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Had I had a thousand dollars of my own to dispose of, the bargain would have been concluded on the spot; but I was in the impossible position of being materially unable to buy the picture and morally unable to tell her that it was not worth acquiring for the Museum.

I dashed into the first evasion in sight. I had no authority, I explained, to purchase pictures for the Museum without the consent of the committee.

Mrs. Fontage coped for a moment in silence with the incredible fact that I had rejected her offer; then she ventured, with a kind of pale precipitation: “But I understood–Miss Copt tells me that you practically decide such matters for the committee.” I could guess what the effort had cost her.

“My cousin is given to generalizations. My opinion may have some weight with the committee–“

“Well, then–” she timidly prompted.

“For that very reason I can’t buy the picture.”

She said, with a drooping note, “I don’t understand.”

“Yet you told me,” I reminded her, “that you knew museums didn’t buy unsigned pictures.”

“Not for what they are worth! Every one knows that. But I–I understood–the price you named–” Her pride shuddered back from the abasement. “It’s a misunderstanding then,” she faltered.

To avoid looking at her, I glanced desperately at the Rembrandt. Could I–? But reason rejected the possibility. Even if the committee had been blind–and they all were but Crozier–I simply shouldn’t have dared to do it. I stood up, feeling that to cut the matter short was the only alleviation within reach.

Mrs. Fontage had summoned her indomitable smile; but its brilliancy dropped, as I opened the door, like a candle blown out by a draught.

“If there’s any one else–if you knew any one who would care to see the picture, I should be most happy–” She kept her eyes on me, and I saw that, in her case, it hurt less than to look at the Rembrandt. “I shall have to leave here, you know,” she panted, “if nobody cares to have it–“

III

That evening at my club I had just succeeded in losing sight of Mrs. Fontage in the fumes of an excellent cigar, when a voice at my elbow evoked her harassing image.

“I want to talk to you,” the speaker said, “about Mrs. Fontage’s Rembrandt.”

“There isn’t any,” I was about to growl; but looking up I recognized the confiding countenance of Mr. Jefferson Rose.

Mr. Rose was known to me chiefly as a young man suffused with a vague enthusiasm for Virtue and my cousin Eleanor.

One glance at his glossy exterior conveyed the assurance that his morals were as immaculate as his complexion and his linen. Goodness exuded from his moist eye, his liquid voice, the warm damp pressure of his trustful hand. He had always struck me as one of the most uncomplicated organisms I had ever met. His ideas were as simple and inconsecutive as the propositions in a primer, and he spoke slowly, with a kind of uniformity of emphasis that made his words stand out like the raised type for the blind. An obvious incapacity for abstract conceptions made him peculiarly susceptible to the magic of generalization, and one felt he would have been at the mercy of any Cause that spelled itself with a capital letter. It was hard to explain how, with such a superabundance of merit, he managed to be a good fellow: I can only say that he performed the astonishing feat as naturally as he supported an invalid mother and two sisters on the slender salary of a banker’s clerk. He sat down beside me with an air of bright expectancy.

“It’s a remarkable picture, isn’t it?” he said.

“You’ve seen it?”

“I’ve been so fortunate. Miss Copt was kind enough to get Mrs. Fontage’s permission; we went this afternoon.” I inwardly wished that Eleanor had selected another victim; unless indeed the visit were part of a plan whereby some third person, better equipped for the cultivation of delusions, was to be made to think the Rembrandt remarkable. Knowing the limitations of Mr. Rose’s resources I began to wonder if he had any rich aunts.