“Well, my dear, where are you off to?” he asked, slipping his hand through her arm. “If you’ve nothing better to do—and what could be better?—take me to tea at your place. Here’s a hansom; let’s jump in.”
For a moment she hesitated. Then, with a laugh and look, stepped with him into the cab.
THOUGH the days were lengthening out toward the spring, there were many hours during each when the light was not clean and clear enough for painting; these Maddison found unspeakably dreary. He was greatly tempted often either to call Marian back to him or to run up to town to see her, but he did not give way to the impulse, for he had determined to test this plan of hers to the bitter end. He did not much believe that she was right and that separation would enable him to do better with his work. Rather to the opposite opinion he inclined, that constant companionship would make them become one, all in all to each other, so that no longer would her presence disturb him, but on the contrary would inspire and spur him on to greater things than he had ever achieved before.
The new picture, a view of the downs and the gray sea beyond, progressed apace, but he was not satisfied with it. There was no defect in it that he could name or which he felt he could amend, but there was something lacking. The outward semblance was right; it was the inward spiritual grace that was lacking. Probably no other than himself would notice it, yet it hurt him. He felt as if some power had gone out of him, and that he painted no longer with gusto or firm, imperative inspiration. His skill had not deserted him, the coloring and the drawing satisfied his exacting taste and his intimate knowledge of nature. But it was only the outside of nature that he had caught and fixed; the heart of her was not there, as it had been in the pictures that had brought him name and fame. This was a dead thing—there was no life in it.
He could not understand why his love for Marian should have affected him in this way or to so great an extent. Why should the absorption in her of all his hopes in any degree depreciate his insight into and love of nature? Surely a man might serve a woman and nature too? But though he could not trace its working or even fix in what it lay, he knew that some change had come over him, and that since he and Marian had been together he was a different man. This love that he had fully counted on to elevate and ennoble him, seemed to restrain him from reaching to that which had before been easily within his grasp.