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 appetite.”

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

We got through some part of our dinner and then took a hansom to the theatre.  As we sat close, side by side, in one of the dark streets, I bent over her and whispered: 

“If we had been married this morning, and you were coming back to the studio with me after the theatre I should be quite happy and I could finish the picture.”

She said nothing, only seemed to quiver in silence, and looked away from me out of the window.

We took stalls and had very good seats, but what that play was like I never knew.  I tried to keep my eyes on the stage, but it floated away from me in waves of light and colour.  I was lost in wondering where I had better go to get fresh inspiration, to escape from the picture, from Viola, from myself.  Away, I must get away. Coelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare current is not always true.  Our mind is but a chameleon and takes its hues from many skies.

In the vestibule at the end I said: