'It is no excuse--but it is an explanation--I do not defend myself. Not the least in the world--but ... Armorel, I was starving.' 'Starving?' 'I could not sell my pictures. No one wanted them. The dealers would give me nothing but a few shillings apiece for them. I was penniless, and I was in debt. A man who drops into London out of Australia has no circle of friends and cousins who will stand by him. I was alone. Perhaps I loved too well the luxurious life. I tried for employment on the magazines and papers, but without success. In truth, I knew not where to look for the next week's rent and the next week's meals. I was a Failure, and I was penniless. Do you ask more?' 'Then the man came----' 'He came--my name was worth nothing--he asked me to suppress it. My work--which no one would buy--he offered to buy for what seemed, in my poverty, substantial prices if I would let him call it his own. What was the bargain? A life of ease against the bare chance of a name with the certainty of hard times. I was so desperate that I accepted.' 'You accepted. Yes.... But you might have given it up at any moment.' 'To be plunged back again into the penniless state. For the life of ease, mark you, brought no ease but a bare subsistence. Only quite lately, terrified by the success of the last picture, my employer has offered to give me two thirds of all he gets. The cheque you saw me tear up and burn was the first considerable sum I have ever received. It is gone, and I am penniless again----' 'And now that you are penniless?' 'Now I shall pawn my watch and chain and everything else that I possess. I shall finish this picture, and I will sell it for what the dealers will give me for it. Too late, this year, for exhibition. And so ... we shall see. If the worst comes I can carry a pair of boards up and down Piccadilly, opposite to the Royal Academy, and dream of the artistic life that once I hoped would be my own.' 'You will do better than that, Roland,' said Armorel, moved to tears. 'Oh! you will make a great name yet. But this man--don't tell me his name. Roland, promise me, please, not to tell me his name. I want you--just now--to think that it is your own secret--to yourself. If I should find it out, by accident, that would be--just now--my secret--to myself. This man--you have not yet broken with him?' 'Not yet.' 'Will you go to him and tell him that it is all over? Or will you write to him?' 'I thought that I would wait, and let him come to me.' 'I would not, if I were you. I would write and tell him at once, and plainly. Sit down, Roland, and write now--at once--without delay. Then you will feel happier.' 'I will do what you command me,' he replied meekly. He had, indeed, resolved with all his might and main that the rupture should be made; but, as yet, he had not made it. 'Get paper, then, and write.' He obeyed, and sat down. 'What shall I say?' he asked.