Now and then one of these gentlemen would screw a jeweller's glass into his eye and remain a few minutes nose almost touching a canvas. Several used the large reading-glass lying on a side table. Before they departed all glanced over the incomplete scale of prices which Jessie Vining had typed and bound in blue covers; but one and all took their leave in amiable silence, saying a non-committal word or two to Quarren in pleasantly modulated voices and passing Jessie's desk with a grave inclination of gravely preoccupied faces. When the last leisurely lingerer had taken his leave Quarren said to Jessie Vining: "Those are representatives of various first-class dealers--confidential buyers, sons--even dealers themselves--like that handsome gray-haired young-looking man who is Max Von Ebers, head of that great house." "But they didn't buy one single thing!" said Jessie. Quarren laughed: "People don't buy off-hand. Our triumph is to get them here at all. I wrote to each of them personally." * * * * * Nobody else came for a long while; then one or two of the lesser dealers appeared, and now and then a man who might be an agent or a prowling and wealthy amateur or perhaps one of those curious haunters of all art marts who never buy but who never miss assisting at all inaugurations in person--like an ubiquitous and silent dog who turns up wherever more than two people assemble with any purpose in view--or without any. During the forenoon and early afternoon several women came into the galleries; and they seemed to be a little different from ordinary women, although it would be hard to say wherein they were different except in one instance--a tall, darkly handsome girl whose jewellery was as conspicuously oriental as her brilliant colour. Later Quarren told Jessie Vining that they were expert buyers on commission or brokers having clients among those very wealthy people who bought pictures now and then because it was fashionable to do so. Also, these same women-brokers represented a number of those unhappy old families who, incognito, were being forced by straitened circumstances to part secretly with heirlooms--family plate, portraits, miniatures, furniture--even with the antique mirrors on the walls and the very fire-dogs on the hearth amid the ashes of a burnt-out race almost extinct. A few Jews came--representing the extreme types of the most wonderful race of people in the world--one tall, handsome, immaculate young man whose cultivated accent, charming manners, and quiet bearing challenged exception--and one or two representing the other extreme, loud, restless, aggressive, and as impertinent as they dared be, discussing the canvases in noisy voices and with callous manners verging always on the offensive. These evinced a disposition for cash deals and bargain-wrangling, discouraged good-naturedly by Quarren who referred them to the catalogue; and presently they took themselves off.