Sooner or later she must see. Sooner or later the already distended
situation must get more and more distended until it burst with a loud
report. Let the moment be sooner, he swiftly decided.

So she went and saw.

Half-way up the attic stairs she began to sniff, and as he turned the
knob of the attic door for her she said, "What a smell of paint! I
fancied yesterday----"

If she had been clever enough she would have said, "What a smell of
masterpieces!" But her cleverness lay in other fields.

"You surely haven't been aspinalling that bath-room chair?... Oh!"

This loud exclamation escaped from her as she entered the attic and saw
the back of the picture which Priam had lodged on the said bath-room
chair--filched by him from the bath-room on the previous day. She
stepped to the vicinity of the window and obtained a good view of the
picture. It was brilliantly shining in the light of morn. It looked
glorious; it was a fit companion of many pictures from the same hand
distributed among European galleries. It had that priceless quality, at
once noble and radiant, which distinguished all Priam's work. It
transformed the attic; and thousands of amateurs and students, from St.
Petersburg to San Francisco, would have gone into that attic with their
hats off and a thrill in the spine, had they known what was there and
had they been invited to enter and worship. Priam himself was pleased;
he was delighted; he was enthusiastic. And he stood near the picture,
glancing at it and then glancing at Alice, nervously, like a mother
whose sister-in-law has come to look at the baby. As for Alice, she said