"You haven't changed," I said, smiling, as I looked at him.

His wife was seated near the stove at her sewing, and she rose as I came in. He introduced me.

Then he gave a cry of delighted surprise and drew me in.

He could not let me alone.

"Don't you remember?" he said to her. "I've talked to you about him often."

And then to me: "But why didn't you let me know you were coming? How long have you been here? How long are you going to stay? Why didn't you come an hour earlier, and we would have dined together?"

It was charming to be welcomed with so much eagerness.

He was heart-broken because he had no whisky, wanted to make coffee for me, racked his brain for something he could possibly do for me, and beamed and laughed, and in the exuberance of his delight sweated at every pore.

He sat me down in a chair, patting me as though I were a cushion, pressed cigars upon me, cakes, wine.

He bombarded me with questions.

I had not announced my arrival to Stroeve, and when I rang the bell of his studio, on opening the door himself, for a moment he did not know me.

He had the same absurd appearance that I remembered.

He was a fat little man, with short legs, young still -- he could not have been more than thirty -- but prematurely bald. His face was perfectly round, and he had a very high colour, a white skin, red cheeks, and red lips.

When I told him that I meant to live in Paris for a while, and had taken an apartment, he reproached me bitterly for not having let him know.

His eyes were blue and round too, he wore large gold-rimmed spectacles, and his eyebrows were so fair that you could not see them.

He reminded you of those jolly, fat merchants that Rubens painted.

He really looked upon it as unfriendly that I had not given him the opportunity of making himself useful to me.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Stroeve sat quietly mending her stockings, without talking, and she listened to all he said with a quiet smile on her lips.

He would have found me an apartment himself, and lent me furniture -- did I really mean that I had gone to the expense of buying it? -- and he would have helped me to move in.

"If you don't be quiet, Dirk, I shall go away."

The sweat made them constantly slip down.

"What on earth do you expect me to say to that?" I laughed.

I could not tell if she loved him.

"But isn't she wonderful? I tell you, my boy, lose no time; get married as soon as ever you can. I'm the happiest man alive. Look at her sitting there. Doesn't she make a picture? Chardin, eh? I've seen all the most beautiful women in the world; I've never seen anyone more beautiful than Madame Dirk Stroeve."

"Mon petit chou", he said.

His letters had told me that he was very much in love with his wife, and I saw that he could hardly take his eyes off her.

"So, you see, I'm married," he said suddenly; "what do you think of my wife?"

He beamed at her, and settled his spectacles on the bridge of his nose.

She flushed a little, embarrassed by the passion in his tone.

Poor pantaloon, he was not an object to excite love, but the smile in her eyes was affectionate, and it was possible that her reserve concealed a very deep feeling.

"Really, Dirk," put in Mrs. Stroeve, smiling.

She was rather tall, and her gray dress, simple and quite well-cut, did not hide the fact that her figure was beautiful.

She was not the ravishing creature that his love-sick fancy saw, but she had a grave comeliness.

But when Stroeve spoke of Chardin it was not without reason, and she reminded me curiously of that pleasant housewife in her mob-cap and apron whom the great painter has immortalised.

Her hair, brown and abundant, was plainly done, her face was very pale, and her features were good without being distinguished.

I could imagine her sedately busy among her pots and pans, making a ritual of her household duties, so that they acquired a moral significance;

It was a figure that might have appealed more to the sculptor than to the costumier.

She just missed being beautiful, and in missing it was not even pretty.

I did not suppose that she was clever or could ever be amusing, but there was something in her grave intentness which excited my interest.

She had quiet gray eyes.

Her reserve was not without mystery.

"Is that what you're doing now?" I asked.

I asked Stroeve if he was working.

"This foolish wife of mine thinks I'm a great artist," said he.

I gave a little start. He was painting a group of Italian peasants, in the costume of the Campagna, lounging on the steps of a Roman church.

Though she was English, I could not exactly place her, and it was not obvious from what rank in society she sprang, what had been her upbringing, or how she had lived before her marriage.

His apologetic laugh did not disguise the pleasure that he felt.

"Working? I'm painting better than I've ever painted before."

"Yes. I can get my models here just as well as in Rome."

I wondered why she had married Dirk Stroeve.

His eyes lingered on his picture.

We sat in the studio, and he waved his hand to an unfinished picture on an easel.

"Don't you think it's very beautiful?" said Mrs. Stroeve.

She was very silent, but when she spoke it was with a pleasant voice, and her manners were natural.

