and insist that the sale proceed. If there are no further bids, the canvas
is mine."

The auctioneer shrugged, and offered Lanyard an apologetic bow. "I am
sorry--" he began.

"Four thousand guineas!" snapped the prince.

Resigned, the auctioneer resumed:

"Four thousand guineas offered. Are there any more bids? Going--"

"Forty-five hundred!"

Beyond reasonable doubt the princess had spurred herself mercilessly to
find sufficient courage to make this latest bid. Lanyard saw her in a
rigour of despair, hoping against hope. Only too surely something in the
picture, some association--heaven knew what!--was more precious to her,
almost, than life, though she had gone already to the limit of her means
and perhaps a bit beyond. If this bid failed, she was lost. Her anxiety was
pitiful.

"Five thousand!"

In the princess something snapped: she recoiled upon herself, sat crushed,
head drooping, white-gloved hands working in her lap. One detected an
appealing quiver on her lips, and noted, or imagined, a suspicious
brightness beneath the long dark lashes that swiftly screened her eyes. Her
young bosom moved convulsively. She was beaten, near to tears.

"Five thousand guineas ... going ... going ..."

The face of the prince was a mocking devil-mask in gray and black. Lanyard
found himself loathing it. Impossible to stand idle and see the creature
get the better of an unhappy girl ...

"Five thousand one hundred guineas!"

With his wits in a blur of amaze, Lanyard knew the echo of his own voice.

IV

THE FOOL AND HIS MONEY

One reflected rather bitterly on the many and obvious oversights of a
putatively all-wise Providence, in especial on its failure so to fashion
the body of man as to enable him on occasion to discipline his own flesh in
the most ignominious manner imaginable.

Lanyard could have kicked himself; that is to say, he wanted to, and
thought it rather a pity he couldn't, and publicly, at that. For the freak
he had just indulged was rank quixotism, something which had as much place
in the code of a man of his calling as milk of human kindness in the
management of a pawnshop.

On second thought, he wasn't so sure. It might have been that quixotism had
inspired his infatuate gesture, but it might quite as conceivably have been
everyday vanity or plain cussedness: a noble impulse to serve a pretty lady
in distress, a spontaneous device to engage her interest, or a low desire
to plague a perso