Having stared for some moments at the object in my palm, I touched it gingerly; whereupon my acquaintance laughed—­a short bass laugh.

“It looks fragile,” he said.  “But have no fear.  It is nearly as hard as a diamond.”

Thus encouraged, I took the thing up between finger and thumb, and held it before my eyes.  For long enough I looked at it, and looking, my wonder grew.  I thought that here was the most wonderful example of the lapidary’s art which I had ever met with, east or west.

It was a tiny pink rose, no larger than the nail of my little finger.  Stalk and leaves were there, and golden pollen lay in its delicate heart.  Each fairy-petal blushed with June fire; the frail leaves were exquisitely green.  Withal it was as hard and unbendable as a thing of steel.

“Allow me,” said the masterful voice.

A powerful lens was passed by my acquaintance.  I regarded the rose through the glass, and thereupon I knew, beyond doubt, that there was something phenomenal about the gem—­if gem it were.  I could plainly trace the veins and texture of every petal.

I suppose I looked somewhat startled.  Although, baldly stated, the fact may not seem calculated to affright, in reality there was something so weird about this unnatural bloom that I dropped it on the table.  As I did so I uttered an exclamation; for in spite of the stranger’s assurances on the point, I had by no means overcome my idea of the thing’s fragility.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said, meeting my startled gaze.  “It would need a steam-hammer to do any serious damage.”

He replaced the jewel in his pocket, and when I returned the lens to him he acknowledged it with a grave inclination of the head.  As I looked into his sunken eyes, in which I thought lay a sort of sardonic merriment, the fantastic idea flashed through my mind that I had fallen into the clutches of an expert hypnotist who was amusing himself at my expense, that the miniature rose was a mere hallucination produced by the same means as the notorious Indian rope trick.

Then, looking around me at the cosmopolitan groups surrounding the many tables, and catching snatches of conversations dealing with subjects so diverse as the quality of whisky in Singapore, the frail beauty of Chinese maidens, and the ways of “bloody greasers,” common sense reasserted itself.

I looked into the gray face of my acquaintance.

“I cannot believe,” I said slowly, “that human ingenuity could so closely duplicate the handiwork of nature.  Surely the gem is unique?—­possibly one of those magical talismans of which we read in Eastern stories?”

My companion smiled.

“It is not a gem,” he replied, “and while in a sense it is a product of human ingenuity, it is also the handiwork of nature.”

I was badly puzzled, and doubtless revealed the fact, for the stranger laughed in his short fashion, and: