giving my guarantee. Well, to cut a long story short, I've found you,
I'm glad to say!"

He sighed again.

"Look here," said Priam. "How much has Witt paid you altogether for my
pictures?"

After a pause, Mr. Oxford said, "I don't mind giving you the figure.
He's paid me seventy-two thousand pounds odd." He smiled, as if to
excuse himself.

When Priam Farll reflected that he had received about four hundred
pounds for those pictures--vastly less than one per cent, of what the
shiny and prosperous dealer had ultimately disposed of them for, the
traditional fury of the artist against the dealer--of the producer
against the parasitic middleman--sprang into flame in his heart. Up till
then he had never had any serious cause of complaint against his
dealers. (Extremely successful artists seldom have.) Now he saw dealers,
as the ordinary painters see them, to be the authors of all evil! Now he
understood by what methods Mr. Oxford had achieved his splendid car,
clothes, club, and minions. These things were earned, not by Mr. Oxford,
but _for_ Mr. Oxford in dingy studios, even in attics, by shabby
industrious painters! Mr. Oxford was nothing but an opulent thief, a
grinder of the face of genius. Mr. Oxford was, in a word, the spawn of
the devil, and Priam silently but sincerely consigned him to his proper
place.

It was excessively unjust of Priam. Nobody had asked Priam to die.
Nobody had asked him to give up his identity. If he had latterly been