They returned to London for a few weeks, and then went to Paris, Elizabeth adored Paris, and wanted to live there permanently; but George was against it. He had got some bug about the best art being “autochthonous,” and declared that an artist ought to live in his own country. But the real reason was that Parisian life seemed so pleasant and the town so full of artists more gifted and more advanced than himself that he found it almost impossible to work there. It was easier to feel important in the comparative desert of London. So they returned to London, and in the autumn George had his first “show,” which was not altogether such a failure as he had expected. When autumn turned to winter, and the yellow leaves of the plane trees drifted down into heaps in the London squares lying miserably sodden under the rain—the everlasting London drizzle—Elizabeth got very restless. She wanted to get away, anywhere under blue skies and sun. Her throat and lungs were rather sensitive, and when the weather turned foggy, she nearly choked in the heavy soot-laden stifling air. They talked about going to Italy or Spain, but George knew only too well that he could not afford it. He might indeed get assurances from various impresarios he frequented that “work could go on as usual,” but he knew only too well that a month’s absence would mean a decline and that after three months he would be practically forgotten and dropped. It’s a dangerous thing to have a national reputation for honesty—people get to trading upon it and seem to think it absolves them from individual obligations. So George, after forming various vague plans for a delightful winter in Sicily or the island of Majorca, had to admit to Elizabeth that he simply dared not go. He begged her to go alone, or to find some friend to go with her. But Elizabeth flatly refused to go without him. So they stayed in London, and worked and coughed together. Perhaps it might have been better to take the risk, for as things turned out George never saw either Spain or Italy, which he had wanted to see so much.