the street, where, during the next
minutes, the others saw him, his back to the shopwindow, philosophically
enough hover and light a fresh cigarette. Charlotte even took, a
little, her time; she was aware of his funny Italian taste for London
street-life.

Her host meanwhile, at any rate, answered her question. "Ah, I've had
it a long time without selling it. I think I must have been keeping it,
madam, for you."

"You've kept it for me because you've thought I mightn't see what's the
matter with it?"

He only continued to face her--he only continued to appear to follow the
play of her mind. "What IS the matter with it?"

"Oh, it's not for me to say; it's for you honestly to tell me. Of course
I know something must be."

"But if it's something you can't find out, isn't it as good as if it
were nothing?"

"I probably SHOULD find out as soon as I had paid for it."

"Not," her host lucidly insisted, "if you hadn't paid too much."

"What do you call," she asked, "little enough?"

"Well, what should you say to fifteen pounds?"

"I should say," said Charlotte with the utmost promptitude, "that it's
altogether too much."

The dealer shook his head slowly and sadly, but firmly. "It's my price,
madam--and if you admire the thing I think it really might be yours.
It's not too much. It's too little. It's almost nothing. I can't go
lower."

Charlotte, wondering, but resisting, bent over the bowl again. "Then
it's impossible. It's more than I can afford."

"Ah," the man returned, "one can sometimes afford for a present more
than one can afford for one's self." He said it so coaxingly that she
found herself going on without, as might be said, putting him in his
place. "Oh, of course it would be only for a present--!"

"Then it would be a lovely one."

"Does one make a present," she asked, "of an object that contains, to
one's knowledge, a flaw?"

"Well, if one knows of it one has only to mention it. The good faith,"
the man smiled, "is always there."

"And leave the person to whom one gives the thing, you mean, to discover
it?"

"He wouldn't discover it--if you're speaking of a gentleman."

"I'm not speaking of anyone in particular," Charlotte said.

"Well, whoever it might be. He might know--and he might try. But he
wouldn't find."

She kept her eyes on him as if, though unsatisfied, mystified, she yet
had a fancy for the bowl. "Not even if the thing should come to pieces?"
And then as he was silent: "Not