“Oh, by Jove!” I said.
It was a sketch of a donkey—an old tired donkey, standing in the rain under a wall.
“By Jove—a Stroud!” I cried.
He was silent; but I felt him close behind me, breathing a little quickly.
“What a wonder! Made with a dozen lines—but on everlasting foundations. You lucky chap, where did you get it?”
He answered slowly: “Mrs. Stroud gave it to me.”
“Ah—I didn’t know you even knew the Strouds. He was such an inflexible hermit.”
“I didn’t—till after.... She sent for me to paint him when he was dead.”
“When he was dead? You?”
I must have let a little too much amazement escape through my surprise, for he answered with a deprecating laugh: “Yes—she’s an awful simpleton, you know, Mrs. Stroud. Her only idea was to have him done by a fashionable painter—ah, poor Stroud! She thought it the surest way of proclaiming his greatness—of forcing it on a purblind public. And at the moment I was the fashionable painter.”