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“Is that what being an artist means—selling? I thought it meant one who was always seeking without absolutely finding. I thought it means the contrary from ‘I know it, I have found it.’ When I say I am an artist, I only mean ‘I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.’”

“Nevertheless, you have a vicious character.”

“You suspect me of something—it is in the air—you think I am keeping something back. ‘Vincent is hiding something that cannot stand the light.’ What is it, Mauve? Speak to me frankly.”

Mauve went back to his easel and began applying paint. Vincent turned away and walked slowly over the sand.

He was right. There was something in the air. The Hague had learned about his relation to Christine. De Bock was the one to break the news. He blew in with a naughty smile on his bud-like mouth. Christine was posing, so he spoke in English.

“Well, well, Van Gogh,” he said, throwing off his heavy black overcoat and lighting a long cigarette. “It’s all over town that you’ve taken a mistress. I heard it from Weissenbruch, Mauve and Tersteeg. The Hague is up in arms about it.”

“Oh,” said Vincent, “so that’s what it’s all about.”

“You should be more discreet, old fellow. Is she some model about town? I thought I knew all the available ones.”

Vincent glanced over at Christine knitting by the fire. There was a homely sort of attractiveness about her as she sat there, sewing in her merino and apron, her eyes upon the little garment she was making. De Bock dropped his cigarette to the floor and jumped up.

“My God I” he exclaimed, “You don’t mean to tell me that’s your mistress?”

“I have no mistress, De Bock. But I presume that’s the woman they’re talking about.”

De Bock wiped some imaginary perspiration from his forehead and looked Christine over carefully. “How the devil can you bring yourself to sleep with her?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“My dear old chap, She’s a hag! The commonest sort of a hag! What can you be thinking about? No wonder Tersteeg was shocked. If you want a mistress, why don’t you pick up one of the neat little models about town? There are plenty of them around.”

“As I told you once before, De Bock, this woman is not my mistress.”

“Then what . . .?”

“She’s my wife!”

De Bock closed his tiny lips over his teeth with the gesture of a man tucking a buttonhole around a button.

“Your wife!”

“Yes. I intend to marry her.”

“My God!”

De Bock threw one last look of horror and repulsion at Christine, and fled without even putting on his coat.

“What were you saying about me?” asked Christine.

Vincent crossed and looked down at her for a moment. “I told De Bock that you are going to be my wife.”

Christine was silent for a long time, her hands working busily. Her mouth hung slightly open and her tongue would dart quickly, like the tongue of a snake, to moisten the rapidly drying lips.

“You would really marry me, Vincent? Why?”

“If I don’t marry you, it would have been kinder of me to let you alone. I want to go through the joys and sorrows of domestic life in order to paint it from my own experience. I was in love with a woman once, Christine. When I went to her house, they told me I disgusted her. My love was true and honest and strong, Christine, and when I came away I knew it had been killed. But after death there is a resurrection; you were that resurrection.”

“But you can’t marry me! What about the children? And your brother may stop sending the money.”

“I respect a woman who is a mother, Christine. We’ll keep the new baby and Herman here with us, the others can stay with your mother. As for Theo . . . yes . . . he may cut off my head. But when I write him the full truth I do not think he will abandon me.”

He sat on the floor by her feet. She was looking so much better than when he had first met her. There was a little touch of happiness in her melancholy brown eyes. A new spirit of life had come to her whole personality. Posing had not been easy for her, but she had worked hard and patiently. When he first met her, she had been coarse and ill and miserable; now her whole manner was more quiet. She had found new health and life. As he sat there looking up into her crude, marked face into which a slight note of sweetness had come, he thought once again of the line from Michelet: “Comment se fait-il qu’il y ait sur la terre une femme seule désespérée?”

“Sien, we’ll skimp and be as saving as possible, won’t we? I fear there will come a time when I shall be quite without means. I shall be able to help you until you go to Leyden, but when you come back I don’t know how you will find me, with or without bread. What I have I will share with you and the child.”

Christine slipped off the chair, on to the floor beside him, put her arms about his neck and laid her head on his shoulder.