they are
deaf and blind to everything else in the world? They are as
little their own masters as the slaves chained to the benches
of a galley. The passion that held Strickland in bondage was
no less tyrannical than love."

"How strange that you should say that!" I answered. "For long
ago I had the idea that he was possessed of a devil."

"And the passion that held Strickland was a passion to
create beauty. It gave him no peace. It urged him hither
and thither. He was eternally a pilgrim, haunted by a divine
nostalgia, and the demon within him was ruthless. There are
men whose desire for truth is so great that to attain it they
will shatter the very foundation of their world. Of such was
Strickland, only beauty with him took the place of truth.
I could only feel for him a profound compassion."

"That is strange also. A man whom he had deeply wronged told
me that he felt a great pity for him." I was silent for a moment.
"I wonder if there you have found the explanation of
a character which has always seemed to me inexplicable.
How did you hit on it?"

He turned to me with a smile.

"Did I not tell you that I, too, in my way was an artist?
I realised in myself the same desire as animated him.
But whereas his medium was paint, mine has been life."

Then Captain Brunot told me a story which I must repeat,
since, if only by way of contrast, it adds something to my
impression of Strickland. It has also to my mind a beauty of
its own.

Captain Brunot was a Breton, and had been in the French Navy.
He left it on his marriage, and settled down on a small
property he had near Quimper to live for the rest of his days
in peace; but the failure of an attorney left him suddenly
penniless, and neither he nor his wife was willing to live in
penury where they had enjoyed consideration. During his sea
faring days he had cruised the South Seas, and he determined
now to seek his fortune there. He spent some months in Papeete
to make his plans and gain experience; then, on money borrowed
from a friend in France, he bought an island in the Paumotus.
It was a ring of land round a deep lagoon, uninhabited,
and covered only with scrub and wild guava. With the
intrepid woman who was his wife, and a few natives,
he landed there, and set about building a house, and clearing
the scrub so that he could plant cocoa-nuts. That was twenty
years before, and now what had been a barren island was a garden.

"It was hard and anx