significance the question had in his
eyes, whether he had packed his things.

"Not yet. Why should I pack my things?"

"Mr. Lilienfeld," she said, "has made a contract for me for two evenings
a week in Boston. You must get ready and go to Boston with me day after
to-morrow."

"To the ends of the world," said Frederick lightly, "to the ends of the
world, dear lady."

She was contented, and gave Mrs. Lilienfeld a look of satisfaction.

XXII

Frederick was greatly relieved when the festivity at Lilienfeld's house
was at last a thing of the past. With Willy Snyders' help, he had
succeeded in getting together a few effects, and he spent part of the
afternoon arranging them. In the evening the artists, who had grown very
fond of their guest and were sorry to lose him, gave him a farewell
dinner at the round table.

For a long time Frederick had not felt so serene and at peace with
himself and the world as that afternoon. After he had got his baggage
ready, Willy Snyders, who had been waiting ever since Frederick's
arrival to show him his collection of Japanese art objects, invited him
to his room. It was a small room on the top floor, cluttered up with a
mass of antiques. He first placed before Frederick a number of Japanese
sword-guards, tsubas, as the Japanese call them, small elliptical pieces
of metal, about which a man's hand can easily reach. They are decorated
with figures in slight relief, partly of the same metal as the ground,
partly damascened, or inlaid with copper, gold, or silver.

"A tiny object, tremendous labour," Frederick observed, after more than
an hour spent in admiring the wonderful workmanship of pieces in the
Kamakura and Namban styles, pieces by members of the Goto family
extending over centuries, of the Jakushi family, and the Kinai family;
pieces of the Akasaka school and the Nara school; pieces from Fushimi in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from Gokinai and Kagonami;
glorious sword-guards in the maru-bori, maru-bori-zogan, and hikone-bori
styles; pieces of the Hamano family, and so on. Who can boast a prouder
aristocracy than Goto Mitsunori, who lived at the end of the nineteenth
century and could trace his descent back through a line of sixteen
ancestors, all great masters in the art of sword-decorating, a glorious
race of craftsmen, inheriting not only the life, but also the skill of
their fore-fathers.

And all the things portrayed on those small oval tsubas! The clo