behind him. It was Ata. He had not heard
her get up. She was standing at his elbow, looking at what
he looked at.

"Good Heavens, my nerves are all distraught," he said.
"You nearly frightened me out of my wits."

He looked again at the poor dead thing that had been man, and
then he started back in dismay.

"But he was blind."

"Yes; he had been blind for nearly a year."

Chapter LVII

AT that moment we were interrupted by the appearance of
Madame Coutras, who had been paying visits. She came in,
like a ship in full sail, an imposing creature, tall and stout,
with an ample bust and an obesity girthed in alarmingly by
straight-fronted corsets. She had a bold hooked nose and three chins.
She held herself upright. She had not yielded for an instant
to the enervating charm of the tropics, but contrariwise was
more active, more worldly, more decided than anyone in a
temperate clime would have thought it possible to be. She was
evidently a copious talker, and now poured forth a breathless
stream of anecdote and comment. She made the conversation we
had just had seem far away and unreal.

Presently Dr. Coutras turned to me.

"I still have in my <i bureau> the picture that Strickland
gave me," he said. "Would you like to see it?"

"Willingly."

We got up, and he led me on to the verandah which surrounded
his house. We paused to look at the gay flowers that rioted
in his garden.

"For a long time I could not get out of my head the
recollection of the extraordinary decoration with which
Strickland had covered the walls of his house," he said
reflectively.

I had been thinking of it, too. It seemed to me that here
Strickland had finally put the whole expression of himself.
Working silently, knowing that it was his last chance, I
fancied that here he must have said all that he knew of life
and all that he divined. And I fancied that perhaps here he
had at last found peace. The demon which possessed him was
exorcised at last, and with the completion of the work, for
which all his life had been a painful preparation, rest
descended on his remote and tortured soul. He was willing to
die, for he had fulfilled his purpose.

"What was the subject?" I asked.

"I scarcely know. It was strange and fantastic. It was a
vision of the beginnings of the world, the Garden of Eden,
with Adam and Eve -- <i que sais-je?> -- it was a hymn to the
beauty of the human form, male and female, and the praise