He may be dead for all I know."
"I may run across him in Paris. Would you like me to let you
know about him?"
She hesitated a minute.
"If he's in any real want I'm prepared to help him a little.
I'd send you a certain sum of money, and you could give it him
gradually, as he needed it."
"That's very good of you," I said.
But I knew it was not kindness that prompted the offer. It is
not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does
that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men
petty and vindictive.
Chapter XVIII
In point of fact, I met Strickland before I had been a
fortnight in Paris.
I quickly found myself a tiny apartment on the fifth floor of
a house in the Rue des Dames, and for a couple of hundred
francs bought at a second-hand dealer's enough furniture to
make it habitable. I arranged with the concierge to make my
coffee in the morning and to keep the place clean. Then I
went to see my friend Dirk Stroeve.
Dirk Stroeve was one of those persons whom, according to your
character, you cannot think of without derisive laughter or an
embarrassed shrug of the shoulders.
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