of mangoes, bananas, oranges, and I know not what
and at first sight it was an innocent picture enough. It would
have been passed in an exhibition of the Post-Impressionists by a
careless person as an excellent but not very remarkable example
of the school; but perhaps afterwards it would come back to his
recollection, and he would wonder why. I do not think then he
could ever entirely forget it.

The colours were so strange that words can hardly tell what a
troubling emotion they gave. They were sombre blues, opaque
like a delicately carved bowl in lapis lazuli, and yet with a
quivering lustre that suggested the palpitation of mysterious
life; there were purples, horrible like raw and putrid flesh,
and yet with a glowing, sensual passion that called up vague
memories of the Roman Empire of Heliogabalus; there were reds,
shrill like the berries of holly -- one thought of Christmas
in England, and the snow, the good cheer, and the pleasure of
children -- and yet by some magic softened till they had the
swooning tenderness of a dove's breast; there were deep
yellows that died with an unnatural passion into a green as
fragrant as the spring and as pure as the sparkling water of a
mountain brook. Who can tell what anguished fancy made these
fruits? They belonged to a Polynesian garden of the Hesperides.
There was something strangely alive in them, as though
they were created in a stage of the earth's dark history
when things were not irrevocably fixed to their forms.
They were extravagantly luxurious. They were heavy with
tropical odours. They seemed to possess a sombre passion of
their own. It was enchanted fruit, to taste which might open
the gateway to God knows what secrets of the soul and to
mysterious palaces of the imagination. They were sullen with
unawaited dangers, and to eat them might turn a man to beast
or god. All that was healthy and natural, all that clung to
happy relationships and the simple joys of simple men, shrunk
from them in dismay; and yet a fearful attraction was in them,
and, like the fruit on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil they were terrible with the possibilities of the Unknown.

At last I turned away. I felt that Strickland had kept his
secret to the grave.

"<i Voyons, Rene, mon ami>," came the loud, cheerful voice of
Madame Coutras, "what are you doing all this time? Here are
the <i aperitifs>. Ask <i Monsieur> if he will not drink a
little glass of Quinquina Dub