"As a matter of fact, sir, I hardly thought about it at all in that way. I only saw that it was a very lovely thing, and Miss June saw that it was a very lovely thing. She admired it so much that she begged me to let her buy it."
"Did you take her money?"
"No, sir. She accepted it as a gift. I asked her not to let us think of it as money."
"Could you afford to do that?" Involuntarily the questioner looked at the young man's threadbare coat and shabby trousers, and at once decided that he, of all people, certainly could not.
William's answer, accompanied by a baffling smile, gave pause to the man of the world. "I hope, sir, I shall always afford the luxury of not setting a price on beauty."
The dark saying brought a frown to the face of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who said in his slow voice: "But surely you would not give away a Van Roon to the first person who asks for it?"
"Why not, sir—if you happen to—to"
"If you happen to what?"
"To like the person."
Although the young man blushed when he made this confession, such an ingenuousness did his cause no harm. Sir Arthur Babraham, all the same, was puzzled more than a little by such an attitude of mind. This indifference to money was almost uncanny; and yet as he compared the face of the assistant with that of the master, the difference was tragic. One suffused with the light that never was on sea or land, the other dark as the image of Baal whose shadow was cast half across the shop.
