Great Magic

By Otakar Batlicka

Engineer Owens has finished all his preparations. He had to leave this little town called
Talka Chuano the next morning. He was angry. He had hoped that after several months of
staying in the middle of the American rainforests he would be able to go to Rio de Janeiro and
enjoy the town life for a few days.

That was why he was really surprised when the owner of the pub “Funda y Pasada” gave
him a letter, in which the company he worked for, asked him to go back to the rainforest to the
place called “El Corazon” and bring some samples.

At first the engineer  was really angry. “Go back again! It is easy for you to say so up
there in Rio de Janeiro! Go and bring the samples! Yes sir! Go, Owens, let the crocodiles eat you
– but don’t forget to send the samples to us!”

He was talking like this for several hours. Then he accepted this new situation and signed
a new contract with his experienced carriers. “So, boys, we have to go to the rainforest again
tomorrow,” he told them sadly.

Then he  was walking around Talka Chuano. He came to a well. On the edge of the well
there were sitting several native Brazilian Indians. One of them was an old man. He was at least
90 years old. His black eyes studied the engineer for a few seconds. “Hombre! Buy a great
magic, good magic. You have this magic around your neck and no snake will bite you – good
magic. No snake come if you have the magic on your neck!” In this bad English he was offering
Owens a small object which he took out of a small basket.

Owens wasn’t new in this area. He smiled and he put his hand on his gun: “I’ve got the
something better for snakes, my friend. this is a really good magic.”

The old man walked back to the edge of the well. Owens felt a bit sorry for the old man.
“Come here! What kind of magic are you selling?”

The old man put the object into Owens hands. It was a round piece of leather from of
some kind of a snake. It was about 4 cm long and it looked nice. On the other side of the object
he could see the pattern of snake’s skin and there were some strange  signs. On the other side
there was a kind of circle and inside this circle there was smaller circle of different colour. It
looked like an animal’s eye. The whole object had a small hole with the cord and it was possible
to put this “great, good magic” around your neck. It was quite an interesting Indian product.

“How much do you want for this magic?” Owens asked.

“One dollar, friend,” the old man said.

Owens gave the man one dollar and he was putting the great magic into the pocket of his
trousers. “No, no, sir! Not in your pocket! The magic doesn’t do anything there, the magic good
here!” And before Owens could do anything, the old man took the magic and put it round his
neck.

“It is very good here! No snake bite you! The magic sees, good eye! Each snake see the eye
immediately? That’s why you have it on your neck not in your pocket! In your pocket the eye not
see anything!”

Owens smiled. “Well, well. Now I’m okay! Now your magic will look after me,” he laughed.

But the old man was serious: “Yes when the you don’t see the snake, the eye will see the snake!”
On the way back the engineer studied the object one more time. He didn’t know why but he left
the magic around his neck, as the old  Indian put it there.

The next day the small group left the little town of  Talka Chuano.  The three carriers and
four donkeys carried all the things. Most of the time they went along a dry river. In the afternoon
Owens told the men to put up the tent. The camp was built and the boys prepared dinner. After
the meal Owens decided to look around the camp. He took all his tools and went. He studied the
ground around him.

He didn’t want  to go too far from the camp. On the left there were some bushes and
behind them he could see a red rock. He decided to go through the bushes to the rock. It was very
difficult to get through and he had to cut some of the bushes with his knife.

After a while he stopped and relaxed. Above him he could see several small monkeys. He
noticed one of the monkeys was carrying a young carefully and at the same time she was
watching Owens. Suddenly a big branch caught Owens.

“Stupid magic! The cord nearly cut off my head!” He broke the branch which caught the cord.
“Why don’t I throw the magic away …” But the engineer didn’t finish his sentence … He didn’t
move. Only his hand was slowly moving to his right side. About five meters in front of Owens
there stood a big snake and it was ready to attack! It was a big and beautiful animal. It was very
colourful and the eyes were watching Owens’ chest!

Owens didn’t move. Finally his right hand reached the gun. He was sweating heavily. He
knew very well how aggressive and poisonous this kind of snake is. His hand with the gun was
going up very slowly. Each second seemed like a year. Then there were three quick shots. All of
them hit the target. The snake went down and died.

“If I had made several more steps I would have died,” Owens thought. “I was really lucky to be
stopped by the cord of the magic. Was it just a coincidence?”

 
Owens returned to the camp. “Moso Pedritto! Can you come here, please? Can you have a look
at this? Can you read what is written on this skin?” Owens asked and handed the great magic to
one of the carriers. Moso took it and he studied it for a while.

“There is written: Watch your steps!”

Owens took the magic back and put it round his neck again. “Great magic, really, great magic!
Everyone should wear it around his neck and watch their steps in their life…”
 The Flowering of the Strange Orchid
H.G. Wells

When you buy an orchid, it is always a risk. You see only a dry, brown thing and you must be
lucky. The plant may be ugly  or dead, or it may be just a nice one. Or you might be really lucky
and you buy a new kind with new colours and shapes. Then you can become famous and name
the plant after you, for example “John-smithia”!

It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made Winter Wedderburn go so often
to these sales. Moreover, he had nothing else to do in the world. He was a shy and lonely man,
who had enough money to make sure he didn’t have to work in his life. He could collect stamps
or coins, or translate Horace, or write poems. But, he grew orchids in his little hothouse.

“I think,” he said over his coffee, “that something is going to happen to me today.” He spoke,
moved and thought slowly.

“Oh, don’t say that!” his housekeeper, who was also his cousin, said.

“You don’t understand me. I mean nothing bad…though I don’t know what I want to happen to
me. Today,” he continued, after a pause, “Peters’ are going to sell some plants from the
Andamans and the Indies. I will go to London and see what they have. I may buy some. ”

He passed his cup for his second cupful of coffee.

“Are these the orchids which were collected by that poor young man you told me about
recently?” his cousin asked, as she filled his cup.

“Yes,” he said. He started to think. “Nothing ever happens to me,” he added. “I wonder why? A
lot of things happen to other people. For example Harvey. On Monday he found a pound, on
Wednesday all his chickens died, on Friday his cousin returned from Australia, and on Saturday
he broke his leg.”

“I think I prefer living without so much excitement,” his housekeeper said. “It can’t be good for
you.”

“I suppose it’s annoying. But … you see, nothing ever happens to me. When I was a little boy I
never had accidents. I never fell in love as I grew up. Never married… I wonder how it feels to
have something happen to you, something really interesting.”

