“Bought a picture?” said Mr. Tristram, looking vaguely round at the walls. “Why, do they sell them?”
“I mean a copy.”
“Oh, I see. These,” said Mr. Tristram, nodding at the Titians and Vandykes, “these, I suppose, are originals.”
“I hope so,” cried Newman. “I don’t want a copy of a copy.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Tristram, mysteriously, “you can never tell. They imitate, you know, so deucedly well. It’s like the jewellers, with their false stones. Go into the Palais Royal, there; you see ‘Imitation’ on half the windows. The law obliges them to stick it on, you know; but you can’t tell the things apart. To tell the truth,” Mr. Tristram continued, with a wry face, “I don’t do much in pictures. I leave that to my wife.”
“Ah, you have got a wife?”
“Didn’t I mention it? She’s a very nice woman; you must know her. She’s up there in the Avenue d’Iéna.”
“So you are regularly fixed—house and children and all.”
“Yes, a tip-top house and a couple of youngsters.”
“Well,” said Christopher Newman, stretching his arms a little, with a sigh, “I envy you.”