He brought out
a picture of two curly-headed Italian urchins playing marbles.
"Aren't they sweet?" said Mrs. Stroeve.
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?
I do not know what put it into my head to ask:
"I say, have you by any chance run across a painter called
Charles Strickland?"
"You don't mean to say you know him?" cried Stroeve.
"Beast," said his wife.
Stroeve laughed.
He went over to her and kissed both
her hands. "She doesn't like him. How strange that you
should know Strickland!"
"I don't like bad manners," said Mrs. Stroeve.
Dirk, laughing still, turned to me to explain.
"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 do not know
why he had begun the story against himself; he felt an
awkwardness at finishing it.
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