“That orchid-collector was only thirty-six–twenty years younger than myself–when he died. And
he had been married twice and divorced once; he had had malaria four times, and once he broke
his leg. He killed a Malay once, and once he was wounded by a poisoned arrow. And in the end
he was killed by leeches. It must have been very interesting, you know–except, perhaps, the
leeches.”
“I am sure it was not good for him,” said the lady.

“Perhaps not.” And then Wedderburn looked at his watch. “Twenty-three minutes past eight. I
am going up by the quarter to twelve train, so that there is plenty of time.“

“I think you should take an umbrella if you are going to London,” she said.

When he returned from London he was excited. He had bought some flowers. It was unusual,
because he usually hesitated and didn’t buy anything in the end. But this time he had bought
some flowers.

“There are Vandas,” he said, “and a Dendrobe and some Palaeonophis.” He was looking at the
things he had bought lovingly as he ate his soup. They were laid out on the table in front of him,
and he was telling his cousin all about them as he slowly ate his dinner.

“I knew something would happen today. And I have bought all these. Some of them–some of
them–I feel sure, that some of them will be exceptional. I don’t know how it is, but I feel
absolutely sure as that some of them will be exceptional.

„That one “–he pointed to a small dry branch, “was not identified. It may be a new kind. And it
was the last that poor Batten ever collected.”

“I don’t like the look of it,” said his housekeeper. “It’s such an ugly shape.”

“I will put it away in a pot tomorrow.”

“It looks,” said the housekeeper, “like a spider.”

Wedderburn smiled and looked the root with his head on one side. “It is certainly not a pretty
stuff. But you can never judge  these things from their dry look. It may turn out to be a very
beautiful orchid.Tomorrow I will be very busy! I must read tonight what to do with these things,
and tomorrow I will start working.”

“They found poor Batten lying dead with one of these very orchids under his body. He had been
unwell for some days and I think he fainted. Every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him
by the leeches. He might have died when he was trying to get that orchid.”

“I don’t understand why people should die in some horrible swamp just for people in England to
have orchids!”

“I don’t suppose it was very nice, but some men seem to enjoy that kind of things,” said
Wedderburn. “Anyhow, the natives who went with him were intelligent enough to take care of
all his collection until his colleague came back to their village. It makes these plants even more
interesting.”
“It makes them disgusting. I would be afraid that there is some malaria on them. And there has
been a dead body lying across that ugly thing! I cannot eat any more of the dinner,” his cousin
said.

“I will take them off the table if you like, and put them on the window. I can see them just as
well there.”

The next few days he was busy in his little hothouse. He was trying to mix together all the things
that orchids need. In the evening he talked about these new orchids to his friends.

Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care, but the strange orchid began to
grow. He was happy, and took his housekeeper to see it at once.

“That is a bud,” he said, “and soon there will be a lot of leaves there, and those little things
coming out here are aerial rootlets.”

“They look to me like little white fingers,” said his housekeeper. “I don’t like them.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. They look like fingers trying to get at you. I can’t help my likes and dislikes.”

“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think there are any orchids that have aerial rootlets quite like
that.  You see they are a little flattened at the ends.”

“I don’t like them,” said his housekeeper, and turned away. “I know it’s very silly of me, and I’m
very sorry, particularly as you like the thing so much. But I can’t help thinking of that dead
man.”

“But it may not be this plant. That was only my idea.”

His housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. “Anyway, I don’t like it,” she said.

Wedderburn felt a little hurt at her dislike of the plant. But that did not stop his talking to her
about orchids generally, and this orchid in particular, whenever he felt like it.

A few days later he came to his cousin and he was really excited. “The leaves are beginning to
unfold now. I wish you would come and see them!”

But she said that the orchid-house was so hot it gave her the headache. She had seen the plant
before, and the aerial rootlets, which were now some of them more than a foot long, had
reminded her of hands reaching out after something. She had even dreams about them trying to
catch her. So she refused to see that plant again, and Wedderburn had to admire its leaves alone.
The leaves were green with dots of deep red. He knew of no other leaves quite like them. The
plant was placed on a low bench near the thermometer. And he spent his afternoons now waiting
for the flowers of this strange plant.

And at last the great thing happened. When he entered the little glass house he knew that the
plant started flowering.There was a new smell in the air. It was a rich, very sweet smell.

As soon as he noticed this he hurried to the strange orchid. And he saw three flowers which
smelt strongly. He stopped before them and admired them.

The flowers were white, with stripes of golden orange. He could see at once that this flower was
a new kind.

The smell became suddenly too strong for him. And the place was very hot. The flowers swam
before his eyes.

He wanted to have a look if the temperature was right. He made a step towards the thermometer.
Suddenly everything appeared unsteady. The bricks on the floor were dancing up and down.
Then the white flowers, the green leaves behind them, the whole greenhouse, seemed to dance in
front of him.

At half-past four his cousin made the tea, as was their custom. But Wedderburn did not come in
for his tea.

“He is with that horrible orchid,” she told herself, and waited ten minutes. “His watch must have
stopped. I will go and call him.”

She went to the hothouse, and, opened the door and called his name. There was no reply. She
noticed that the air was very heavy, and full a new perfume. Then she saw something lying on
the ground.

For a minute, perhaps, she didn’t move.

He was lying, face upward, under the strange orchid. The aerial rootlets stretched and their ends
were on his chin, neck and hands.

She did not understand. Then she saw that under one of the roots on his face that  there was some
blood.

She screamed and ran towards him, and tried to pull him away from the orchid. She broke two of
these roots, and there came out some red liquid.

Then the strong smell of the blossom began to make her feel weak. How the roots clung to him!
She tore at the tough roots. She felt she was fainting, but she knew she must not. She left him
and quickly opened the nearest door, and, after she was for a moment in the fresh air, she had a
brilliant idea. She took a flower-pot and smashed the windows at the end of the greenhouse.
Then she went back again. She pulled at Wedderburn’s body, and the strange orchid fell on the
floor. But the roots still held. And then she pulled him and the orchid into the open air.

Then she took each root one by one, and in another minute he was free and she pulled him as far
as she could go.

He was white and blood was coming out of the places where the roots had been.

The gardener was coming up the garden. He heard the smashing of glass, and then he saw her
pulling a motionless body and her hands were bloody. For a moment he thought she had killed
him.

