THE PRINCE
"Wouldn't you find out if it were a question of parting with me? My value would in that case be estimated."
She had covered him with her charming eyes, as if his value were well before her. "Yes, if you mean that I'd pay rather than lose you."
And then there came again what this had made him say. "Don't talk about me—it's you who are not of this age. You're a creature of a braver and finer one, and the cinquecento, at its most golden hour, wouldn't have been ashamed of you. It would of me, and if I didn't know some of the pieces your father has acquired I should rather fear for American City the criticism of experts. Would it at all events be your idea," he had then just ruefully asked, "to send me there for safety?"
"Well, we may have to come to it."
"I'll go anywhere you want."
"We must see first—it will be only if we have to come to it. There are things," she had gone on, "that father puts away—the bigger and more cumbrous of course, which he stores, has already stored in masses, here and in Paris, in Italy, in Spain, in warehouses, vaults, banks, safes, wonderful secret places. We've been like a pair of pirates—positively stage pirates, the sort who wink at each other and say 'Ha-ha!' when they come to where their treasure is buried. Ours is buried pretty well everywhere—except what we like to see, what we travel with and have about us. These, the smaller pieces, are the things we take out and arrange as we can, to make the hotels we stay at and the houses we hire a little less ugly. Of course it's
13
