act of hers which especially helped to intoxicate me. When we were at
Vienna her twentieth birthday occurred, and as she was very fond of
ornaments, we all took the opportunity of the splendid jewellers' shops
in that Teutonic Paris to purchase her a birthday present of jewellery.
Mine, naturally, was the least expensive; it was an opal ring--the opal
was my favourite stone, because it seems to blush and turn pale as if it
had a soul. I told Bertha so when I gave it her, and said that it was an
emblem of the poetic nature, changing with the changing light of heaven
and of woman's eyes. In the evening she appeared elegantly dressed, and
wearing conspicuously all the birthday presents except mine. I looked
eagerly at her fingers, but saw no opal. I had no opportunity of
noticing this to her during the evening; but the next day, when I found
her seated near the window alone, after breakfast, I said, "You scorn to
wear my poor opal. I should have remembered that you despised poetic
natures, and should have given you coral, or turquoise, or some other
opaque unresponsive stone." "Do I despise it?" she answered, taking hold
of a delicate gold chain which she always wore round her neck and drawing
out the end from her bosom with my ring hanging to it; "it hurts me a
little, I can tell you," she said, with her usual dubious smile, "to wear
it in that secret place; and since your poetical nature is so stupid as
to prefer a more public position, I shall not endure the pain any
longer."

She took off the ring from the chain and put it on her finger, smiling
still, while the blood rushed to my cheeks, and I could not trust myself
to say a word of entreaty that she would keep the ring where it was
before.

I was completely fooled by this, and for two days shut myself up in my
own room whenever Bertha was absent, that I might intoxicate myself