The downcast eyes did not leave the floor. "They are sold," she said, "to Herr Umstätter." A little smile played about the thin lips.
"Sold! Already!" The round eyes bulged at her. "My God!" he shouted fiercely, "you would sell his very soul, if he had left it where you could!"
She raised the blue eyes and regarded him calmly. "The estate is without condition," she said.
He groaned as he backed toward the door. The canvas was hugged under his arm. At the door he paused, looking back over the room. His small eyes winked fast, and the loose mouth trembled.
"He was a great man, Agnes," he said gently. "We must keep it clean—the name of Dürer."
She looked up with a little gesture of dismissal. "It is I who bear the name," she said coldly.
When he was gone she glanced about the room. She went over to a pile of canvases and turned them rapidly to the light. Each one that bore the significant monogram she set aside with a look of possession. She came at last to the one she was searching. It was a small canvas—a Sodom and Gomorrah. She studied the details slowly. It was not signed. She gave a little breath of satisfaction, and took up the brush from the bench. She remembered well the day Albrecht brought it home, and his childish delight in it. It was one of Joachim Patenir's. Albrecht had given a Christ head of his own in exchange for it. The brush in her fingers trembled a little. It inserted the wide-spreading A beneath Lot's flying legs, and overtraced it with a delicate D. She paused a moment in thought. Then she raised her head and painted in, with swift, decisive strokes, high up in one corner of the picture, a date. It was a safe date—1511—the year he painted his Holy Trinity. There would be no one to question it.
She sat back, looking her satisfaction.
Seventy-five guldens to account. It atoned a little for the loss of the Christ.