“Bring some water!” she cried. When she poured some water on his face, Wedderburn opened
his eyes. “What’s the matter?” he asked, and closed his eyes again.

“Go and tell Annie to come out here, and then go for Dr. Haddon at once,” she told the gardener.
“I will tell you all about it when you come back.”

After a while Wedderburn opened his eyes again, “You fainted in the hothouse.”

“And the orchid?”

“I will take care of that,” she said.

Wedderburn had lost a lot of blood, but otherwise there was nothing wrong with him. They gave
him brandy mixed with some pink extract, and carried him to his bed. His cousin told her
incredible story to Dr. Haddon. “Come to the orchid-house and see,” she said.

The cold air was blowing through the open door, and the perfume was almost gone. Most of the
rootlets lay among a number of dark stains upon the bricks. The orchid was broken by the fall,
and the flowers were getting brown at the edges. The doctor bent towards it. Then saw that one
of the aerial rootlets moved a bit.

The next morning the strange orchid still lay there. It was black now and it was dying. The cold
wind was going through the Wedderburn’s orchids and they were getting dry. But Wedderburn
himself was bright and happy in his room because finally a strange adventure happened to him.
 The Thing's The Play
By O.Henry

Being acquainted with a newspaper reporter who had a couple of free passes, I got to see the
performance a few nights ago at one of the popular vaudeville houses.

     One of the numbers was a violin solo by a striking-looking man not much past forty, but with
very gray thick hair. Not being afflicted with a taste for music, I let the system of noises drift
past my ears while I regarded the man.

     "There was a story about that chap a month or two ago," said the reporter. "They gave me the
assignment. It was to run a column and was to be on the extremely light and joking order. The
old man seems to like the funny touch I give to local happenings. Oh, yes, I'm working on a farce
comedy now. Well, I went down to the house and got all the details; but I certainly fell down on
that job. I went back and turned in a comic write-up of an east side funeral instead. Why? Oh, I
couldn't seem to get hold of it with my funny hooks, somehow. Maybe you could make a one-act
tragedy out of it for a curtain-raiser. I'll give you the details."

     After the performance my friend, the reporter, recited to me the facts over Wurzburger.

     "I see no reason," said I, when he had concluded, "why that shouldn't make a rattling good
funny story. Those three people couldn't have acted in a more absurd and preposterous manner if
they had been real actors in a real theatre. I'm really afraid that all the stage is a world, anyhow,
and all the players men and women. 'The thing's the play,' is the way I quote Mr. Shakespeare."

     "Try it," said the reporter.

     "I will," said I; and I did, to show him how he could have made a humorous column of it for
his paper.

There stands a house near Abingdon Square. On the ground floor there has been for twenty-five
years a little store where toys and notions and stationery are sold.

     One night twenty years ago there was a wedding in the rooms above the store. The Widow
Mayo owned the house and store. Her daughter Helen was married to Frank Barry. John Delaney
was best man. Helen was eighteen, and her picture had been printed in a morning paper next to
the headlines of a "Wholesale Female Murderess" story from Butte, Mont. But after your eye and
intelligence had rejected the connection, you seized your magnifying glass and read beneath the
portrait her description as one of a series of Prominent Beauties and Belles of the lower west
side.

     Frank Barry and John Delaney were "prominent" young beaux of the same side, and bosom
friends, whom you expected to turn upon each other every time the curtain went up. One who
pays his money for orchestra seats and fiction expects this. That is the first funny idea that has
turned up in the story yet. Both had made a great race for Helen's hand. When Frank won, John
shook his hand and congratulated him - honestly, he did.

     After the ceremony Helen ran upstairs to put on her hat. She was getting married in a
traveling dress. She and Frank were going to Old Point Comfort for a week. Downstairs the usual
horde of gibbering cave-dwellers were waiting with their hands full of old Congress gaiters and
paper bags of hominy.

     Then there was a rattle of the fire-escape, and into her room jumps the mad and infatuated
John Delaney, with a damp curl drooping upon his forehead, and made violent and reprehensible
love to his lost one, entreating her to flee or fly with him to the Riviera, or the Bronx, or any old
place where there are Italian skies and dolce far niente.

It would have carried Blaney off his feet to see Helen repulse him. With blazing and scornful
eyes she fairly withered him by demanding whatever he meant by speaking to respectable people
that way.

     In a few moments she had him going. The manliness that had possessed him departed. He
bowed low, and said something about "irresistible impulse" and "forever carry in his heart the
memory of" - and she suggested that he catch the first fire-escape going down.

     "I will away," said John Delaney, "to the furthermost parts of the earth. I cannot remain near
you and know that you are another's. I will to Africa, and there amid other scenes strive to for -"

     "For goodness sake, get out," said Helen. "Somebody might come in."

     He knelt upon one knee, and she extended him one white hand that he might give it a farewell
kiss.

     Girls, was this choice boon of the great little god Cupid ever vouchsafed you - to have the
fellow you want hard and fast, and have the one you don't want come with a damp curl on his
forehead and kneel to you and babble of Africa and love which, in spite of everything, shall
forever bloom, an amaranth, in his heart? To know your power, and to feel the sweet security of
your own happy state; to send the unlucky one, broken-hearted, to foreign climes, while you
congratulate yourself as he presses his last kiss upon your knuckles, that your nails are well
manicured - say, girls, it's galluptious - don't ever let it get by you.

     And then, of course - how did you guess it? - the door opened and in stalked the bridegroom,
jealous of slow-tying bonnet strings.

     The farewell kiss was imprinted upon Helen's hand, and out of the window and down the fire-
escape sprang John Delaney, Africa bound.
 A little slow music, if you please - faint violin, just a breath in the clarinet and a touch of the
'cello. Imagine the scene. Frank, white-hot, with the cry of a man wounded to death bursting
from him. Helen, rushing and clinging to him, trying to explain. He catches her wrists and tears
them from his shoulders - once, twice, thrice he sways her this way and that - the stage manager
will show you how - and throws her from him to the floor a huddled, crushed, moaning thing.
Never, he cries, will he look upon her face again, and rushes from the house through the staring
groups of astonished guests.

     And, now because it is the Thing instead of the Play, the audience must stroll out into the real
lobby of the world and marry, die, grow gray, rich, poor, happy or sad during the intermission of
twenty years which must precede the rising of the curtain again.

