ooking at me with confusion and
perplexity in her eyes.

"I know nothing. I merely ask you. You were up all night?"

Her face became quite pale again, and she raised her eyebrows with a
slight smile of indifference.

"Yes, I was."

I paled too, with annoyance.

"Lucia! this is the one thing I asked you to do for me; to give your
nights, at least, to rest!"

"I know you did," she said, passionately, looking at me, her lips
quivering and her face growing paler and paler. "But it is impossible
sometimes! What gain is there in discussing these things? A perfect
scheme came to me last night, and I sat here thinking of it--planning
it upon this canvas. I could not have slept had I left this room.
Besides, to close your brain to your ideas when they do come!--it is
madness! I might never have seen the picture so vividly before me again
if I had not stayed to think it out, to realise it, to impress it, as
it were, clearly on myself. I cannot promise you, Victor--I never have,
I would not before--to go to bed and try to sleep when a plan occurs to
me suddenly for a canvas, as it did last night!"

"But think of sitting in a room like this all night with no fire! This
studio is positively freezing!"

"Is it? I don't feel it."

"No. That is what I complain of. You feel nothing and think of nothing
while you are at work, and you will injure yourself unconsciously. If
you do these things you will certainly break down."

She merely shrugged her shoulders and looked past me through the
window, an arrogant determination filling her blue eyes. The next
minute she was speaking rapidly, and with an intonation of impatience
in her voice.

"You know I am given over to the work--entirely, utterly. It is useless
to expect me to sacrifice it to anything. On the contrary, everything
must be sacrificed to it. Health, life itself, must be in the second
place. I only value my life for the sake of this talent. Of course, I
know if I lose my life I lose it too; but, equally, I can produce
nothing without work. If I am to succeed I must work simply--it is
necessity."

Each word was incisive, and seemed to cut slightly like falling steel
from those soft, warm lips. A sudden desire rushed through me to teach
her--at any rate, to exert myself to the utmost to teach her--that her
life was valuable to her for other things than the capacity it gave to
work. But I checked the words and the thoughts that rose, acting on the
same principle as