Walking in Fifth Avenue and attracted by the shop windows, I couldn't help being struck by New York's love of the antique. To me the antique was familiar. Boyd Averill had asked me if I hadn't sold it. I had said I hadn't—but why not? Beauty surely entered into the sum total of needs in living, and I had, moreover, often named it to myself as the thread of flame by which I should find my way.
All the same, it required some effort to walk into any of these storehouses of the loot of castles and cathedrals and offer my services as judge and connoisseur. On the threshold of three I lost my courage and stepped back. It was only after stopping before a fourth, the window severely simple with three ineffable moon-white jars set against a background of violet shot with black, that I reasoned myself into taking the step. It was a case of de l'audace, de l'audace, et encore de l'audace. By audacity alone were high things accomplished and great fortunes won. Before I could recoil from this commendable reflection I opened the door and went in.
I found myself in a gallery resembling certain venerable sacristies. The floor was carpeted in red, the walls lined with cabinets paneled in ebony, their doors discreetly closed on the treasures inside. In a corner an easel supported a black-framed flower-piece, probably by Huysmans. On a well-preserved Elizabethan table partly covered with a square of filet lace was a tea-service of Nantgarw or Rockingham. Nothing could have been more in accordance with my own ideas of conducting a business than this absence of crude display.
I had leisure to make these observations, because the only other visible occupant of the shop, if I may use the word of a shrine so dignified, was a young lady who moved slowly toward me down the gallery. She was in the neatest black, with only a string of pearls for ornament. Healthily pale, with fair hair carefully "marcelled," her hands resting on each other in front of her, she approached me with a faint smile that emphasized her composure.
"You wish—?"
I had not considered the words in which I should frame my application, so I stammered:
"I—I thought I—I might be of—of some use here."
The faint smile faded, but the composure remained as before.
"Some—what?"
"Use. I—I understand these things. That tea-service, now, it's Rockingham or Nantgarw, possibly Chelsea. The three moon-white jars in the window, two of them gourd-shaped—"