arrival in Brazil. In an elegant room of their beautiful, modest house, Carlotta was putting on a magnificent gown she had brought from Paris without her husband's knowledge, and when Jean came in and saw her he said aloud:

— How beautiful, how magnifi-cent this gown is! You will be the most beautiful guest this evening too — but...

— But what?...

— But I do not see the pearl necklace.

— The necklace? And why must I wear an ornament at all? Is not elegance found in economy of adornment? And I think that in this city especially I ought to give people the notion that I own so many jewels that I neglect them and appear at parties without them...

He agreed with her view, yet said with insistence:

— All the same, I want you to wear the necklace, for it is unlike any other ornament.

— But I can never put it on my neck.

He said, his face darkening:

— Why? Why? Have you lost it?

She went to a small drawer, took from it the case of the necklace, and offered it to Jean, saying:

— No! It is not lost — but look..

Jean opened the beautiful case with a trembling hand, and the necklace appeared before his eyes in all the splendor and luster of its pearls. He remembered how he had spent two whole years gathering its pearls one after another through the most famous jeweler in Paris; and he remembered too the great joy that had flooded his soul two weeks before his wedding, when the necklace was complete and he saw it lying temptingly in its velvet compartment, just as he saw it now. Then he took the necklace tenderly between his

hands and began to feel its pearls with his fingers as though it were a living thing. Carlotta watched his movements with something like heartache and said to him:

— And now, do you understand why I cannot wear it and adorn myself with it?

But Jean remained bewildered, looking now at his wife and now at the precious necklace, and then said:

— No! I confess I have not understood what you mean.

So she took her husband's arm, drew near the lamp with him, and said:

— Look at it closely!

Jean's color drained after he had examined the pearls by the light of the lamp, and he cried in a hoarse voice:

— It is impossible! No! That cannot be.

She answered him with sadness and sorrow:

— Yes, my dear. The pearls of the necklace are now false, for the jeweler who sold it to you bought it back from me in secret, after making me a copy of it... By this alone were we able to save the situation until today.

— So this is your secret?

— Yes, my dear.

Jean appreciated the great sac-rifice Carlotta had made, yet he suffered much over the sale of the necklace, for he imagined that they had sold something of her love and of their past happiness.

Carlotta was thinking of this side of the matter too, and she said to him:

— I confess to you that selling the necklace pained me greatly, but I found no other way to save our situation. You know it is dear to my heart, and for that reason alone I wished to cheat fate... The pearls of the necklace now

are all false and lying — save for one pearl. Yes, I preserved the precious memory the necklace carries by placing its most beau-tiful pearl among the false ones; and thus the precious symbol it bears has kept its meaning.

Jean took his wife in his arms and kissed her warmly, giving voice to his gratitude, and she went on:

— And I adorned myself with it all through the time we were playing our part, and it never crossed anyone's mind that Carlotta Beraldi could put a false necklace on her neck. And now, after the play has ended in peace, I can never wear it at all — for it is very possible that people would read in my eyes and in the features of my face that it is a false necklace...

And she closed the case that held the necklace and returned it to its place with a kind of reverence. Jean said to her in admiration:

— You are an astonishing woman. Had I not tried tonight to examine the pearls of the necklace, moved by some strange feeling, doubt of it would not have crossed my mind for a single instant — I, who picked out its original pearls with my own hand, one by one... O illu-sion, how mighty is your power!..

She sighed as though dreaming, and said:

— Illusion! How many people die of it! As for us, we are among those who have lived in it to the very end... And now come, let us go, if we care to reach the gover-nor's house before it is too late.