"Were you ever actually in China?" she asked, looking around at him.
The terrified poet feebly pointed to the author of "Black Roses."
"Oh!" she said. "Were you in China, Mr. Waudle, or only in Japan?"
But Mr. Waudle found nothing further to say.
"Because," she said, "in Japan sometimes one is deceived into buying alleged Chinese jades and crystals and porcelains. I am afraid that you were deceived. I hope you were honestly deceived. What you have sold to Mr. Clydesdale as jade is not jade. And the porcelains are not what you represented them to be."
"That's where you make a mistake!" shouted Waudle loudly. "I've had the inscription on every vase translated, and I can prove it! How much of an expert are you? Hey?"
"If you were an expert," she explained wearily, "you would understand that inscriptions on Chinese porcelains are not trustworthy. Even hundreds of years ago forgeries were perpetrated by the Chinese who desired to have their works of art mistaken for still more ancient masterpieces; and so the ancient and modern makers of porcelains inscribed them accordingly. Only when an antique porcelain itself conforms to the inscription it bears do we venture to accept that inscription. Never otherwise."
Waudle, hypnotised, stood blinking at her, bereft of speech, almost of reason.
The poet piped feebly: "It was not our fault! We were brutally deceived in Japan. And, oh! The bitter deception to me! The cruelty of the awakening!" He got up out of his chair; words and gestures were once again at his command; tears streaked his pasty cheeks.
"Miss Nevers! My dear and honoured young lady! You know—you among all women must realise how precious to me is the moon! Sacred, worshipped, adored—desired far more than the desire for gold—yea, than much fine gold! Sweeter, also, than honey in the honeycomb!" he sobbed. "And it was a pair of moon vases, black as midnight, pearl-orbed, lacquered, mystic, wonderful, that lured me——"