Even this was more than he could bear to say. He stood up again quickly to force back the tears that were swelling in his throat. Tears do not become a man. It is the most reasonable, the most natural thing in the world that he should abominate them, and so he seldom, if ever, knows the wonderful moment it is in the life of a woman when he cries like a baby on her shoulder. It is only right that it should be so. Women know their power well enough as it is. And in such a moment as this, they realise their absolute omnipotence.
And this is just why nature decrees that it is weak, that it is foolish for a man to shed tears in the presence of a woman. Undoubtedly nature is right.
Before they had well risen to his eyes, John had left the room. In the shadows of the archway beneath the house, he was brushing them roughly from his cheek while upstairs the gentle old lady sat just where he had left her, thinking of the thousands of reasons why he would never see the lady of St. Joseph again.
She was going away. She did not love him. They had quarrelled. After an hour's contemplation, she decided upon the last. They had quarrelled.
Then she set straight her cap.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE TREASURE SHOP
At a quiet corner in the Merceria, stood the Treasure Shop. In every respect it had all the features which these little warehouses of the world's curiosities usually present. Long chains of old copper vessels hung down, on each side of the doorway, reaching almost to the ground. Old brass braziers and incense burners stood on the pavement outside and, in the window, lay the oddest, the wildest assortment of those objects of antiquity--brass candlesticks, old fans, hour-glasses, gondola lamps, every conceivable thing which the dust of Time has enhanced in value in the eyes of a sentimental public.
At the back of the window were hung silk stuffs and satin, rich old brocades and pieces of tapestry--just that dull, burnished background which gives a flavour of age as though with the faint scent of must and decay that can be detected in its withering threads.
All these materials, hanging there, shut out the light from the shop inside. Across the doorstep, the sun shone brilliantly, but, as though there were some hand forbidding it, it advanced no further. Within the shop, was all the deepest of shadow--shadow like heavy velvet from which permeated this dry and dusty odour of a vanished multitude of years.