Some of those he had picked up in India I could tell him about, but
I had no impression that he would remember what I said. There was
one Bokhara tapestry I examined with a good deal of interest.

'Yes,' he said, 'they told me I shouldn't get anything as good as
that out here, so I brought it,' but I had to explain to him why it
was anomalous that this should be so.

'It came a good many miles over desert from somewhere,' he remarked,
as I made a note of inquiry as to the present direction of trade in
woven goods from Persia, 'I had to pound it for a week to get the
dust out.'

We spent an hour looking over work he had done down in the plains,
and then I took my leave. It did not occur to me at the moment to
ask Armour to come to the club or to offer to do anything for him;
all the hospitality, all that was worth offering seemed so much more
at his disposition than at mine. I only asked if I might come
again, mentioning somewhat shyly that I must have the opportunity of
adding, at my leisure, to those of his pictures that were already
mine by transaction with the secretary of the Art Exhibition. I
left him so astonished that this had happened, so plainly pleased,
that I was certain he had never sold anything before in his life.
This impression gave me the uplifted joy of a discoverer to add to
the satisfactions I had already drawn from the afternoon; and I
almost bounded down the hill to the Mall. I left the pi dog barking
in the veranda, and I met Mr. Rosario coming up, but in my unusual
elation I hardly paused to consider either of them further.

The mare and her groom were waiting on the Mall, and it was only