vulgar bric-a-brac shop at Biarritz, where she shrank out of sight among sham Sevres and Dutch silver, as one has seen certain women—­rare, shy, exquisite—­made almost invisible by the vulgar splendours surrounding them.  Well! that little Venus, who was just a specious seventeenth century attempt at the ‘antique,’ but who had penetrated me with her pleading grace, touched me by the easily guessed story of her obscure, anonymous origin, was more to me imaginatively—­yes! more than the cold bought beauty of the Daunt Diana...”

“The Daunt Diana!” I broke in.  “Hold up, Neave—­the Daunt Diana?”

He smiled contemptuously.  “A professional beauty, my dear fellow—­expected every head to be turned when she came into a room.”

“Oh, Neave,” I groaned.

“Yes, I know.  You’re thinking of what we felt that day we first saw her in London.  Many a poor devil has sold his soul as the result of such a first sight!  Well, I sold her instead.  Do you want the truth about her? Elle etait bete a pleurer.”

He laughed, and stood up with a little shrug of disenchantment.

“And so you’re impenitent?” I paused.  “And yet you’re buying some of the things back?”

Neave laughed again, ironically.  “I knew you’d find me out and call me to account.  Well, yes:  I’m buying back.”  He stood before me half sheepish, half defiant.  “I’m buying back because there’s nothing else as good in the market.  And because I’ve a queer feeling that, this time, they’ll be mine.  But I’m ruining myself at the game!” he confessed.

It was true:  Neave was ruining himself.  And he’s gone on ruining himself ever since, till now the job’s nearly done.  Bit by bit, year by year, he has gathered in his scattered treasures, at higher prices than the dealers ever dreamed of getting.  There are fabulous details in the story of his quest.  Now and then I ran across him, and was able to help him recover a fragment; and it was wonderful to see his delight in the moment of reunion.  Finally, about two years ago, we met in Paris, and he told me he had got back all the important pieces except the Diana.

“The Diana?  But you told me you didn’t care for her.”

“Didn’t care?” He leaned across the restaurant table that divided us.  “Well, no, in a sense I didn’t.  I wanted her to want me, you see; and she didn’t then!  Whereas now she’s crying to me to come to her.  You know where she is?” he broke off.

Yes, I knew:  in the centre of Mrs. Willy P. Goldmark’s yellow and gold drawing-room, under a thousand-candle-power chandelier, with reflectors aimed at her from every point of the compass.  I had seen her wincing and shivering there in her outraged nudity at one of the Goldmark “crushes.”

“But you can’t get her, Neave,” I objected.

“No, I can’t get her,” he said.