He seemed to have lost his spirits. Once, certain that he was unobserved except by Quarren, he ventured to balance his stick on his chin, but it was a half-hearted performance; and when he tossed up his straw hat and attempted to catch it on his head, he missed, and the corrugated brim sustained a dent.
A number of people called that morning, quiet, well-dressed, cautious-eyed, soft-spoken gentlemen who moved about noiselessly over the carpets and, on encountering one another, nodded with silent familiarity and smiles scarcely perceptible.
They seemed to require no information concerning the pictures which they swept with glances almost careless on their first rounds of the rooms. But the first leisurely tour always resulted in a second where one or two pictures seemed to claim their closer scrutiny.
Now and then one of these gentlemen would screw a jeweller's glass into his eye and remain a few minutes nose almost touching a canvas. Several used the large reading-glass lying on a side table. Before they departed all glanced over the incomplete scale of prices which Jessie Vining had typed and bound in blue covers; but one and all took their leave in amiable silence, saying a non-committal word or two to Quarren in pleasantly modulated voices and passing Jessie's desk with a grave inclination of gravely preoccupied faces.
When the last leisurely lingerer had taken his leave Quarren said to Jessie Vining:
"Those are representatives of various first-class dealers—confidential buyers, sons—even dealers themselves—like that handsome gray-haired young-looking man who is Max Von Ebers, head of that great house."
"But they didn't buy one single thing!" said Jessie.
Quarren laughed: "People don't buy off-hand. Our triumph is to get them here at all. I wrote to each of them personally."
Nobody else came for a long while; then one or two of the lesser dealers appeared, and now and then a man who might be an agent or a prowling and wealthy amateur or perhaps one of those curious haunters of all art marts who never buy but who never miss assisting at all inaugurations in person—like an ubiquitous and silent dog who turns up wherever more than two people assemble with any purpose in view—or without any.