Some may think I naturally should from a sense of gratitude, a sense of duty,—­that I should be spurred to do my best, since avowedly Viola had sacrificed all that the work should be good.

But ah, how little has the Will to do with Art!

How well has the German said, “The Will in morals is everything; in
Art, nothing.  In Art, nothing avails but the being able.”

The most intense desire, the most fervid wish, in Art, helps us nothing.  On the contrary, a great desire to do well in Art, more often blinds the eye and clogs the brain and causes our hand to lose its cunning.  Unbidden, unasked for, unsought, often in our lightest, most careless moments, the Divine Afflatus descends upon us.

We had arranged to have a week-end together out of town.  Fate had favoured us, for Viola’s aunt had gone to visit her sister for a few weeks, and the girl was left alone in the town house, mistress of all her time and free to do as she pleased.  The short interviews at the studio, delightful as they were, seemed to fail to satisfy us any longer.  We craved for that deeper intimacy of “living together.”

This is supposed to be fatal to passion in the end, but whether this is so or not, it is what passion always demands and longs for in the beginning.

So we had planned for four days together in the country, four days of May, with a delicious sense of delight and secret joy and warm heart-beatings.

I had dined at her house last night when all the final details had been arranged in a palm-shaded corner by the piano, our conversation covered by the chatter of the other guests.  No one knew of our plan, it was a dear secret between us, but it would not have mattered very much if others had known that we were going into the country.  I was always supposed to be able to look after Viola, and everybody assumed that it was only a question of time when we should marry each other.  We had grown up together, we were obviously very much attached to each other, and we were cousins.  And with that amazing inconsistency that is the chief feature of the British public, while it would be shocked at the idea of your marrying your sister, it always loves the idea of your marrying your cousin, the person who in all the world is most like your sister.

However, all we as hapless individuals of this idiotic community have to do is to secretly evade its ridiculous conventions when they don’t suit us, and to make the most of them when they do.

And as I was more anxious to marry Viola than about anything else in the world, I welcomed the convention that assigned her to me and made the most of it.

For all that, we kept the matter of our four days to ourselves and planned out its details with careful secrecy.

I was to meet her at Charing-Cross station, and we were going to take an afternoon train down into Kent where Viola declared she knew of a lovely village of the real romantic kind.  I had thought we ought to write or wire for rooms at a hotel beforehand, but Viola had been sure she would find what she wanted when we arrived, and she wished to choose a place herself.