The blood went to my head in great waves. The supreme tenderness of a moment back seemed gone, her words had roused another phase of pa.s.sion, the harsh fury of it.

"I don't care about the art, I don't care about anything. You shall marry me. I will make you love me."

"You don't understand. If you were fifty-eight I would marry you directly."

"You shall marry me before then," I answered, and kissed her again and put my hands up to her soft-haired head to pull it down to my breast and dragged loose some of its soft coils.

"Trevor, you are mad. Let me get up."

I rose myself, and left her free to get up. She sat up on the couch, white and trembling.

"Now you are going to say you won't come to me any more, I suppose?" I said angrily. The nervous excitement of the moment was so great; there was such a wild booming in my ears I could hardly hear my own voice.

She looked up. The tears welled into her luminous blue eyes.

"How unkind you are! and how unjust! Of course I shall come, must come every day if you want it till the Phryne is done. You don't know how I love you."

I took her dear little hand and kissed it.

"I am sorry," I said. "Forgive me, but you must not say such stupid things. Of course you will marry me; why, we are half married already.

Most people would say we ought to be."

I turned on the lights and drew the table up to the fire, which I stirred, and began to make the tea.

Viola sat on the edge of the couch in silence, coiling up her hair.

She seemed very pale and tired, and I tried to soothe her with increased tenderness. I made her a cup of tea and came and sat beside her while she drank it. Then I put my arm round her waist and got her to lean against me, and put her soft fair-haired head down on my shoulder and rest there in silence.

I stroked one of her hands that lay cold and nerveless in her lap with my warm one.

"You have done so much for me," I said softly; "wonderful things which I can never forget, and now you must belong to me altogether. No two people could love each other more than we do. It would be absurd of us not to marry." I kissed her, and she accepted my caresses and did not argue with me any more; so I felt happier, and when she rose to leave our good-bye was very tender, our last kiss an ecstasy.

When she had gone I picked up one of the sketches I had first made of her and gazed long at it.

How extravagantly I had come to love her now. I realised in those moments how strong this pa.s.sion was that had grown up, as it were, under cover of the work, and that I had not fully recognised till now.

How intensely the sight of these wonderful lines moved me! I felt that I could worship her, literally. That she had become to me as a religion is to the enthusiast.

I must be the possessor, the sole owner of her. I felt she was mine already. The agony and the loss, if she ever gave herself to another, would be unendurable. If that happened I should let a revolver end everything for me. I did not believe even the thought of my work would save me.

Yet how curious this same pa.s.sion is, I reflected, gazing at the exquisite image on the paper before me. If one of these lines were bent out of shape, twisted, or crooked, this same pa.s.sion would cease to be. The love and affection and esteem I had for her would remain, but this intense desire and longing for her to be my own property, which shook me now to the very depths of my system, would utterly vanish.

Yet it would be wrong to say that these lines alone had captured me, for had they enclosed a stupid or commonplace mind they would have stirred me as little as if they themselves had been imperfect.

No it is when we meet a Spirit that calls to us from within a form of outward beauty, and only then, that the greatest pa.s.sion is born within us.

And that I felt for Viola now, and I knew--looking back through a vista of other and lighter loves--I had never known yet its equal. She loved me, too, that great fact was like a chord of triumphant music ringing through my heart. Then why this fancy that she would not marry me? How could I possibly break it down? persuade her of its folly?

I walked up and down the studio all that evening, unable to go out to dinner, unable to think of anything but her, and all through the night I tossed about, restless and sleepless, longing for the hour on the following day which should bring her to me again.

Yet how those hours tried me now! It would be impossible to continue.

She must and should marry me. It was only for me she held back from it apparently, yet for me it would be everything.

One afternoon, after a long sitting, the power to work seemed to desert me suddenly. My throat closed nervously, my mouth grew dry, the whole room seemed swimming round me, and the faultless, dazzling figure before me seemed receding into a darkening mist. I flung away my brush and rose suddenly. I felt I must move, walk about, and I started to pace the room then suddenly reeled, and saved myself by clutching at the mantelpiece.

"What is it? What is the matter?" came Viola's voice, sharp with anxiety, across the room. "Are you ill? Shall I come to you?"

"No, no," I answered, and put my head down on the mantelpiece. "Go and dress. I can't work any more."

I heard her soft slight movements as she left the dais. I did not turn, but sank into the armchair beside me, my face covered by my hands.

Screens of colour pa.s.sed before my eyes, my ears sang.

I had not moved when I felt her come over to me. I looked up, she was pale with anxiety.

"You are ill, Trevor! I am so sorry."

"I have worked a little too much, that's all," I said constrainedly, turning from her lovely anxious eyes.

"Have you time to stay with me this evening? We could go out and get some dinner, if you have, and then go on to a theatre. Would they miss you?"

"Not if I sent them a wire. I should like to stay with you. Are you better?"

I looked up and caught one of her hands between my own burning and trembling ones.

"I shall never be any better till I have you for my own, till we are married. Why are you so cruel to me?"

"Cruel to you? Is that possible?" Her face had crimsoned violently, then it paled again to stone colour.

"Well, don't let's discuss that. The picture's done. I can't work on it any more. It can't be helped. Let's go out and get some dinner, anyway."

Viola was silent, but I felt her glance of dismay at the only half-finished figure on the easel.

She put on her hat and coat in silence, and we went out. After we had ordered dinner and were seated before it at the restaurant table we found we could not eat it. We sat staring at one another across it, doing nothing.

"Did you really mean that ... that you wouldn't finish the picture?"

she said, after a long silence.

I looked back at her; the pale transparency of her skin, the blue of the eyes, the bright curls of her hair in the glow of the electric lamp, looked wonderfully delicate, entrancing, and held my gaze.

"I don't think I can. I have got to a point where I must get away from it and from you."

"But it is dreadful to leave it unfinished."

"It's better than going mad. Let's have some champagne. Perhaps that will give us an appet.i.te."

Viola did not decline, and the wine had a good effect upon us.