"That fellow's place," he would say of some dealer, "is such a jumble and so dark that nobody can see what he's got. Ought to be very grateful to me that I put 'em where people could see 'em. If I can pay for 'em, all right, and if I can't, let him take 'em back. He always knows where to find 'em. I'm not going to have an auction." This last course of "taking his purchases back" had been followed by a good many of Jack's creditors, who, at last, tired out, had driven up a furniture van and carted the missing articles home again. Others, more patient, dunned persistently and continually--every morning some one of them--until Jack, roused to an extra effort, painted pot-boilers (portrait of a dog, or a child with a rabbit, or Uncle John's exact image from a daguerrotype many years in the family) up to the time the debt was discharged and the precious bit of old Spanish leather or the Venetian chest or Sixteenth Century chair became his very own for all time to come. This "last-moment" act of Jack's--this reprieve habit of saving his financial life, as the noose was being slipped over his bankrupt neck--instead of strangling Jack's credit beyond repair, really improved it. The dealer generally added an extra price for interest and the trouble of collecting (including cartage both ways), knowing that his property was perfectly safe as long as it stayed in Jack's admirably cared-for studio, and few of them ever refused the painter anything he wanted. When inquiries were made as to his financial standing the report was invariably, "Honest but slow--he'll pay some time and somehow," and the ghost of a bad debt was laid. The slower the better for Jack. The delay helped his judgment. The things he didn't want after living with them for months (Jack's test of immortality) he was quite willing they should cart away; the things he loved he would go hungry to hold on to. This weeding-out process had left a collection of curios, stuffs, hangings, brass, old furniture, pottery, china, costumes and the like, around Jack's rooms, some of which would have enriched a museum: a Louis XVI. cabinet, for instance, that had been stolen from the Trianon (what a lot of successful thieves there were in those days); the identical sofa that the Pompadour used in her afternoon naps, and the undeniable curtain that covered her bed, and which now hung between Jack's two rooms. In addition to these ancient and veritable "antiques" there was a collection of equally veritable "moderns," two of which had arrived that morning from an out-of-town exhibition and which were at this precise moment leaning against the legs of an old Spanish chair. One had had three inches of gilt moulding knocked off its frame in transit, and both bore Jack's signature in the lower left-hand corner.