of little nameless odds and ends, broken trinkets, torn embroideries, the amputated extremities of maimed marbles:  things that even the rag-picker had pitched away when he sifted his haul.  But they weren’t nameless or meaningless to Neave; his strength lay in his instinct for identifying, putting together, seeing significant relations.  He was a regular Cuvier of bric-a-brac.  And during those early years, when he had time to brood over trifles and note imperceptible differences, he gradually sharpened his instinct, and made it into the delicate and redoubtable instrument it is.  Before he had a thousand francs’ worth of anticaglie to his name he began to be known as an expert, and the big dealers were glad to consult him.  But we’re getting no nearer the Daunt Diana...

Well, some fifteen years ago, in London, I ran across Neave at Christie’s.  He was the same little man we’d known, effaced, bleached, indistinct, like a poor “impression”—­as unnoticeable as one of his own early finds, yet, like them, with a quality, if one had an eye for it.  He told me he still lived in Rome, and had contrived, by fierce self-denial, to get a few decent bits together—­“piecemeal, little by little, with fasting and prayer; and I mean the fasting literally!” he said.

He had run over to London for his annual “look-round”—­I fancy one or another of the big collectors usually paid his journey—­and when we met he was on his way to see the Daunt collection.  You know old Daunt was a surly brute, and the things weren’t easily seen; but he had heard Neave was in London, and had sent—­yes, actually sent!—­for him to come and give his opinion on a few bits, including the Diana.  The little man bore himself discreetly, but you can imagine his pride.  In his exultation he asked me to come with him—­“Oh, I’ve the grandes et petites entrees, my dear fellow:  I’ve made my conditions—­” and so it happened that I saw the first meeting between Humphrey Neave and his fate.

For that collection was his fate:  or, one may say, it was embodied in the Diana who was queen and goddess of the realm.  Yes—­I shall always be glad I was with Neave when he had his first look at the Diana.  I see him now, blinking at her through his white lashes, and stroking his seedy wisp of a moustache to hide a twitch of the muscles.  It was all very quiet, but it was the coup de foudre.  I could see that by the way his hands trembled when he turned away and began to examine the other things.  You remember Neave’s hands—­thin, sallow, dry, with long inquisitive fingers thrown out like antennae?  Whatever they hold—­bronze or lace, hard enamel or brittle glass—­they have an air of conforming themselves to the texture of the thing, and sucking out of it, by every finger-tip, the mysterious essence it has secreted.  Well, that day, as he moved about among Daunt’s treasures, the Diana followed him everywhere.  He didn’t look back at her—­he gave himself to the business he was there for—­but whatever he touched, he felt her.  And on the threshold he turned and gave her his first free look—­the kind of look that says:  "You’re mine."