Ten thousand francs was the price of that jewel; and Marchis did not have them. Mute, immovable, his heart oppressed, he listened to Gemma’s words as she described it to him. How could he tell her, how could he even tell her that he had not the ten thousand francs. It was terrible. To another woman who should have had that caprice, one might have proposed to have her own diamonds reset after that model or perhaps even to have an imitation diadem made; no one would have suspected it; but he felt that the danger lay in confessing his powerlessness. Yet, it must be done.... And he made an effort at courage.
Gemma had seated herself beside him, throwing back and bending a little to one side her blonde head, with that irresistible feminine movement which displays the white throat, the pure line descending from the slender neck to the full-bloomed bust down to the round and flexible waist.
“I would like to have it, it seems to me that I should look well.... Don’t you think so? I have a great wish to be beautiful.... If you knew why?”
She laughed, now, deliciously, with the air of her roguish hours. He was silent for a moment; then, fixing a vague look upon the delicate designs of the oriental carpet, paling as if from an inward wound, he murmured:
“The fact is that I do not know.... I do not really know whether ... whether I shall be able to buy it for you....”
“Why?”
She had quickly raised her head, much surprised, uneasy, looking at him. Such a thing had never happened to her.
Marchis wiped his forehead and resumed his discourse.
“The fact is ... you see, in a bank like ours, there are moments that ... certain moments in which one cannot ... in which it is impossible.”
What was impossible for him, in that moment, was to finish the phrase. He stopped, and lifted his eyes timidly to her, desolately, as if to beg her to help him. She was very pale, with a sudden hardness in all her features, in her compressed mouth, in her knit brows, in her sparkling eyes.