“Ah, poor Stroud—as you say. Was that his history?”
“That was his history. She believed in him, gloried in him—or thought she did. But she couldn’t bear not to have all the drawing-rooms with her. She couldn’t bear the fact that, on varnishing days, one could always get near enough to see his pictures. Poor woman! She’s just a fragment groping for other fragments. Stroud is the only whole I ever knew.”
“You ever knew? But you just said—”
Gisburn had a curious smile in his eyes.
“Oh, I knew him, and he knew me—only it happened after he was dead.”
I dropped my voice instinctively. “When she sent for you?”
“Yes—quite insensible to the irony. She wanted him vindicated—and by me!”
He laughed again, and threw back his head to look up at the sketch of the donkey. “There were days when I couldn’t look at that thing—couldn’t face it. But I forced myself to put it here; and now it’s cured me—cured me. That’s the reason why I don’t dabble any more, my dear Rickham; or rather Stroud himself is the reason.”
For the first time my idle curiosity about my companion turned into a serious desire to understand him better.
“I wish you’d tell me how it happened,” I said.