     Mrs. Barry inherited the shop and the house. At thirty-eight she could have bested many an
eighteen-year-old at a beauty show on points and general results. Only a few people remembered
her wedding comedy, but she made of it no secret. She did not pack it in lavender or moth balls,
nor did she sell it to a magazine.

     One day a middle-aged money-making lawyer, who bought his legal cap and ink of her, asked
her across the counter to marry him.

     "I'm really much obliged to you," said Helen, cheerfully, "but I married another man twenty
years ago. He was more a goose than a man, but I think I love him yet. I have never seen him
since about half an hour after the ceremony. Was it copying ink that you wanted or just writing
fluid?"

     The lawyer bowed over the counter with old-time grace and left a respectful kiss on the back
of her hand. Helen sighed. Parting salutes, however romantic, may be overdone. Here she was at
thirty-eight, beautiful and admired; and all that she seemed to have got from her lovers were
approaches and adieus. Worse still, in the last one she had lost a customer, too.

 Business languished, and she hung out a Room to Let card. Two large rooms on the third floor
were prepared for desirable tenants. Roomers came, and went regretfully, for the house of Mrs.
Barry was the abode of neatness, comfort and taste.

     One day came Ramonti, the violinist, and engaged the front room above. The discord and
clatter uptown offended his nice ear; so a friend had sent him to this oasis in the desert of noise.

     Ramonti, with his still youthful face, his dark eyebrows, his short, pointed, foreign, brown
beard, his distinguished head of gray hair, and his artist's temperament - revealed in his light, gay
and sympathetic manner - was a welcome tenant in the old house near Abingdon Square.

     Helen lived on the floor above the store. The architecture of it was singular and quaint. The
hall was large and almost square. Up one side of it, and then across the end of it ascended an
open stairway to the floor above. This hall space she had furnished as a sitting room and office
combined. There she kept her desk and wrote her business letters; and there she sat of evenings
by a warm fire and a bright red light and sewed or read. Ramonti found the atmosphere so
agreeable that he spent much time there, describing to Mrs. Barry the wonders of Paris, where he
had studied with a particularly notorious and noisy fiddler.

     Next comes lodger No. 2, a handsome, melancholy man in the early 40's, with a brown,
mysterious beard, and strangely pleading, haunting eyes. He, too, found the society of Helen a
desirable thing. With the eyes of Romeo and Othello's tongue, he charmed her with tales of
distant climes and wooed her by respectful innuendo.

     From the first Helen felt a marvelous and compelling thrill in the presence of this man. His
voice somehow took her swiftly back to the days of her youth's romance. This feeling grew, and
she gave way to it, and it led her to an instinctive belief that he had been a factor in that romance.
And then with a woman's reasoning (oh, yes, they do, sometimes) she leaped over common
syllogism and theory, and logic, and was sure that her husband had come back to her. For she
saw in his eyes love, which no woman can mistake, and a thousand tons of regret and remorse,
which aroused pity, which is perilously near to love requited, which is the sine qua non in the
house that Jack built.

 But she made no sign. A husband who steps around the corner for twenty years and then drops
in again should not expect to find his slippers laid out too conveniently near nor a match ready
lighted for his cigar. There must be expiation, explanation, and possibly execration. A little
purgatory, and then, maybe, if he were properly humble, he might be trusted with a harp and
crown. And so she made no sign that she knew or suspected.

     And my friend, the reporter, could see nothing funny in this! Sent out on an assignment to
write up a roaring, hilarious, brilliant joshing story of - but I will not knock a brother - let us go
on with the story.

     One evening Ramonti stopped in Helen's hall-office-reception-room and told his love with the
tenderness and ardor of the enraptured artist. His words were a bright flame of the divine fire that
glows in the heart of a man who is a dreamer and doer combined.

     "But before you give me an answer," he went on, before she could accuse him of suddenness,
"I must tell you that 'Ramonti' is the only name I have to offer you. My manager gave me that. I
do not know who I am or where I came from. My first recollection is of opening my eyes in a
hospital. I was a young man, and I had been there for weeks. My life before that is a blank to me.
They told me that I was found lying in the street with a wound on my head and was brought there
in an ambulance. They thought I must have fallen and struck my head upon the stones. There
was nothing to show who I was. I have never been able to remember. After I was discharged
from the hospital, I took up the violin. I have had success. Mrs. Barry - I do not know your name
except that - I love you; the first time I saw you I realized that you were the one woman in the
world for me - and" - oh, a lot of stuff like that.
Helen felt young again. First a wave of pride and a sweet little thrill of vanity went all over her;
and then she looked Ramonti in the eyes, and a tremendous throb went through her heart. She
hadn't expected that throb. It took her by surprise. The musician had become a big factor in her
life, and she hadn't been aware of it.

     "Mr. Ramonti," she said sorrowfully (this was not on the stage, remember; it was in the old
home near Abingdon Square), "I'm awfully sorry, but I'm a married woman."

     And then she told him the sad story of her life, as a heroine must do, sooner or later, either to
a theatrical manager or to a reporter.

     Ramonti took her hand, bowed low and kissed it, and went up to his room.

     Helen sat down and looked mournfully at her hand. Well she might. Three suitors had kissed
it, mounted their red roan steeds and ridden away.

     In an hour entered the mysterious stranger with the haunting eyes. Helen was in the willow
rocker, knitting a useless thing in cotton-wool. He ricocheted from the stairs and stopped for a
chat. Sitting across the table from her, he also poured out his narrative of love. And then he said:
"Helen, do you not remember me? I think I have seen it in your eyes. Can you forgive the past
and remember the love that has lasted for twenty years? I wronged you deeply - I was afraid to
come back to you - but my love overpowered my reason. Can you, will you, forgive me?"

     Helen stood up. The mysterious stranger held one of her hands in a strong and trembling
clasp.

     There she stood, and I pity the stage that it has not acquired a scene like that and her emotions
to portray.

 For she stood with a divided heart. The fresh, unforgettable, virginal love for her bridegroom
was hers; the treasured, sacred, honored memory of her first choice filled half her soul. She
leaned to that pure feeling. Honor and faith and sweet, abiding romance bound her to it. But the
other half of her heart and soul was filled with something else - a later, fuller, nearer influence.
And so the old fought against the new.

     And while she hesitated, from the room above came the soft, racking, petitionary music of a
violin. The hag, music, bewitches some of the noblest. The daws may peck upon one's sleeve
without injury, but whoever wears his heart upon his tympanum gets it not far from the neck.

