He smiled dryly and pulled his beard.

"You are a dreadful sentimentalist, my poor friend."

A week later I heard by chance that Strickland had gone to
Marseilles. I never saw him again.

Chapter XLIII

Looking back, I realise that what I have written about Charles
Strickland must seem very unsatisfactory. I have given
incidents that came to my knowledge, but they remain obscure
because I do not know the reasons that led to them.
The strangest, Strickland's determination to become a painter,
seems to be arbitrary; and though it must have had causes in
the circumstances of his life, I am ignorant of them.
From his own conversation I was able to glean nothing. If I were
writing a novel, rather than narrating such facts as I know of
a curious personality, I should have invented much to account
for this change of heart. I think I should have shown a
strong vocation in boyhood, crushed by the will of his father
or sacrificed to the necessity of earning a living; I should
have pictured him impatient of the restraints of life; and in
the struggle between his passion for art and the duties of his
station I could have aroused sympathy for him. I should so
have made him a more imposing figure. Perhaps it would have
been possible to see in him a new Prometheus. There was here,
maybe, the opportunity for a modern version of the hero who for
the good of mankind exposes himself to the agonies of the damned.
It is always a moving subject.

On the other hand, I might have found his motives in the
influence of the married relation. There are a dozen ways in
which this might be managed. A latent gift might reveal
itself on acquaintance with the painters and writers whose
society his wife sought; or domestic incompatability might turn
him upon himself; a love affair might fan into bright flame
a fire which I could have shown smouldering dimly in his heart.
I think then I should have drawn Mrs. Strickland quite
differently. I should have abandoned the facts and made her a
nagging, tiresome woman, or else a bigoted one with no
sympathy for the claims of the spirit. I should have made
Strickland's marriage a long torment from which escape was the
only possible issue. I think I should have emphasised his
patience with the unsuitable mate, and the compassion which
made him unwilling to throw off the yoke that oppressed him.
I should certainly have eliminated the children.

An effective story might also have be