Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/145

THE PRINCE "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."

Charlotte, wondering but resisting, bent over the bowl again. "Then it's impossible. It's more than I can afford."

"Ah," the man returned, "one can sometimes afford for a present more than one can afford for one's self."

He said it so coaxingly that she found herself going on without, as might be said, putting him in his place. "Oh of course it would be only for a present—!"

"Then it would be a lovely one."

"Does one make a present," she asked, "of an object that contains to one's knowledge a flaw?"

"Well, if one knows of it one has only to mention it. The good faith," the man smiled, "is always there."

"And leave the person to whom one gives the thing, you mean, to discover it?"

"He wouldn't discover it—if you're speaking of a gentleman."

"I'm not speaking of any one in particular," Charlotte said. 115