"I suppose your parents will not object?" he asked. "You can assure them I am a most trustworthy young man."
"My parents allow me to do exactly what I wish," she answered. "You see, they can trust me," she added, smilingly.
"Naturally. Then it is a promise."
This was their first meeting. Subsequently it became her custom to ride out alone after breakfast. She chose the morning, when Kathleen was busy and could not accompany her, and she took her sketching book; but most of her time was spent in watching Custance, and absorbing his art.
When her teacher left Grey Town she suddenly realised that her parents and friends in Melbourne needed her society, and, after an affectionate parting from Kathleen and the Quirks, was carried out of Grey Town life by the train that is termed an express.
In Melbourne, an indulgent father and mother, who fondly believed that she was perfect, readily consented to her improving her talent under the teaching of the great artist, and she made rapid progress in her art. But this was not the chief result of her lessons. Slowly she became infatuated with the personality of Custance, while he, having begun to play the game of love simply for the excitement it afforded him, finally found himself involved in a grand passion. This he declared to her in language suggested by his artistic temperament, and she responded in a similar strain.
Then came a pause, when he asked himself: "Is it fair that any woman shall link her fate to mine?" He looked at the small syringe on the mantelpiece and the tiny little bottle beside it. He thought of the marks on his arm, of the passing inspirations he thus found, and of the subsequent fits of remorse.
The following day, while they were working in the studio, Sylvia painting and he criticising her work, he asked:
"If I were a drunkard, would you still care for me?"
She did not so much as turn while she answered: