ence, while I studied my own work. When she had her
hat on I looked up and asked her if she wanted to be paid.

"No," she answered, "we'll leave it till the end of the week.
Good-bye."

"Good-bye," I said, and she went out. I laid the sketch on the table
beside me, and sat thinking. A sudden blankness fell upon me as I
stood mentally opposite this new idea that had never presented itself
to me in the same form before, that in my former easy, wandering
existence I had always welcomed a beautiful model, not only for the
gain to my art, but because of the incidental pleasure it might bring
me. But now I realised suddenly that this girl's beauty brought me no
elation. _It was not any use_, and in a flash I saw, too, that no
woman now, no beauty could be any use to me ever any more, for I was
not a single irresponsible existence any longer, but involved with
another which was sacred to me.

How often in the past, when entangled in some light _liaison_, I had
wished for deeper, stronger emotions, something to wake the mind and
stir the soul! Then in my love for Viola I had found all these and
welcomed them madly. She had stirred my whole sleeping being into
flame, and given me those keener and stronger desires of the brain,
and satisfied them; and till now it had seemed to me that this passion
for her was a free gift from the hands of Fate. Now, suddenly, I saw
that the gift had its price. That, after all, there was something to
be said for those light free loves of the past. That some joy had been
taken out of life, now those glittering trifles, toys of the senses,
were taken from me, made impossible.

For the first time I realised that a great passion has its yoke, and
that, in return for the great joy it gives, it demands and takes one's
freedom.

I sat motionless, feeling overwhelmed by the sudden blaze of light
that the simple incident of this model's advent had thrown on an
obscure psychological fact.

I saw now that my love for Viola was not wholly a gain, not something
extra added to my life's-cup that made it full to overflowing, but, as
always in this life, something had been taken away as well as added.

I felt as a child might feel who was presented with a magnificent gift
with which he was overjoyed, but who on taking it to the nursery to
add to his other treasures, saw his nurse locking these all away from
him for ever in a glass case above his reach.

As the child might, I hugged my new gift to me and