"Dearest heart, if only your people knew!"
"If only your picture were painted!" answered Sapphira. After which you can hardly need telling that he had already conceived a masterpiece, and talked it over with Sapphira, who had latterly become hotly impatient for its production.
"Ah," he said, "don't hurry me over that! I didn't intend to touch it for years and years. Heaven knows I mean no reproach to you, dearest; yet if it wasn't for my love I wouldn't think of it even now. Oh, don't look like that! I am grateful to you—I am, indeed, for hurrying me up; I was just as likely to go to the other extreme. But you must give me till next spring, sweetheart, and then——"
His eyes strayed far away into the cool, dark shadows beneath the trees, but in a flash came back to burn themselves into hers.
"My picture's painted already," he said with a smile and a meaning stare of love and worship—"the best I shall ever do. I could never love anything I did as I love my poor libel on you! Oh, but if you knew how you watch over me all the time I am at work! If you knew how one good look at you gives me fresh heart, fresh hope, fresh energy when my own stock runs out! For it is you sometimes, though I made it. And yet, now I am with you, I see it is no more you than a smear of blue paint is the sky—my darling heart!"
His passion pleased Sapphira, and put out of her head for the moment the thought of her people, which haunted her unpleasantly at times; but as decidedly such a time was the present, when she was about to go back into their midst, she reverted to the subject of her own accord, dwelling chiefly on the obsolete character of her people's ideas on certain points, of which the instance was the fuss they had made about her coming up to town at all. That move had obtained their sanction at last, but never their approval. They were still on the pounce for the slightest pretext to insist upon her giving it all up, like a dutiful child, which (said Sapphira) was by no means their opinion of her in the meantime. If, therefore, they were to suspect for one moment—but imperatively they must suspect nothing until such time as they might be told all with confidence born of a picture in the Academy at the very least. Such were the girl's people on her own showing. As a fact, they were also exceedingly prosperous and well-to-do; but of that she made as little as possible. And a few days later she was back among them; taking nothing seriously from morning till night; joining heartily in the general laugh against herself and her artistic exploits in town; and cheerfully supporting, from day to day, the renewed attentions of a young neighbouring squire, whom she had banished from the country (without intending that) a twelve-month before—the honest gentleman, in fact, who is now her husband.
Meanwhile in glaring London, the ill-starred Saumerez was wearing out brain and hand and eye for his Sapphira. As a moving surprise for her when she returned, and to show his great love, he had begun incontinently upon his great attempt; and daily the dream of months was crumbling beneath his hand, for the simple reason that the conception was entirely beyond his present power of execution, besides being as yet most imperfectly matured in his mind. Hour after hour, and day after day, his hand hovered over the great canvas, as often with palette-knife as with brush; and only the presence of his model kept him from tears and execrations. And night after night, under a great blinding light, the same fool sat drawing viciously for the semi-insolvent illustrated paper from which he was earning his precarious livelihood all this time. Night and day, day and night; it was enough to wreck the strongest, and Saumerez was never strong. But he was greatly fortified by the thought of his mistress, and still more by the ever-present sight of her on the one canvas he had covered to something like his own satisfaction. Sapphira's portrait was a distinct success, which left him some lingering belief in his own powers, to pit against daily and hourly failure; and he had often told her how it encouraged him in another way. By a clever trick accidently caught he had painted her eyes so that they watched him incessantly, whether at night over his drawing-board or at his easel during the day; he had only to look up to meet the soft eyes he loved; and sometimes, when long hours had tangled his nerves, to surprise a kind smile on the red lips and to fancy the sweet sunburnt throat swelling with warm breath. At such moments he would go and stand, until he ached again, before the portrait that was making him work desperately but not well—and think—and think—and even pray to Sapphira for pluck and power, as to a painted Virgin.
But he had made to himself a kinder face than he was ever to see any more in the flesh. For when Sapphira came back in September it was to get rid of her flat at the end of the quarter; and when he went to say good-bye to her she informed him—with considerable agitation, it is true, but yet with a firmness and decision about which there could be no mistake—that she must give him up too. In the condition to which Saumerez had reduced himself by overwork and worry, a scene was to be expected, and he made one that frightened dreadfully the author of all this misery; yet she bore it with such a disarming humility and so many and bitter self-reproaches that the wronged man's heart softened hopelessly before he left her. Thus they parted with tears on both sides, and on his the most passionate vows he had ever made her: just because she had told him how she honoured and admired him above all men, among whom, simply, she found there was none she could "really love."
Now mark the mischief of this assurance. To Saumerez it was food and drink and sleep for many days. From an only consolation it grew into a last hope. Then the hope began to importune for expression, and that crescendo, until Saumerez sat down at last and made a full and final outpouring of his soul to Sapphira, and charging her not to answer until her heart was changed, turned to his tools with relief, and began excellently by destroying the abortive "masterpiece." However, an answer came with startling promptitude. And Saumerez would have done well to open it without first pondering the superscription in the dear familiar hand, that danced through his starting tears, and without wasting time in fond and fatuous speculations; for the answer was, what Sapphira had hoped to spare him "for a long, long time"—namely, that she was already engaged to someone else—meaning the excellent man she married before the year was out.