?"

"I don't think I loved her. I wanted her as an experience."

"Is it not just the same with me?"

"No, it isn't. It's quite different. Do not worry me with questions,
Viola. Kiss me and tell me you love me."

She raised herself suddenly on one elbow and leant over me, kissing
me on the eyes and lips, all over my face, with passionate intensity.

"I do love you. You are like my life to me, but I know I ought not to
marry you. I should absorb you. You would love me. You would not want
to be unfaithful to me. But fidelity to one person is madness an
impossibility to an artist if he is to reach his highest development.
It can't be. We must not think of it."

The blood went to my head in great waves. The supreme tenderness of a
moment back seemed gone, her words had roused another phase of
passion, the harsh fury of it.

"I don't care about the art, I don't care about anything. You shall
marry me. I will make you love me."

"You don't understand. If you were fifty-eight I would marry you
directly."

"You shall marry me before then," I answered, and kissed her again and
put my hands up to her soft-haired head to pull it down to my breast
and dragged loose some of its soft coils.

"Trevor, you are mad. Let me get up."

I rose myself, and left her free to get up. She sat up on the couch,
white and trembling.

"Now you are going to say you won't come to me any more, I suppose?" I
said angrily. The nervous excitement of the moment was so great; there
was such a wild booming in my ears I could hardly hear my own voice.

She looked up. The tears welled into her luminous blue eyes.

"How unkind you are! and how unjust! Of course I shall come, must come
every day if you want it till the Phryne is done. You don't know how I
love you."

I took her dear little hand and kissed it.

"I am sorry," I said. "Forgive me, but you must not say such stupid
things. Of course you will marry me; why, we are half married already.
Most people would say we ought to be."

I turned on the lights and drew the table up to the fire, which I
stirred, and began to make the tea.

Viola sat on the edge of the couch in silence, coiling up her hair.

She seemed very pale and tired, and I tried to soothe her with
increased tenderness. I made her a cup of tea and came and sat beside
her while she drank it. Then I put my arm round her waist and got her
to lean against me, and put her soft fair-haired head down on my
shoulder and rest the