She wanted to sit down on the stairs and take the paper off her beads: stopping in the act, she looked up at him with a laugh, but yet showing a gleam of serious meaning in her red-brown eyes. “Why not, if I can’t have real ones?” she said with a note of pathos in her voice. “If I had rich things I should sell them to give you money. But these poor ones I can keep and do you no harm.” And George had a lump in his throat, as he often had now at innocent speeches like this from his wife, which showed the dawnings of a new womanly sympathy with him side by side with the old childish love of finery and glitter. She showed, by certain impulsive remarks in the course of the next few days, a deep interest in the “marvellously cheap and beautiful assortment of Indian jewellery,” of which the sham Arabian had spoken; and when, towards the end of the week, Monsieur Ben Hassan called one evening, not, as he assured the young Englishman, with the intention of persuading him to buy the mock gems which he had been informed Madame did not wear, but merely to justify in the eyes of Monsieur the praises which he had lavished on his own wares, Nouna showed so much eagerness to see them that George had not the heart to deny her the pleasure. Ben Hassan proceeded, by the light of the lamp which stood on the table amidst the remnants of the dessert, to unfasten a little flat box which he carried, to take out a layer of cotton-wool, and to display, against the velvet lining, rows of flashing white gems which caused Nouna to cry out with irrepressible admiration and longing. “I flatter myself,” said the Parisian, laying the box on the table and retreating a few paces with a bow, as if trusting his wares to speak for themselves, “that there is not another firm in France which can produce such a class of jewel for the same price.” “Yes, yes,” said George hastily, with a shrewd guess that to see these sparkling ornaments hidden away again in the little box and carried off without leaving her so much as a single gem to remember them by, would break Nouna’s heart. “But they are only sham jewels, Monsieur Ben Hassan, and a lady who has had diamonds of her own could not condescend to wear these.” Nouna, who was leaning over the table, fingering the ornaments delicately, and considering them with the intelligent interest of a connoisseur, glanced up at her husband with a twinkle of demure humour in her eyes, and instantly returned to her amusement with condescension so infinite that it was not to be distinguished from the most extravagant admiration. The astute Ben Hassan saw the look, and bowed again with great humility. “Monsieur, it is true an imitation is but a poor thing when you know it is an imitation,” he said with shoulders raised and hands outstretched in modest pleading. “But I appeal to Madame, who is evidently a judge, if she would have known these stones from real ones?”