of Priam Farll." "Sad death of a great genius." "Puzzling career
prematurely closed." "Europe in mourning." "Irreparable loss to the
world's art." "It is with the most profound regret." "Our readers will
be shocked." "The news will come as a personal blow to every lover of
great painting." So the papers went on, outvying each other in
enthusiastic grief.

He ceased to be careless and condescending to them. The skin crept along
his spine. There he lay, solitary, under the crimson glow, locked in his
castle, human, with the outward semblance of a man like other men, and
yet the cities of Europe were weeping for him. He heard them weeping.
Every lover of great painting was under a sense of personal bereavement.
The very voice of the world was hushed. After all, it was something to
have done your best; after all, good stuff _was_ appreciated by the mass
of the race. The phenomena presented by the evening papers was certainly
prodigious, and prodigiously affecting. Mankind was unpleasantly stunned
by the report of his decease. He forgot that Mrs. Challice, for
instance, had perfectly succeeded in hiding her grief for the
irreparable loss, and that her questions about Priam Farll had been
almost perfunctory. He forgot that he had witnessed absolutely no sign
of overwhelming sorrow, or of any degree of sorrow, in the thoroughfares
of the teeming capital, and that the hotels did not resound to sobbing.
He knew only that all Europe was in mourning!

"I suppose I was rather wonderful--_am_, I mean"--he said to himself,
dazed and happy. Yes, happy. "The fact is, I've got so used to my own
work that perhaps I don't think enough of it." He said this as modestly
as he could.

There was no question now of casually glancing at the obituaries. He
could not miss a single line, a single word. He even regretted that the
details of his life were so few and unimportant. It seemed to him that
it was the business of the journalists to have known more, to have
displayed more enterprise in acquiring information. Still, the tone was
right. The fellows meant well, at any rate. His eyes encountered nothing
but praise. Indeed the press of London had yielded itself up to an
encomiastic orgy. His modesty tried to say that this was slightly
overdone; but his impartiality asked, "Really, what _could_ they say
against me?" As a rule unmitigated praise was nauseous but here they
were undoubtedly genuine, the fellows; their sentences rang true!

Never