That delight in beauty which is to an artist as much a part of his life as another man’s delight in food or wine Viola had shared with me in an intense degree.

And sharing any of the delights of life with one we love enhances them enormously.  One can easily imagine a gourmand being dissatisfied with his wife if she resolutely refused to share any of his meals!

Now, as I gazed through the windows of the slow-moving train and saw the long blue lines of the level-topped hills, the deep purple edges of the vast table-lands rising against the amber or the blood red evening skies, I longed for Viola with that inward longing of the soul which nothing but the presence of its own companion can satisfy.

One evening, as I gazed out, the whole prairie was bathed in rose-coloured light that appeared to ripple over it in pink waves.  The tall grass, tall as that of an English hay-field, seemed touched with fire; far on every side stretched the open plain, absolutely level, bounded at last in the far distance by that deep purple wall of mountains, flat-topped, level-lined also, against the sky, the great mesas or table-lands of Mexico.

And in this vast expanse of waving grasses and low flowering shrubs, in the pink glow of the evening, stood out two graceful forms, a pair of coyotes, distinct against the sunset behind them.  Only these two were visible in all that great lonely plain, and they stood together watching the train go by, their sinuous bodies and low sweeping tails touched and tipped with fire in the ruby light.

How delighted Viola would have been with that scene, I thought regretfully, as the train carried us through it.

When we arrived at the City of Mexico, we drove to the Hotel Iturbide and took a room high up on the third floor, to be well lifted out of the suffocating atmosphere of the streets.

Suzee was a little overawed by the height of the long, narrow room that we had assigned to us in this, at one time, palace, but when she saw that the bed was comfortable and there was a large mirror before which she could array and re-array herself, she was satisfied.

I saw the room would be a very difficult one to paint in, for it was dark in spite of the tall window which opened on to an iron balcony running across the front of the hotel.

The window was draped with thick red curtains and had a deep, handsome cornice hanging over it.

Suzee went on to the balcony immediately and was delighted with the incessant stream of gaily dressed people passing underneath.  This was the main street of the city.  Not very wide, flanked with lofty, old, picturesquely built houses on each side, of which the lower part was often shop or restaurant, it presented somewhat the same heavy, gloomy appearance as the streets in Italian towns.  The air was thick, dust-laden, and evil-smelling, for the City of Mexico, though at an elevation of 8,000 feet, has none of the crisp, healthful clearness, usually to be found at that altitude.  Built over the bed of an enormous dried up lake, in the centre of an elevated table-land, it is, even at the present day, badly drained and unhealthy.