'You have heard, now, what manner of man he was. Very well. I tell you two the story because I want to consult you. The other day I arranged a little play of my own. That is, I invited people to hear the reciting of that drama: I invited the pretender himself among the rest, but he did not know or guess what the play was going to be. And at the same time I invited the painter and the poet. The former brought his unfinished picture--the latter brought her latest poem, which the pretender was going that very week to bring out in his own name. I had set it to music, and I sang it. I meant that he should learn in this way, without being told, that everything was discovered. I watched his face during the recital of the play, and I saw the dismay of the discovery creeping gradually over him as he realised that he had lost his painter, his poet, and his dramatist. There remained nothing more but to discover the author of the stories--and that, too, I have found out. And I think he will lose his story-teller as well. He will be deprived of all his borrowed plumes. At one blow he saw himself ruined.' Neither of the two made answer for a space. Then spoke Roland: 'Dux femina facti! A woman hath done this.' 'He is ruined unless he can find others to take your places. The question I want you to consider is--What shall be done next? Roland, it is your name and fame that he has stolen--your pictures that he has called his own. Effie, they are your poems that he has published under his name. What will you do? Will you demand your own again? Think.' 'He must exhibit no more pictures of mine,' said Roland. 'He has one in his studio that he has already sold. That one must not go to any gallery. That is all I have to say.' 'He cannot publish any more poems of mine,' said Effie, 'because he hasn't got any, and I shall give him no more.' 'What about the past?' 'Are we so proud of the past and of the part we have played in it'--asked Roland--'that we should desire its story published to all the world?' Effie shook her head, approvingly. 'As for me,' he continued, 'I wish never to hear of it again. It makes me sick and ashamed even to think of it. Let it be forgotten. I was an unknown artist--I had few friends--I had exhibited one picture only--so that my work was unknown--I had painted for him six or seven pictures which are mostly bought by an American. As for the resemblance of style, that may make a few men talk for a season. Then it will be forgotten. I shall remain--he will have disappeared. I am content to take my chance with future work, even if at first I may appear to be a mere copyist of Mr. Alec Feilding.' 'And you, Effie?' 'I agree with Mr. Lee,' she replied briefly. 'Let the past alone. I shall write more verses, and, perhaps, better verses.' 'Then I will go to him and tell him that he need fear nothing. We shall hold our tongues. But he is not to exhibit the picture that is in his studio. I will tell him that.'