“What made you think of being a painter?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“It happened that I had a knack for drawing. I got prizes for it at school. My poor mother was very proud of my gift, and she gave me a box of water-colours as a present. She showed my sketches to the pastor and the doctor and the judge. And they sent me to Amsterdam to try for a scholarship, and I won it. Poor soul, she was so proud; and though it nearly broke her heart to part from me, she smiled, and would not show me her grief. She was pleased that her son should be an artist. They pinched and saved so that I should have enough to live on, and when my first picture was exhibited they came to Amsterdam to see it, my father and mother and my sister, and my mother cried when she looked at it.” His kind eyes glistened. “And now on every wall of the old house there is one of my pictures in a beautiful gold frame.”
He glowed with happy pride. I thought of those cold scenes of his, with their picturesque peasants and cypresses and olive-trees. They must look queer in their garish frames on the walls of the peasant house.
“The dear soul thought she was doing a wonderful thing for me when she made me an artist, but perhaps, after all, it would have been better for me if my father’s will had prevailed and I were now but an honest carpenter.”
“Now that you know what art can offer, would you change your life? Would you have missed all the delight it has given you?”
“Art is the greatest thing in the world,” he answered, after a pause.
He looked at me for a minute reflectively; he seemed to hesitate; then he said:
“Did you know that I had been to see Strickland?”
“You?”