"
The pictures continued to go by.
"I can't stand this much longer."
"Hush!"
The Boucher drawing went up. It was turned to the right and to the
left: a beautiful girl lying on her belly, her legs parted slightly.
Therefore the bidding began briskly, but for some unaccountable
reason it died away. "Somebody must have declared it to be a
forgery," Owen whispered to Harding, and a moment after it became
Harding's property for eighty-seven pounds--"The exact sum I paid
for it years ago. How very extraordinary!"
"A portrait by Manet--a hundred pounds offered, one hundred," and two
grey eyes in a face of stone searched the room for bidders. "One
hundred pounds offered, five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, fifty,"
and so on to two hundred.
"Her portrait will cost me a thousand," Owen whispered to Harding,
and, catching the auctioneer's eyes, he nodded again. Seven hundred.
"Will they never stop bidding? That fellow yonder is determined to
run up the picture." Eight hundred and fifty! The auctioneer raised
his hammer, and the watchful eyes went round the room in search of
some one who would pay another ten pounds for Evelyn's portrait by
Manet. Eight hundred and fifty--eight hundred and fifty.
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