herto 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 of artistic skill, designed and arranged under her
own directions, the curtains enclosing it were delicate in colouring
and so soft in fabric that the bed seemed enveloped in a mass of blue
clouds, gold-lined, and all the sheets and clothing were filmy and
lace-edged, and must have been the despair of the steam laundry; a
blue silk covering, the colour of her own eyes, and embroidered with
pale pink roses, gold-centred, reposed on it, matching the curtains,
and an electric lamp shaded in rose colour depended from the French
crown above the head; a lamp which flooded the bed with light when all
the curtains were drawn and shut out the lights of the room. The
carpet was blue also, and the heavy curtains over all the windows
matched it, edged with, and embroidered in gold.

The toilet-table, though simple enough in its arrangements, for Viola
needed no cosmetics, no lotions, no manicure nor other evil
inventions, was always a lovely object. On its pale rose covering lay
her gold-backed brushes and comb, her gold hand-mirror