Just such a place was the Treasure Shop. Its atmosphere was all this and more. Sitting there on a stool behind his heaped-up counter, in the midst of this chaos of years, the old gentleman was no longer a simple painter of landscape, but an old eccentric, whose every look and every gesture were begotten of his strange and mysterious acquaintance with the Past. It came to be known of him that he was loth to part with his wares. It came to be told of him in the hotels that he was a strange old man who had lived so long in his musty environment of dead people’s belongings that he could not bring himself to sell them; as though the spirits of those departed owners abode with him as well, and laid their cold hands upon his heart whenever he would try to sell the treasures they once had cherished. And all this was the necromancy of the atmosphere in that little curio shop in the _Merceria_. But to us, who know all about it, whose eyes are not blinded with the glamour of illusion, there is little or nothing of the eccentric about Thomas Grey. It is not eccentric to have a heart--it is the most common possession of humanity. It is not eccentric to treasure those things which are our own, which have shared life with us, which have become a part of ourselves; it is not eccentric to treasure them more than the simpler necessities of existence. We all of us do that, though fear of the accusation of sentimentality will not often allow us to admit it. It is not eccentric to put away one’s pride, to take a lower seat at the guest’s table in order that those we love shall have a higher place in the eyes of the company. We all would do that also, if we obeyed the gentle voice that speaks within everyone of us. But if by chance this judgment is all at fault; if by chance it is eccentric to do these things, then this was the eccentricity of that white-haired old gentleman--Thomas Grey. Whenever a customer--and ninety per cent. of them were tourists--came into the shop, he treated them with undisguised suspicion. They had a way of hitting upon those very things which he valued most--those very things which he only meant to be on show in his little window. Of course, when they selected something which he had only recently acquired, his manner was courtesy itself. He could not say very much in its favour, but then, the price was proportionately small. Under circumstances such as these, they found him charming. But if they happened to cast their eyes upon that Dresden-china figure which stood so boldly in the fore-front of the window; if by hazard they coveted the set of old ivory chess men, oh, you should have seen the frown that crossed his forehead then! It was quite ominous. "Well--that is very expensive," he always said and made no offer to remove it from its place. And sometimes they replied---- "Oh, yes--I expect so. I didn’t think it would be cheap. It’s so beautiful, isn’t it? Of course--really--really old."