use.

"The dear soul thought she was doing a wonderful thing for me
when she made me an artist, but perhaps, after all, it would
have been better for me if my father's will had prevailed and
I were now but an honest carpenter."

"Now that you know what art can offer, would you change your
life? Would you have missed all the delight it has given you?"

"Art is the greatest thing in the world," he answered, after a pause.

He looked at me for a minute reflectively; he seemed to hesitate;
then he said:

"Did you know that I had been to see Strickland?"

"You?"

I was astonished. I should have thought he could not bear to
set eyes on him. Stroeve smiled faintly.

"You know already that I have no proper pride."

"What do you mean by that?"

He told me a singular story.

Chapter XXXIX

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. He dragged
himself up the stairs; his feet seemed unwilling to carry him;
and outside the door he lingered for a long time, trying to
summon up courage to go in. He felt horribly sick. He had an
impulse to run down the stairs after me and beg me to go in
with him; he had a feeling that there was somebody in the
studio. He remembered how often he had waited for a minute or
two on the landing to get his breath after the ascent, and how
absurdly his impatience to see Blanche had taken it away again.
To see her was a delight that never staled, and even
though he had not been out an hour he was as excited at the
prospect as if they had been parted for a month. Suddenly he
could not believe that she was dead. What had happened could
only be a dream, a frightful dream; and when he turned the key
and opened the door, he would see her bending slightly over
the table in the gracious attitude of the woman in Chardin's
<i Benedicite>, which always seemed to him so exquisite.
Hurriedly he took the key out of his pocket, opened, and
walked in.

The apartment had no look of desertion. His wife's tidiness
was one of the traits which had so much pleased him; his own
upbringing had given him a tender sympathy for the delight in
orderliness; and when he had seen her instinctive desire to
put each thing in its appointed place it had given him a
little warm feeling in his heart. The bedroom looked a