can get my models here just as well as in Rome."

"Don't you think it's very beautiful?" said Mrs. Stroeve.

"This foolish wife of mine thinks I'm a great artist," said he.

His apologetic laugh did not disguise the pleasure that he felt.
His eyes lingered on his picture. It was strange that
his critical sense, so accurate and unconventional when he
dealt with the work of others, should be satisfied in himself
with what was hackneyed and vulgar beyond belief.

"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. I discovered that in Paris he had
been painting just the same stale, obviously picturesque
things that he had painted for years in Rome. It was all
false, insincere, shoddy; and yet no one was more honest,
sincere, and frank than Dirk Stroeve. Who could resolve
the contradiction?

I do not know what put it into my head to ask:

"I say, have you by any chance run across a painter called
Charles Strickland?"

"You don't mean to say you know him?" cried Stroeve.

"Beast," said his wife.

Stroeve laughed.

<i "Ma pauvre cherie."> He went over to her and kissed both
her hands. "She doesn't like him. How strange that you
should know Strickland!"

"I don't like bad manners," said Mrs. Stroeve.

Dirk, laughing still, turned to me to explain.

"You see, I asked him to come here one day and look at my
pictures. Well, he came, and I showed him everything I had."
Stroeve hesitated a moment with embarrassment. I do not know
why he had begun the story against himself; he felt an
awkwardness at finishing it. "He looked at -- at my pictures,
and he didn't say anything. I thought he was reserving his
judgment till the end. And at last I said: 'There, that's
the lot!' He said: 'I came to ask you to lend me twenty francs.'"

"And Dirk actually gave it him," said his wife indignantly.

"I was so taken aback. I didn't like to refuse. He put the
money in his pocket, just nodded, said 'Thanks,' and walked out."

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 min