He had all my sympathy, poor Neave; yet these were trials inseparable from the collector’s lot, and not always without their secret compensations.  Certainly they did not wholly explain my friend’s attitude; and for a moment I wondered if it were due to some strange disillusionment as to the quality of his treasures.  But no! the Daunt collection was almost above criticism; and as we passed from one object to another I saw there was no mistaking the genuineness of Neave’s pride in his possessions.  The ripe sphere of beauty was his, and he had found no flaw in it as yet...

A year later came the amazing announcement—­the Daunt collection was for sale.  At first we all supposed it was a case of weeding out (though how old Daunt would have raged at the thought of anybody’s weeding his collection!) But no—­the catalogue corrected that idea.  Every stick and stone was to go under the hammer.  The news ran like wildfire from Rome to Berlin, from Paris to London and New York.  Was Neave ruined, then?  Wrong again—­the dealers nosed that out in no time.  He was simply selling because he chose to sell; and in due time the things came up at Christie’s.

But you may be sure the trade had found an answer to the riddle; and the answer was that, on close inspection, Neave had found the collection less impeccable than he had supposed.  It was a preposterous answer—­but then there was no other.  Neave, by this time, was pretty generally recognized as having the subtlest flair of any collector in Europe, and if he didn’t choose to keep the Daunt collection it could be only because he had reason to think he could do better.

In a flash this report had gone the rounds and the buyers were on their guard.  I had run over to London to see the thing through, and it was the queerest sale I ever was at.  Some of the things held their own, but a lot—­and a few of the best among them—­went for half their value.  You see, they’d been locked up in old Daunt’s house for nearly twenty years, and hardly shown to any one, so that the whole younger generation of dealers and collectors knew of them only by hearsay.  Then you know the effect of suggestion in such cases.  The undefinable sense we were speaking of is a ticklish instrument, easily thrown out of gear by a sudden fall of temperature; and the sharpest experts grow shy and self-distrustful when the cold current of depreciation touches them.  The sale was a slaughter—­and when I saw the Daunt Diana fall at the wink of a little third-rate brocanteur from Vienna I turned sick at the folly of my kind.

For my part, I had never believed that Neave had sold the collection because he’d “found it out”; and within a year my incredulity was justified.  As soon as the things were put in circulation they were known for the marvels they are.  There was hardly a poor bit in the lot; and my wonder grew at Neave’s madness.  All over Europe, dealers began to be fighting for the spoils; and all kinds of stuff were palmed off on the unsuspecting as fragments of the Daunt collection!