He merely bowed to them, lit a second pipe and smoked it placidly, standing, in the corridor.
The train started. Ten minutes later, he came and sat down beside the countess and asked:
"Have you the ring on you, madame?"
"Please let me look at it."
He took it and examined it:
"As I thought: it is a faked diamond."
"Faked?"
"Yes, by a new process which consists in subjecting diamond-dust to enormous heat until it melts ... whereupon it is simply reformed into a single diamond."
"Why, but my diamond is real!"