ers. There was a moment
when my suspense on this point was so acute that I all but broke out
with the question, and what kept it back was but a kind of instinctive
recoil (lest it should be a mistake), from the last violence of
self-exposure. She was such a subtle old witch that one could never
tell where one stood with her. You may imagine whether it cleared up the
puzzle when, just after she had said she would think of my proposal
and without any formal transition, she drew out of her pocket with an
embarrassed hand a small object wrapped in crumpled white paper. She
held it there a moment and then she asked, "Do you know much about
curiosities?"

"About curiosities?"

"About antiquities, the old gimcracks that people pay so much for today.
Do you know the kind of price they bring?"

I thought I saw what was coming, but I said ingenuously, "Do you want to
buy something?"

"No, I want to sell. What would an amateur give me for that?" She
unfolded the white paper and made a motion for me to take from her a
small oval portrait. I possessed myself of it with a hand of which I
could only hope that she did not perceive the tremor, and she added, "I
would part with it only for a good price."

At the first glance I recognized Jeffrey Aspern, and I was well aware
that I flushed with the act. As she was watching me however I had the
consistency to exclaim, "What a striking face! Do tell me who it is."

"It's an old friend of mine, a very distinguished man in his day. He
gave it to me himself, but I'm afraid to mention his name, lest you
never should have heard of him, critic and historian as you are. I know
the world goes fast and one generation forgets another. He was all the
fashion when I was young."

She was perhaps amazed at my assurance, but I was surprised at hers; at
her having the energy, in her state of health and at her time of
life, to wish to sport with me that way simply for her private
entertainment--the humor to test me and practice on me. This, at least,
was the interpretation that I put upon her production of the portrait,
for I could not believe that she really desired to sell it or cared
for any information I might give her. What she wished was to dangle it
before my eyes and put a prohibitive price on it. "The face comes back
to me, it torments me," I said, turning the object this way and that and
looking at it very critically. It was a careful but not a supreme work
of art, larger than the ordinar