The fire in her seemed to die down. Vitality vanished, leaving her limp and listless. She rose, a frail slip of a girl with colourless skin and a halo of light brown hair like a dim mist—items so negligible compared with the lilies and roses of Marion’s robuster person, the flaming glory of her hair, the seductiveness of her brimming youth. Wyvern could not resist making a mental comparison even in this moment. He hated himself for making it, and he recorded it to his credit that he hated himself. It was so like him to be merciless to his own faults. He watched Elsie narrowly, from behind a curtain of cigarette smoke.
‘Very well, Jim. I shan’t stand in your way; you know that. To-morrow I’ll go away somewhere. Good night.’
He was pained and yet elated. She would go away to-morrow. Fortunately she had plenty of friends and, thank heaven, he had long ago settled an adequate income upon her. He had nothing to reproach himself with. She would go away to-morrow. They would meet again—oh, frequently. They would always be friends. He felt more warmly towards her than he had done for months, and yet he was dissatisfied. The victory he had won didn’t seem so good to him as it had seemed in prospect. He shrank from the suspicion that he had, in some inexplicable way, sunk in her esteem. The idea was unbearable.
‘We’ll discuss that another time. You’re not angry, darling?’ he said. ‘You see how inevitable it all is?’
With her hand on the door knob she turned to say: ‘Yes, Jim. I’m not blaming you.’ And she went out, closing the door softly behind her.
So that was all right. He smoked his cigarette out in something like peace of mind. Not perfect peace, however; the thought of losing something—even something for which he didn’t care—was distasteful. Old associations would cling. It was an insufferable social order that pressed this cruel alternative on a sensitive man, ordaining that he must release one woman before he could take another. ‘It’s all so niggardly, niggardly!’ said Wyvern, as he stepped out into the sweetness of that June evening. He felt the need, as he had never felt it before, of Nature’s soothing touch, her sunset’s balm for his eyes, the caress of her delicate breezes on his brow.
For the sake of the walk he set out in the direction of his studio, a walk that would take him away from suburban houses into little lanes surrounded by open fields. There one could get close to Nature and to Beauty. He had often been grateful to his own foresight for having provided him with a studio not only separate from his residence but distant from it by many miles. Only in solitude, he murmured to himself, can the human spirit grow to its full stature; and he knew that the rather recondite art whereby he supplemented, or failed to supplement, his substantial private income could never have flourished in the vicinity of Elsie, who was, when all was said, ‘a dear little woman, but no artist.’ In his studio he could work undistracted; and once or twice, when the tide of his inspiration had been at the full, he had stayed there for several days, sleeping at nights upon a little canvas folding-bed. There was something Spartan about the practice that appealed to him. Elsie exhibited a suitable distress at these absences, but she encouraged his painting and applauded the results, though without revealing any real critical understanding of them. James Wyvern professed allegiance to no school, and to that fact attributed his failure to obtain recognition. He dealt too exclusively in subtleties to be able to please the multitude, even the multitude of art-critics. It was his declared purpose to demonstrate by his work a familiar French aphorism: La vérité consiste dans les nuances. ‘The Boot Cupboard’ and an unnamed picture representing amethyst-blue houses were perhaps his most successful productions. ‘Representation, no. Symbolism, if you like. Representation is an artistic vice.’ Yet he had his lapses and was deliciously conscious of them. ‘My dear, I am daring. I am taking the gravest risk. What do you think—a ploughed field! Positively a ploughed field! The danger is simply colossal.’ To his artist-friends he was in the habit of saying: ‘Fundamentally, I suppose, I’m a novelist.’ Just as, three years before, during his literary period, he had fended off praise by murmuring: ‘I’m happiest, after all, with my palette and brush.... Oh, that little box of paints!’
Striding along between fragrant hedges, he luxuriated in the joy of the open air and in his new sense of freedom. Everything had been explained to Elsie, and she had taken it, on the whole, beautifully. He was really grateful to Elsie. And now he was a free man. ‘Freedom, the deep breath!’ he quoted in rapture. He was free now to rescue Marion, his imprisoned princess, from her dungeon of despair. He would take her away, far away. Away from censorious England to the magic air and blue skies of Italy, where life should become an exquisite indolent dream. ‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘Como! Como shall be the mise-en-scène.’
Dreaming of Como, he entered the studio.