"You are very kind," she said, "I thank you for this money"; and swiftly, with a deft movement of the fingers, she undid the strand of pearls at her throat, and held it out across the table. "Until I can repay it, please put this necklace in the corner of your box."
The Duke put her hand gently back. "No," he said, his mouth a bit drawn at the corners, "you must not make a money lender of me."
"And you," replied the Marchesa, "must not make a beggar of me. I must be permitted to return this money or I cannot take it."
"Certainly," replied the Duke, "you may repay me when you like, but I will not take security like a Jew."
The butler, announcing luncheon, ended the controversy.
CHAPTER III—THE HERMIT'S CRUST
The Marchesa passed through the door held open by the butler, across a little stone passage, into the dining room.
This room was in structure similar to the one she had just quitted, except for the two long windows cut through the south wall—flood gates for the sun. The table was laid with a white cloth almost to the floor. In the center of it was a single silver bowl, as great as a peck measure, filled with fruit, an old massive piece, shaped like the hull of a huge acorn, the surface crudely cut to resemble the outside of that first model for his cup, which the early man found under the oak tree. The worn rim marked the extreme antiquity of this bowl. Somewhere in the faint dawn of time, a smith, melting silver in a pot, had cast the clumsy outline of the piece in a primitive sand mold on the floor of his shop, and then sat down with his model—picked up in the forest—before him on his bench, to cut and hammer the outside as like to nature as he could get it with his tools—the labor of a long northern winter; and then, when that prodigious toil was ended, to grind the inside smooth with sand, rubbed laboriously over the rough surface. But his work remained to glorify his deftness ages after his patient hands were dust. It sat now on the center of the white cloth, the mottled spots, where the early smith had followed so carefully his acorn, worn smooth with the touching of innumerable fingers.