"Do you know Paris well?" I asked.

The absinthe came, and with due solemnity we dropped water over the melting sugar.

The Avenue de Clichy was crowded at that hour, and a lively fancy might see in the passers-by the personages of many a sordid romance.

"I thought somebody would come along sooner or later. I've had a lot of letters from Amy."

"Then you know pretty well what I've got to say."

There were clerks and shopgirls; old fellows who might have stepped out of the pages of Honore de Balzac; members, male and female, of the professions which make their profit of the frailties of mankind. There is in the streets of the poorer quarters of Paris a thronging vitality which excites the blood and prepares the soul for the unexpected.

"How on earth did you find out your hotel?"

"No. We came on our honeymoon. I haven't been since."

"I thought I'd better tell you at once why I had come to see you," I said, not without embarrassment.

His eyes twinkled.

"It was recommended to me. I wanted something cheap."

"Oh, I don't know," I answered.

I cannot describe the extraordinary callousness with which he made this reply.

It disconcerted me, but I did my best not to show it.

"No."

The eloquent phrases I had arranged, pathetic or indignant, seemed out of place on the Avenue de Clichy. Suddenly he gave a chuckle.

"Well, look here, you get it over, and then we'll have a jolly evening."

"She'll get over it."

He shook his head, smiling.

"Then, isn't it monstrous to leave her in this fashion, after seventeen years of married life, without a fault to find with her?"

"Have you any complaint to make against her?"

"None."

"I've not read them."

I lit a cigarette to give myself a moment's time.

"Has she deserved that you should treat her like this?"

I adopted the tone used by my Uncle Henry, a clergyman, when he was asking one of his relatives for a subscription to the Additional Curates Society.

"Beastly job for you this, isn't it?"

"You don't mind my talking to you frankly?"

I did not quite know now how to set about my mission.

"Has it occurred to you that your wife is frightfully unhappy?"

I hesitated.

"She can't."

"I don't think there is."

"How is she going to live?"

I had no experience, since my own practice has always been to deny everything.

"What, then?" asked Strickland.

"Hang it all, one can't leave a woman without a bob."

"Well, if you acknowledge that, there doesn't seem much more to be said."

Of course there were many things I might have answered to this.

I tried to curl my lip.

"Why not?"

I was prepared to be persuasive, touching, and hortatory, admonitory and expostulating, if need be vituperative even, indignant and sarcastic; but what the devil does a mentor do when the sinner makes no bones about confessing his sin?

I glanced at him with surprise.

His cordial agreement with all I said cut the ground from under my feet. It made my position complicated, not to say ludicrous.

"I've supported her for seventeen years. Why shouldn't she support herself for a change?"

I felt that I was not carrying out my embassy with any great skill. I was distinctly nettled.

"Let her try."

"Monstrous."

I might have spoken of the economic position of woman, of the contract, tacit and overt, which a man accepts by his marriage, and of much else; but I felt that there was only one point which really signified.

"Don't you care for her any more?"

"Not a bit," he replied.

"But aren't you fond of them? They're such awfully nice kids. Do you mean to say you don't want to have anything more to do with them?"

I reminded myself that his behaviour was abominable.

I worked myself up into a state of moral indignation.

The matter was immensely serious for all the parties concerned, but there was in the manner of his answer such a cheerful effrontery that I had to bite my lips in order not to laugh.

"Damn it all, there are your children to think of. They've never done you any harm. They didn't ask to be brought into the world. If you chuck everything like this, they'll be thrown on the streets."

"They've had a good many years of comfort. It's much more than the majority of children have. Besides, somebody will look after them. When it comes to the point, the MacAndrews will pay for their schooling."

"Won't it mean anything to you to know that people loathe and despise you?"

"I wonder if one can live quite comfortably when one's conscious of the disapproval of one's fellows? Are you sure it won't begin to worry you? Everyone has some sort of a conscience, and sooner or later it will find you out. Supposing your wife died, wouldn't you be tortured by remorse?"

His brief answer was so scornful that it made my question, natural though it was, seem absurd. I reflected for a minute or two.

"You don't seem in the least ashamed."

"Let them."

"It's just inhuman."

"I liked them all right when they were kids, but now they're growing up I haven't got any particular feeling for them."

"Everyone will think you a perfect swine."

He did not answer, and I waited for some time for him to speak. At last I had to break the silence myself.

I tried another tack.

"I'm not."

"No."

"I dare say."

"What have you to say to that?"

"Only that you're a damned fool."

"At all events, you can be forced to support your wife and children," I retorted, somewhat piqued. "I suppose the law has some protection to offer them."

I paused for a little while to consider what I had better say next. But it was he who spoke first.

He was very cunning, but it was evidently this that he was aiming at.

Now it was my turn to smile.

It was true that his hotel pointed to the most straitened circumstances.

