I stared at him. He stood before me, motionless, with a
mocking smile in his eyes; but for all that, for a moment I
had an inkling of a fiery, tortured spirit, aiming at
something greater than could be conceived by anything that was
bound up with the flesh. I had a fleeting glimpse of a
pursuit of the ineffable. I looked at the man before me in
his shabby clothes, with his great nose and shining eyes, his
red beard and untidy hair; and I had a strange sensation that
it was only an envelope, and I was in the presence of a
disembodied spirit.

"Let us go and look at your pictures," I said.

Chapter XLII

I did not know why Strickland had suddenly offered to show
them to me. I welcomed the opportunity. A man's work reveals him.
In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he
wishes the world to accept, and you can only gain a true
knowledge of him by inferences from little actions, of which
he is unconscious, and from fleeting expressions, which cross
his face unknown to him. Sometimes people carry to such
perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they
actually become the person they seem. But in his book or his
picture the real man delivers himself defenceless.
His pretentiousness will only expose his vacuity. The lathe
painted to look like iron is seen to be but a lathe.
No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.
To the acute observer no one can produce the most casual work
without disclosing the innermost secrets of his soul.

As I walked up the endless stairs of the house in which
Strickland lived, I confess that I was a little excited.
It seemed to me that I was on the threshold of a surprising
adventure. I looked about the room with curiosity. It was
even smaller and more bare than I remembered it. I wondered
what those friends of mine would say who demanded vast
studios, and vowed they could not work unless all the
conditions were to their liking.

"You'd better stand there," he said, pointing to a spot from
which, presumably, he fancied I could see to best advantage
what he had to show me.

"You don't want me to talk, I suppose," I said.

"No, blast you; I want you to hold your tongue."

He placed a picture on the easel, and let me look at it for a
minute or two; then took it down and put another in its place.
I think he showed me about thirty canvases. It was the result
of the six years during which he had been painting. He had
never s