     This music and the musician caller her, and at her side honor and the old love held her back.

     "Forgive me," he pleaded.

     "Twenty years is a long time to remain away from the one you say you love," she declared,
with a purgatorial touch.
     "How could I tell?" he begged. "I will conceal nothing from you. That night when he left I
followed him. I was mad with jealousy. On a dark street I struck him down. He did not rise. I
examined him. His head had struck a stone. I did not intend to kill him. I was mad with love and
jealousy. I hid near by and saw an ambulance take him away. Although you married him, Helen
-"

     "Who are you?" cried the woman, with wide-open eyes, snatching her hand away.

     "Don't you remember me, Helen - the one who has always loved you best? I am John
Delaney. If you can forgive -"

 But she was gone, leaping, stumbling, hurrying, flying up the stairs toward the music and him
who had forgotten, but who had known her for his in each of his two existences, and as she
climbed up she sobbed, cried and sang: "Frank! Frank! Frank!"

     Three mortals thus juggling with years as though they were billiard balls, and my friend, the
reporter, couldn't see anything funny in it!
 Three Letters
By Nels Schifano

It was autumn. Although still afternoon the journey had been spent peering at slowly
moving red lights through clouds of condensing exhaust and the intermittent slip-slip of wipers.
Now as she turned off the ignition darkness gathered silently around her. She walked head down,
hood up, feeling plastic handles moulding themselves around her fingers, the carrier bag
spinning one way then the next as it clipped against her leg. The pavement was thick with the
slippery brown mulch of fallen leaves and the smell of bonfires wafted across the common. A
thin mist clung around the streetlights producing a shifting yellow gas. Sounds were muffled and
movements lethargic. Cars slipped slowly by on a film of dirty water. At her gate she delayed,
unwilling to break the stillness with squeaking hinges; not yet teatime and the city was being put
to sleep.

     The terrace before her hugged the curve of the road tumbling erratically down the hill and
into the gloom. Bending around the edges of her vision she was conscious of curtains being
swished closed, stone faces bathed by the grey light of televisions, broken roof tiles, satellite
dishes, bay windows, the whole higgledy-piggledy collection of guttering and skylights. For a
moment her home was a stranger, a simple compartment in this huge connected structure.

     She rattled the key into the lock, tilting it to the particular angle that would allow it to catch.
She stepped inside, her hand brushing the light switch as she closed the door behind her. The
softly lit warmth of the interior walls were a welcome contrast to the dark slimy surfaces of the
outside. Two elderly neighbours warmed the house from the sides and soon she would hear the
comforting noises of the boiler rousing itself into life.

     She kept her mind occupied by these happy details of returning home as she walked along the
hall and into the kitchen. She lifted the carrier bag onto the worktop and reached for the kettle.
Standing in the centre of the room, still in her anorak, she listened to the sound of the water boil
and felt the house adjust itself to her presence. Now she returned at all times of the day she
sometimes sensed she had caught it unawares. What ghosts that had been running through rooms
were now slipping reluctantly back into walls? While its inhabitants had moved the house stayed
still, preserving pockets of time in dusty corners. The blue-tak tears on bedroom walls, a water-
colour sun and stick man hiding behind a fitted wardrobe, a dent in a table, a crack in a mirror,
were all passing moments etched into the physical world, like voices pressed into vinyl.

Steam began to rise vertically to the ceiling where it changed direction aware of the presence of
some subtle draft (or draft of some subtle presence). Through the window she could see the
outline of the narrow garden, the fuzzy grey shapes of a rusting climbing frame and overflowing
compost heap. Along one side a scruffy fence lent drunkenly one way then the other, while a
brutally straight line of six-foot high boards marked the other side of the territory. What further
anti-cat measures (minefields, tripwires perhaps) lay waiting beyond? As if summoned by her
thoughts Rahel, green eyes and a flicking tail, appeared on the window ledge, her silent meows
making small circles of condensation. Smiling, she unlocked the door. The cat padded in, figures
of eight around her feet represented by muddy paw prints on the kitchen floor. The kettle worked
itself towards a crescendo, beads of perspiration appeared on its sides and it shook violently
unable to contain the bubbling pressure inside. Abruptly it finished, sat back on the filament and
turned itself off.

     She reached up to the top cupboards for the coffee jar and bent down for those that contained
the mugs. Here she paused, confused by the vast number of assorted cup, mugs and beakers that
stared blankly back at her. Why did she have so many? Where had they come from? She sighed
as she straightened pulling out a standard shaped mug with handle; colour - light blue; design -
three letters emblazoned in gold, S U E.

     She took off her coat and laid it over the back of the oak kitchen chair and sat down. She let
her feet slip out of her shoes and raised them onto the fitted bench across the other side of the
table. Above the bench were shelves supporting decorative plates in wire stands, a Charles and
Diana mug (more mugs!), and a collection of photographs showing either madly grinning or
defiantly sulky children (both on the verge of crying). As she looked the image of a growing
family seemed to slowly recede to reveal the image of a shrinking woman.

There was the sudden sound of water flooding into a drain as somewhere nearby a plug was
pulled from a sink, a toilet was flushed or maybe a washing machine emptied itself and she
realised that her coffee had gone cold. She moved to the sink and ran the hot water. Staring out
into darkness she listened to the succession of far-off bangs and shudders from the network of
pipes. Bathed in yellow light hovering over the gloom of the garden she looked in at a woman
repeatedly working a tea towel around the inside of a mug. Who was she? Why was she so
miserable?

     She shook herself and took out the plug. Slipped away again into nothing time (that time that
flowed into the gaps between the things you did). Wouldn't a wasted minute become a wasted
hour, wasted hours become wasted days? Where could she be now if she hadn't been doing,
what? - making tea, sitting in traffic jams, reading the local paper, standing in a supermarket
queue. Best avoided, the thought of her life draining into these moments.

