"Doped? Why--what didn't I do?" I asked him. "That's just it," he said, looking at me curiously; but I could feel his disappointment in me. "You didn't do anything--not a blasted thing more than you were told to do. The world's full of supers that can do that." For just a minute I forgot the diamond. "Then--it's a mistake? You were wrong and--and I can't be an actress?" He threw back his head before he answered, puffing a mouthful of smoke up at the ceiling, as he did the night he caught me. The gesture itself seemed to remind him of what had made him think in the first place he could make an actress of me. For he laughed down at me, and I saw he remembered. "Well," he said, "we'll wait and see... I was mistaken, though, sure enough, about one thing that night." I looked up at him. "You're a darn sight prettier than I thought you were. The gold brick you sold me isn't all--" He put out his hand to touch my chin. I side-stepped, and he turned laughing to the stage. But he called after me. "Is a beauty success going to content you, Olden?" "Well, we'll wait and see," I drawled back at him in his own throaty bass. Oh, I was drunk, Mag, drunk with thinking about that diamond! I didn't care even to please Obermuller. I just wanted the feel of that diamond in my hand. I wanted it lying on my own neck--the lovely, cool, shining, rosy thing. It's like the sunrise, Mag, that beauty stone. It's just a tiny pool of water blushing. It's-- How to get it! How to get away with it! On what we'd get for that diamond, Tom and I--when his time is up--could live for all our lives and whoop it up besides. We could live in Paris, where great grafters live and grafting pays--where, if you've got wit and fifty thousand dollars, and happen to be a "darn sight prettier," you can just spin the world around your little finger! But, do you know, even then I couldn't bear to think of selling the pretty thing? It hurt me to think of anybody having it but just Nance Olden. But I hadn't got it yet. Gray has a dressing-room to herself. And on her table--which is a big box, open end down--just where the three-sided big mirror can multiply the jewels and make you want 'em three times as bad, her big russia-leather, silver-mounted box lies open, while she's dressing and undressing. Other times it's locked tight, and his Lordship himself has it tight in his own right hand, or his Lordship's man, Topham, has it just as tight. How to get that diamond! There was a hard nut for Nance Olden's sharp teeth to crack. I only wanted that--never say I'm greedy, Mag--Gray could keep all the rest of the things--the pigeon in rubies and pearls, the tiara all in diamonds, the chain of pearls, and the blazing rings, and the waist-trimming all of emeralds and diamond stars. But that diamond, that huge rose diamond, I couldn't, I just couldn't let her have it.