ng unattended over the common counters. Except in the purchase of my
first gift for my mother--a tiny diamond sword-hilt, in memory of my
father--I have never experienced so much pleasure.

It hung, a great blob of veined, milky whiteness, from a strong but
tiny golden chain--a gift for a Rajah, not a bank-official! I had
never expended so much, or half so much, upon a single purchase, and
the pale, native thrift of Old and New England together glowed and
thrilled scarlet in me, and the lucent, moonlike sphere flushed into a
ruby before my dazzled eyes: I knew then how an eager chief will toss
away a province for an emerald--if he may lay the jewel upon the neck
of all the world for him!

I had the clasp engraved with her name--itself a pearl--and slipped
the delicate case in my pocket. The great comedienne, whom I have
always thought the sweetest of women--but one--talked a moment aside
at the smiling request of the master jeweller and then whispered
laughingly to Sue with the most artfully artless glance at me. Sue,
who was a little drawn and white from her enemy neuralgia, murmured to
me in French that I had the honour to render desolate Miss L----n
R----l, the reigning stage beauty, who was greatly desirous of
precisely that pearl and whose too vacillating admirer would doubtless
enjoy his bad little quarter hour _a cause de moi_. I do not deny that
this put a point to my satisfaction. I was, in fact, idiotically
gratified--God and man that is born of woman alone know why.

I hurried to the dingy station as a boy hurries to the train that will
take him home to the holidays, and the tedious hours were miraculously
light, the face of the telegraph operator like the face of my best
friend, the rough, damp passage in the blue boat a pleasant incident.
Caliban had a friendly, stupid grin for me and rowed his best; the
very oars knew how I wanted to get to her!

They stood with a lantern on the landing-steps, in the rough,
picturesque clothes I had first seen them in, and we hurried through a
thickening drizzle to the warm, light cottage, ridiculously
hand-in-hand, the lantern bobbing between us.

Roger had revived his old school accomplishments and had ready a
panful of delicious little sausages in a bath of tomatoes and onions
and Worcestershire that sent me back to Vevay in the fraction of a
second, and we dipped fragments of the crusty French loaf I had
brought in the sauce, in the old Vevay fashion, and drank to