Now, when this dazzling Faun came to light and Mr. van Koppen announced his intention of purchasing the masterpiece for his collection, his art-expert, Sir Herbert Street—­the eminent connoisseur whom he had filched form the South Kensington Museum with the bribe of a Cabinet Minister’s salary—­thought it his duty to compare the disfigured Demeter with this new and marvelous thing.  Sir Herbert Street was an inordinately vain man, but conscientious at the same time and, in matters of art-criticism, sufficiently reliable.  Not every art-expert would have done what he did.  In the interests of his employer he took the trouble of journeying to Paris and carefully examining the poor Demeter fragment.  Then, viewing the Locri Faun at Nepenthe in the presence of Count Caloveglia, he made rather a subtle remark.

“Does it not strike you, Count, that there is a curious, an evasive kind of resemblance between this Faun and the Demeter?”

The old man beamed with joy at these words.

“My dear Sir Herbert, allow me to congratulate you on your keen artistic perception!  I believe you are the only person, besides myself, who has hitherto been struck by those definite but undefinable traits of similarity.  Mr. van Koppen may well be proud of your penetration—­”

“Thank you,” said the other, immensely flattered.  “That is what I am paid for, you know.  But now, how do you account for the likeness?”

“I will tell you my own hypothesis.  I hold, to be brief, that they both came from the same workshop.”

“The same workshop!  You amaze me.”

“Yes, or at all events from the same school of craftsmen, or some common fountain of inspiration.  We know lamentably little of the art history of even a great center like Locri, but, judging by the hints of Pindar and Demosthenes, I think there may well have been—­there must have been—­consummate local masters, now forgotten, who propagated certain methods of work, certain fashions in form and feeling and treatment which ended, naturally enough, in a kind of fixed tradition.  This would suffice to explain the resemblance which your sagacity has enabled you to detect between these two pieces.  That is what I mean by saying that they came from the same workshop.  What do you think of my theory?”

“I think it accounts for the fact in a most satisfactory manner,” the expert had replied, thoroughly convinced.

Mr. van Koppen knew all this.

But he only believed half of it. . . .

“You were saying, Count?”

The Italian shifted his glance from the dainty outlines of the Locri Faun and smiled upon his interlocutor and then upon Mr. Heard, who had at last taken a seat, after walking approvingly round and round the statuette.