     She unpacked the carrier bag. She put away the milk, the orange, the biscuits and the cat food,
then struggled to slide the two pizza's into an already crowded freezer spraying tiny shards of ice
across the floor. An overflowing collection of polythene bags scrunched inside other polythene
bags in the bottom of a cupboard was her commitment to recycling. When it was opened a white
plastic avalanche slid towards her. She threw in the latest addition and slammed the door. A lone
bag made a break for freedom and buoyed by the swish of air it lifted across the room like a
jellyfish. Two pairs of eyes followed its progress over the spice rack and breadboard until it was
caught on a bottle of olive oil.
     The oak bench was not just a foot rest. She had made this discovery during a rigorous
cleaning session one New Year. Under the lip of the removable cushioned seat she had found a
small catch, rusty enough to break two nails. Eventually it yielded and raised to reveal a dark,
hollow chest. Despite a few moments when her heartbeat seemed to fill the house, it proved to
contain nothing more exciting than a pile of old newspapers - more dirtiness to clean. It was, she
decided, an ideal place to store tablecloths and tea towels, but steadily it began to swallow
bedding, pillowcases and blankets of various sorts. Really, it was ridiculous to think that no one
else was aware of its existence (was she the only one ever to change a bed, lay a table?) Still, she
always thought of it as hers, and, when alone in the house, she opened it, she experienced a flush
of childish excitement. She felt it rise now as her fingers fumbled beneath soft layers of folded
cotton searching for the sharp cold of a shiny metal toffee tin.

She put the tin on the table. Inside lay a medal from the Polish Airforce; a commemorative coin;
a pebble taken from Ilfracomb beach in 1978 (could she really remember the heavy heat of that
day or did she need the proof of the pebble to tell her she had been there); a present bought but
never given; and inside a neatly folded bag, three envelopes. She glanced around the room, from
somewhere inside a wall a pipe clanked - the house clearing its throat - and took out the top
envelope.

     An antelope leapt across a colourful stamp. It looked startled as antelopes often do caught in
the sights of the black postmark. The paper inside was thick and cream-coloured, it had a blue
letterhead and the date in the top right hand corner was July 2000. As she let her eyes wander
over the page she noticed it was just a little crumpled, stiff in places, as if it had been wetted then
dried.

This must be something of a surprise. If, that is, this letter gets to you. I remembered your
address, of course, but then it suddenly struck me that maybe you had moved and I didn't know
and anyway the post round here isn't exactly reliable. So perhaps I am only writing a letter to
myself.

     Really now that I've started I can't think what it was I wanted to say. I think it was just the act
of writing that was important, just to feel as if I was still in contact with things, although I guess
a blank piece of paper in an envelope would have seemed a little strange.

     I've really no need to ask how things are with you. It all seems to have worked out pretty
much as you planned. But still I hope you are both healthy and happy.

     I am afraid I've done nothing very exciting to tell you about. Here is just an endless
succession of long boring tasks, and then there's the heat and the clouds of flies that rise from the
river and make everything twice as hard. But this evening as I washed and dried my clothes
suddenly there was this feeling of satisfaction. Strange, five months of toil and worry then calm
descends as welcome and unexpected as an ice-cream van clattering through the bush.

Maybe that's why I am writing this letter. Perhaps it's thinking about England in the summer,
perhaps it's the sounds of the river at night but my mind wandered back to the place of long
afternoons, listening to Pink Moon and Lay Lady Lay. Can you still find a way back to the taste
of cheap wine, the feel of grass between your fingers and a world that was all shimmering
reflections?

     All those people disappeared into the world. How would they be recognised now - perhaps
only by the sound of their laughter?

     I'm afraid I once damaged the environment in your name and took a penknife to the willow
we used to sit by. I can remember wondering if the bark would ever grow back. If you ever find
yourself driving past one weekend . . . Well perhaps not, it's probably so sadly different. But I
know your name will still be there, carved in the memory of a tree.

She re-folded the letter and tapped it several times against her top lip. From the hall the clock
calling out the quarter hour, then a moment of stillness - time stalling - before, faintly, the clock
in her study responded.

     She took out the next envelope. While her fingers searched for the flap she looked at the
Queen's silver silhouette. The letter was written on paper so white and thin that as her gaze fell
across it she saw it as a shade of blue. The date was April 1976.

Do I remember that September afternoon when I first met you? Is it possible to remember the
slide into sleep or the hypnotist's fingers on your eyelids? I only know that it happened because
at some stage I awoke.

     Some things are clear, the lucid fragments of a dream, a conversation over the phone one
Easter. We both felt down because I was working in a stuffy shop and you in a sorting office. I
hated it and asked you how it was that time moved so slowly. It's okay, you said, it doesn't
matter, because it will end and time passed is all the same, and anyway, in the end it's not time
that you're left with.

You told me to go look for happiness and bring some back when I found it. But you can't bank
happiness. You can't keep it for when you need it and you cannot give to someone else simply by
having it yourself.

     I thought I would be content to watch the river flow past and drift away on the scent of water
lilies. I watched days become nights and nights gently give way to days, believing I was
shedding my cares when really I was storing regrets. Now I know that reading is dreaming, that
dreaming is sleeping and thought inaction. When I wake I find that all I have left is thoughts of
you.

The noise of the cat jumping clumsily onto her lap, the feeling of her pressing up and down with
alternate paws, claws snagging loops of cotton.

     This time the silhouette is not the Queen's but that of Nehru, a white head against an orange
background. The stamp is stuck on at an odd angle (but still stuck after all this time!) and he
stares down at the scraggly lines of a familiar address. The letter itself is written on a school
child's lined paper, as her eyes run down the page they linger on the date, Nov. 1968 and the
dappling of yellow blotches. What were they? Had they always been there?

I still can't believe you decided to go. Why go back to the grey, the dirt, the noise, the rush?
There is a lifetime to do those things. I know you chase that dream of yours, but the dream is so
sweetly deferred here. Here I feel as if I am absorbing the sunshine and serenity.

     Since you left we moved further east where the earth here has a reddish tinge and so does the
food. Today we met a group of Americans. We got a ride on the roof of their van and helped
them collect firewood. They say there is an old man who sells the beads you wanted from the
front of his hut, and eight miles of white sand.

I am writing this in a flickering of orange and blackness. This is the best time, talking and
reading, the world melting away into words, although sometimes a phrase is so beautiful I have
to walk around a little just to let them settle in. One of these made me think of you. 'Do that
which makes you happy to do, and you will do right.'

The freezer's cooling mechanism rattled, then fell silent, and she realised that she hadn't been
aware of the noise it was making. In its absence the air in the house seemed to hang with that
same question; how would her life have been if she had managed to send just one of them? But
the air received no answers and went back to its lazy circulation.

