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"She could have gone back to Stroeve," he said irritably. "He was ready to take her." "You're inhuman," I answered. "It's as useless to talk to you about these things as to describe colours to a man who was born blind." He stopped in front of my chair, and stood looking down at me with an expression in which I read a contemptuous amazement.
Though she was English, I could not exactly place her, and it was not obvious from what rank in society she sprang, what had been her upbringing, or how she had lived before her marriage. She was very silent, but when she spoke it was with a pleasant voice, and her manners were natural. I asked Stroeve if he was working. "Working? I'm painting better than I've ever painted before."
The day was fine and sunny, and I felt in myself a more acute delight in life. I could not help it; I put Stroeve and his sorrows out of my mind. I wanted to enjoy. I did not see him again for nearly a week. Then he fetched me soon after seven one evening and took me out to dinner. He was dressed in the deepest mourning, and on his bowler was a broad black band.
"But think of the great artists of the past Raphael, Michael Angelo, Ingres, Delacroix they were all successful." "Let us go," said Stroeve to me, "or I shall kill this man." I saw Strickland not infrequently, and now and then played chess with him. He was of uncertain temper.
When I come to his connection with Blanche Stroeve I am exasperated by the fragmentariness of the facts at my disposal. To give my story coherence I should describe the progress of their tragic union, but I know nothing of the three months during which they lived together. I do not know how they got on or what they talked about.
He told me a singular story. When I left him, after we had buried poor Blanche, Stroeve walked into the house with a heavy heart. Something impelled him to go to the studio, some obscure desire for self-torture, and yet he dreaded the anguish that he foresaw.
I grew more intimate with Blanche Stroeve, and I think, because I was English and she knew few English people, she was glad to see me. She was pleasant and simple, but she remained always rather silent, and I knew not why, gave me the impression that she was concealing something. But I thought that was perhaps no more than a natural reserve accentuated by the verbose frankness of her husband.
He beamed at her, and settled his spectacles on the bridge of his nose. The sweat made them constantly slip down. "What on earth do you expect me to say to that?" I laughed. "Really, Dirk," put in Mrs. Stroeve, smiling. "But isn't she wonderful? I tell you, my boy, lose no time; get married as soon as ever you can. I'm the happiest man alive. Look at her sitting there. Doesn't she make a picture?
"When the concierge went up this morning to take a letter she could get no answer to her ring. She heard someone groaning. The door wasn't locked, and she went in. Blanche was lying on the bed. She'd been frightfully sick. There was a bottle of oxalic acid on the table." Stroeve hid his face in his hands and swayed backwards and forwards, groaning. "Was she conscious?" "Yes.
But one evening when I was passing along the Avenue de Clichy in front of the cafe which Strickland frequented and which I now avoided, I ran straight into him. He was accompanied by Blanche Stroeve, and they were just going to Strickland's favourite corner. "Where the devil have you been all this time?" said he. "I thought you must be away."
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