patiently waiting for one to pluck it from its obscurity? There must be. I know there is. Do you hear? I say I know. There, madame, you have for me the mystery of Venice.”

20

“For you,” placidly replied Mrs. Gordon, “simply because you are a dealer in antiquities. But why is Venice in that regard more mysterious than other great cities?”

I thought Mrs. Gordon right. St. Hilary’s enthusiasm was far-fetched. The dapper little man, with his black, snapping eyes, his face the color of parchment, and lined as the palm of one’s hand, agile as a puppet on strings, neat as a tailor’s model, was in earnest, absurdly in earnest, in this idle, quaint fancy of his.

“Perhaps so,” he sighed. “Say that it is the passion of the collector that talks and not the sober judgment of the dealer. And yet, and yet, it is this hope that sends me to impossible places in Persia, to Burma. Yes; it has brought me now to Venice.”

“To Venice!” I cried, astonished. “You 21allow yourself to be mastered by a whim, as vague, as visionary as this?”

21

“My dear Hume, perhaps this whim, as you call it, is not vague or visionary to me,” he replied quietly.

“But,” I expostulated, “you have no proofs of your treasure. Why is it not behind the glass cases in St. Mark’s yonder? Why are not your canvases in the museums? Why are not your antiquities in the shops?”

He looked at me with a strangely thoughtful expression.

“What we have never had we do not miss,” he mused. “No one missed the Venus de Milo, or the Frieze of the Parthenon, or the Kohinoor. Yet we call them to-day three of the wonders of the world.”

“Because there are but three of them,” I said impatiently.impatiently. “I am afraid you must look far and wide before you find the lucky fourth.”

impatiently.

impatiently.

“No doubt,” he said indifferently, “no doubt.” And then with apparent irrelevance, “Now one would not think that crowns were so easily lost.”

“And have they been?” I asked curiously.

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