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Updated: May 16, 2025
He turned sharp about. The Frenchman stood there with his hat raised, a gentleman to the finger-tips. Involuntarily Dirke lifted his own hat, and lifted it after the manner of a gentleman. The manner was not lost upon the Frenchman. "Monsieur," said the latter, courteously; "I had the misfortune to lose a ring this evening. I shall redeem it on the morrow, when I can command my resources."
One day in particular, he found himself in the street with thirty thousand dollars in his trousers' pocket. This not unprecedented situation derived its special significance from the fact that the day was the one fixed for Frances Lester's marriage. As Dirke walked up the street he saw, in fact, the carriages drawn up before Trinity Church, and he knew that the ceremony was going forward.
Again he raised his hat, but this time Dirke was on his guard and was not to be betrayed into any concession to courtesy. There was a slight shrug of the shoulders as the Frenchman replaced his hat. He spoke, however, in a conciliatory tone: "It is a fine evening," he observed. "I have followed your example. I go for a walk." "You have followed me, you mean," said Dirke, bluntly.
For Aaron Dirke's failure had involved moral as well as financial ruin. He had died of the shock, as some of his creditors thought it behooved him to do, died in prison after one week's durance. His son envied him; but dying is difficult in early youth, and Dabney Dirke did not quite know how to set about.
But in their faces, when the luck went against them, was a look that he was poignantly familiar with; a look which had first dawned in his father's face, flickeringly, intermittently, and which had grown and intensified, week after week, month after month, till it had gone out in the blankness of despair. That was when the elder Dirke heard his sentence of imprisonment.
"Because the ring is sold!" The Frenchman started visibly. "And the purchaser? Would you have the courtesy to indicate to me the purchaser?" "No!" The rudely spoken monosyllable put an abrupt period to the conversation. Dirke passed down the steps and along the deserted street.
Then, as the smile deepened upon his face, fixed there by the hand of death, the lips parted for the last time, and Dirke whispered; "I am going in for astronomy!" Mr.
Poor Dabney Dirke! If he had possessed the saving grace of humor he could not have dedicated the golden years of youth to anything so hopelessly chimerical and absurd.
When I say to you that the sight of that ring upon your finger compromises my honor, that it is an insult to me, you comprehend; is it not so?" "Quite so," Dirke replied, with carefully studied offensiveness. "Then, Monsieur, it will perhaps be possible at another time to correct the inequality in point of arms to which you have called my attention." The challenge was admirably delivered.
As he watched their obliteration in the dawn of a day deliberately dedicated to evil, a profound yearning for their pure tranquil eternal light came upon him, and as Jupiter himself withdrew into the impenetrable spaces, Dirke turned his eyes downward with a long, shuddering sigh. His downcast gaze fell upon the poor earthly brilliance of the diamonds.
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