"I am grateful," she said simply; but the radiance in her eyes, the laughter on her mouth, the quivering excitement in all her face and form, said the same thing for her far better than her words.
The old man watched her narrowly.
"They are not for yourself?" he asked.
"That is my affair," she answered him, all her pride rising in arms. "What concerned you was their value."
He smiled and bent his head.
"Fairly rebuked. But say is this all you came for? Wherever you came from, is this all that brought you here?"
She looked awhile in his eyes steadily, then she brought the sketches from their hiding-place. She placed them before him.
"Look at those."
He took them to the light and scanned them slowly and critically; he knew all the mysteries and intricacies of art, and he recognized in these slight things the hand and the color of a master. He did not say so, but held them for some time in silence.
"These also are for sale?" he asked at length.