Querida’s almond-shaped, velvet eyes had done their share for him in his time; they were merely part of a complex machinery which, included many exquisitely adjusted parts which could produce at will such phenomena as temporary but genuine sympathy and emotion:  a voice controlled and modulated to the finest nuances; a grace of body and mind that resembled inherent delicacy; a nervous receptiveness and intelligence almost supersensitive in its recognition of complicated ethical problems.  It was a machinery which could make of him any manner of man which the opportunism of the particular moment required.  Yet, with all this, in every nerve and bone and fibre he adored material and intellectual beauty, and physical suffering in others actually distressed him.

Now, reviewing matters, deeply interested to find the microscopic obstruction which had so abruptly stopped the machinery of destiny for him, he was modest enough and sufficiently liberal-minded to admit to himself that Alma Hind-Willet was the exception that proved this rule.  There were women so constructed that they had become essentially unresponsive.  Alma was one.  But, he concluded that if he lived a thousand years he was not likely to encounter another.

And the following afternoon he called upon Mrs. Hind-Willet’s understudy, the blue-eyed little Countess d’Enver.

Helene d’Enver was superintending the definite closing of her beautiful duplex apartments—­the most beautiful in the great chateau-like, limestone building.  And Jose Querida knew perfectly well what the rents were.

“Such a funny time to come to see me,” she had said laughingly over the telephone; “I’m in a dreadful state with skirts pinned up and a motor-bonnet over my hair, but I will not permit my maids to touch the porcelains; and if you really wish to see me, come ahead.”

He really wished to.  Besides he adored her Ming porcelains and her Celedon, and the idea of any maid touching them almost gave him heart-failure.  He himself possessed one piece of Ming and a broken fragment of Celedon.  Women had been married for less.

She was very charming in her pinned-up skirts and her dainty head-gear, and she welcomed him and intrusted him with specimens which sent pleasant shivers down his flexible spine.

And, together, they put away many scores of specimens which were actually priceless, inasmuch as any rumour of a public sale would have excited amateurs to the verge of lunacy, and almost any psychopathic might have established a new record for madness at an auction of this matchless collection.

They breathed easier when the thrilling task was ended; but emotion still enchained them as they seated themselves at a tea-table—­an emotion so deep on Helene’s part that she suffered Querida to retain the tips of her fingers for an appreciable moment when transferring sugar to his cup.  And she listened, with a smile almost tremulous, to the fascinating music of his voice, charmingly attuned and modulated to a pitch which, somehow, seemed to harmonise with the very word, Celedon.