This staggered him. He never could remember for more than half-an-hour
at a time that he was a retired valet. And it was decidedly not her
practice to remind him of the fact. The notion of himself in a situation
as valet was half ridiculous and half tragical. He could no more be a
valet than he could be a stockbroker or a wire-walker.

"I wasn't thinking of that," he stammered.

"Then what were you thinking of?" she asked.

"Oh! I don't know!" he said vaguely.

"Because those things they advertise--homework, envelope addressing, or
selling gramophones on commission--they're no good, you know!"

He shuddered.

The next morning he bought a 36 x 24 canvas, and more brushes and tubes,
and surreptitiously introduced them into the attic. Happily it was the
charwoman's day and Alice was busy enough to ignore him. With an old
table and the tray out of a travelling-trunk, he arranged a substitute
for an easel, and began to try to paint a bad picture from his sketch.
But in a quarter of an hour he discovered that he was exactly as fitted
to paint a bad picture as to be a valet. He could not sentimentalize the
tones, nor falsify the values. He simply could not; the attempt to do so
annoyed him. All men are capable of stooping beneath their highest
selves, and in several directions Priam Farll could have stooped. But
not on canvas! He could only produce his best. He could only render
nature as he saw nature. And it was instinct, rather than conscience,
that prevented him from stooping.

In three days, during which he kept Alice out of the attic partly by
lies and partly by locking the door, the picture was finished; and he
had forgotten all about everything except his profession. He had become
a different man, a very excited man.

"By Jove," he exclaimed, surveying the picture, "I can paint!"

Artists do occasionally soliloquize in this way.

The picture was dazzling! What atmosphere! What poetry! And what
profound fidelity to nature's facts! It was precisely such a picture as
he was in the habit of selling for L800 or a L1,000, before his burial
in Westminster Abbey! Indeed, the trouble was that it had 'Priam Farll'
written all over it, just as the sketch had!

* * * * *

CHAPTER VII

_The Confession_

That evening he was very excited, and he seemed to take no thought to
disguise his excitement. The fact was, he could not have disguised it,
even if he had tried. The feve