eits of Syracusan coins. It was he who
segregated the Renaissance intaglios at Bloomsbury only the winter before
he exposed the composite figurines at Berlin. To him the Balaklava
Coronal must have proclaimed its nullity as far as its red gold could be
seen. For that matter the coronal was a bye-word, and why not? The same
dealers who had landed the more famous Tiara in the Louvre had the
selling of it. The greater museums in Europe and America had refused it
at a bargain. On Fifth Avenue and the Rue Lafitte all the dealers were
joking about the Balaklava Coronal. The name of Sarafoff, its maker, had
even become accepted slang. For a season we "Sarafoffed" our intimates
instead of hoaxing them. And in the face of all this Vogelstein had sold
the Coronal to Morrison under Brush's very nose. It seemed so wholly
incredible that I began counting Vogelstein's heavy respirations, to make
sure I was really awake.

Then the pale, tense mask of Brush--so isolated in the apoplectic row
across the table--calmed me. That he was Vogelstein's or anyone's tool
was unthinkable. Mercenary suspicions, to be sure, had been put about,
but those who knew him merely laughed at such a notion. Vogelstein also
laughed, shaking volcanically within, whenever the Coronal, the
genuineness of which he still maintained, was mentioned. And he always
treated Brush with a curious and almost tender condescension, much in
fact as the mastodon might have regarded that fragile ancestor of the
horse, the five-toed protohippos.

I have neglected to explain that the occasion which brought me at one
table with such major celebrities as Morrison, Vogelstein, and Brush was
a public dinner in behalf of civic art. For just as we find the celestial
compromised by the naughty Aphrodite, so we distinguish two antithetical
sorts of art. There is a bad private art which is produced for dealers
and millionaires and takes care of itself, and there is a virtuous public
art which we hope to have some day and meanwhile has to be taken care of
by special societies. It was one of these that was now dining for the
good of the cause. Under the benevolent eye of Morrison, our acting
president, we had put pompano upon a soup underlaid with oysters, and
then a larded fillet upon some casual tidbit of terrapins. Whereupon a
frozen punch. Thus courage was gained, the consecrated sequence of
sherry, hock, claret and champagne being absolved, for the proper
discussion of woodcock in t