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The emotions common to most of us simply did not exist in him, and it was as absurd to blame him for not feeling them as for blaming the tiger because he is fierce and cruel. But it was the whim I could not understand. I could not believe that Strickland had fallen in love with Blanche Stroeve. I did not believe him capable of love.

I kept silence for a little while, thinking of what Stroeve had told me. I could not stomach his weakness, and he saw my disapproval. "You know as well as I do how Strickland lived," he said tremulously. "I couldn't let her live in those circumstances I simply couldn't." "That's your business," I answered. "What would <i you> have done?" he asked. "She went with her eyes open.

Dirk Stroeve, telling the story, had such a look of blank astonishment on his round, foolish face that it was almost impossible not to laugh. "I shouldn't have minded if he'd said my pictures were bad, but he said nothing nothing." "And you <i will> tell the story, Dirk," Said his wife.

The Frenchman considered the position, then broke suddenly into jovial expletives, and with an impatient gesture, gathering up the pieces, flung them into their box. He cursed Strickland freely, then, calling for the waiter, paid for the drinks, and left. Stroeve drew his chair closer to the table. "Now I suppose we can talk," he said.

It was about ten o' clock at night; I had been dining by myself at a restaurant, and having returned to my small apartment, was sitting in my parlour, reading I heard the cracked tinkling of the bell, and, going into the corridor, opened the door. Stroeve stood before me. "Can I come in?" he asked.

He called for another absinthe. Stroeve, with voluble tongue, explained how he and I had met, and by what an accident we discovered that we both knew Strickland. I do not know if Strickland listened. He glanced at me once or twice reflectively, but for the most part seemed occupied with his own thoughts; and certainly without Stroeve's babble the conversation would have been difficult.

Two or three days later Dirk Stroeve called on me. "I hear you've seen Blanche," he said. "How on earth did you find out?" "I was told by someone who saw you sitting with them. Why didn't you tell me?" "I thought it would only pain you." "What do I care if it does? You must know that I want to hear the smallest thing about her." I waited for him to ask me questions.

She just missed being beautiful, and in missing it was not even pretty. But when Stroeve spoke of Chardin it was not without reason, and she reminded me curiously of that pleasant housewife in her mob-cap and apron whom the great painter has immortalised.

"Show him some more of your pictures," she said. "Shall I?" Though he had suffered so much from the ridicule of his friends, Dirk Stroeve, eager for praise and naively self-satisfied, could never resist displaying his work. He brought out a picture of two curly-headed Italian urchins playing marbles. "Aren't they sweet?" said Mrs. Stroeve. And then he showed me more.

As a mistress she did not then exist for him, but only as a model; and then there were long hours in which they lived side by side in silence. It must have frightened her. When Strickland suggested that in her surrender to him there was a sense of triumph over Dirk Stroeve, because he had come to her help in her extremity, he opened the door to many a dark conjecture. I hope it was not true.