ossibility. What if her whole present repertory were
but a passing phase in her art--a mere beginning--an earlier manner? She
remembered how marvellously last night she had manipulated the ear-rings
and the studs. Then lo! the light died out of her eyes, and her face
grew rigid. That memory had brought other memories in its wake.

For her, when she fled the Broad, Noaks' window had blotted out all
else. Now she saw again that higher window, saw that girl flaunting her
ear-rings, gibing down at her. "He put them in with his own hands!"--the
words rang again in her ears, making her cheeks tingle. Oh, he had
thought it a very clever thing to do, no doubt--a splendid little
revenge, something after his own heart! "And he kissed me in the open
street"--excellent, excellent! She ground her teeth. And these doings
must have been fresh in his mind when she overtook him and walked with
him to the house-boat! Infamous! And she had then been wearing his
studs! She drew his attention to them when--

Her jewel-box stood open, to receive the jewels she wore to-night. She
went very calmly to it. There, in a corner of the topmost tray, rested
the two great white pearls--the pearls which, in one way and another,
had meant so much to her.

"Melisande!"

"Mademoiselle?"

"When we go to Paris, would you like to make a little present to your
fiance?"

"Je voudrais bien, mademoiselle."

"Then you shall give him these," said Zuleika, holding out the two
studs.

"Mais jamais de la vie! Chez Tourtel tout le monde le dirait
millionaire. Un garcon de cafe qui porte au plastron des perles
pareilles--merci!"

"Tell him he may tell every one that they were given to me by the late
Duke of Dorset, and given by me to you, and by you to him."

"Mais--" The protest died on Melisande's lips. Suddenly she had ceased
to see the pearls as trinkets finite and inapposite--saw them as things
presently transmutable into little marble tables, bocks, dominos,
absinthes au sucre, shiny black portfolios with weekly journals in them,
yellow staves with daily journals flapping from them, vermouths secs,
vermouths cassis...

"Mademoiselle is too amiable," she said, taking the pearls.

And certainly, just then, Zuleika was looking very amiable indeed. The
look was transient. Nothing, she reflected, could undo what the Duke had
done. That hateful, impudent girl would take good care that every one
should know. "He put them in with his own hands." HER ear-r