“How can I speak for them?” I answered.
“I say you can and shall.”
“Very well, then,” I replied. “I think, if you ask me, that they should not. A man’s imagination is his mistress. He cannot keep his mistress in the same house with his wife. They would be sure to quarrel, and naturally the mistress, having no orthodox title to remain, would be the one to go.”
“But—but, supposing it no question of a wife?”
“Then, it is no question at all. Love makes no contracts and is bound by none. It is worldly policy that does all that part. Do you think I would debar my man of genius that best stimulus to his imagination—an unfettered passion? It is all the difference between the golden goat and the poor Billy tethered to a stake in the backyard.”
She sat quiet for a long time after that, her face still averted, her fingers playing with the stones. Then suddenly she stirred, and, with a sigh, rose to her feet.
“Are we not wasting our time?” she said. “I feel that there is so much to see. And yet it is so beautiful here.”
We were quite alone in the vast amphitheatre. As she stood up, the picture she made—her face, half in glow half in shadow, the vivid life of her contrasting with the golden ruins of the walls—wrought with such ardour upon my imagination, that I felt that, if I failed in that moment to take advantage of the creative impulse its beauty awoke in me, I deserved to be writ down for ever more the emasculate cypher of her strictures. So very quietly I got out the block, pencils, and a handful of coloured crayons which I made it my constant practice to carry about with me.
“Fifine,” I said, “don’t move: stand just as you are. I am going to immortalise you.”
She gave a little start; just glanced at me; then, neither stirring nor posing, obeyed. I was in happy pin: mood, model and place were all in one luminous harmony, and the thing came out as I had conceived it, automatically, almost without effort. It took me but a few minutes.