mind
a yellow tinge; it looks all right against their skin; sometimes they
even prefer a yellow stone to a white one, and speaking for myself I
think they're right. On some women white stones don't look good. Well,
all of a sudden down came the Bamboo Curtain and I couldn't sell my
stones there, and where else was I to dispose of them? I lost heavily
on that deal."
Antwerp
and the diamond-cutting industry in general, I reflected, are a long
cry from the unfortunate Koh-i-nur. I said as much to a diamond man I
had met at the club and saw again at the airport, waiting for the same
plane back to London as I was. We had plenty of time to discuss such
matters; we could have talked thoroughly about most of the stones in
Streeter's catalogue of great gems before we got to Waterloo. Speaking
by the timetable it is a short jump from Belgium to England, but as
things worked out we were sitting in the airport all day. There was fog
over Antwerp; there was fog over London. It was a damp, depressing day,
a good day to think about fiery, flashing diamonds.
"It's
a funny thing the way these stones borrow legends from each other," I
said at last. "That story about the Sancy—or was it the Sancy
really?—having been stolen from an idol's eye. Well, I read somewhere
that Tavernier stole the Great Mogul like that, right out of an Indian
temple, which is ridiculous."
His
reply was interrupted by the long-awaited summons to our plane. We
filed like sheep out of the fold, past the barrier, out into the wet
air, up the little stairs, and into our strapped seats.
"About
that idol's eye," he said, "it did happen, you know, more than once. I
don't know that particular stone, but I do know that a maharaja brought
our firm two diamonds he wanted recut for modern setting. They were
perfectly matched,
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