It was strange that his critical sense, so accurate and unconventional when he dealt with the work of others, should be satisfied in himself with what was hackneyed and vulgar beyond belief.

Though he had suffered so much from the ridicule of his friends, Dirk Stroeve, eager for praise and naively self-satisfied, could never resist displaying his work.

I do not know what put it into my head to ask:

"Shall I?"

"I say, have you by any chance run across a painter called Charles Strickland?"

And then he showed me more. I discovered that in Paris he had been painting just the same stale, obviously picturesque things that he had painted for years in Rome.

It was all false, insincere, shoddy; and yet no one was more honest, sincere, and frank than Dirk Stroeve. Who could resolve the contradiction?

"Show him some more of your pictures," she said.

"You don't mean to say you know him?" cried Stroeve.

He brought out a picture of two curly-headed Italian urchins playing marbles.

"Aren't they sweet?" said Mrs. Stroeve.

Stroeve laughed.

"I don't like bad manners," said Mrs. Stroeve.

"Beast," said his wife.

"Ma pauvre cherie." He went over to her and kissed both her hands. "She doesn't like him. How strange that you should know Strickland!"

Dirk, laughing still, turned to me to explain.

"And Dirk actually gave it him," said his wife indignantly.

I do not know why he had begun the story against himself; he felt an awkwardness at finishing it.

"He looked at -- at my pictures, and he didn't say anything. I thought he was reserving his judgment till the end. And at last I said: `There, that's the lot!' He said: `I came to ask you to lend me twenty francs. '"

It was lamentable that one was more amused by the ridiculous figure cut by the Dutchman than outraged by Strickland's brutal treatment of him.

"You see, I asked him to come here one day and look at my pictures. Well, he came, and I showed him everything I had." Stroeve hesitated a moment with embarrassment.

"I was so taken aback. I didn't like to refuse. He put the money in his pocket, just nodded, said 'Thanks,' and walked out."

Dirk Stroeve, telling the story, had such a look of blank astonishment on his round, foolish face that it was almost impossible not to laugh.

"I shouldn't have minded if he'd said my pictures were bad, but he said nothing -- nothing."

"And you will tell the story, Dirk," Said his wife.

He had already recovered his good-humour.

"That's it. He's a great artist."

"A big fellow with a red beard. Charles Strickland. An Englishman."

"The fact remains that he's a great artist, a very great artist."

"Impossible."

"Strickland?" I exclaimed. "It can't be the same man."

"Where can one see his work?" I asked. "Is he having any success? Where is he living?"

"No; he has no success. I don't think he's ever sold a picture. When you speak to men about him they only laugh. But I know he's a great artist. After all, they laughed at Manet. Corot never sold a picture. I don't know where he lives, but I can take you to see him. He goes to a cafe in the Avenue de Clichy at seven o'clock every evening. If you like we'll go there to-morrow."

I remembered suddenly my last talk with him.

I was astonished, and at the same time I was very much excited.

Stroeve smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"I hope I shall never see him again," said Mrs. Stroeve.

"Have I ever been mistaken?" Dirk asked me. "I tell you he has genius. I'm convinced of it. In a hundred years, if you and I are remembered at all, it will be because we knew Charles Strickland."

"He had no beard when I knew him, but if he has grown one it might well be red. The man I'm thinking of only began painting five years ago."

"I'm not sure if he'll wish to see me. I think I may remind him of a time he prefers to forget. But I'll come all the same. Is there any chance of seeing any of his pictures?"

Stroeve's lips trembled a little.

She turned to me. "Do you know, when some Dutch people came here to buy Dirk's pictures he tried to persuade them to buy Strickland's? He insisted on bringing them here to show."

"What did you think of them?" I asked her, smiling.

"They were awful."

"Why did I always think your pictures beautiful, Dirk? I admired them the very first time I saw them."

"Well, your Dutch people were furious with you. They thought you were having a joke with them."

Dirk Stroeve took off his spectacles and wiped them.

"Ah, sweetheart, you don't understand."

His flushed face was shining with excitement.

"Not from him. He won't show you a thing. There's a little dealer I know who has two or three. But you mustn't go without me; you wouldn't understand. I must show them to you myself."

"Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination."

"Dirk, you make me impatient," said Mrs. Stroeve. "How can you talk like that about his pictures when he treated you as he did?"

"Go to bed, my precious. I will walk a few steps with our friend, and then I will come back."