L’Ami Fritz got up and left the room.  He was going into the kitchen to make the coffee.

“Mr. Chester was telling me of your valuable pearls,” said Madame Wachner pleasantly.  “I was surprised!  What a lot of money to ’ang round one’s neck!  But it is worth it if one ’as so lovely a neck as ’as the beautiful Sylvia!  May I look at your pearls, dear friend?  Or do you never take them off?”

Sylvia unclasped the string of pearls and laid it on the table.

“Yes, they are rather nice,” she said modestly.  “I always wear them, even at night.  Many people have a knot made between each pearl, for that, of course, makes the danger of losing them much less should the string break.  But mine are not knotted, for a lady once told me that it made the pearls hang much less prettily; she said it would be quite safe if I had them restrung every six months.  So that is what I do.  I had them restrung just before coming to France.”

Madame Wachner reverentially took up the pearls in her large hand; she seemed to be weighing them.

“How heavy they are,” she said at length, and now she spoke French.

“Yes,” said Sylvia, “you can always tell a real pearl by its weight.”

“And to think,” went on her hostess musingly, “that each of these tiny balls is worth—­how much is it worth?—­at least five or six hundred francs, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said Sylvia again, “I’m glad to say they have increased in value during the last few years.  You see, pearls are the only really fashionable gems just now.”

“And they cannot be identified like other fine jewels,” observed Madame Wachner, “but I suppose they are worth more together than separately?” she was still speaking in that thoughtful, considering tone.

“Oh, I don’t know that,” said Sylvia, smiling.  “Each separate pearl is worth a good deal, but still I daresay you are right, for these are beautifully matched.  I got them, by a piece of great luck, without having to pay—­well, what I suppose one would call the middle-man’s profit!  I just paid what I should have done at a good London sale.”

“And you paid?—­seven—­eight ’undred pounds?” asked Madame Wachner, this time in English, and fixing her small, dark eyes on the fair Englishwoman’s face.

“Oh, rather more than that.”  Sylvia grew a little red.  “But as I said just now, they are always increasing in value.  Even Mr. Chester, who did not approve of my getting these pearls, admits that I made a good bargain.”

Through the open door she thought she heard Monsieur Wachner coming back down the passage.  So she suddenly took the pearls out of the other woman’s hand and clasped the string about her neck again.

L’Ami Fritz came into the room.  He was holding rather awkwardly a little tray on which were two cups—­one a small cup, the other a large cup, both filled to the brim with black coffee.  He put the small cup before his guest, the large cup before his wife.