concede. Whatever the
merits of the case, the rupture had produced in a milieu consumed by the
desire to guess what Emma would do, at least one person who was solely
interested in what Crocker's next move might be. For the first time in a
singularly calculable life he had become an object of genuine curiosity.

He acted with his usual simplicity. To Emma he wrote a brief note
upbraiding her for fearing the voices of the valley, professing his
eagerness to return when the St. Michael had been put out of the
reckoning, and declaring that if it were not soon, he would willy-nilly
come back and see how things were between them. It was a letter that
wounded Emma, yet somehow warmed her, too, and from its reception we
found her in an unwonted attitude of nonconformity to the verdicts of the
valley. She began to speak up in behalf of this or that human specimen
under our diminishing lenses with the unsubtle and disconcerting
bluntness of Morton Crocker himself. The phenomenon kept alive our waning
interest during nearly a year of waiting. As for Crocker he gave it out
ostentatiously that he was bound for a wonderful Cima in Northumbria and
afterward was to try dry-fly fishing on the Itchen. Beyond that he had no
plans. All this was characteristically the truth; he bought the Cima,
wrote of his baskets to Harwood, but stayed away past his melons, his
grapes and his olives. By early winter we heard of him shooting the moose
in New Brunswick, and later planning a system of art education in the
Massachusetts schools, and it was not till the brisk days of March that
we learned the west wind was bringing him our way again.

Meanwhile Emma had acquired a few more grey hairs and had resolutely
declined to dispossess herself of the St. Michael. A couple of months
after Crocker's leave-taking, a note had come to her from Crespi, the
unfrocked priest and consummate antiquarian, who, to the point of
improvising a _chef d'oeuvre_, will furnish anything that this gilded
age demands. Crespi most respectfully begged to represent an urgent
client, a Russian prince, who desired a fine Crivelli. Would the most
gentle Miss Verplanck haply part with hers? The price should be what she
chose to name. It was no question of money, but of obliging a client
whom Crespi could ill afford to disappoint. Emma curtly declined the
offer. The St. Michael was valued for personal reasons and was not for
sale. Six weeks later came a more insidious suggestion. Th