his impudent assumption of princely airs, must have (I shouldn't
wonder) made the fact of his notice appear as a sort of favour
dropped from Olympus. I really can't tell how the minds and the
imaginations of such aunts and uncles are affected by such rare
visitations. Mythology may give us a hint. There is the story of
Danae, for instance."

"There is," remarked Mills calmly, "but I don't remember any aunt
or uncle in that connection."

"And there are also certain stories of the discovery and
acquisition of some unique objects of art. The sly approaches, the
astute negotiations, the lying and the circumventing . . . for the
love of beauty, you know."

With his dark face and with the perpetual smiles playing about his
grimness, Mr. Blunt appeared to me positively satanic. Mills' hand
was toying absently with an empty glass. Again they had forgotten
my existence altogether.

"I don't know how an object of art would feel," went on Blunt, in
an unexpectedly grating voice, which, however, recovered its tone
immediately. "I don't know. But I do know that Rita herself was
not a Danae, never, not at any time of her life. She didn't mind
the holes in her stockings. She wouldn't mind holes in her
stockings now. . . That is if she manages to keep any stockings at
all," he added, with a sort of suppressed fury so funnily
unexpected that I would have burst into a laugh if I hadn't been
lost in astonishment of the simplest kind.