The last one lay close to the large centre-table before which he had just been standing.
The dainty trail formed by these bright sparkling drops seemed to affect him oddly.

He knew, minute observer that he was, that in the manufacture of this garniture the spangles are strung on a thread which, if once broken, allows them to drop away one by one, till you can almost follow a woman so arrayed by the sequins that fall from her.

Perhaps it was the delicate nature of the clew thus offered that pleased him, perhaps it was a recognition of the irony of fate in thus making a trap for unwary mortals out of their vanities.

Whatever it was, the smile with which he turned his eye upon the table toward which he had thus been led was very eloquent.

But before examining this article of furniture more closely, he attempted to find out where the thread had become loosened which had let the spangles fall.