good affair. Some day those pictures will be
worth more than all you have in your shop. Remember Monet,
who could not get anyone to buy his pictures for a hundred francs.
What are they worth now?"

"True. But there were a hundred as good painters as Monet who
couldn't sell their pictures at that time, and their pictures
are worth nothing still. How can one tell? Is merit enough to
bring success? 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.

"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."

Chapter XXIII

I saw Strickland not infrequently, and now and then played
chess with him. He was of uncertain temper. Sometimes he
would sit silent and abstracted, taking no notice of anyone;
and at others, when he was in a good humour, he would talk in
his own halting way. He never said a clever thing, but he had
a vein of brutal sarcasm which was not ineffective, and he
always said exactly what he thought. He was indifferent to
the susceptibilities of others, and when he wounded them was amused.
He was constantly offending Dirk Stroeve so bitterly
that he flung away, vowing he would never speak to him again;
but there was a solid force in Strickland that attracted the
fat Dutchman against his will, so that he came back, fawning
like a clumsy dog, though he knew that his only greeting would
be the blow he dreaded.

I do not know why Strickland put up with me. Our relations
were peculiar. One day he asked me to lend him fifty francs.

"I wouldn't dream of it," I replied.

"Why not?"

"It wouldn't amuse me."

"I'm frightfully hard up, you know."

"I don't care."

"You don't care if I starve?"

"Why on earth should I?" I asked in my turn.

He looked at me for a minute or two, pulling his untidy beard.
I smiled at him.

"What are you amused at?" he said, with a gleam of anger in
his eyes.

"You're so simple. You recognise no obligations. No one is
under any obligation to you."

"Wouldn't it make you uncomfortable if I went and hanged
myself because I'd been turned out of my room as I couldn't
pay the rent?"