46“Yes?” she inquired, with such a mocking chill in her voice that it caused him to lower his eyes. “Yes,” she repeated, walking over to a table where an inkstone lay, “it is quite true that what Time adds yearly to the pearl, it steals from a woman’s cheek but,” she put the pearls in the wet ink and with the tip of her tiny forefinger rubbed them around and around until they were but a blackened mass, “you see,” she continued naïvely, “that they are alike in a way.”

“Isn’t it strange?” she murmured, still rubbing her little finger tip among the blackened jewels. “Isn’t it strange?”

The Viceroy stood immovable, while a network of purple veins began to spread across his face.

The wife’s hands rested for a moment on . . . Read More