"It's because I am a Jew. Few really practising Christians can find it in their hearts to trust a Jew."
"But you're only half a Jew!"
"You might as well say 'only half a negro,'" he remarked without bitterness. "It is the blood that counts, not the amount of it...."
He had brought her the gray sapphires he once promised her, a long string of them with pearls between, and a tassel of pearls at either end.
She exclaimed with pleasure, "What an exquisite jewel!" (She had learned more about such things than in the days when she secretly scorned her aquamarine because it was not set in diamonds.) "How the pearls bring out the color of the stones, and how wonderfully they match, Stefan!"
"Do they?" He looked critically from the stones to her eyes. "Yes, they are darker now than the aquamarine. Shadows have come into them—The sapphires are better."
She patted his hand. "It is so nice to have somebody about again who notices whether I have eyes or not!"
"Surely your Archibald notices?"
"If he does he never mentions them! He would think it rather indelicate, like praising something of his own, you know."
Nikolai smiled, gravely. "That is a very safe state for a husband to be in—I hope you do not take advantage of it, Joan?"