tury, Callot, Hollar? What you will.... No, you shall have only a few, and those not the most celebrated but perhaps the best loved. Now, here's for your pleasure...."
He came to the table bearing carefully, reverentially, his treasures. He set them down. From one after another he withdrew the paper, there gleaming between the stiff white shining mats they breathed, they lived, they smiled. There was the Rembrandt "Landscape with a flock of sheep," there the Muirhead Bone "Orvieto," the Hollar "Seasons," Callot's "Passion," Meryon's "College Henri Quatre," Paul Potter's "Two Horses," a sea-scape of Zeeman, Cotman's "Windmill," Bracquemond's "Teal Alighting," a sea-scape of Moreau, and Aldegrever's "Labour of Hercules" to close the list. Not more than thirty in all, but living there on the table with their personal glow spontaneity. He bent over them caressing them, fondling them, smiling at them. Harkness drew near and, looking at the tender wistfulness of the two old Potter's horses, bravely living out there the last days of their broken forgotten lives, he felt a sudden friendliness to all the world, a reassurance, a comfort.
Those glittering jewelled things had had at their heart a warning, an alarm; but no one, he was suddenly aware, who cared for these prints could be bad. There are no things in the world so kindly, so simple, so warm in their humanity....
