"You like my museum?" he asked. "Few people care much for it except, of course, those who go in for the Oriental arts. Most of my friends think it bizarre--too grotesque and unusual. I have tried to satisfy them by including those comfortable low divan-couches (they refuse altogether to sit in the priests' chairs), but still they are unhappy."
He called his servant, who came to take Ste. Marie's hat and coat and returned with smoking things.
"It seems entirely wonderful to me," said the younger man. "I'm not an expert at all--I don't know who the gentlemen in those sixteen panels are, for example--but it is very beautiful. I have never seen anything like it at all." He gave a little laugh. "Will it sound very impertinent in me, I wonder, if I express surprise--not surprise at finding this magnificent room, but at discovering that this sort of thing is a taste and, very evidently, a serious study of yours? You--I remember your saying once with some feeling that it was youth and beauty and--well, freshness that you liked best to be surrounded by. This," said Ste. Marie, waving an inclusive hand, "was young so many centuries ago! It fairly breathes antiquity and death."
"Yes," said Captain Stewart, thoughtfully. "Yes, that is quite true."
The two had seated themselves upon one of the broad, low benches which had been built into the place to satisfy the Philistine.
"I find it hard to explain," he said, "because both things are passions of mine. Youth--I could not exist without it. Since I have it no longer in my own body, I wish to see it about me. It gives me life. It keeps my heart beating. I must have it near. And then this--antiquity and death, beautiful things made by hands dead centuries ago in an alien country! I love this, too. I didn't speak too strongly; it is a sort of passion with me--something quite beyond the collector's mania--quite beyond that. Sometimes, do you know, I stay at home in the evening, and I sit here quite alone, with the lights half on, and for hours together I smoke and watch these things--the quiet, sure, patient smile of that Buddha, for example. Think how long he has been smiling like that, and waiting! Waiting for what? There is something mysterious beyond all words in that smile of his, that fixed, crudely carved wooden smile--no, I'll be hanged if it's crude! It is beyond our modern art. The dead men carved better than we do. We couldn't manage that with such simple means. We can only reproduce what is before us. We can't carve questions--mysteries--everlasting riddles."
Through the pale-blue, wreathing smoke of his cigarette Captain Stewart gazed down the room to where eternal Buddha stood and smiled eternally. And from there the man's eyes moved with slow enjoyment along the opposite wall over those who sat or stood there, over the panels of the ancient Rakan, over carved lotus, and gilt contorted dragon forever in pursuit of the holy pearl. He drew a short breath which seemed to bespeak extreme contentment, the keenest height of pleasure, and he stirred a little where he sat and settled himself among the cushions. Ste. Marie watched him, and the expression of the man's face began to be oddly revolting. It was the face of a voluptuary in the presence of his desire. He was uncomfortable, and wished to say something to break the silence, but, as often occurs at such a time, he could think of nothing to say. So there was a brief silence between them. But presently Captain Stewart roused himself with an obvious effort.
"Here, this won't do!" said he, in a tone of whimsical apology. "This won't do, you know. I'm floating off on my hobby (and there's a mixed metaphor that would do credit to your own Milesian blood!). I'm boring you to extinction, and I don't want to do that, for I'm anxious that you should come here again--and often. I should like to have you form the habit. What was it I had in mind to ask you about? Ah, yes! The journey to Dinard and Deauville. I am afraid it turned out to be fruitless or you would have let me know."
"Entirely fruitless," said Ste. Marie.
He went on to tell the elder man of his investigation, and of his certainty that no one resembling Arthur Benham had been at either of the two places.