"'Lal Lu, I am compelled to leave thee for a space; I will send thy woman to thee. Until to-morrow, then, adieu.' And fixing upon her a glance so ardent that she almost followed him in its fascination, the prince withdrew from her presence with a reluctance which was duplicated in the bosom of the bewildered girl, if not so unmistakably evinced. "As the prince retreated toward his apartments, the alarming alternative proposed by the merchant repeated itself with a sort of wordless insistence: "'Unless Lal Lu shall be returned, a handful of my precious stones shall be missing. "'Ah! "'In their place will be as many pebbles! "'Impossible!' "And secure in his bedchamber, into which none might venture without ceremonious announcement, the prince hastened to a recess in the wall, where, in response to a pressure applied to a spot known only to himself, a cunningly devised panel shot back, revealing a gleaming, glittering mass of scintillating light and glamor. "'Ah, ha!' he gloated, 'no pebbles yet'; and plunging his hands into the costly heap, he withdrew a motley of diamonds, sapphires, rubies and opals, and held them, with grudging avarice, to the regard of the declining sun. "'No pebbles yet,' he repeated, as he challenged the fires of the gems with the fever of his eyes, and sent mimic lightnings hither and thither by communicating the tremble of his hands and the incidence of the sunbeams to the glorious confusion of facet and hue; 'no pebbles yet.' "As Prince Otondo repeated this obvious reassurance, he replaced the gems, which seemed to quiver with lambent life, within the compartment, and withdrawing the shagreen case from his sash, he discharged the magnificent sapphire it contained upon the apex of the glittering heap, where it rested with a sort of insolent disproportion to the irradiant pyramid of brilliants beneath. "Regarding the bewildering ensemble for a few moments of exulting ownership and familiar calculation, the prince closed the panel with the mien of Paris making restitution of Helen, and, turning aside, prepared to retire for the night. "The ceremony was simple and so promptly observed that ere the radiance had ceased its revel in his mind the prince found himself reclining upon his couch, unusually ready to succumb to the sleep which he had so often sought in vain. "The night was hot and stifling, and yet it seemed to the prince that he had only retired to rise the moment after, so profound had been his slumber and so quickly had daybreak arrived. "For a few moments he lay in that agreeable condition of semi-realization ere the visages of his wonted obligations had assumed the definition of their customary insistence, or the menace of a restrained remorse had reannounced itself, when suddenly, without introduction or sequence, the phrase 'pebbles for diamonds' slipped into his consciousness.