By the time seven more Persian rugs--all old and all more than ordinarily pleasing in design and colouring--were sprawling about the chamber, any organised depreciation was out of the question. Where all were so beautiful, it required a larger output of moral courage than any one of us could essay to decry the whole pack. By way of doing his or her bit, everybody decided to praise one or two to the implied condemnation of the remainder. In the absence of collusion, it was inevitable that those rugs which somebody had thus branded as goats should invariably include somebody else's sheep. The result was that every single rug had its following. A glance at their owner, who was standing aside, making no offer to commend his carpets, but fingering his chin and watching us narrowly with quick-moving eyes, showed that he was solely engaged in considering how much he dared ask. I moved across to him. "You only come here twice a year?" I inquired. "That is so, _Monsieur_." "And how do you get these things? By barter?" "Yes, _Monsieur_." After a little encouragement, he explained that before each voyage he laid in a stock of knives, gramophones, mirrors, trinkets, and the like, these to exchange with the natives in the bazaars of the smaller Eastern ports at which his ship touched. From Bordeaux he used to set out, and to Bordeaux he as regularly returned. An aunt dwelling at Pau was responsible for his selection of the town as a market for his goods. I should not have taken him for a sailor, and said as much. With a shy smile, he confessed that he was a steward, adding that he was a landsman at heart, and that, but for the opportunities of trading which his occupation presented he should go to sea no more. Suddenly-- "What else have you got?" said Daphne. Six panels of Chinese embroidery--all powder-blue and gold, 'laborious Orient ivories,' a gorgeous hanging that had been the coat of a proud mandarin, three Chinese mats, aged and flawless, a set of silken doilies--each one displaying a miniature landscape limned with a subtlety that baffled every eye--one by one these treasures were laid before us. Even Jonah went down before the ivories. Ere the trunk was empty, we had, one and all, dropped our masks and were revelling openly. "Now, isn't that beautiful?" "Sally's got a ball like that, but it isn't so big." "It's just as well she's in Ireland, or we shouldn't have had those mats." "You know, that rug on the chair's a devilish fine one." "They all are." "Yes, but that--my dear fellow, it's the sort of rug they put in the window and refuse to sell, because it's such an advertisement." "I'll tell you what, if we had those panels made into curtains, they'd look simply priceless in the drawing-room." "Give me the ivories." It was Adèle who pulled the check-string. "What's the price of this rug?" she said quietly. There was an expectant and guilty hush.