t intention. The caller was Mr. Van Busche Taylor,
an American, and Mrs. Strickland gave me particulars with a
charming smile of apology to him.

"You know, we English are so dreadfully ignorant. You must
forgive me if it's necessary to explain." Then she turned to
me. "Mr. Van Busche Taylor is the distinguished American
critic. If you haven't read his book your education has been
shamefully neglected, and you must repair the omission at
once. He's writing something about dear Charlie, and he's
come to ask me if I can help him."

Mr. Van Busche Taylor was a very thin man with a large, bald
head, bony and shining; and under the great dome of his skull
his face, yellow, with deep lines in it, looked very small.
He was quiet and exceedingly polite. He spoke with the accent
of New England, and there was about his demeanour a bloodless
frigidity which made me ask myself why on earth he was busying
himself with Charles Strickland. I had been slightly tickled
at the gentleness which Mrs. Strickland put into her mention
of her husband's name, and while the pair conversed I took
stock of the room in which we sat. Mrs. Strickland had moved
with the times. Gone were the Morris papers and gone the
severe cretonnes, gone were the Arundel prints that had
adorned the walls of her drawing-room in Ashley Gardens; the
room blazed with fantastic colour, and I wondered if she knew
that those varied hues, which fashion had imposed upon her,
were due to the dreams of a poor painter in a South Sea
island. She gave me the answer herself.

"What wonderful cushions you have," said Mr. Van Busche Taylor.

"Do you like them?" she said, smiling. "Bakst, you know."

And yet on the walls were coloured reproductions of several of
Strickland's best pictures, due to the enterprise of a
publisher in Berlin.

"You're looking at my pictures," she said, following my eyes.
"Of course, the originals are out of my reach, but it's a
comfort to have these. The publisher sent them to me himself.
They're a great consolation to me."

"They must be very pleasant to live with," said Mr. Van Busche Taylor.

"Yes; they're so essentially decorative."

"That is one of my profoundest convictions," said Mr. Van
Busche Taylor. "Great art is always decorative."

Their eyes rested on a nude woman suckling a baby, while a
girl was kneeling by their side holding out a flower to the
indifferent child. Looking over them was a wrinkled, scraggy hag.