It was true that was all we could do, yet I looked round the bare attic-like room with regret.  Could ever another give me more than that had done?  Could there ever be a keener joy, a deeper delight than I had known in the shadows of that first violet night?

PART THREE

THE BLACK NIGHT

CHAPTER VI

IN MAYFAIR

The spring of the next year found us installed in a small house in Mayfair, for the season.

For a year we had been abroad; the summer in Italy, the winter in Egypt, and had come back with our eyes full of colour, armed against the deadly greyness of England for three months at least.

We had travelled as Mr. and Mrs. Lonsdale, we came back as Mr. and Mrs. Lonsdale.  There had been no difficulty so far.  Every one seemed satisfied, and what was far more important, so were we.

The whole top floor of the Mayfair house was my studio, and made a fairly large and convenient one.  We kept on the old studio as a matter of sentiment, but rarely went there now.

The “Phryne” and the “Soul of the Wood” had been finished and accepted for exhibition.  Both were sold, the “Phryne” for five thousand pounds, the “Soul of the Wood” for four thousand, and I had brought from abroad many unfinished sketches and partly finished pictures.

In all this time we had lived very close to each other:  Viola had been my only model against an ever-varied background.  Not the faintest shadow had flecked the sunshine of our passion for each other.  Viola had written her operetta, and it had been taken for a London theatre.  A Captain Lawton had written the libretto under the title of the “Lily of Canton.”  The music was weird and charming, suited to the strange Chinese story and scenery.  It was to be produced in May, and Viola always spoke of the first night with excited joy.

It had been a full, rich year.  Like bees, as Viola had said, we had gone from flower to flower, draining the honey from each new blossom and passing on.  New places, new skies, new scenes had all in turn contributed to our pleasure and given us inspiration which took form again in our art.

The vivid desert backgrounds, the light-filled skies of Upper Egypt crept into my pictures, the cry of impassioned Eastern music in the forbidden dancing-dens of Keneh stole into Viola’s refrains.

On that sunny afternoon in April, as we took tea in our tiny and gimcrack drawing-room together, Viola and I felt in the best of spirits.

“Captain Lawton and Mr. and Mrs. Dixon are coming in to dinner to-night,” Viola remarked.  “Lawton tells me he saw the manager yesterday, and the piece seems getting on all right.”

“I am very glad,” I answered.  “Do you know, Viola, a Roman girl called here this morning, and wanted me to take her on as a model.  She’s very good.  I think I’d better secure her, if ... if....”