rageous mind and was moreover well acquainted with the
fantastic folly of allowing customers to call again. Within his
experience of some thirty years he had not met half a dozen exceptions
to the rule that customers who called again, if ever they did call,
called in a mood of hard and miserly sanity which for the purposes of
the jewellery business was sickeningly inferior to their original mood.

"Please, please, Mr. Prohack!" said he, with grand deprecation, and
departed out of the room with his fellow.

No sooner had they gone than the wall sank. It did not tumble with a
crash; it most gently subsided.

"Arthur!" Eve exclaimed, with a curious uncertainty of voice. "Are you
mad?"

"Yes," said Mr. Prohack.

"Well," said she. "If you think I shall walk about London with sixteen
thousand five hundred pounds round my neck you're mistaken."

"But I insist! You were a martyr and our marriage was ruined because I
didn't give you real pearls. I intend you shall have real pearls."

"But not these," said Eve. "It's too much. It's a fortune."

"I am aware of that," Mr. Prohack agreed. "But what is sixteen thousand
five hundred pounds to me?"

"Truly I couldn't, darling," Eve wheedled.

"I am not your darling," said Mr. Prohack. "How can I be your darling
when you're never going to forgive me? Look here. I'll let you choose
another necklace, but only on the condition that you forgive all my
alleged transgressions, past, present and to come."

She kissed him.

"You can have the one at five thousand guineas," said Mr. Prohack.
"Nothing less. That is my ultimatum. Put it on. Put it on, quick! Or I
may change my mind."

He recalled the experts who, when they heard the grave news, smiled
bravely, and looked upon Eve as upon a woman whose like they might never
see again.

"My wife will wear the necklace at once," said Mr. Prohack. "Pen and
ink, please." He wrote a cheque. "My car is outside. Perhaps you will
send some one up to my bank immediately and cash this. We will wait. I
have warned the bank. There will be no delay. The case can be delivered
at my house. You can make out the receipt and usual guarantee while
we're waiting." And so it occurred as he had ordained.

"Would you care for us to arrange for the insurance? We undertake to do
it as cheaply as anybody," the expert suggested, later.

Mr. Prohack was startled, for in his inexperience he had not thought of
such complications.

"I was just going to sugge