he was talking partly to get his bearings after his shock at seeing Jack—­“no, not one Velasquez in the Metropolitan!  I go home without seeing a Velasquez.  They have the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe collection, thousands of square yards of it, and yes, cheer up!  Thank heaven, they have some great Americans, Inness and Martin and Homer and our exile Whistler, who annexed Japan, and our Sargent, born in Florence.  And I did see the Metropolitan tower.  I take off my hat, my broad-brimmed hat, wishing that it were as big as a carter’s umbrella, to that tower.  I hate to think it an accident of chaos like the Grand Canyon.  I rather like to think of it as majestic promise.”

The Doge had talked so fast that he was almost out of breath.  He was ready to yield the floor to Jack.

“I kissed my hand to Diana for you!” said Jack.  “And what do you think?  The lady in answer shook out her scarf and something white and small fluttered down.  I picked it up.  It was a note.”

“Did you open that note?” asked the Doge in haughty suspicion.

“Naturally.”

“Wasn’t it marked personal for me?”—­this in fine simulation of indignation.

“Without address!”

“I am chagrined and surprised at Diana,” said the Doge ruefully.  “It’s the effect of city association.  As a matter of course, she ought to have given it to Mercury, or at least to one of the Centaurs, considering all the horseshows that have been held under her skipping toes!  Well, what did she say?  Being a woman of action she was brief.  What did she say?”

“It was in the nature of a general personal complaint.  Her costume is in need of repair; it is flaking disgracefully.  She said that if you had not forsaken your love of the plastic for love of the graphic arts you would long ago have stolen a little gold off the Eternal Painter’s palette, just to clothe her decently for the sake of her own self-respect—­the town having set her so high that its sense of propriety was quite safe.”

“I stand convicted of neglect,” said the Doge, coming down to the floor of the store.  “I will shoot her a bundle of gold leaf from the top of the pass on a ray of evening sunshine.”

There, he gave Jack a pat on the shoulder; a hasty, playful, almost affectionate demonstration, and broke off with a shout of: 

“Persiflage, sir, persiflage!”

“It is manna to me!” declared Jack, in the fulness and sweetness of the sensation of the atmosphere of Little Rivers reproduced in New York.

“And not a Velasquez in the Metropolitan!” mused the Doge, bustling along the aisle hurriedly.  “Well, Mary, we have errands to do.  There is no time to spare.”

They were at the door, Jack in wistful insistence, hungry for their companionship, and the Doge and Mary in common hesitancy for a phrase before parting from him.  He was ahead of the phrase.

“But there is a Velasquez, one of the greatest of Velasquezes, just a few steps from here!  It would take only a minute to see it.”