I tried to set in order what I had to tell his wife. It was unsatisfactory, and I could not imagine that she would be content with me; I was not content with myself.

During the journey back to England I thought much of Strickland.

I could not understand his motives.

Strickland perplexed me.

If, seized by an intolerable boredom, he had determined to be a painter merely to break with irksome ties, it would have been comprehensible, and commonplace; but commonplace is precisely what I felt he was not.

I could make nothing of it.

At last, because I was romantic, I devised an explanation which I acknowledged to be far-fetched, but which was the only one that in any way satisfied me.

When I had asked him what first gave him the idea of being a painter, he was unable or unwilling to tell me.

I tried to persuade myself than an obscure feeling of revolt had been gradually coming to a head in his slow mind, but to challenge this was the undoubted fact that he had never shown any impatience with the monotony of his life.

Conversion may come under many shapes, and it may be brought about in many ways.

But how strange it was that the creative instinct should seize upon this dull stockbroker, to his own ruin, perhaps, and to the misfortune of such as were dependent on him; and yet no stranger than the way in which the spirit of God has seized men, powerful and rich, pursuing them with stubborn vigilance till at last, conquered, they have abandoned the joy of the world and the love of women for the painful austerities of the cloister.

The cuckoo lays its egg in the strange bird's nest, and when the young one is hatched it shoulders its foster-brothers out and breaks at last the nest that has sheltered it.

It was this: I asked myself whether there was not in his soul some deep-rooted instinct of creation, which the circumstances of his life had obscured, but which grew relentlessly, as a cancer may grow in the living tissues, till at last it took possession of his whole being and forced him irresistibly to action.

With some men it needs a cataclysm, as a stone may be broken to fragments by the fury of a torrent; but with some it comes gradually, as a stone may be worn away by the ceaseless fall of a drop of water.

But to my practical mind it remained to be seen whether the passion which obsessed him would be justified of its works. When I asked him what his brother-students at the night classes he had attended in London thought of his painting, he answered with a grin:

"They thought it a joke."

Strickland chuckled.

When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves.

And it was just that which had most disconcerted me in my dealings with him.

"Yes. The blighter came round this morning -- the master, you know; when he saw my drawing he just raised his eyebrows and walked on."

Strickland had the directness of the fanatic and the ferocity of the apostle.

He did not seem discouraged.

Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours.

He was independent of the opinion of his fellows.

"Have you begun to go to a studio here?"

No one runs so hurriedly to the cover of respectability as the unconventional woman who has exposed herself to the slings and arrows of outraged propriety.

It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.

It affords you then an inordinate amount of self-esteem.

You have the self-satisfaction of courage without the inconvenience of danger.

It is the bravado of ignorance.

But the desire for approbation is perhaps the most deeply seated instinct of civilised man.

I do not believe the people who tell me they do not care a row of pins for the opinion of their fellows.

But here was a man who sincerely did not mind what people thought of him, and so convention had no hold on him; he was like a wrestler whose body is oiled; you could not get a grip on him; it gave him a freedom which was an outrage. I remember saying to him:

They mean only that they do not fear reproaches for peccadillos which they are convinced none will discover.

"I don't care; it's rotten nonsense."

It is the spy seated in the central stronghold of the ego.

And once I sought to be satirical.

"I never heard it before, but it's rotten nonsense."

"Well, it was Kant who said it."

I take it that conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.

Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy within his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd.

Nor with such a man could you expect the appeal to conscience to be effective.

You might as well ask for a reflection without a mirror.

It is the policeman in all our hearts, set there to watch that we do not break its laws.

"You evidently don't believe in the maxim: Act so that every one of your actions is capable of being made into a universal rule."

"That's a damned silly thing to say. Everyone doesn't want to act like me. The great majority are perfectly content to do the ordinary thing."

"Look here, if everyone acted like you, the world couldn't go on."

And man, subservient to interests he has persuaded himself are greater than his own, makes himself a slave to his taskmaster.

It will force him to place the good of society before his own.

"Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me."

He sits him in a seat of honour.

"My own impression is that she's well rid of you," I said.

When I saw that Strickland was really indifferent to the blame his conduct must excite, I could only draw back in horror as from a monster of hardly human shape.

Then he has no words hard enough for the man who does not recognise its sway; for, a member of society now, he realises accurately enough that against him he is powerless.

It is the very strong link that attaches the individual to the whole.

The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were:

At last, like a courtier fawning on the royal stick that is laid about his shoulders, he prides himself on the sensitiveness of his conscience.

"My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent."