Hold on, there! came a sharp challenge from the stairs behind and below me. What are you doing? And what’s that picture doing? It was one of the Museum’s guards. I was going to ask somebody that same question, I told him as austerely as I could manage. What about this picture? I thought there was a Boecklin hanging here. The guard relaxed. Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. I thought you were somebody else–the man who brought that thing. He nodded at the picture. Personally, I think it’s plain beastly.
And the Museum has accepted it at last? I asked. He shook his head. Oh, no, sir. I, too, came close. There was no plate beneath the painting. But in the lower left-hand corner of the canvas were sprawling capitals, pale paint on the dark, spelling out the word GOLGOTHA. Beneath these, in small, barely readable script: I sold my soul that I might paint a living picture.