I shook my head and answered,
“I might have done that long ago, Augusta.”
“Then it must be because there is some other woman whom you wish to gain. Why do you always wear that strange necklace?” she added sharply. “Did it belong to this savage girl Iduna, as, from the look of it, it might well have done?”
“Not so, Augusta. She took it for a while, and it brought sorrow on her, as it will do on all women save one who may or may not live to-day.”
“Give it me. I have taken a fancy to it; it is unusual. Oh! fear not, you shall receive its value.”
“If you wish the necklace, Augusta, you must take the head as well; and my counsel to you is that you do neither, since they will bring you no good luck.”
“In truth, Captain Olaf, you anger me with your riddles. What do you mean about this necklace?”
“I mean, Augusta, that I took it from a very ancient grave——”
“That I can believe, for the jeweller who made it worked in old Egypt,” she interrupted.
“——and thereafter I dreamed a dream,” I went on, “of the woman who wears the other half of it. I have not seen her yet, but when I do I shall know her at once.”