earlier manner, offering a box in which each cigar was separately
encased in gold-leaf. The cigar was such as costs a crown in a
restaurant, half-a-crown in a shop, and twopence in Amsterdam. It was a
princely cigar, with the odour of paradise and an ash as white as snow.
But Priam could not appreciate it. No! He had seen on a beaten copper
plate under the archway these words: 'Parfitts' Galleries.' He was in
the celebrated galleries of his former dealers, whom by the way he had
never seen. And he was afraid. He was mortally apprehensive, and had a
sickly sensation in the stomach.

After they had scrupulously inspected the picture, through the clouds of
incense, Mr. Oxford wrote out a cheque for five hundred pounds, and,
cigar in mouth, handed it to Priam, who tried to take it with a casual
air and did not succeed. It was signed 'Parfitts'.'

"I dare say you have heard that I'm now the sole proprietor of this
place," said Mr. Oxford through his cigar.

"Really!" said Priam, feeling just as nervous as an inexperienced youth.

Then Mr. Oxford led Priam over thick carpets to a saloon where electric
light was thrown by means of reflectors on to a small but incomparable
band of pictures. Mr. Oxford had not exaggerated. They did give pleasure
to Priam. They were not the pictures one sees every day, nor once a
year. There was the finest Delacroix of its size that Priam had ever met
with; also a Vermeer that made it unnecessary to visit the Ryks Museum.
And on the more distant wall, to which Mr. Oxford came last, in a place
of marked honour, was an evening landscape of Volterra, a hill-town in
Italy. The bolts of Priam's very soul started when he caught sight of
that picture. On the lower edge of the rich frame were two words in