     In time she would fold the letter away and place it back in the envelope, place the envelopes
back into the bag, the bag back into the tin and the tin into the trunk. She would cover it with
layers of cloth and place down the seat and lock the catch. But now she just sat for a moment, the
noise of the cat's contented breathing filling the house.
 The Necklace
By Guy de Maupassant

She was one of those pretty and charming girls born, as if by an error of fate, into a family of
clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of becoming known, understood, loved or
wedded by a man of wealth and distinction; and so she let herself be married to a minor official
at the Ministry of Education.

     She dressed plainly because she had never been able to afford anything better, but she was as
unhappy as if she had once been wealthy. Women don't belong to a caste or class; their beauty,
grace, and natural charm take the place of birth and family. Natural delicacy, instinctive elegance
and a quick wit determine their place in society, and make the daughters of commoners the
equals of the very finest ladies.

     She suffered endlessly, feeling she was entitled to all the delicacies and luxuries of life. She
suffered because of the poorness of her house as she looked at the dirty walls, the worn-out
chairs and the ugly curtains. All these things that another woman of her class would not even
have noticed, tormented her and made her resentful. The sight of the little Brenton girl who did
her housework filled her with terrible regrets and hopeless fantasies. She dreamed of silent
antechambers hung with Oriental tapestries, lit from above by torches in bronze holders, while
two tall footmen in knee-length breeches napped in huge armchairs, sleepy from the stove's
oppressive warmth. She dreamed of vast living rooms furnished in rare old silks, elegant
furniture loaded with priceless ornaments, and inviting smaller rooms, perfumed, made for
afternoon chats with close friends - famous, sought after men, who all women envy and desire.

     When she sat down to dinner at a round table covered with a three-day-old cloth opposite her
husband who, lifting the lid off the soup, shouted excitedly, "Ah! Beef stew! What could be
better," she dreamed of fine dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestries which peopled the walls
with figures from another time and strange birds in fairy forests; she dreamed of delicious dishes
served on wonderful plates, of whispered gallantries listened to with an inscrutable smile as one
ate the pink flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail.

 She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing; and these were the only things she loved. She felt she
was made for them alone. She wanted so much to charm, to be envied, to be desired and sought
after.

     She had a rich friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, whom she no longer wanted to visit
because she suffered so much when she came home. For whole days afterwards she would weep
with sorrow, regret, despair and misery.

*
One evening her husband came home with an air of triumph, holding a large envelope in his
hand.

     "Look," he said, "here's something for you."

     She tore open the paper and drew out a card, on which was printed the words:

     "The Minister of Education and Mme. Georges Rampouneau request the pleasure of M. and
Mme. Loisel's company at the Ministry, on the evening of Monday January 18th."

     Instead of being delighted, as her husband had hoped, she threw the invitation on the table
resentfully, and muttered:

     "What do you want me to do with that?"

     "But, my dear, I thought you would be pleased. You never go out, and it will be such a lovely
occasion! I had awful trouble getting it. Every one wants to go; it is very exclusive, and they're
not giving many invitations to clerks. The whole ministry will be there."

     She stared at him angrily, and said, impatiently:

     "And what do you expect me to wear if I go?"

     He hadn't thought of that. He stammered:

     "Why, the dress you go to the theatre in. It seems very nice to me ..."

     He stopped, stunned, distressed to see his wife crying. Two large tears ran slowly from the
corners of her eyes towards the corners of her mouth. He stuttered:

"What's the matter? What's the matter?"

     With great effort she overcame her grief and replied in a calm voice, as she wiped her wet
cheeks:

     "Nothing. Only I have no dress and so I can't go to this party. Give your invitation to a friend
whose wife has better clothes than I do."

     He was distraught, but tried again:

     "Let's see, Mathilde. How much would a suitable dress cost, one which you could use again
on other occasions, something very simple?"

     She thought for a moment, computing the cost, and also wondering what amount she could
ask for without an immediate refusal and an alarmed exclamation from the thrifty clerk.

     At last she answered hesitantly:

     "I don't know exactly, but I think I could do it with four hundred francs."

     He turned a little pale, because he had been saving that exact amount to buy a gun and treat
himself to a hunting trip the following summer, in the country near Nanterre, with a few friends
who went lark-shooting there on Sundays.

     However, he said:

     "Very well, I can give you four hundred francs. But try and get a really beautiful dress."

The day of the party drew near, and Madame Loisel seemed sad, restless, anxious. Her dress was
ready, however. One evening her husband said to her:

     "What's the matter? You've been acting strange these last three days."

     She replied: "I'm upset that I have no jewels, not a single stone to wear. I will look cheap. I
would almost rather not go to the party."

     "You could wear flowers, " he said, "They are very fashionable at this time of year. For
ten francs you could get two or three magnificent roses."

     She was not convinced.

"No; there is nothing more humiliating than looking poor in the middle of a lot of rich women."

     "How stupid you are!" her husband cried. "Go and see your friend Madame Forestier and ask
her to lend you some jewels. You know her well enough for that."

     She uttered a cry of joy.

     "Of course. I had not thought of that."

     The next day she went to her friend's house and told her of her distress.

     Madame Forestier went to her mirrored wardrobe, took out a large box, brought it back,
opened it, and said to Madame Loisel:

     "Choose, my dear."

     First she saw some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a gold Venetian cross set with
precious stones, of exquisite craftsmanship. She tried on the jewelry in the mirror, hesitated,
could not bear to part with them, to give them back. She kept asking:

     "You have nothing else?"

     "Why, yes. But I don't know what you like."

     Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb diamond necklace, and her heart
began to beat with uncontrolled desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it around
her neck, over her high-necked dress, and stood lost in ecstasy as she looked at herself.

     Then she asked anxiously, hesitating:

     "Would you lend me this, just this?"

     "Why, yes, of course."

     She threw her arms around her friend's neck, embraced her rapturously, then fled with her
treasure.

The day of the party arrived. Madame Loisel was a success. She was prettier than all the other
women, elegant, gracious, smiling, and full of joy. All the men stared at her, asked her name,
tried to be introduced. All the cabinet officials wanted to waltz with her. The minister noticed
her.

 She danced wildly, with passion, drunk on pleasure, forgetting everything in the triumph of her
beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness, made up of all this respect, all
this admiration, all these awakened desires, of that sense of triumph that is so sweet to a woman's
heart.

     She left at about four o'clock in the morning. Her husband had been dozing since midnight in
a little deserted anteroom with three other gentlemen whose wives were having a good time.

