Priam recovered more quickly than might have been expected.  His first thought was naturally that women are uncalculated, if not incalculable, creatures, and that the best of them will do impossible things—­things inconceivable till actually done!  Fancy her introducing a stranger, without a word of warning, direct into his attic!  However, when he rose he saw the visitor’s nose (whose nostrils were delicately expanding and contracting in the fumes of the oil-stove), and he was at once reassured.  He knew that he would have to face neither rudeness, nor bluntness, nor lack of imagination, nor lack of quick sympathy.  Besides, the visitor, with practical assurance, set the tone of the interview instantly.

“Good-morning, maitre,” he began, right off.  “I must apologize for breaking in upon you.  But I’ve come to see if you have any work to sell.  My name is Oxford, and I’m acting for a collector.”

He said this with a very agreeable mingling of sincerity, deference, and mercantile directness, also with a bright, admiring smile.  He showed no astonishment at the interior of the attic.

Maitre!

Well, of course, it would be idle to pretend that the greatest artists do not enjoy being addressed as maitre.  ‘Master’ is the same word, but entirely different.  It was a long time since Priam Farll had been called maitre.  Indeed, owing to his retiring habits, he had very seldom been called maitre at all.  A just-finished picture stood on an easel near the window; it represented one of the most wonderful scenes in London:  Putney High Street at night; two omnibus horses stepped strongly and willingly out of a dark side street, and under the cold glare of the main road they somehow took on the quality of equestrian sculpture.  The altercation of lights was in the highest degree complex.  Priam understood immediately, from the man’s calm glance at the picture, and the position which he instinctively took up to see it, that he was accustomed to looking at pictures.  The visitor did not start back, nor rush forward, nor dissolve into hysterics, nor behave as though confronted by the ghost of a murdered victim.  He just gazed at the picture, keeping his nerve and holding his tongue.  And yet it was not an easy picture to look at.  It was a picture of an advanced experimentalism, and would have appealed to nothing but the sense of humour in a person not a connoisseur.

“Sell!” exclaimed Priam.  Like all shy men he could hide his shyness in an exaggerated familiarity.  “What price this?” And he pointed to the picture.

There were no other preliminaries.

“It is excessively distinguished,” murmured Mr. Oxford, in the accents of expert appreciation.  “Excessively distinguished.  May I ask how much?”

“That’s what I’m asking you,” said Priam, fiddling with a paint rag.

“Hum!” observed Mr. Oxford, and gazed in silence.  Then:  “Two hundred and fifty?”