Asher." And Harding followed Owen, intensely
annoyed.

"Not even to a gentlemanly picture-dealer should you--"

"You are entirely wrong; I said 'Sir Owen Asher.'"

"Very strange you should say 'Sir Owen Asher'; why didn't you say Sir
Owen?"

Harding did not answer, being uncertain if it would not be better to
drop Asher's acquaintance. But they had known each other always. It
would be difficult.

"The sale is about to begin," Asher said, and Harding sat down angry
with Asher and interested in the auctioneer's face, created, Harding
thought, for the job... "looking exactly like a Roman bust. Lofty
brow, tight lips, vigilant eyes, voice like a bell.... That damned
fellow Asher! What the hell did he mean--"

The auctioneer sat at a high desk, high as any pulpit, and in the
benches the congregation crowded--every shade of nondescript, the
waste ground one meets in a city: poor Jews and dealers from the
outlying streets, with here and there a possible artist or
journalist. As the pictures were sold the prices they fetched were
marked in the catalogues, and Harding wondered why.

Around the room were men and women of all classes; a good many of Sir
Owen's "set" had come--"Society being well represented that day," as
the newspapers would put it. All the same, the pictures were not
selling well, not nearly so well as Owen and Harding anticipated.
Harding was glad of this, for his heart was set on a certain drawing
by Boucher.

"I would sooner you had it, Harding, than anybody else. It would be
unendurable if one of those picture-dealers should get it; they'd
come round to my house trying to sell it to me again, whereas in
your rooms--"

"Yes," said Harding, "it will be an excuse to come to see me. Well,
if I can possibly afford it--"

"Of course you can afford it; I paid eighty-seven pounds for it years
ago; it won't go to more than a hundred. I'd really like you to have
it."

"Well, for goodness' sake don't talk so loud, somebody will hear
you."

The pictures went by--portraits of fair ladies and ancient admirals,
landscapes, underwoods and deserts, flower and battle pieces,
pathetic scenes and gallantries. There was a time when every one of
these pictures was the hope and delight of a human being, now they
went by interesting nobody....

At last the first of Evelyn's pictures was hoisted on the easel.

"Good God!" isn't it a miserable sight seeing her pictures going to
whomsoever cares to bid a few pounds