Then gradually a sense of unrest mingled with the calm.  The whole afternoon while Viola was with me I worked happily, content to the point of being absolutely oblivious of everything except ourselves and the picture.  Our tea together afterwards, when we discussed the progress made and the colour effects, was a delight.  But the moment the door was closed after her, when she had left me, a blank seemed to spread round me.  The picture itself could not console me.  I gazed and gazed at it, but the gaze did not satisfy me nor soothe the feverish unrest.  I longed for her presence beside me again.

One day after the posing she seemed so tired and exhausted that I begged her to lie down a little and drew up my great comfortable couch, like a Turkish divan, to the fire.  She did as she was bid, and I heaped up a pile of blue cushions behind her fair head.

“I am so tired,” she exclaimed and let her eyes close and her arms fall beside her.

I stood looking down on her.  Her face was shell-like in its clear fairness and transparency, and the beautiful expressive eyebrows drawn delicately on the white forehead appealed to me.

The intimacy established between us, her complete willing sacrifice to me, her surrender, her trust in me, the knowledge of herself and her beauty she had allowed me gave birth suddenly in my heart to a great overwhelming tenderness and a necessity for its expression.

I bent over her, pressed my lips down on hers and held them there.  She did not open her eyes, but raised her arms and put them round my neck, pressing me to her.  In a joyous wave of emotion I threw myself beside her and drew the slender, supple figure into my arms.

“Trevor,” she murmured, as soon as I would let her, “I am afraid you are falling in love with me.”

“I have already,” I answered.  “I love you, I want for my own.  You must marry me, and come and live at the studio.”

“I don’t think I can marry you,” she replied in very soft tones, but she did not try to move from my clasp.

“Why not?”

“Artists should not marry:  it prevents their development.  How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight,” I answered, half-submerged in the delight of the contact with her, of knowing her in my arms, hardly willing or able to listen to what she said.

“And how many women have you loved?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I answered.  “I have been with lots, of course, but I don’t think I have ever loved at all till now.”

“What about the little girl in the tea-shop at Sitka?”

“I don’t think I loved her.  I wanted her as an experience.”

“Is it not just the same with me?”

“No, it isn’t.  It’s quite different.  Do not worry me with questions, Viola.  Kiss me and tell me you love me.”

She raised herself suddenly on one elbow and leant over me, kissing me on the eyes and lips, all over my face, with passionate intensity.