'My dear Briscoe,' said Lee, handing him his handkerchief to help to dry himself, 'this is really too bad of you. Do you think I don't know the meaning of those stuffed pockets of yours? You've been helping yourself, forgetting altogether the work of art in which we are engaged.' 'Heaven helps those that help themselves,' growled Briscoe, still a little maudlin and very crusty. 'A very good proverb indeed; but it has always seemed to me to require a gloss, as, say, "Help yourself, and Heaven will develop heroic qualities in you by opposing you." So you see I am interfering with you to give your acts a higher tone. You'll have to empty out your pockets, my boy. Nobody need know; and, if they should, kleptomania is quite genteel.' 'Now, look here,' said Briscoe: 'I'm not fit for this almighty art of yours. By Jove, when I think of where I am, and what we're up to, I can hardly believe it's me! Just you give me as much money as you can, and let me slope quietly, and you'll get on far better without me. I never could grease myself and worm through the tight places--get through the world, as folks say; and I tell you it would be far better for you if I were away.' 'Briscoe, I have always admired your independent character,' said Lee. 'Neither can I get through the world; but there's another method which equally insures success, and that is, to transcend the world: death by starvation is then itself a glorious triumph--the triumph of the idea. I know what I mean, and, though I were to explain till doomsday, you wouldn't, so it don't matter. You will confer a lasting benefit on the world if you stay and help with the work in which I am engaged. It is a glorious labour, apart from its artistic merit; for it is raising the tone of everybody about me. It is just what these people needed, especially Muriel and Frank--the dash of bitter that strengthens the sweet, the need for rebellion that wakens the soul, the spur that drives natures roughshod over convention, the----' 'Draw it mild,' interposed Briscoe sneeringly. 'To-morrow, or maybe to-night, Caroline will be down with the real man, and what will you do then?' 'I long for their arrival. That will be the great scene.' 'What'll you do?' 'Well, murder I merely glanced at. To turn them out of the house as impostors, though a simple solution of the matter for a short time, would only stave off a final settlement. This is what I intend: to shut up Chartres in one of the rooms, pinioned, and, if necessary, gagged, as a dangerous lunatic, until I can have him removed to a private asylum, which will be a matter of only a few hours; and, once there, we are safer than if he were in the grave.' 'How will you manage that?' 'The simplest thing in the world. You can't have read many novels or you wouldn't ask. Besides the novels, however, I have studied the lunacy laws; and I could put you, Briscoe--sensible, hard-headed fellow as you are--into an asylum to-morrow, and defy the world to take you out!'