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She thought he was going to marry her. They turned her out into the street neck and crop. She was going to have a baby, and she tried to commit suicide. Stroeve found her and married her." "It was just like him. I never knew anyone with so compassionate a heart." I had often wondered why that ill-assorted pair had married, but just that explanation had never occurred to me.
It was an ideal that he painted a poor one, common and shop-soiled, but still it was an ideal; and it gave his character a peculiar charm. It was because I felt this that Dirk Stroeve was not to me, as to others, merely an object of ridicule.
But while I talked to Stroeve I was puzzling over the suddenness of the whole affair. I could not imagine that he had had no warning. I remembered the curious look I had seen in Blanche Stroeve's eyes; perhaps its explanation was that she was growing dimly conscious of a feeling in her heart that surprised and alarmed her.
But though I was no less convinced than Stroeve that the connection between Strickland and Blanche would end disastrously, I did not expect the issue to take the tragic form it did. The summer came, breathless and sultry, and even at night there was no coolness to rest one's jaded nerves.
I stood by, at a loss, like a stranger in a land where the reactions of man to familiar things are all different from those he has known. Stroeve tried to talk to me about the picture, but he was incoherent, and I had to guess at what he meant. Strickland had burst the bonds that hitherto had held him. He had found, not himself, as the phrase goes, but a new soul with unsuspected powers.
Don't believe it. <i Du reste>, it has still to be proved that this friend of yours has merit. No one claims it for him but Monsieur Stroeve." "And how, then, will you recognise merit?" asked Dirk, red in the face with anger. "There is only one way by success." "Philistine," cried Dirk.
I've got to give her twenty francs." "What's he like?" "Splendid. He's got a great red face like a leg of mutton, and on his right cheek there's an enormous mole with long hairs growing out of it." Strickland was in a good humour, and when Dirk Stroeve came up and sat down with us he attacked him with ferocious banter.
Stroeve could not bear to be alone, and I exhausted myself in efforts to distract him. I took him to the Louvre, and he pretended to look at pictures, but I saw that his thoughts were constantly with his wife. I forced him to eat, and after luncheon I induced him to lie down, but he could not sleep. He accepted willingly my invitation to remain for a few days in my apartment.
"I'd finished it. It wasn't any good to me." "Do you know that Stroeve nearly destroyed it?" "It wasn't altogether satisfactory." He was quiet for a moment or two, then he took his pipe out of his mouth again, and chuckled. "Do you know that the little man came to see me?" "Weren't you rather touched by what he had to say?" "No; I thought it damned silly and sentimental."
I was afraid something was going to happen, and I wished I hadn't spoken. He looked round for his hat. Then she spoke: "'I'm going with Strickland, Dirk, she said. 'I can't live with you any more. "I tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come. Strickland didn't say anything. He went on whistling as though it had nothing to do with him." Stroeve stopped again and mopped his face.
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