on I don't know when and I don't know how. But by some very fine old worker and by some beautiful old process."
Charlotte, frankly charmed with the cup, smiled back at him now. "A lost art?"
"Call it a lost art."
"But of what time then is the whole thing?"
"Well, say also of a lost time."
The girl considered. "Then if it's so precious, how comes it to be cheap?"
Her interlocutor once more hung fire, but by this time the Prince had lost patience. "I'll wait for you out in the air," he said to his companion, and, though he spoke without irritation, he pointed his remark by passing immediately into the street, where, during the next minutes, the others saw him, his back to the shopwindow, philosophically enough hover and light a fresh cigarette. Charlotte even took, a little, her time; she was aware of his funny Italian taste for London street-life.
Her host meanwhile, at any rate, answered her question. "Ah, I've had it a long time without selling it. I think I must have been keeping it, madam, for you."
"You've kept it for me because you've thought I mightn't see what's the matter with it?"
He only continued to face her — he only continued to appear to follow the play of her mind. "What is the matter with it?"
"Oh, it's not for me to say; it's for you honestly to tell me. Of course I know something must be."
"But if it's something you can't find out, isn't it as good as if it were nothing?"
"I probably should find out as soon as I had paid for it."
"Not," her host lucidly insisted, "if you hadn't paid too much."
"What do you call," she asked, "little enough?"
"Well, what should you say to fifteen pounds?"
"I should say," said Charlotte with the utmost promptitude, "that it's altogether too much."
The dealer shook his head slowly and sadly, but firmly. "It's my price, madam — and if you admire the thing I think it really might be yours. It's not too much. It's too little. It's almost nothing. I can't go lower."
