"You would? Well, perhaps you're right. It's a question, in my mind,
whether some other painter may not turn up one of these days who would
do that sort of thing even better than Farll did it. I could imagine the
possibility of a really clever man coming along and imitating Farll so
well that only people like yourself, _maître_, and perhaps me, could
tell the difference. It's just the kind of work that might be
brilliantly imitated, if the imitator was clever enough, don't you
think?"

"But what do you mean?" asked Priam, perspiring in his back.

"Well," said Mr. Oxford vaguely, "one never knows. The style might be
imitated, and the market flooded with canvases practically as good as
Farll's. Nobody might find it out for quite a long time, and then there
might be confusion in the public mind, followed by a sharp fall in
prices. And the beauty of it is that the public wouldn't really be any
the worse. Because an imitation that no one can distinguish from the
original is naturally as good as the original. You take me? There's
certainly a tremendous chance for a man who could seize it, and that's
why I'm inclined to accept your advice and sell my one remaining Farll."

He smiled more and more confidentially. His gaze was charged with a
secret meaning. He seemed to be suggesting unspeakable matters to Priam.
That bright face wore an expression which such faces wear on such
occasions--an expression cheerfully insinuating that after all there is
no right and no wrong--or at least that many things which the ordinary
slave of convention would consider to be wrong are really right. So
Priam read the expression.