"Well, ma'am?"
I answered:
"Can you give me change for a sovereign?"
I must have been losing my head; for though I spoke in perfect good faith, I had not a shilling about me. It was not forgetfulness, but distinctly an illusion; for I not only had the picture of the imaginary sovereign distinctly before me, but thought I had it actually in my hand.
The jeweller was talking in subdued and urbane accents to his customer, and pointing out, no doubt, the special beauties and workmanship of his bijouterie.
"Sorry I can't oblige you; you must try elsewhere," he said, again directing a hard glance at me. I think he was satisfied that I was not a thief; and he continued his talk with the young man who was making his selection, and who was probably a little hard to please. I turned to leave the shop, and the jeweller went into the next room, possibly in search of something more likely to please his fastidious client at the counter.
I had not yet seen the face of either of the visitors to the shop, but I was conscious that the younger of the two had once or twice looked over his shoulder at me. He now said, taking his purse from his pocket—it was but as a parenthesis in his talk with his companion:
"I beg pardon; perhaps I can manage that change for you."
I drew nearer. What occurred next appeared to me like an incident in a dream, in which our motives are often so obscure that our own acts take us by surprise. Whether it was a mad moment or a lucid moment I don't know; for in extreme misery, if our courage does not fail us, our thoughts are always wicked.
I stood there, a slight figure, in crape, cloaked, veiled—in pain, giddy, confused. I cannot tell you what interest the common-place spectacle before me had for me, nor why I stayed there, gazing towards the three gas lamps that seemed each girt with a dazzling halo that made my eyes ache. What sounds and sights smote my sick senses with a jarring recognition? The hard, nasal tones of the elderly man in black, who leaned over the counter, and the pallid, scornful face, with its fine, restless eyes and sinister energy, were those of Monsieur Droqville!