The seated man did not reply; but another man on the speaker’s right, a large man, widest at the waist, leaned across the arm of his chair to scrutinize the jewel. Its owner turned his throat for the inspection, despite a certain grumness and crocodilian aggressiveness in the man’s interest.
“I like a diamond, myself,” said the new on-looker, dropped back in his chair, and met the eyes of the pearl’s owner with a heavy glance.
“Tastes differ,” kindly responded the wearer of the pearl. “Are you acquainted with the language of gems?”
The big-waisted man gave a negative grunt, and spat bravely into the fire. “Didn’t know gems could talk,” he said.
“They do not talk, they speak,” responded their serene interpreter. The company in general noticed that, with all his amiability of tone and manner, his mild eyes held the big-waisted man with an uncomfortable steadiness. “They speak not to the ear, but to the eye and to the thought:
‘Thought is deeper than all speech;
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.’”
The speaker’s victim writhed, but the riveted gaze and an uplifted finger pinioned him. “You should know—every one should know—the language of gems. There is a language of flowers:
‘To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’
But the language of gems is as much more important than that of flowers as the imperishable gem is itself more enduring than the withering, the evanescent blossom. A gentleman may not with safety present to a lady a gem of whose accompanying sentiment he is ignorant. But with the language of gems understood between them, how could a sentiment be more exquisitely or more acceptably expressed than by the gift of a costly gem uttering that sentiment with an unspoken eloquence! Did you but know the language of gems, your choice would not be the diamond. ‘Diamond me no diamonds,’ emblems of pride—
‘Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of humankind pass by.’