Alice, gazing around, chiefly with her mouth, inquired suddenly—­

“What’s that printing there?”

She had detected a legend incised on one of the small stone flags which form the vast floor of the nave.  They stooped over it.  “PRIAM FARLL,” it said simply, in fine Roman letters and then his dates.  That was all.  Near by, on other flags, they deciphered other names of honour.  This austere method of marking the repose of the dead commended itself to him, caused him to feel proud of himself and of the ridiculous England that somehow keeps our great love.  His gloom faded.  And do you know what idea rushed from his heart to his brain?  “By Jove!  I will paint finer pictures than any I’ve done yet!” And the impulse to recommence the work of creation surged over him.  The tears started to his eyes.

“I like that!” murmured Alice, gazing at the stone.  “I do think that’s nice.”

And he said, because he truly felt it, because the will to live raged through him again, tingling and smarting: 

“I’m glad I’m not there.”

They smiled at each other, and their instinctive hands fumblingly met.

A few days later, the Dean and Chapter, stung into action by the majestic rebuke of the Daily Record, amended the floor of Valhalla and caused the mortal residuum of the immortal organism known as Henry Leek to be nocturnally transported to a different bed.

On Board

A few days later, also, a North German Lloyd steamer quitted Southampton for Algiers, bearing among its passengers Priam and Alice.  It was a rough starlit night, and from the stern of the vessel the tumbled white water made a pathway straight to receding England.  Priam had come to love the slopes of Putney with the broad river at the foot; but he showed what I think was a nice feeling in leaving England.  His sojourn in our land had not crowned him with brilliance.  He was not a being created for society, nor for cutting a figure, nor for exhibiting tact and prudence in the crises of existence.  He could neither talk well nor read well, nor express himself in exactly suitable actions.  He could only express himself at the end of a brush.  He could only paint extremely beautiful pictures.  That was the major part of his vitality.  In minor ways he may have been, upon occasions, a fool.  But he was never a fool on canvas.  He said everything there, and said it to perfection, for those who could read, for those who can read, and for those who will be able to read five hundred years hence.  Why expect more from him?  Why be disappointed in him?  One does not expect a wire-walker to play fine billiards.  You yourself, mirror of prudence that you are, would have certainly avoided all Priam’s manifold errors in the conduct of his social career; but, you see, he was divine in another way.

As the steamer sped along the lengthening pathway from England, one question kept hopping in and out of his mind: