“I am seated on the divan here.”
“I am standing by the door.”
“Are you not going to take these pearls?”
“Are you not going to bring them to me?”
The Viceroy got up, hesitated, then came and stood beside her. She held out her hand and he wrapped the necklace around her palm and wrist, while a childish happiness dimpled her cheeks as she admired and fondled the gold-strung baubles from the sea.
“They would be most beautiful,” she said, looking up at him with a smile that brought a flush to his face, “did not the jewelled kindness that suggested them dim their brilliancy.”
“Eh? Yes, yes,” his Excellency bowed. “Pearls are a very worthy jewel—unfortunate——women have not their attributes——”
“What are they?” she demanded, throwing back her head.
“Why, why, Time’s incrustations——”
“Yes?” she inquired, with such a mocking chill in her voice that it caused him to lower his eyes. “Yes,” she repeated, walking over to a table where an inkstone lay, “it is quite true that what Time adds yearly to the pearl, it steals from a woman’s cheek but,” she put the pearls in the wet ink and with the tip of her tiny forefinger rubbed them around and around until they were but a blackened mass, “you see,” she continued naïvely, “that they are alike in a way.”