dressed in a faultlessly fitting serge suit enlivened by a nankeen
waistcoat supporting a gold watch-chain. The fingers of one hand
clutched a palm-leaf fan; the fingers of the other were extended toward
Jack. He had known Jack's governor for years, and so a too formal
introduction was unnecessary.

"Show me what you've got," he began, "the latest, understand. Wife wants
something to hang over the sideboard. You've been doing some new things,
I hear from Ruggles."

The tone of the request grated on Jack, who had risen to his feet the
moment "His Finance" (as he insisted on calling him afterward to Sam)
had opened the door. He felt instantly that the atmosphere of his
sanctum had, to a certain extent, been polluted. But that Sam's eyes
were upon him he would have denied point-blank that he had a single
canvas of any kind for sale, and so closed the incident.

Sam saw the wavering look in his friend's face and started in to
overhaul a rack of unframed pictures with their faces turned to the
wall. These he placed one after the other on the ledge of the easel and
immediately above the Monet, which still kept its place on the floor,
its sunny face gazing up at the shopkeeper, his clerk, and
bin customer.

"This the newest one you've got?" asked the millionnaire, in the same
tone he would have used to his tailor, as he pointed to a picture of a
strip of land between sea and sky--one of those uncertain landscapes
that a man is righteously excused for hanging upside down.

"Yes," said Jack, with a grave face, "right off the ice."