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.
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