Mr. Prohack turned a little pale, and his voice trembled as he said, looking up from the letter: 

“I wonder who the thief was.  Anyhow, women are staggering.  Here some woman—­I’m sure it was the woman and not the man—­picks up a necklace from the floor of one of your drawing-rooms, well knowing it not to be her own, hides it, makes off with it, and then is careless enough to leave it in a taxi!  Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

“But that wasn’t my necklace, Arthur!” said Eve.

“Of course it was your necklace,” said Mr. Prohack.

“Do you mean to tell me—­” Eve began, and it was a new Eve.

“Of course I do!” said Mr. Prohack, who had now thoroughly subdued his temper in the determination to bring to a head that trouble about the necklace and end it for ever.  He was continuing his remarks when the wall suddenly fell down with an unimaginable crash.  Eve said nothing, but the soundless crash deafened Mr. Prohack.  Nevertheless the mere fact that Sissie’s wedding lay behind and not before him, helped him somewhat to keep his spirits and his nerve.

“I will never forgive you, Arthur!” said Eve with the most solemn and terrible candour.  She no longer played a part; she was her formidable self, utterly unmasked and savagely expressive without any regard to consequences.  Mr. Prohack saw that he was engaged in a mortal duel, with the buttons off the deadly foils.

“Of course you won’t,” said he, gathering himself heroically together, and superbly assuming a calm which he did not in the least feel.  “Of course you won’t, because there is nothing to forgive.  On the contrary, you owe me your thanks.  I never deceived you.  I never told you the pearls were genuine.  Indeed I beg to remind you that I once told you positively that I would never buy you a pearl necklace,—­don’t you remember?  You thought they were genuine, and you have had just as much pleasure out of them as if they had been genuine.  You were always careless with your jewellery.  Think how I should have suffered if I had watched you every day being careless with a rope of genuine pearls!  I should have had no peace of mind.  I should have been obliged to reproach you, and as you can’t bear to be reproached you would have picked quarrels with me.  Further, you have lost nothing in prestige, for the reason that all our friends and acquaintances have naturally assumed that the pearls were genuine because they were your pearls and you were the wife of a rich man.  A woman whose husband’s financial position is not high and secure is bound to wear real pearls because people will assume that her pearls are false.  But a woman like yourself can wear any pinchbeak pearls with impunity because people assume that her pearls are genuine.  In your case there could be no advantage whatever in genuine pearls.  To buy them would be equivalent to throwing money in the street.  Now, as it is, I have saved money over the pearls, and therefore