swindled, and what he says
is that he's going to see the thing through. I've got to prove to him
that the pictures are yours. I've got to show him what grounds I had for
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
receiving tens instead of thousands for his pictures, the fault was his
alone. Mr. Oxford had only bought and only sold; which was his true
function. But Mr. Oxford's sin, in Priam's eyes, was the sin of having
been right.

It would have needed less insight than Mr. Oxford had at his disposal to
see that Priam Farll was taking the news very badly.

"For both our sakes, _cher maitre_," said Mr. Oxford persuasively, "I
think it will be advisable for you to put me in a position to prove that
my guarantee to Witt was justified."

"Why for both our sakes?"

"Because, well, I shall be delighted to pay you, say thirty-six thousand
pounds in acknowledgment of--er--" He stopped.

Probably he had instantly perceived that he was committing a disastrous
error of tact. Either he should have offered nothing, or he sh