So that, for the first time in twenty years, Melrose found himself provided with a listener, and a spectator who neither wanted to buy from him nor sell to him.  When a couple of vases and a statuette, captured in Paris from some remains of the Spitzer sale, arrived at the Tower, it was to Faversham’s room that Melrose first conveyed them; and it was from Faversham’s mouth that he also, for the first time, accepted any remarks on his purchases that were not wholly rapturous.  Faversham, with the arrogance of the amateur, thought the vases superb, and the statuette dear at the price.  Melrose allowed it to be said; and next morning the statuette started on a return journey to Paris, and the Tower knew it no more.

Meanwhile the old collector would appear at odd moments with a lacquered box, or a drawer from a cabinet, and Faversham would find a languid amusement in turning over the contents, while Melrose strolled smoking up and down the room, telling endless stories of “finds” and bargains.  Of the store, indeed, of precious or curious objects lying heaped together in the confusion of Melrose’s den, the only treasures of a portable kind that Faversham found any difficulty in handling were his own gems.  Melrose would bring them sometimes, when the young man specially asked for them, would keep a jealous eye on them the whole time they were in their owner’s hands, and hurry them back to their drawer in the Riesener table as soon as Faversham could be induced to give them up.

One night the invalid made a show of slipping them back into the breast-pocket from which they had been taken while he lay unconscious.

“I’m well enough now to look after them,” he had said, smiling, to his host.  “Nurse and I will mount guard.”

Whereupon Melrose protested so vehemently that the young man, in his weakness, did not resist.  Rather sulkily, he handed the case back to the greedy hand held out for it.

Then Melrose smiled; if so pleasant a word may be applied to the queer glitter that for a moment passed over the cavernous lines of his face.

“Let me make you an offer for them,” he said abruptly.

“Thank you—­I don’t wish to sell them.”

“I mean a good offer—­an offer you are not likely to get elsewhere—­simply because they happen to fit into my own collection.”

“It is very kind of you.  But I have a sentiment about them.  I have had many offers.  But I don’t intend to sell them.”

Melrose was silent a moment, looking down on the patient, in whose pale cheeks two spots of feverish red had appeared.  Then he turned away.

“All right.  Don’t excite yourself, pray.”

“I thought he’d try and get them out of me,” thought Faversham irritably, when he was left alone.  “But I shan’t sell them—­whatever he offers.”