more she stood turning the smiling thing in her hand, twisting it, flashing it this way and that. It was the size of a good-shaped pea, only flatter and exquisitely cut. Its rays seemed to mesmerise her eyes and paralyse her will. At last she finished undressing and approached the bed. Kneeling down, she murmured her prayers as usual, but mechanically, her eyes fixed all the time on the heart of rose-pink fire lying before her. An unrequested phrase thrust itself into her mind:
Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
She could not remember where such an odd injunction came from. It sounded like the Bible and reminded her of her childhood, so she thrust it out of her mind again quickly. Neither the Bible nor her childhood harmonised with the rose-red diamond. She got into bed, taking the stone with her, and lay awake a long time watching it. At length, when her eyes grew heavy, she slid it under her pillow just beneath her head. But even in her sleep her hand jealously guarded the treasure.