'Deception! Criminals!' I suppose there is no depth of wickedness into which men may not descend, step by step, getting daily deeper in the mire of falsehood and crime, yet walking always with head erect, and meeting the world with the front of rectitude. Had anyone told Mr. Alec Feilding, years before, what he would do in the future, he would have kicked that foul and obscene prophet. Well: he had done these things, and deliberately: he had posed before the world as painter, poet, and writer of fiction. As time went on, and the world accepted his pretensions, they became a part of himself. Nay: he even excused himself. Everybody does the same thing: or, just the same, everybody would do it, given the chance: it is a world of pretension, make-believe, and seeming. Besides, he was no highwayman, he bought the things: he paid for them: they were his property. And yet--'Deception! Criminals!' The words astonished and pained him. And the base ingratitude of the man. He was starving: no one would buy his things: nobody knew his work, when he stepped in. Then, by dexterity in the art of Puff, which the moderns call _réclame_--he actually believed this, being so ignorant of Art--he had forced these pictures into notice: he had run up their price, until for that picture on the easel he had been offered, and had taken, 450_l._! Ungrateful! 'Deception! Criminals!' Why, the man had actually received a cheque for 300_l._ for that very picture. What more could he want or expect? True, he had refused to cash the cheque. More fool he! And now he was going absolutely to withdraw from the partnership, and work for himself. Well--poor devil! He would starve! He stood in front of the picture and looked at it mournfully. The beautiful thing--far more beautiful than any he had exhibited before. It cut him to the heart to think--not that he had been such a fraud, but--that he could have no more from the same source. His career was cut short at the outset, his ambitions blasted, by this unlucky accident. Yet a year or two and the Academy would have made him an Associate: a few more years and he would have become R.A. Perhaps, in the end, President. And now it was all over. No Royal Academy for him, unless--a thing almost desperate--he could find some other Roland Lee--some genius as poor, as reckless of himself. And it might be years--years--before he could find such a one. Meantime, what was he to show? What was he to say? 'Deception! Criminals!' Confound the fellow! The words banged about his head and boxed his ears.