However, his other demon, shyness, kept him from imperiously stopping the car.

The car stopped itself in Bond Street, in front of a building with a wide archway, and the symbol of empire floating largely over its roof.  Placards said that admission through the archway was a shilling; but Mr. Oxford, bearing Priam’s latest picture as though it had cost fifty thousand instead of five hundred pounds, went straight into the place without paying, and Priam accepted his impressive invitation to follow.  Aged military veterans whose breasts carried a row of medals saluted Mr. Oxford as he entered, and, within the penetralia, beings in silk hats as faultless as Mr. Oxford’s raised those hats to Mr. Oxford, who did not raise his in reply.  Merely nodded, Napoleonically!  His demeanour had greatly changed.  You saw here the man of unbending will, accustomed to use men as pawns in the chess of a complicated career.  Presently they reached a private office where Mr. Oxford, with the assistance of a page, removed his gloves, furs, and hat, and sent sharply for a man who at once brought a frame which fitted Priam’s picture.

“Do have a cigar,” Mr. Oxford urged Priam, with a quick return to his earlier manner, offering a box in which each cigar was separately encased in gold-leaf.  The cigar was such as costs a crown in a restaurant, half-a-crown in a shop, and twopence in Amsterdam.  It was a princely cigar, with the odour of paradise and an ash as white as snow.  But Priam could not appreciate it.  No!  He had seen on a beaten copper plate under the archway these words:  ‘Parfitts’ Galleries.’  He was in the celebrated galleries of his former dealers, whom by the way he had never seen.  And he was afraid.  He was mortally apprehensive, and had a sickly sensation in the stomach.

After they had scrupulously inspected the picture, through the clouds of incense, Mr. Oxford wrote out a cheque for five hundred pounds, and, cigar in mouth, handed it to Priam, who tried to take it with a casual air and did not succeed.  It was signed ‘Parfitts’.’

“I dare say you have heard that I’m now the sole proprietor of this place,” said Mr. Oxford through his cigar.

“Really!” said Priam, feeling just as nervous as an inexperienced youth.

Then Mr. Oxford led Priam over thick carpets to a saloon where electric light was thrown by means of reflectors on to a small but incomparable band of pictures.  Mr. Oxford had not exaggerated.  They did give pleasure to Priam.  They were not the pictures one sees every day, nor once a year.  There was the finest Delacroix of its size that Priam had ever met with; also a Vermeer that made it unnecessary to visit the Ryks Museum.  And on the more distant wall, to which Mr. Oxford came last, in a place of marked honour, was an evening landscape of Volterra, a hill-town in Italy.  The bolts of Priam’s very soul started when he caught sight of that picture.  On the lower edge of the rich frame were two words in black lettering:  ‘Priam Farll.’  How well he remembered painting it!  And how masterfully beautiful it was!