The old man beamed with joy at these words.
"My dear Sir Herbert, allow me to congratulate you on your keen artistic perception! I believe you are the only person, besides myself, who has hitherto been struck by those definite but undefinable traits of similarity. Mr. van Koppen may well be proud of your penetration—"
"Thank you," said the other, immensely flattered. "That is what I am paid for, you know. But now, how do you account for the likeness?"
"I will tell you my own hypothesis. I hold, to be brief, that they both came from the same workshop."
"The same workshop! You amaze me."
"Yes, or at all events from the same school of craftsmen, or some common fountain of inspiration. We know lamentably little of the art history of even a great center like Locri, but, judging by the hints of Pindar and Demosthenes, I think there may well have been—there must have been—consummate local masters, now forgotten, who propagated certain methods of work, certain fashions in form and feeling and treatment which ended, naturally enough, in a kind of fixed tradition. This would suffice to explain the resemblance which your sagacity has enabled you to detect between these two pieces. That is what I mean by saying that they came from the same workshop. What do you think of my theory?"
"I think it accounts for the fact in a most satisfactory manner," the expert had replied, thoroughly convinced.
Mr. van Koppen knew all this.
But he only believed half of it….
"You were saying, Count?"