"What is it? What is the matter?" came Viola's voice, sharp with anxiety, across the room. "Are you ill? Shall I come to you?"
"No, no," I answered, and put my head down on the mantelpiece. "Go and dress. I can't work any more."
I heard her soft slight movements as she left the dais. I did not turn, but sank into the armchair beside me, my face covered by my hands.
Screens of colour passed before my eyes, my ears sang.
I had not moved when I felt her come over to me. I looked up, she was pale with anxiety.
"I have worked a little too much, that's all," I said constrainedly, turning from her lovely anxious eyes.
"Have you time to stay with me this evening? We could go out and get some dinner, if you have, and then go on to a theatre. Would they miss you?"
"Not if I sent them a wire. I should like to stay with you. Are you better?"
I looked up and caught one of her hands between my own burning and trembling ones.
"I shall never be any better till I have you for my own, till we are married. Why are you so cruel to me?"
"Cruel to you? Is that possible?" Her face had crimsoned violently, then it paled again to stone colour.
"Well, don't let's discuss that. The picture's done. I can't work on it any more. It can't be helped. Let's go out and get some dinner, anyway."
Viola was silent, but I felt her glance of dismay at the only half-finished figure on the easel.
She put on her hat and coat in silence, and we went out. After we had ordered dinner and were seated before it at the restaurant table we found we could not eat it. We sat staring at one another across it, doing nothing.
"Did you really mean that ... that you wouldn't finish the picture?" she said, after a long silence.
I looked back at her; the pale transparency of her skin, the blue of the eyes, the bright curls of her hair in the glow of the electric lamp, looked wonderfully delicate, entrancing, and held my gaze.
"I don't think I can. I have got to a point where I must get away from it and from you."
"But it is dreadful to leave it unfinished."
"It's better than going mad. Let's have some champagne. Perhaps that will give us an appetite."
Viola did not decline, and the wine had a good effect upon us.
We got through some part of our dinner and then took a hansom to the theatre. As we sat close, side by side, in one of the dark streets, I bent over her and whispered: