Some time or other I would succeed in breaking through that charmed circle in which she lived, in making her yield up to me the spiritual maidenhood which, as it were, was hers.

I would be first and last and everything to her, and not even her art should count beside me.

I closed my eyes and put my head back on the couch where I was sitting and gave myself up to listening to the music.

How the instrument answered her!  What a divine melody rose from it, floating gently on the air like quivering wings.

Then suddenly came a storm of passion, and the room was filled with a tempest of sound, while one strong thread of melody low down in the bass ran through it all and seemed a fierce reproach of one in anguish.  At last one sheet of sound seemed to sweep the piano from end to end, a cry of dismay, of pain, the woe and grief of one who sees his world shattered suddenly before his eyes; then there was silence.  I sprang up and clasped her in my arms.

“Trevor,” she exclaimed, like one awakening from a dream; “I had no idea you were there.”

“No,” I said savagely; “you were so absorbed, you never noticed me come in.”

“Well, I heard the model go, and I waited and waited for you to come down; but you were so long I turned to the piano to console me.”

“Which it did quite well, apparently,” I answered.

A sweet, tender look came over her face, and she stretched out her arms to me.

“Nothing could wholly console me for your absence,” she said; “and you know that quite well; but the music always helps me to bear it.”

I drew her to me and strained her close up to me in silence, longing to conquer, to come into union with that mysterious inner something we call the Soul.

Yet in this unconquerable quality, in this pursuit of that which always escapes from our most passionate embraces, man finds an inexhaustible delight.

CHAPTER VII

FREEDOM

The weeks slipped by, and I worked hard at the painting, while Viola gave herself up to the music and all the work that the approaching production of her opera gave her.  Our evenings were always spent together.  We set aside two evenings in the week for our friends, giving only small dinners of eight or ten.  On the other evenings when we were not dining out ourselves we went to the opera, and supper after.

I often wondered whether there was anything or nothing in the fact that we were not married to each other, which affected our feelings and relations to each other.  Does that conventional bond make some subtle difference, just by its existence; and did that account for the fact that we seemed to find a greater delight in each other’s society, a greater need of each other than the average husband and wife do; or was it only because we happened to be two who had met and really loved more than most people do, and had we been married, we should have felt the same?