"Your wife says that nothing you can do will ever induce her to divorce you. She's quite made up her mind. You can put any possibility of that definitely out of your head."

I began to be more puzzled than before.

He was perfectly cool, and his eyes kept that mocking smile which made all I said seem rather foolish.

"Why doesn't Amy marry again? She's comparatively young, and she's not unattractive. I can recommend her as an excellent wife. If she wants to divorce me I don't mind giving her the necessary grounds."

"Earn some."

He had some reason to conceal the fact that he had run away with a woman, and he was using every precaution to hide her whereabouts.

I answered with decision:

"What are you going to do when you've spent that?"

"Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven't any money. I've got about a hundred pounds."

"Poor Amy," he grinned.

"What poor minds women have got! Love. It's always love. They think a man leaves only because he wants others. Do you think I should be such a fool as to do what I've done for a woman?"

"On your word of honour?"

"But, my dear fellow, I don't care. It doesn't matter a twopenny damn to me one way or the other."

"Do you mean to say you didn't leave your wife for another woman?"

He looked at me with an astonishment that was certainly not feigned. The smile abandoned his lips, and he spoke quite seriously.

Then his face grew bitterly scornful.

He laughed so uproariously that people sitting near us looked round, and some of them began to laugh too.

"Oh, come now; you mustn't think us such fools as all that. We happen to know that you came away with a woman."

"I don't see anything very amusing in that."

He gave a little start, and then suddenly burst into a shout of laughter.

I laughed.

I don't know why I asked for that. It was very ingenuous of me.

"Of course not."

"On my word of honour."

"Can you paint?"

"Was that where you went when Mrs. Strickland thought you were playing bridge at your club?"

"Not yet. But I shall. That's why I've come over here. I couldn't get what I wanted in London. Perhaps I can here."

"That's what made me think it was high time to begin."

"I preferred to keep it to myself."

I forgot everything but my own amazement.

"Do you think it's likely that a man will do any good when he starts at your age? Most men begin painting at eighteen."

I thought he was mad. It must be remembered that I was very young, and I looked upon him as a middle-aged man.

I looked at him for quite a long time.

"I want to paint."

"That's it."

"Why didn't you tell her?"

"Then, what in God's name have you left her for?"

"I rather wanted to be a painter when I was a boy, but my father made me go into business because he said there was no money in art. I began to paint a bit a year ago. For the last year I've been going to some classes at night."

"But you're forty."

I did not understand.

"Have you ever painted?"

"How old are you? Twenty-three?"

He did not answer for a minute.

"I've got to paint."

His gaze rested on the passing throng, but I do not think he saw it. His answer was no answer.

"I've got to paint," he repeated.

A course that would have been natural for me was absurd for him. I wished to be quite fair.

"Of course a miracle may happen, and you may be a great painter, but you must confess the chances are a million to one against it. It'll be an awful sell if at the end you have to acknowledge you've made a hash of it."

"I can learn quicker than I could when I was eighteen."

It seemed to me that the question was beside the point.

He looked at me. His eyes had something strange in them, so that I felt rather uncomfortable.

It was natural that I should take chances; but he was a man whose youth was past, a stockbroker with a position of respectability, a wife and two children.

"Supposing you're never anything more than third-rate, do you think it will have been worth while to give up everything? After all, in any other walk in life it doesn't matter if you're not very good; you can get along quite comfortably if you're just adequate; but it's different with an artist."

"What makes you think you have any talent?"

"Aren't you taking an awful chance?"

"I don't see why, unless it's folly to say the obvious."

"You blasted fool," he said.

I seemed to feel in him some vehement power that was struggling within him; it gave me the sensation of something very strong, overmastering, that held him, as it were, against his will.

There was real passion in his voice, and in spite of myself I was impressed.

I could not understand.

"I tell you I've got to paint. I can't help myself. When a man falls into the water it doesn't matter how he swims, well or badly: he's got to get out or else he'll drown."

He seemed really to be possessed of a devil, and I felt that it might suddenly turn and rend him.

My eyes, resting on him curiously, caused him no embarrassment.

Yet he looked ordinary enough.

I wondered what a stranger would have taken him to be, sitting there in his old Norfolk jacket and his unbrushed bowler; his trousers were baggy, his hands were not clean; and his face, with the red stubble of the unshaved chin, the little eyes, and the large, aggressive nose, was uncouth and coarse.

"Now that you've got that off your chest, let's go and have dinner."

I was silent for a moment in order to give greater force to my next remark.

"She can go to hell."

"You are a most unmitigated cad."

"She's willing to forget everything that's happened and start afresh. She'll never make you a single reproach."

No; I could not have placed him.

"You don't care if people think you an utter blackguard? You don't care if she and your children have to beg their bread?"

"Not a damn."

"Never. "

"You won't go back to your wife?" I said at last.

His mouth was large, his lips were heavy and sensual.

I spoke as deliberately as I could.