“It is a pity to make your love, which otherwise would be such a divine pleasure, a thing of restraint and fetters,” I said slowly.

“But it is a mutual obligation in love,” she said in a very low tone.  “It must be so.  You would not wish me to kiss any of the men who come here, would you?  They often ask me to.”

Her words gave me suddenly such a sense of surprise and shock, it was almost as if she had struck me in the eyes.

“No,” I said involuntarily, the instinct within me speaking without thought.

“Well, that is what I say,” answered Viola gently.  “A great passion has its fetters.  I don’t see how it can be helped.  You can have the promiscuous loves of all the women you meet, or you can have the absolute devotion of one; but I don’t see how you can have the two.”

My heart beat, and the blood seemed going up to my head, confusing my reason.  I felt angry because I knew she was right.

“Well, really it seems that the first might be better if one’s life is to be so limited.”

Viola did not answer at all.  I turned and walked towards the window and stood looking out for a few minutes.  When I turned round the room was empty.

I went up to the studio, but again I could not paint.  The pale, unhappy face of Viola came between me and the picture.

To Veronica I hardly spoke.  Her beauty neither attracted nor even pleased me.  She was the cause of all this vague cloud rising up in my life, which had hitherto been intensely happy and allowed me to do the very best in my art.

Her efforts to attract me and to draw me from my work only annoyed and irritated me, and when I went down to tea I told her to go, that I should not paint afterwards.

No one happened to be calling that afternoon, so Viola and I were alone.  There was hardly any constraint between us even after what had passed at luncheon.  We were so much one, so intimate, mentally as well as physically, that we could not quarrel with each other any more than one can quarrel with oneself.  One can be cross with oneself occasionally, but not for long.

We neither of us referred to Veronica or anything disagreeable, but gave ourselves up to the joy of each other’s society.  When I told her I was not going back to paint she was delighted, and we planned to dine early and go to the Empire after.

The ballet seemed to amuse her, and when we returned and went up to our room she was in the lightest and gayest of spirits.  This room was the only one in the house in the furnishing of which Viola had taken the slightest interest.  In all the others she had allowed things to stand just as we found them, just as our landlord had thought good to leave them, but in this one much had been added to the contents written down in the inventory and so much altered that our landlord would indeed have been astonished if he had suddenly looked in.  The bed was a triumph