     He threw over her shoulders the clothes he had brought for her to go outside in, the modest
clothes of an ordinary life, whose poverty contrasted sharply with the elegance of the ball dress.
She felt this and wanted to run away, so she wouldn't be noticed by the other women who were
wrapping themselves in expensive furs.

     Loisel held her back.

     "Wait a moment, you'll catch a cold outside. I'll go and find a cab."

     But she would not listen to him, and ran down the stairs. When they were finally in the street,
they could not find a cab, and began to look for one, shouting at the cabmen they saw passing in
the distance.

     They walked down toward the Seine in despair, shivering with cold. At last they found on the
quay one of those old night cabs that one sees in Paris only after dark, as if they were ashamed to
show their shabbiness during the day.
     They were dropped off at their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly walked up the steps to
their apartment. It was all over, for her. And he was remembering that he had to be back at his
office at ten o'clock.

     In front of the mirror, she took off the clothes around her shoulders, taking a final look at
herself in all her glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry. She no longer had the necklace round her
neck!

 "What is the matter?" asked her husband, already half undressed.

     She turned towards him, panic-stricken.

     "I have ... I have ... I no longer have Madame Forestier's necklace."

     He stood up, distraught.

     "What! ... how! ... That's impossible!"

     They looked in the folds of her dress, in the folds of her cloak, in her pockets, everywhere.
But they could not find it.

     "Are you sure you still had it on when you left the ball?" he asked.

     "Yes. I touched it in the hall at the Ministry."

     "But if you had lost it in the street we would have heard it fall. It must be in the cab."

     "Yes. That's probably it. Did you take his number?"

     "No. And you, didn't you notice it?"

     "No."

     They stared at each other, stunned. At last Loisel put his clothes on again.

     "I'm going back," he said, "over the whole route we walked, see if I can find it."

     He left. She remained in her ball dress all evening, without the strength to go to bed, sitting on
a chair, with no fire, her mind blank.

     Her husband returned at about seven o'clock. He had found nothing.

     He went to the police, to the newspapers to offer a reward, to the cab companies, everywhere
the tiniest glimmer of hope led him.

     She waited all day, in the same state of blank despair from before this frightful disaster.

     Loisel returned in the evening, a hollow, pale figure; he had found nothing.
     "You must write to your friend," he said, "tell her you have broken the clasp of her necklace
and that you are having it mended. It will give us time to look some more."

She wrote as he dictated.

At the end of one week they had lost all hope.

     And Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:

     "We must consider how to replace the jewel."

     The next day they took the box which had held it, and went to the jeweler whose name they
found inside. He consulted his books.

     "It was not I, madame, who sold the necklace; I must simply have supplied the case."

     And so they went from jeweler to jeweler, looking for an necklace like the other one,
consulting their memories, both sick with grief and anguish.

     In a shop at the Palais Royal, they found a string of diamonds which seemed to be exactly
what they were looking for. It was worth forty thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six
thousand.

     So they begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days. And they made an arrangement that he
would take it back for thirty-four thousand francs if the other necklace was found before the end
of February.

     Loisel had eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He would borrow the rest.

     And he did borrow, asking for a thousand francs from one man, five hundred from another,
five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes, made ruinous agreements, dealt with usurers,
with every type of money-lender. He compromised the rest of his life, risked signing notes
without knowing if he could ever honor them, and, terrified by the anguish still to come, by the
black misery about to fall on him, by the prospect of every physical privation and every moral
torture he was about to suffer, he went to get the new necklace, and laid down on the jeweler's
counter thirty-six thousand francs.

     When Madame Loisel took the necklace back, Madame Forestier said coldly:

     "You should have returned it sooner, I might have needed it."

To the relief of her friend, she did not open the case. If she had detected the substitution, what
would she have thought? What would she have said? Would she have taken her friend for a
thief?
*

From then on, Madame Loisel knew the horrible life of the very poor. But she played her part
heroically. The dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their maid; they
changed their lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof.

     She came to know the drudgery of housework, the odious labors of the kitchen. She washed
the dishes, staining her rosy nails on greasy pots and the bottoms of pans. She washed the dirty
linen, the shirts and the dishcloths, which she hung to dry on a line; she carried the garbage down
to the street every morning, and carried up the water, stopping at each landing to catch her
breath. And, dressed like a commoner, she went to the fruiterer's, the grocer's, the butcher's, her
basket on her arm, bargaining, insulted, fighting over every miserable sou.

     Each month they had to pay some notes, renew others, get more time.

     Her husband worked every evening, doing accounts for a tradesman, and often, late into the
night, he sat copying a manuscript at five sous a page.

     And this life lasted ten years.

     At the end of ten years they had paid off everything, everything, at usurer's rates and with the
accumulations of compound interest.

     Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become strong, hard and rough like all women of
impoverished households. With hair half combed, with skirts awry, and reddened hands, she
talked loudly as she washed the floor with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her
husband was at the office, she sat down near the window and thought of that evening at the ball
so long ago, when she had been so beautiful and so admired.

     What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows, who knows? How
strange life is, how fickle! How little is needed for one to be ruined or saved!

One Sunday, as she was walking in the Champs Élysées to refresh herself after the week's work,
suddenly she saw a woman walking with a child. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still
beautiful, still charming.

     Madame Loisel felt emotional. Should she speak to her? Yes, of course. And now that she had
paid, she would tell her all. Why not?

     She went up to her.

     "Good morning, Jeanne."

     The other, astonished to be addressed so familiarly by this common woman, did not recognize
her. She stammered:
     "But - madame - I don't know. You must have made a mistake."

     "No, I am Mathilde Loisel."

     Her friend uttered a cry.

     "Oh! ... my poor Mathilde, how you've changed! ..."

     "Yes, I have had some hard times since I last saw you, and many miseries ... and all because
of you! ..."

     "Me? How can that be?"

     "You remember that diamond necklace that you lent me to wear to the Ministry party?"

     "Yes. Well?"

     "Well, I lost it."

     "What do you mean? You brought it back."

     "I brought you back another exactly like it. And it has taken us ten years to pay for it. It wasn't
easy for us, we had very little. But at last it is over, and I am very glad."

     Madame Forestier was stunned.

     "You say that you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?"

     "Yes; you didn't notice then? They were very similar."

     And she smiled with proud and innocent pleasure.

     Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took both her hands.

 "Oh, my poor Mathilde! Mine was an imitation! It was worth five hundred francs at most! ..."