Her husband had not given her the diadem!
But hearing him enter, she turned, and seeing that he held a casket in his hands, she comprehended everything. With a bound, she was beside him, her arms twined around his neck.
“Oh, how good you are! How good you are! How I love you!” He trembled all over, and was very pale. Gemma did not even perceive it. All at once, with one of her irresistible movements, she loosened her arms from his neck, took with one hand the casket and with the other holding her husband’s hand, she led him after her to the mirror. She seated herself and opened the casket. Among puffs of red plush, under the burning light, the diadem sent forth sparks like a flame. She had a new outburst of joy, took the husband’s head between her hands, drew it down, and kissed his forehead—oh! the forehead of a corpse, icy and livid; then without looking at his features, his wandering gaze, she offered him the diadem and bent before him her blonde head, which was so well suited to that mystical jewel.
“Come sir, crown me!”
And while he sought to unite with trembling hands the clasp of the gems among those marvelous blonde curls, waving and breaking into ripples of gold at every movement, she, still with bent head, lifted her smiling eyes to meet his look. And he answered with a resigned gentleness to the smile of those perilous blue eyes; he, the poor man who deceived for the sake of desire to be deceived, and who bought for himself a little mock love with ... mock diamonds.
ETCHINGS: FROZEN
(E. Henderson: For Short Stories.)
A bleak afternoon in Dakota ... a sledge containing two women and several men is driven rapidly across the prairie.
Alighting at a “shanty,” the women and one of the men enter. The rest of the men immediately begin digging, or rather “chopping” a grave in the frozen ground. They work silently and unceasingly, by turns, for the short winter afternoon already shows signs of merging into night.