“Is there any danger a woman wouldn’t dare for beauty’s sake? And in spite of the superstition, they are more fashionable than ever. Yet I don’t think there is a woman who wears them who does not feel in her heart that she is living under the rainbow of some beautiful doom, some romantic menace. Some day the genius of the stone will touch her heart, with its wand of sorrow, and her face will suddenly become like one of her rings, mysteriously lit with pathos.”
“I believe,” said I, “that it is on that very account that women wear them. It is the legend of the stone that attracts them almost more than its beauty. It has for them something of the attraction of sorcery, and suggests a commerce with those occult influences which in spite of ourselves we involuntarily think of as ruling the romantic side of our lives. There is just a spice of magic about all precious stones, and, as in the old fairy tales, a certain ring was supposed to give control over unseen powers, so even yet we unconsciously, or consciously, continue to attach superstitious significance to the wearing of a ring.”
“That is true,” said the Sphinx, “and any woman who wears rings with art, and not merely for indiscriminate display, sets a new ring on her finger with a certain thoughtfulness, if not hesitation. If it does not already mean something to her, it is going to mean something--and what will that meaning be! A ring that means nothing to one, however beautiful, hardly seems to belong to us. A ring is a personal possession or nothing ... except diamonds,” the Sphinx added, laughing, some particularly fine diamonds glittering at her throat; “diamonds are like one’s carriage--a part of one’s _entourage_.”
“They are the Three-per-Cents of Romance,” said I.
“Yes; one wears diamonds as one wears shoes. They mean nothing to one individually. They are social stones, even democratic. They are impervious to association. They are like the sun--every one loves sunlight, but no one has ever thought of sentimentally annexing the sun. The sun is not romantic. It is a wholesome, prosperous presence in our lives, but it is impossible to think of it as personally related to ourselves--whereas the moon, on the other hand, means just ‘us’ and no one else in the world to every romantic eye that looks up to it. The diamond is the sun of precious stones, the opal is the moon.”