After a few minutes’ more reflection, I went to look for her.  I thought I would try to soften the effect of my last words to her, but I could not find her, and full of a sense of dissatisfaction, I went on at last upstairs to the studio.

When Veronica came into the room I realised the full extent of my folly the previous afternoon.  Hitherto her manner had been respectful and demure enough on the surface, though always with a suggestion of veiled insolent self-confidence.  Now the veil was thrown off, she was assured of herself, and showed it.

She came up to me, kissed me as a matter of course, and when I barely returned the kiss, she laughed openly and said coolly.

“What’s the matter, Trevor?  Viola been lecturing you?”

To hear her use Viola’s name seemed to freeze me.

“Be quiet,” I said sharply.

The girl merely made a grimace and began to take off her hat and let down her hair.

The morning passed dully.  I did not paint well.  The impersonal state of mind in which alone good artistic work can be produced was not with me.

When I went down to luncheon I found Viola looking very pale and ill.  This made me feel cross.  Ill-health very rarely excites pity or sympathy in men, but nearly always a feeling of vexation and annoyance.  “Why should she worry herself?” I asked myself angrily, “when there was nothing to worry about.”

She had generally a very warm pink colour glowing in her face, which disappeared if anything worried or grieved her.  It was gone now, and I knew it was my words of the morning that had driven it away.

“I looked for you this morning before I went up to paint,” I said; “but couldn’t find you.”

“I am so sorry,” she answered with a quick smile.  “What did you want me for?”

“To tell you you needn’t worry about Veronica.  She is absolutely nothing to me.”

“Then, if she is, why will you not send her away, or at least when the ‘Bacchante’ is finished?”

“Because I don’t see any necessity,” I answered.  “Besides, if I get any other model you would feel the same, wouldn’t you, about her?”

“Any model you kissed and desired.  Yes, certainly.”

We were both standing now facing each other.  Viola was deadly pale, as she always became in any conflict with me.

I stood silent for a moment.

I could not understand how she knew and could speak so definitely, but I could not lie and deny it, so I said nothing.

“Do you mean that I am never to kiss another woman as long as I live?” I asked, a shade of derision coming into my voice.

“No, only as long as we are what we are to each other.”

A chill fell upon me.  I could not think of a time when she would not be with me, could not face the idea of change.

The light fell across her very bright and waving hair, and caught the tips of her eyelashes and fell all round her exquisite, girlish figure, full of that wonderful grace I had never seen in any other.