She had generally a very warm pink colour glowing in her face, which disappeared if anything worried or grieved her. It was gone now, and I knew it was my words of the morning that had driven it away.
"I looked for you this morning before I went up to paint," I said; "but couldn't find you."
"I am so sorry," she answered with a quick smile. "What did you want me for?"
"To tell you you needn't worry about Veronica. She is absolutely nothing to me."
"Then, if she is, why will you not send her away, or at least when the 'Bacchante' is finished?"
"Because I don't see any necessity," I answered. "Besides, if I get any other model you would feel the same, wouldn't you, about her?"
"Any model you kissed and desired. Yes, certainly."
We were both standing now facing each other. Viola was deadly pale, as she always became in any conflict with me.
I could not understand how she knew and could speak so definitely, but I could not lie and deny it, so I said nothing.
"Do you mean that I am never to kiss another woman as long as I live?" I asked, a shade of derision coming into my voice.
"No, only as long as we are what we are to each other."
A chill fell upon me. I could not think of a time when she would not be with me, could not face the idea of change.
The light fell across her very bright and waving hair, and caught the tips of her eyelashes and fell all round her exquisite, girlish figure, full of that wonderful grace I had never seen in any other.
"It is a pity to make your love, which otherwise would be such a divine pleasure, a thing of restraint and fetters," I said slowly.
"But it is a mutual obligation in love," she said in a very low tone. "It must be so. You would not wish me to kiss any of the men who come here, would you? They often ask me to."
Her words gave me suddenly such a sense of surprise and shock, it was almost as if she had struck me in the eyes.
"_No_," I said involuntarily, the instinct within me speaking without thought.
"Well, that is what I say," answered Viola gently. "A great passion has its fetters. I don't see how it can be helped. You can have the promiscuous loves of all the women you meet, or you can have the absolute devotion of one; but I don't see how you can have the two."