He laid aside the ivory figure and followed me down the room with feeble steps; I noticed then that one of his feet dragged as he walked. It was peculiarly unpleasant—indeed the whole personality of this decrepit little old man seemed unpleasant and repulsive. I stopped in the red glow of an iron lantern that hung from a bracket upon the wall.
“I lived in Spain a year,” I repeated. “That is why, when I saw your sign, I stopped in to look around.”
He stood beside me, looking up into my face, his head shaking with the palsy of old age, his eyes gleaming into mine.
“In España you have lived, eh?” The thin, cracked treble of his voice came from lips that parted in a toothless smile. “That is good—very good, señor.”
“In Granada,” I added briefly.
He put a shaking hand upon my arm; involuntarily I drew back from his touch.
“The señor has lived in Granada! My birthplace, señor—yet for fifteen years have I been here in your New York. Fifteen years, selling here the treasures of España. You have lived in Granada—ah, then, señor, the Alhambra you have seen?”
“Yes,” I said, “of course.”
He picked up a little vase from the table before us. The fire of patriotism that for an instant had lighted his face was gone; cupidity marked it instead.
“The señor perhaps is interested in ceramics?” His voice was almost a whine. “The great Alhambra vase—greatest example of the ceramic art of the Moors in all the world—here is its miniature, señor. See—gazelles in cream and golden luster upon a blue field.