Intending to frighten her, I suddenly grasped her wrist, and snatched the ornament from its bed of crimson satin.
“Dieu!” she cried, “I—I didn’t know you were here, Anton. You startled me!”
“What a pretty pin,” I remarked. “Where did you get it from?”
“It is mine,” she replied.
At that moment I made pretence of lunging at her with it, when she shrank back with expressions of fear and repugnance that amazed me.
“Is it sharp?” I inquired, feeling the point with my thumb.
“Gran’ Dieu! what would you do? You will kill yourself!” she cried in alarm.
“What do you mean?” I asked, as she wrested the pin from my fingers.
“I mean that a puncture with this would prove fatal,” she said in a low, serious tone. “You understand?”
“Is it poisoned, then?”