"Well, you weren't in very deeply, you know," commented Dankmere.
"No; but last week I went to bed a broker in real estate; and this week I wake up a picture dealer and your partner. It's going to take most of my time. I can't sell a picture unless I know what it is. I've got to find out—or try to. Do you know what that means?"
"I fancy it means chucking your real estate," said Dankmere, imperturbably. "Why not? This is a better gamble. And if we make anything we ought to make something worth while."
"Do you propose that I shall simply drop my entire business—close up everything and go into this thing permanently?" demanded Quarren.
"It will come to that, ultimately. Don't you want to?"
From the beginning Quarren had felt, vaguely, that it would come to that—realised instinctively that in such an enterprise he would be on solid ground—that the idea was pleasant to him—that his tastes fitted him for such an occupation. Experience was lacking, but, somehow, his ignorance did not dismay him.
All his life he had cared for such things, been familiar with them, been curious to learn more, had read enough to understand something of the fascinating problems now confronting him, had, in his hours of leisure, familiarised himself with the best of art in the public and private galleries of the city.
More than that a natural inclination and curiosity had led him among dealers, restorers, brokers of pictures. He knew them all from Fifth Avenue to Lexington, the celebrated and the obscure; he had heard them talk, heard the gossip and scandal of their curious world, watched them buying, selling, restoring, relining, reframing; listened to their discussions concerning their art and the art in which they dealt. And it had always fascinated him although, until Dankmere arrived, it had never occurred to him to make a living out of a heterogeneous mass of partly assimilated knowledge acquired from the sheer love of the subject.
Fortunate the man whose means of livelihood is also his pleasure! Deep in his heart lies the unconscious contentment of certainty.
And somehow, with the advent of Dankmere's pictures, into Quarren's troubled heart had come a vague sensation of ease—a cessation of the old anxiety and unrest—a quiet that he had never before known.