would begin.  He wondered that he could ever have dreamed of concealing his identity on a canvas.  The thing simply shouted ‘Priam Farll,’ every inch of it.  In any exhibition of pictures in London, Paris, Rome, Milan, Munich, New York or Boston, it would have been the cynosure, the target of ecstatic admirations.  It was just such another work as his celebrated ’Pont d’Austerlitz,’ which hung in the Luxembourg.  And neither a frame of ‘chemical gold,’ nor the extremely variegated coloration of the other merchandise on sale could kill it.

However, there were no signs of a crowd.  People passed to and fro, just as though there had not been a masterpiece within ten thousand miles of them.  Once a servant girl, a loaf of bread in her red arms, stopped to glance at the window, but in an instant she was gone, running.

Priam’s first instinctive movement had been to plunge into the shop, and demand from his tobacconist an explanation of the phenomenon.  But of course he checked himself.  Of course he knew that the presence of his picture in the window could only be due to the enterprise of Alice.

He went slowly home.

The sound of his latchkey in the keyhole brought her into the hall ere he had opened the door.

“Oh, Henry,” she said—­she was quite excited—­“I must tell you.  I was passing Mr. Aylmer’s this morning just as he was dressing his window, and the thought struck me that he might put your picture in.  So I ran in and asked him.  He said he would if he could have it at once.  So I came and got it.  He found a frame, and wrote out a ticket, and asked after you.  No one could have been kinder.  You must go and have a look at it.  I shouldn’t be at all surprised if it gets sold like that.”

Priam answered nothing for a moment.  He could not.

“What did Aylmer say about it?” he asked.

“Oh!” said his wife quickly, “you can’t expect Mr. Aylmer to understand these things.  It’s not in his line.  But he was glad to oblige us.  I saw he arranged it nicely.”

“Well,” said Priam discreetly, “that’s all right.  Suppose we have lunch?”

Curious—­her relations with Mr. Aylmer!  It was she who had recommended him to go to Mr. Aylmer’s when, on the first morning of his residence in Putney, he had demanded, “Any decent tobacconists in this happy region?” He suspected that, had it not been for Aylmer’s beridden and incurable wife, Alice’s name might have been Aylmer.  He suspected Aylmer of a hopeless passion for Alice.  He was glad that Alice had not been thrown away on Aylmer.  He could not imagine himself now without Alice.  In spite of her ideas on the graphic arts, Alice was his air, his atmosphere, his oxygen; and also his umbrella to shield him from the hail of untoward circumstances.  Curious—­the process of love!  It was the power of love that had put that picture in the tobacconist’s window.

Whatever power had put it there, no power seemed strong enough to get it out again.  It lay exposed in the window for weeks and never drew a crowd, nor caused a sensation of any kind!  Not a word in the newspapers!  London, the acknowledged art-centre of the world, calmly went its ways.  The sole immediate result was that Priam changed his tobacconist, and the direction of his promenades.