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loaning Frank heavily, but not more so than any other. And as for the great blocks of stocks he
was carrying in his son's companies, he was to be told when to get out should that prove
necessary. Frank's brothers were being aided in the same way to make money on the side, and
their interests were also now bound up indissolubly with his own.
With his growing financial opportunities, however, Cowperwood had also grown very liberal in
what might be termed his standard of living. Certain young art dealers in Philadelphia, learning
of his artistic inclinations and his growing wealth, had followed him up with suggestions as to
furniture, tapestries, rugs, objects of art, and paintings--at first the American and later the
foreign masters exclusively. His own and his father's house had not been furnished fully in these
matters, and there was that other house in North Tenth Street, which he desired to make
beautiful. Aileen had always objected to the condition of her own home. Love of distinguished
surroundings was a basic longing with her, though she had not the gift of interpreting her
longings. But this place where they were secretly meeting must be beautiful. She was as keen
for that as he was. So it became a veritable treasure-trove, more distinguished in furnishings
than some of the rooms of his own home. He began to gather here some rare examples of altar
cloths, rugs, and tapestries of the Middle Ages. He bought furniture after the Georgian theory--a
combination of Chippendale, Sheraton, and Heppelwhite modified by the Italian Renaissance
and the French Louis. He learned of handsome examples of porcelain, statuary, Greek vase
forms, lovely collections of Japanese ivories and netsukes. Fletcher Gray, a partner in Cable &
Gray, a local firm of importers of art objects, called on him in connection with a tapestry of the
fourteenth century weaving. Gray was an enthusiast and almost instantly he conveyed some of
his suppressed and yet fiery love of the beautiful to Cowperwood.
"There are fifty periods of one shade of blue porcelain alone, Mr. Cowperwood," Gray informed
him. "There are at least seven distinct schools or periods of rugs--Persian, Armenian, Arabian,
Flemish, Modern Polish, Hungarian, and so on. If you ever went into that, it would be a
distinguished thing to get a complete-- I mean a representative--collection of some one period,
or of all these periods. They are beautiful. I have seen some of them, others I've read about."
"You'll make a convert of me yet, Fletcher," replied Cowperwood. "You or art will be the ruin of
me. I'm inclined that way temperamentally as it is, I think, and between you and Ellsworth and
Gordon Strake"--another young man intensely interested in painting--"you'll complete my
downfall. Strake has a splendid idea. He wants me to begin right now--I'm using that word 'right'
in the sense of 'properly,'" he commented--"and get what examples I can of just the few rare
things in each school or period of art which would properly illustrate each. He tells me the great
pictures are going to increase in value, and what I could get for a few hundred thousand now
will be worth millions later. He doesn't want me to bother with American art."
"He's right," exclaimed Gray, "although it isn't good business for me to praise another art man. It
would take a great deal of money, though."
"Not so very much. At least, not all at once. It would be a matter of years, of course. Strake
thinks that some excellent examples of different periods could be picked up now and later
replaced if anything better in the same held showed up."
His mind, in spite of his outward placidity, was tinged with a great seeking. Wealth, in the
beginning, had seemed the only goal, to which had been added the beauty of women. And now
art, for art's sake--the first faint radiance of a rosy dawn--had begun to shine in upon him, and to
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